Faith kills » « Congratulations to Danielle Muscato

Later this morning in America

People still want to discuss the ongoing ghastliness in Ferguson, MO, but the thread dedicated to that in Good Morning, America is getting old…and as a spam defensive measure, commenting on posts older than three months is automatically shut down. No exceptions allowed.

So here’s a fresh new post to accumulate comments!

Faith kills » « Congratulations to Danielle Muscato

Comments

  1. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/12/02/3598082/one-woman-could-appoint-a-special-prosecutor-and-bring-justice-to-ferguson/

    Missouri courts, at times, have interpreted their power to appoint a special prosecutor broadly, to include not only blatant conflicts — like the prosecutor being related to the defendant — but also subtler conflicts that reveal themselves through the prosecutor’s conduct in the case.
    In the 1996 case of State v. Copeland, a Missouri court replaced the prosecutor because the judge “sensed that [the prosecutor’s] sympathies for [the defendant] may have prevented him from being an effective advocate for the state.” The judge “found the adversarial process to have broken down in that [the prosecutor] appeared to be advocating the defendant’s position.”
    The criticism of the prosecutor in Copeland largely mirrors the criticism of McCulloch and his team in Wilson’s case. Ben Trachtenberg, a professor at the University of Missouri School of law, told ThinkProgress last week that McCulloch’s statement after the grand jury decision “read like a closing argument for the defense.” Marjorie Cohn, a professor of criminal law and procedure at Thomas Jefferson School of Law agreed, saying “It was clear the prosecutor was partisan in this case, and not partisan in the way prosecutors usually are, which is to get people indicted.” Another expert, Susan McGraugh, an associate professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law, also criticized McCulloch’s conduct. “His duty is not to be a defense attorney,” McGraugh said.
    In an interview with ThinkProgress, Washington University law professor Mae Quinn said she believed an appointment of a special prosecutor by Judge McShane would still be possible under the law. Quinn said, “this case was treated very very differently from every other case before the grand jury in St. Louis County.”
    Indeed, Bob McCulloch admitted as much, telling the grand jury at the start of the proceeding that the case would be “different from a lot of the other cases you’ve heard, that you’ve heard during your term.” A grand jury returns an indictment in the overwhelming majority of cases.
    Quinn also noted that the prosecutors vouched for the police to the grand jury, linking the credibility of their office to the credibility of the police. McCulloch introduced assistant prosecutor Kathi Alizadeh, who was one of the main attorneys presenting evidence to the grand jury, as someone who has been “working with the police… on this since the very beginning.”
    Alizadeh told jurors, just before Wilson testified, that the “policies of the police department” don’t “have anything to do with your decision” because a separate federal investigation would look into those issues. She also “instructed grand jurors on how to decide the case based on a statute that was invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court two decades ago.” The statute “said that officers can use any force they deem necessary to achieve the arrest of a fleeing suspect.” It was invalidated as unconstitutional in 1985.
    Alizadeh and another assistant prosecutor were also criticized for their gentle handling of Wilson and aggressive examination of any witness that was adverse to his defense.
    Quinn told ThinkProgress that it appears Judge McShane, based on the authority granted to her under the statute, could appoint a new prosecutor at any time. (The legal term for this kind of decision, which doesn’t come at the prompting of any party, is sua sponte.)
    Another approach would be for members of the community, perhaps Brown’s family, to claim standing in the case and file a motion pursuant to the statute asking Judge McShane to appoint a special prosecutor. Absent a formal motion, members of the community could also contact the court and request Judge McShane to appoint a special prosecutor to the case.
    A special prosecutor could take a fresh look at all the evidence to seek an indictment from a new grand jury, charge Wilson directly or decline any prosecution.
    Quinn said she could imagine “the justice system deciding upon a second look, particularly given the stakes here, just to be on the safe side.”

  3. rq says

    toska
    There’s also @MsPackyetti, forgot about her but she’s a big voice out there, too.

    +++

    I collected all the afternoon links, then forgot to post them before leaving for work. :( Boo. Ah well, more for later!

  4. rq says

    If you want to be depressed (even more), I have three pieces by Mano on race, crime and policing in America, all tied in to one or more of the recent police shootings of young black men. Chew-toy in comments.
    1: If he had been black, he might be dead now;
    2: Guilt by association?;
    3: The role of race in police shootings.

    And via Lynna, Stewart Unloads On Hannity For Blaming Ferguson On Obama, Sharpton (VIDEO). I can’t watch the video at work, but it certainly sounds entertaining. :P

    Stewart rolled tape of a slew of Fox and Fox Business hosts blaming violence in Ferguson not on police brutality or mistrust, but on “racial arsonists,” “race hustlers,” “racial racketeers,” and “race grievance-industry leaders.”

    But it was Fox’s stalwart Hannity who took this line of thinking to the next level.

    “Ferguson burns because of, in part, a mindset that was created by Al Sharpton, by Eric Holder and the President,” Hannity said in a clip, one of two blaming the same trio.

    “Be honest my friend,” Stewart began. “Are those three people responsible, or did you just name the only three black guys you could think of?”

    The host took on a mocking tone: “Ferguson burns, my friends, in part because of Jay-Z, the guy who plays Urkel and let’s say, Hank Aaron.”

  5. Pteryxx says

    Another DailyKos analysis of Wilson’s narrative links to the Jim Crow Museum’s collection of racial stereotypes and their cultural and political relevance:

    The Brute Caricature (warning for disturbing racist graphics, and graphic descriptions of racism)

    The brute caricature portrays black men as innately savage, animalistic, destructive, and criminal — deserving punishment, maybe death. This brute is a fiend, a sociopath, an anti-social menace. Black brutes are depicted as hideous, terrifying predators who target helpless victims, especially white women. Charles H. Smith (1893), writing in the 1890s, claimed, “A bad negro is the most horrible creature upon the earth, the most brutal and merciless”(p. 181). Clifton R. Breckinridge (1900), a contemporary of Smith’s, said of the black race, “when it produces a brute, he is the worst and most insatiate brute that exists in human form” (p. 174). George T. Winston (1901), another “Negrophobic” writer, claimed:

    When a knock is heard at the door [a White woman] shudders with nameless horror. The black brute is lurking in the dark, a monstrous beast, crazed with lust. His ferocity is almost demoniacal. A mad bull or tiger could scarcely be more brutal. A whole community is frenzied with horror, with the blind and furious rage for vengeance.(pp. 108-109)

    During slavery the dominant caricatures of blacks — Mammy, Coon, Tom, and picaninny — portrayed them as childlike, ignorant, docile, groveling, and generally harmless. These portrayals were pragmatic and instrumental. Proponents of slavery created and promoted images of blacks that justified slavery and soothed white consciences. If slaves were childlike, for example, then a paternalistic institution where masters acted as quasi-parents to their slaves was humane, even morally right. More importantly, slaves were rarely depicted as brutes because that portrayal might have become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    During the Radical Reconstruction period (1867-1877), many white writers argued that without slavery — which supposedly suppressed their animalistic tendencies — blacks were reverting to criminal savagery. The belief that the newly-emancipated blacks were a “black peril” continued into the early 1900s. Writers like the novelist Thomas Nelson Page (1904) lamented that the slavery-era “good old darkies” had been replaced by the “new issue” (blacks born after slavery) whom he described as “lazy, thriftless, intemperate, insolent, dishonest, and without the most rudimentary elements of morality” (pp. 80, 163). Page, who helped popularize the images of cheerful and devoted Mammies and Sambos in his early books, became one of the first writers to introduce a literary black brute. In 1898 he published Red Rock, a Reconstruction novel, with the heinous figure of Moses, a loathsome and sinister black politician. Moses tried to rape a white woman: “He gave a snarl of rage and sprang at her like a wild beast” (pp. 356-358). He was later lynched for “a terrible crime.”

    The “terrible crime” most often mentioned in connection with the black brute was rape, specifically the rape of a white woman. At the beginning of the twentieth century, much of the virulent, anti-black propaganda that found its way into scientific journals, local newspapers, and best-selling novels focused on the stereotype of the black rapist. The claim that black brutes were, in epidemic numbers, raping white women became the public rationalization for the lynching of blacks.

    […]

    In 1921-22 the United States House of Representatives and Senate debated the Dyer Bill, an anti-lynching bill. This bill provided fines and imprisonment for persons convicted of lynching in federal courts, and fines and penalties against states, counties, and cities which failed to use reasonable effort to protect citizens from lynch mobs. The Dyer Bill passed in the House of Representatives, but it was killed in the Senate by filibustering southerners who claimed that it was unconstitutional and an infringement upon states’ rights (Gibson, n.d., p. 5). The following statements made by southern Congressmen during the Dyer Bill debate suggest that they were more concerned with white supremacy and the oppression of blacks than they were with constitutional issues.

    Senator James Buchanan of Texas claimed that in “the Southern States and in secret meetings of the Negro race [white liberals] preach the damnable doctrine of social equality which excites the criminal sensualities of the criminal element of the Negro race and directly incites the diabolical crime of rape upon the white women. Lynching follows as swift as lightning, and all the statutes of State and Nation cannot stop it.” (Holden-Smith, 1996, p. 14)

  8. rq says

    CaitieCat
    I just hope we’re not the only island. I wade out into the polluted sea that is #Ferguson, or the slightly stagnant pond that is my FB timeline, sometimes, and I despair.

  9. rq says

    * Note: to counter that despair, I like to look at pictures of the current protests and the response (in terms of participant numbers) they’re getting, and the passing comments about those watching responding well.

  10. Pteryxx says

    Found a partial transcript of Jay Smooth’s piece on Ferguson, riots, and human limits. Youtube link, quote from Sociological Images: (starting at 1:45 in the video)

    Riots are things that human beings do because human beings have limits.

    We don’t all have the same limits. For some of us, our human limit is when our favorite team loses a game. For some of us, it’s when our favorite team wins a game.

    The people of Ferguson had a different limit than that. For the people of Ferguson, a lifetime of neglect and defacto segregation and incompetence and mistreatment by every level of government was not their limit.

    When that malign neglect set the stage for one of their children to be shot down and left in the street like a piece of trash… that was not their limit.

    For the people of Ferguson, spending one hundred days almost entirely peacefully protesting for some measure of justice for that child and having their desire for justice treated like a joke by every local authority… was not their limit.

    And then after those 100 days, when the so-called prosecutor waited till the dead of night to twist that knife one last time. When he came out and confirmed once and for all that Michael Brown’s life didn’t matter…

    Only then did the people of Ferguson reach their limit.

    So when you look at what happened Monday night, the question you should be asking is how did these human beings last that long before they reached their human limit? How do black people in America retain such a deep well of humanity that they can be pushed so far again and again without reaching their human limit?

    Another section that I transcribed myself, starting just after the above at 3:07 in the video:

    How do we keep going through this same cycle? Because that’s the thing, it’s not just these one hundred days – it’s the one hundred times this cycle played out before Michael Brown. The thing about that tweet I sent out Monday night?

    [image of Jay Smooth’s tweet reading: The fundamental danger of a non-indictment is not more riots, it is more Darren Wilsons.]

    That tweet wasn’t really from Monday night. I made the exact same tweet a year and a half ago about Trayvon Martin.

    [image of Jay Smooth’s tweet reading: The fundamental danger of an acquittal is not more riots, it is more George Zimmermans.]

    The exact same tweet, word for word! All I did was switch out the name, and that’s how *sick*, that’s how predictable and sick this white supremacy Groundhog’s Day is that we live in. You can literally, word-for-word, have the exact same conversation year after year and just switch out the name of the black child we lost.

    There is nothing more exhausting or more inhumane than Black America’s eternal cycle of being shocked but not surprised. When you have to go through your whole life with all your muscles tensed, waiting for the same blow to come again and again, knowing it will hurt a bit more each time precisely because you always know it’s coming, and then you have to teach your children how to go through the same cycle? That’s the definition of torture. Those are not fit living conditions for human beings.

    So when I see President Obama say he has no sympathy for people who destroy a car? I’m sorry, but I do have sympathy for them. I’m not happy to see them doing it, but human beings have limits. When I watched that footage of Michael Brown’s mother out there, crushed and heartbroken, and I see her family talk about burning this thing down… I’m not happy to see that, but I don’t think we should be making excuses for that. I don’t think we should be explaining that away. I don’t think there’s anything to be ashamed of. That is real life. That is what happens when you treat human beings this way.

  11. Pteryxx says

    More from Sociological Images: A SocImages Collection: Police, Black Americans, and U.S. Society

    All of the below are links.

    In lieu of a monthly update post, please consider this collection of SocImages posts related to the relationship between police, black Americans, and this country. See, also, the Ferguson syllabus put together by Sociologists for Justice and this summary of the facts by Nicki Lisa Cole.

    Race and policing:

    When force is hardest to justify, victims of homicide by police are most likely to be black
    The failure of racial profiling
    Stand Your Ground increases racial bias in “justifiable homicide” trials
    In simulations, people are quicker to shoot at people perceived as black
    The war on blacks: Arrests for marijuana possession
    NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy

    Perceptions of black men and boys as inherently criminal:

    Framing children’s deviance
    Race, clothes, and perceptions of criminality
    Who’s afraid of young, black men?
    Whose deviance do we notice?
    Media portrayals of Mark Duggan and Mike Brown

    Proof that Americans have less empathy for black people:

    The racial empathy gap
    The death penalty, race, and the victim
    Can black men be sexually assaulted?
    Racial disparity in imprisonment inspire whites to be tough on crime
    Failure to understand when non-white people distrust the police

    Evidence of the consistent maltreatment, misrepresentation, and oppression of black people in every part of American society:

    Race and pre-term births
    Race and the initiation of treatment for breast cancer
    Racial bias in presidential pardons
    Racist antics at college parties, a collection
    Race, criminal records, and employment
    Percent of children with a parent in prison, by race
    Racial minorities have to wait longer at the polls
    Cultural invisibility: What color is “flesh”?
    Race, education, and earning potential
    College graduation and unemployment among blacks vs. whites
    Special education eligibility by race and region
    Whites, blacks, and kidney failure
    Racial bias in jury selection
    Whiteness as the standard of beauty
    White vigilantes in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
    Distrust for black entrepreneurs
    Racialized representations of evolution
    Black/white disparities in prison sentences

    The situation now:

    “How much do you think people can take?”
    Zimmerman’s acquittal hurt race relations
    Race and beliefs about the ongoing fight for civil rights
    Many Americans overestimate and fear racial diversity
    150 years of racism: Attitudes in the American South
    The average white American’s social network is 1% black

    W.E.B. DuBois (1934):

    The colored people of America are coming to face the fact quite calmly that most white Americans do not like them, and are planning neither for their survival, nor for their definite future if it involves free, self-assertive modern manhood. This does not mean all Americans. A saving few are worried about the Negro problem; a still larger group are not ill-disposed, but they fear prevailing public opinion. The great mass of Americans are, however, merely representatives of average humanity. They muddle along with their own affairs and scarcely can be expected to take seriously the affairs of strangers or people whom they partly fear and partly despise.

    For many years it was the theory of most Negro leaders that this attitude was the insensibility of ignorance and inexperience, that white America did not know of or realize the continuing plight of the Negro. Accordingly, for the last two decades, we have striven by book and periodical, by speech and appeal, by various dramatic methods of agitation, to put the essential facts before the American people. Today there can be no doubt that Americans know the facts; and yet they remain for the most part indifferent and unmoved.

    – From A Negro Nation Within a Nation

    The first in the list: When Force is Hardest to Justify, Victims of Police Violence Are Most Likely to be Black

    African Americans are, in fact, far more likely to be killed by police. Among young men, blacks are 21 times more likely to die at the hands of police than their white counterparts.

    But, are they more likely to precipitate police violence? No. The opposite is true. Police are more likely to kill black people regardless of what they are doing. In fact, “the less clear it is that force was necessary, the more likely the victim is to be black” (source).

  12. Pteryxx says

    and the most recent two posts from SocImages:

    Angela Davis: “No Idea What Black People Have Gone Through”

    From the great documentary, Black Power Mix Tape, Angela Davis puts violence in perspective. She’s being interviewed about the tactics of the Black Panthers. The interviewer asks: “How do you get there? Do you get there by confrontation, violence?” She responds:

    Oh, is that the question you were asking?

    She smiles to herself.

    Because of the way this society’s organized, because of the violence that exists on the surface everywhere. You have to expect that there are going to be such explosions. You have to expect things like that as reactions. If you… if a black person lives in the black community all your life and walks out on the street everyday seeing white policemen surrounding you…

    I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. Some very good friends of mine were killed by bombs, bombs that were planted by racists. I remember from the time I was very small, I remember the sounds of bombs exploding across the street, our house shaking. I remember my father having to have guns at his disposal at all times because of the fact that at any moment someone… we might expect to be attacked.

    The… man who was at that time in complete control of the city government… would often get on the radio and make statements like: “Niggers have moved into a white neighborhood. We better expect some bloodshed tonight.” And, sure enough, there would be bloodshed.

    […]

    I mean, that’s why when someone asks me about violence, I just…. I just find it incredible. Because what it means is that the person asking that question has no idea what black people have gone through… what black people have experienced in this country since the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa.

    She’s no longer smiling.

    Malcolm X: “We’re Nonviolent With People Who Are Nonviolent With Us”

    Excerpt from a cited video:

    We are peaceful people, we are loving people. We love everybody who loves us. But we don’t love anybody who doesn’t love us. We’re nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us. But we are not nonviolent with anyone who is violent with us.

    …

    Whatever kind of action program can be devised to get us the thing that are ours by right, then I’m for that action no matter what the action is.

    I don’t think when a man is being criminally treated, that some criminal has the right to tell that man what tactics to use to get the criminal off his back. When a criminal starts misusing me, I’m going to use whatever necessary to get that criminal off my back.

    And the injustice that has been inflicted on Negros in this country by Uncle Sam is criminal…

  13. Pteryxx says

    from Boingboing: Second career of choice for disgraced cops: cop

    When cops are fired or forced to resign for malfeasance, chances are they walk straight into another law enforcement job — in LA, the Sheriff’s Department operates a revolving door between its police force and its notoriously corrupt jails, transferring its worst police offers into its custodial service.

    Indeed, unless a cop is convicted of a felony, it’s generally impossible to keep him from getting a job on another force. In some small town forces — like Jonestown, Texas — half the cops on the force have histories of misconduct on other forces.

    citing Techdirt:

    The problem is so pervasive it has its own term: gypsy cops. Moving from agency to agency tends to obscure incriminating paper trails, especially if the switch involves moving from a city agency (police department) to a county agency (sheriff’s department) or state agency (state troopers, highway patrol). Changes in background check requirements and decertification stipulations can be abused to keep bad law enforcement officers employed by law enforcement agencies.

    The background checks themselves are their own problem. Agencies have been known to hire officers who’ve failed checks or while background checks were still pending. For smaller agencies or those pressured to add officers, these background checks may not be as thorough — if they’re even performed at all.

    Also from BB: DC cops budget their asset forfeiture income years in advance

    The DC force plans out how much stuff they’ll steal from the public through the corrupt “asset forfeiture” program years in advance, almost as though they don’t rely on crime to seize assets, but rather just arbitrarily grab stuff from people and sell it to pay their bills.

    From the WaPo in its ongoing “Stop and Seize” series:

    Since 2009, D.C. officers have made more than 12,000 seizures under city and federal laws, according to records and data obtained from the city by The Washington Post through the District’s open records law. Half of the more than $5.5 million in cash seizures were for $141 or less, with more than a thousand for less than $20. D.C. police have seized more than 1,000 cars, some for minor offenses allegedly committed by the children or friends of the vehicle owners, documents show.

    When D.C. police seize cash or property under District law, the proceeds go into the city’s general fund. But proceeds of seizures made under federal law go directly to the police department through the Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Program, which allows local departments to join with federal agencies in forfeitures and keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds.

    District financial records show that D.C. police receive about $670,000 annually from the Equitable Sharing Program. About $30,000 in proceeds from forfeitures under District law go into the general fund.

    Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr declined to discuss civil asset forfeiture practices in the District. He said police agencies can participate in the program only if they comply with its guidelines. Among other things, the guidelines say that agencies “should not ‘spend it before you get it’ or budget anticipated receipts. Receiving agencies may not commit to the spending of sharing monies for a certain purpose in advance.”

    […]

    The bill would require that the federal proceeds from seized property go into the city’s general fund rather than to the department. Because the Equitable Sharing Program requires that seizure proceeds go to the department, D.C. police would effectively be blocked from participating in the program and using the federal law. That would force city police to make all seizures under District law, which already requires that seizure proceeds go into the general fund.

    Wells said the general fund provision in the bill cannot take effect until fiscal 2019, because the city has already budgeted the anticipated proceeds to that point.

    “That is personally offensive to me,” said Wells, whose council term ends in January. “I want to make it fair. There is a financial incentive not to do that.”

  14. rq says

    Whew, Pteryxx, that’s quite the list! *gulp* Lots of reading in my future, I see!

    I’m going to put up the afternoon links, then see what else is new before I call it a night.
    First, a collection of writings by Sarah Kendzior on Ferguson: Understanding St. Louis and Ferguson (Updated). There’s about 13 articles at the link, some of which we have seen here, some not. Worth a read, I like her point of view.

    Ferguson Oath Keepers Security Team

    However, on Saturday, they were ordered to leave by St. Louis County police after being welcomed earlier in the week.

    Leader Sam Andrews complied but returns to St. Louis this morning to legally challenge that order to leave. Today, they are going to get an order against that junction. The organization is looking for volunteers to assist.

    Here are the skill sets/experience they are looking for:

    Police Officers (preferably with 5 years or more experience) street cops or corrections.
    Forward deployed assets, such as scouts, with binocular range finder and requisite equipment, and the right field experience.
    Communications experts with HAM and/or FRS radios
    Direct action infantry (11B or 0311). You need to have your own gear necessary for this mission, including your own body armor, tactical lights, and other essential tactical gear, and cold weather gear. etc. Personal Security Detail training and experience a plus.
    Photographers/cameramen with video and still-camera, preferably with combat experience, or similar high stress field experience. Also, we prefer that they have their own body armor and cold weather gear. Photographers need to be able to film all activity outdoors in all weather. We want to film any encounters with looters, as potential evidence. We also need someone who can live-stream.
    Private drone operators, with drone mounted cameras.
    Truck drivers (4WD) (military experience preferred)
    Medics and Paramedics with own gear. Both military medics and corpsmen, and civilian paramedics and EMTs, are needed.
    Experienced Fire-Fighters.

    Doesn’t look like they’re ready to leave. …

    Kickstarter for Protestify,

    Problem and Solution

    Protestify frees journalists from the manual and uncertain process of finding breaking news through social media by organizing and curating public protest news. Our offer is microstock and data visualization.

    With a strong built in viral element, our focus is on connecting those on the street with those in the newsroom. When a “citizen journalist” snaps a picture or a video during a protest, they will hashtag #protestify on Twitter and it will be then be sent straight to us. We reply with a link back to them with a copyright agreement. If a news agency buys their content, they will be compensated and recognized as a “citizen journalist.”

    Our goal is to map the entire social media space for protest news, which will bring awareness to truly amazing data visualizations that news agencies can integrate into their stories. Data visualization is a type of communication that uses schematic forms such as graphs and charts to relay vital information to the public. For example, newsrooms can purchase a data visualization on the life of visual uploads for one protest hashtag over a few months time span, along with the raw data to back it up.

    We now have 18 million visuals of protests posted on social media stored in our database, which our system automatically tracks and displays. When we started this Kickstarter it was upwards of 13 million. This number is increasing at a rate of more than 42 thousand visual uploads per day and 1.25 million per month. With this protest data, we now offer supreme data and an innovative way of viewing news content. You can purchase a trial through our kickstarter today!

    Ultimately, PROTESTIFY empowers individuals to use pictures and videos to tell personalized stories. By aggregating and illustrating these stories, PROTESTIFY aims to offer unbiased and objective accounts of protests while providing greater and global context to movements around the world. We also want to contextualize local protests, especially where journalists cannot reach and therefore report on. In the words of a journalist; “PROTESTIFY will serve as the platform that Twitter has not been for journalists and citizen-journalists.”

    PROTESTIFY will give you visuals where you can see people all over the world campaigning for a better social, economic, and political future. We are looking for your support to keep us innovating and developing and to ultimately turn this site into a marketplace. Your contributions will turn the front page into the most viral real-time content. The top banner will contain the latest photos and videos from protests around the globe. Ultimately, we will get your breaking news images to the newsroom in less than 5 minutes, with editorial rights.

    We have been working on PROTESTIFY for the past two years at Columbia University. We are now based out of Columbia’s Startup Lab and finished with Columbia’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program. Diving into policy, business, activism, data visualization and high technology, we have now made PROTESTIFY a reality. We have taken our passion for free press, youth unemployment, social movements and the future of visualization to drive us to revolutionize citizen journalism. Our team works diligently, making use of all available resources to make this happen for those who are filming under chaotic conditions and dire time constraints and are desperate to share their news content. Our generation is a visual generation that is eager to keep up with current affairs.

    Kind of tangential, but may be of interest to some.

    More on those poor Rams: St. Louis County police, Rams spar over reported apology

    A Rams official spoke with police Monday. And that’s when the he-said, he-said started.

    St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar sent an e-mail to his staff saying the Rams’ chief operating officer called him Monday to apologize.

    “I received a very nice call this morning from Mr. Kevin Demoff of the St. Louis Rams who wanted to take the opportunity to apologize to our department on behalf of the Rams for the “Hands Up” gesture that some players took the field with yesterday,” Belmar wrote in the e-mail, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

    But the Rams said that’s just not true.

    “We did not apologize,” Rams spokesman Artis Twyman told CNN.

    The team issued a statement saying the organization had “positive discussions” Monday with Belmar and other police officials “during which we expressed our respect for their concerns surrounding yesterday’s game.”

    Police took issue with the Rams’ saying they didn’t apologize and aired their grievances on Twitter.

    “Apology: ‘expression of regret for not being able to do something” @kdemoff: “I regretted any offense their officers may have taken,'” St. Louis County Police tweeted Monday night.

    Warning for autoplay video at the link.

    The New Yorker had an awesome cover a little while back. Here’s a portrait of the artist, Bob Staake.

    More on the Cleveland cops filing for discrimination – racial discrimination: Nine of the 13 Cleveland cops who fired 137 shots at two apparently unarmed black civilians following a high-speed chase in 2012 have filed a federal lawsuit saying they are victims of racial discrimination.

    Really.

    Eight of the aggrieved cops are white. The ninth is Hispanic. They charge that the city of Cleveland has “a history of treating non-African American officers involved in the shootings of African Americans substantially harsher than African-American officers.” […]

    “Police officers have a very difficult job. They must make life and death decisions in a split second based on whatever information they have in that moment. But when you have an emergency, like what happened that night, the system has to be strong enough to override subjective decisions made by individuals who are under that extreme stress.”

    He continued: “Policy, training, communications, and command have to be so strong and so ingrained to prevent subjective judgment from spiraling out of control. The system has to take over and put on the brakes.”

    As it was, the chase was accompanied and spurred on by apparently erroneous radio reports of the occupants firing and reloading a gun. And it all culminated in a middle-school parking lot with the cops mistaking gunfire from other cops as coming from inside the suspect’s car and blazing away as if they had encountered a modern day Bonnie and Clyde rather than just unarmed Melissa and Timothy.

    “We are dealing with a systematic failure in the Cleveland Police Department,” DeWine concluded. “Command failed. Communications failed. The system failed.” [… – there follows the story of Tamir Rice]

    Whatever exactly transpired, the Cleveland Police Department had not learned some important lessons from the 2012 shooting about imagined danger and restraint.

    However the department deals with Loehmann is not likely to be directly determined by his race any more than race directly determined how the department dealt with the aggrieved nine who have filed the lawsuit.

    Race becomes a big factor when the press and the public go generic; white cops and black victims with little attention paid to the details and the individuals and the circumstances. The department responds as press becomes pressure.

    In their lawsuit, the Cleveland Nine say an unnamed black cop received only “the 45-day cooling off period” of restricted duty in the gym after shooting a black suspect.

    Had the media made an issue of the shooting, you can be all but certain that the cop in question would not have just done a little “gym time,” no matter what his race.

    One white cop who is not part of the suit is Michael Brelo, who somehow fired 49 of the 137 bullets unleashed in 2012, reloading twice. He faces manslaughter charges and is now awaiting trial. The city of Cleveland recently reached a $3 million settlement with the Russell and Williams families.

  15. rq says

    Borked the link, but it goes where it should!

    Another Killing in Ferguson Leaves a Family Grappling With the Unknown . Yes, Deandre Joshua – who was not, it turns out, a Grand Jury witness.

    The police have offered few details about the killing. Chief Jon Belmar of the St. Louis County Police suggested last week that there could be “a nexus” between the broader unrest and Mr. Joshua’s death, but a police spokesman said it remained unclear whether there was any direct link. The police have not named any suspects, and have said it was unclear precisely when Mr. Joshua was killed or why his body was burned.

    Last Tuesday, the morning after the riots, Ms. Joshua was watching the news, she said, when she saw reports of a body found inside a white Pontiac Grand Prix near the Canfield Green Apartments, in the neighborhood where Mr. Brown had been killed. The news cameras focused in to reveal a crack in the car’s bumper and a missing front license plate. And Ms. Joshua said: “I knew it was him. It was him.” […]

    His family said Mr. Joshua had never joined the marches and protests over Mr. Brown’s shooting, even though, in a twist of fate, the twin brothers were childhood friends with a crucial figure in the case, the witness who was walking with Mr. Brown when he was killed.

    “It was just something that happened,” Dont’A Joshua said of the Brown shooting. […]

    “I kept calling him that day, to tell him to be careful with this Ferguson riots,” she said. “And I never got an answer. I couldn’t get an answer.”

    That night, Ms. Joshua said, Deandre watched the grand jury announcement with his aunt and two cousins on Winkler Drive, about a mile east of where his body was found. He was happy because Walmart had canceled his shift in anticipation of unrest.

    Around 2 a.m., as a dozen buildings along West Florissant Avenue were burning and gunshots were crackling through the city, Ms. Joshua said, her son left his aunt’s home to make the short drive to the apartment of a girl he had been seeing for about a month. It is unclear how he ended up in the nearby parking lot of the Northwinds Apartments.

    His death became fodder for online speculation, caught in the fervor over the unrest in Ferguson. People sifting through thousands of pages of redacted grand jury testimony from the Brown case posited that Mr. Joshua was one of the unnamed witnesses.

    But Mr. Joshua’s family said he had known nothing about Mr. Brown’s death and never testified before the grand jury. A former girlfriend, Chasity Jones, a student at Southern Illinois University, said she and Mr. Joshua were at a St. Louis-area beauty salon in August when they heard news of Mr. Brown’s death. […]

    As it waits for answers, his family has started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to cover his funeral and burial. The family scans the online speculation about him, but tries to look beyond it. And Ms. Joshua said she found herself driving past that ordinary-looking parking lot.

    “I don’t know why I go there — I just ride by,” she said. “That was the last place he was at.”

    Oh, the title on this one, from Al-Jazeera. The peril of hipster economics

    “Why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers in the south Bronx, in Harlem, in Bed Stuy, in Crown Heights for the facilities to get better? The garbage wasn’t picked up every … day when I was living in 165 Washington Park… So, why did it take this great influx of white people to get the schools better? Why’s there more police protection in Bed Stuy and Harlem now? Why’s the garbage getting picked up more regularly? We been here!”

    “Gentrification spreads the myth of native incompetence: That people need to be imported to be important, that a sign of a neighbourhood’s ‘success’ is the removal of its poorest residents. True success lies in giving those residents the services and opportunities they have long been denied.”

    Lee was criticised by many for “hipster-bashing”, including African-American professor John McWhorter, who claimed that “hipster” was “a sneaky way of saying ‘honkey'” and compared Lee to television character George Jefferson.

    These dismissals, which focus on gentrification as culture, ignore that Lee’s was a critique of the racist allocation of resources. Black communities whose complaints about poor schools and city services go unheeded find these complaints are readily addressed when wealthier, whiter people move in. Meanwhile, long-time locals are treated as contagions on the landscape, targeted by police for annoying the new arrivals.

    Gentrifiers focus on aesthetics, not people. Because people, to them, are aesthetics.

    Proponents of gentrification will vouch for its benevolence by noting it “cleaned up the neighbourhood”. This is often code for a literal white-washing. The problems that existed in the neighbourhood – poverty, lack of opportunity, struggling populations denied city services – did not go away. They were simply priced out to a new location. […]

    In a sweeping analysis of displacement in San Francisco and its increasingly impoverished suburbs, journalist Adam Hudson notes that “gentrification is trickle-down economics applied to urban development: the idea being that as long as a neighbourhood is made suitable for rich and predominantly white people, the benefits will trickle down to everyone else”. Like trickle-down economics itself, this theory does not play out in practice.

    Rich cities such as New York and San Francisco have become what journalist Simon Kuper calls gated citadels: “Vast gated communities where the one percent reproduces itself.”

    Struggling US cities of the rust belt and heartland lack the investment of coastal contemporaries, but have in turn been spared the rapid displacement of hipster economics. Buffered by their eternal uncoolness, these slow-changing cities have a chance to make better choices – choices that value the lives of people over the aesthetics of place. […]

    Lee tells me he has his own plan to try to mitigate the negative effects of gentrification, which he calls “50-50-20-15”. All employers who launch businesses in gentrifying neighbourhoods should have a workforce that is at least 50 percent minorities, 50 percent people from the local neighbourhood, and 20 percent ex-offenders. The employees should be paid at least $15 per hour.

    Gentrification spreads the myth of native incompetence: That people need to be imported to be important, that a sign of a neighbourhood’s “success” is the removal of its poorest residents. True success lies in giving those residents the services and opportunities they have long been denied.

    When neighbourhoods experience business development, priority in hiring should go to locals who have long struggled to find nearby jobs that pay a decent wage. Let us learn from the mistakes of New York and San Francisco, and build cities that reflect more than surface values.

    And another racist on TV MSNBC’s Scarborough on Ferguson coverage doing ‘grave disservice’ to police. You can watch the video. Ew.

    Protestors meet with Obama, nice photo.

  16. Pteryxx says

    More on the Rams and the St Louis Police claiming their freeze peaches have been trampled, from Techdirt citing WaPo:

    Roorda warned, “I know that there are those that will say that these players are simply exercising their First Amendment rights. Well I’ve got news for people who think that way, cops have first amendment rights too, and we plan to exercise ours. I’d remind the NFL and their players that it is not the violent thugs burning down buildings that buy their advertiser’s products. It’s cops and the good people of St. Louis and other NFL towns that do. Somebody needs to throw a flag on this play. If it’s not the NFL and the Rams, then it’ll be cops and their supporters.”

    As many have noted, this certainly sounds like Roorda saying that it’s the police’s “First Amendment” rights to look the other way should any threats come to the team or the stadium.

    Of course, that’s not how the First Amendment actually works. It’s quite the opposite. As Sally Jenkins at the Washington Post points out, the reality is exactly the opposite. The First Amendment protects the public from government officials (including the police) from taking actions based on expression of members of the public. If anything, Roorda’s implied threat violates the First Amendment, suggesting that the government will punish people for their expression.

    To begin with, the First Amendment only protects free speech against government action. That’s all it does. It doesn’t protect the St. Louis players from NFL owners, or league commissioners, or talk radio hosts who disagree with them. But it does protect them from the government. So the person in danger of abusing the First Amendment here is not the football player with the edgy gesture in a public stadium. Or the NFL owner who might want to tell them to shut up to protect advertising. It’s the governmental agent — like, say, a cop — who seeks to punish someone for expressing certain views.

  17. Pteryxx says

    Awesome find, rq.

    Gentrification spreads the myth of native incompetence: That people need to be imported to be important, that a sign of a neighbourhood’s ‘success’ is the removal of its poorest residents. True success lies in giving those residents the services and opportunities they have long been denied.

  20. rq says

    Pteryxx
    Oooh, I hadn’t seen that take on the Rams players’ supportive gesture yet! Hah, take that, Roorda! Not that he’ll listen. :P Poo.

    +++

    Eric Garner: Grand Jury Decision In Eric Garner Killed In NYPD Chokehold Expected This Week. I have a feeling it will do nothing but stoke the fires of righteous anger, and solidify the determination of protestors to make things count.

    Student protests, McClure North Walks Out For Mike Brown #3 (youtube video).

    So where’s Roorda on this one? Four Members of Congress do ‘Hands Up’ gesture on House floor . Excellent photos.

    Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) and Al Green (D-Tex.), referred to the gesture that has come to symbolize the outrage over the death of Brown, the African American teen shot dead by police officer Darren Wilson in August..

    “ ‘Hands up, don’t shoot’ is a rallying cry of people all across America who are fed up with police violence in … communities all across America,” Jeffries said.

    Two of the members of Congress, Reps. Lee and Green, also offered their praise for the five St. Louis Rams who gave the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” signal on the field during a game Sunday night.

    “I saw this clip where the Rams players came into the arena: ‘Hands up; don’t shoot’ … this has become the new symbol, a new statement,” Green said.

    “I want to make sure that those who participated on the Rams team, that their names are chronicled in history… I want Kenny Britt to be recognized, Tavon Austin to be recognized, Stedman Bailey to be recognized, Jared Cook, Chris Givens, and Tre Mason.”

    Oh, and upthread there was a video about a guy called Scarborough. Well, here’s his take on this:

    “What is wrong with this country? What is wrong with these people? What’s wrong with these elected officials, they know it’s a lie. They know the cops didn’t shoot him with his hands in the air. They know it’s a lie and they’re doing this on that Capitol floor?”

    So there’s that.

    Ferguson puts spotlight on what we need to change, on the probably futility of bodycams on police.

    At 51, I have reached a point in my life where I have little fear for my personal safety in my interactions with the police, although I am fully aware that minor changes in my behavior or appearance could rob me of this security very quickly. But I worry constantly about my children and other young men and boys like them.

    Racial stereotypes, particularly the common tendency in American culture for black men to be perceived as uniquely threatening, are obviously an important source of my fear, but honestly, that is just a part of it. Negative cultural associations with black men are harmful, but what is worse is how quickly they can become deadly.

    American society is chillingly comfortable with violence as an effective way to provide safety in threatening situations. We enact “stand-your-ground” and concealed carry laws that make guns ubiquitous in many parts of the country, and we respond to the slaughter of innocents at an elementary school with serious discussions in Congress about the benefit of armed guards among kindergartners.

    This casual relationship with guns and gun violence certainly sets us apart from our peer nations. When you add that to our country’s tortured racial history, it is not at all surprising that black men are shot by the police even when, as appears to have been the case in Ferguson, they are running away. […]

    Why do police in the United States shoot their guns so often? Is it because many of them believe that almost anyone they encounter might have a gun and shoot them first?

    When compared to its neighboring communities, Ferguson has a fairly low violent crime rate, and crime rates across the country have been dropping for many years. Despite all this, Officer Darren Wilson, who initially was inside of his police cruiser, felt so threatened by a physical interaction with Michael Brown, who was outside of the vehicle, that he shot at him twice. When Brown fled the scene, he chose to give chase and felt threatened enough again to shoot 10 more times. I have to believe that similar situations occur with some frequency in London, but guns are not fired and nobody dies. […]

    There is a certain wisdom in that idea — these cameras have been instrumental in revealing many instances of police misconduct and in other cases, vindicating officers’ actions. But, as is often the case in the United States, we reach for a technological solution when we confront an intractable social problem. What really needs to change is our culture’s relationship to guns and deadly violence.

    thisisthemovement, installment #62

    Did The Rams Apologize to The Police? Last night, a Rams executive met with members of the police union and the police force. The police say that he apologize. He says that he did not apologize. Truth? Likely somewhere in between. Then the STL County PD posted this statement via Facebook. Must read.

    The Death of DeAndre Joshua The NYT’s piece on DeAndre Joshua, which includes interviews with his family, provides a holistic overview on his murder and clearly states that he was not a Grand Jury witness. Important read.

    Ferguson’s Ugly History, An Old Sundown Town In the 1940’s, black people from a neighboring town called Kinloch had to be back on their side of town by sunset. A gate blocked black people out after passing through coming home from working as maids or factory workers, keeping the white people in Ferguson. Ferguson has made small tiny steps towards progress.

    What White People Need to Know, And Do, After Ferguson This might be one of the best pieces re: white privilege in the context of Ferguson that’s come out yet. Not sure what “after Ferguson” means, but the commentary itself is strong. Absolute must read.

    Who Are The OathKeepers? Sam Andrews, a former Defense Department contractor who is now a weapons engineer in STL has helped recruit and organize private security detail for businesses in Ferguson. Volunteers are armed and have been seen in positions on the rooftops of businesses in Ferguson.

    The Resignation of Darren Wilson Adds More Insult to Injury This compelling piece by Reverend Osagyefo Sekou highlights exactly how many do not see Darren Wilson’s resignation as a “win,” Good read.

    Ferguson Protesters Lead Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” Poll Ferguson protesters have captured 10.7% of the votes for the magazine’s website and Facebook page. Protesters are leading the way ahead of a Novel Prize winner and the President of Russia.

    #DCFerg Ferguson protesters in DC shut down Interstate 395. Awesome act of solidarity.

    Mike Brown’s Family Will Continue to Seek Justice “The family is considering a civil wrongful death lawsuit and is also championing proposed legislation to require police officers to wear video body cameras.” Important read.

    Charles Barkley on Ferguson So, read this article that includes Barkley’s comments on Ferguson for yourself. We’ll let you be the judge of his comments. Sigh. Interesting read.

    +++

    I love that piece on the gentrification I found above. I haven’t closed the tab, I keep rereading bits and pieces. It makes me despise hipsters and what they stand for even more. All that faux-this and sarcastic-that. Anyway.

  21. rq says

    Jenny Trout on the Grand Jury, in short: Important links for info on the Ferguson grand jury. Includes a list of people to follow on twitter (and I can’t help noticing that it’s mostly men, and I would encourage everyone to show special support to the young women out there, some of which I had on my list above, as they are not only facing down racism, but sexism and homophobia, as well).

    There was something I wanted to share, however. I posted this to my personal Facebook account, but I felt like it could be more useful shared here. So, consider this a cross-post of a cross-post of a cross-post:

    Okay, here’s the thing: whether you believe Mike Brown was a “thug,” whether you believe that it’s “not about race,” or you don’t agree with the protests, there was a failure on the part of our justice system when the grand jury refused to indict Wilson. You can not argue that away with your thoughts on the “thug life” or your belief that it’s Brown on the surveillance footage from the store. You might believe the protests are an overreaction or bad behavior. Fine, that’s your opinion. But your opinion does not trump the fact that conflicting statements were made the grand jury. The National Bar Association, numerous legal experts, and even Nancy Grace, a former prosecutor who always hysterically sides with law enforcement and the justice system on her HLN program, have publicly questioned the proceedings.

    I don’t generally cross-post from my Tumblr, but I think it’s important to note that mainstream sources, as well as the grand jury testimony, all have pointed out the failures on the part of prosecutor McCulloch, investigators, and someone has thoughtfully catalogued these, with sources. Step away from your feelings about the protest, about Michael Brown, and about Darren Wilson, and please read about the errors made by the justice system. If the law is reason free from passion, drop your passion and just look.*

    A grand jury doesn’t deliver a criminal verdict. They only decide whether or not to pursue a trial. If you support Darren Wilson, and you truly believe in his version of the events, fine. I won’t change your mind. But if you believe the evidence in the case would have exonerated him, why do you support him not facing a trial? If the evidence you have been presented has overwhelmingly convinced you, why do you doubt that it would convince a jury?

    Admitting that the proceedings in St. Louis were rigged does not mean that you cannot support Wilson (although I personally question what your motives are in doing so and I won’t apologize for that), doesn’t mean you have to support the protests, and has nothing to do with your personal feelings on racial politics in America. You have to change nothing about your stance to accept that there was an obstruction of justice in the proceedings.

    *you may need to resize your browser window because my tumblr theme sucks. Also, remember that Tumblr is not a news organization, but a blogging tool, so yes, the post does hold biased commentary, as would any news article’s comments section. The original post cites sources, and those sources often cite sources, so focus on that.

    To the people out there protesting and calling for action, I salute you.

    More on Roorda via dailykos.com: The Real Jeff Roorda, Behind the St. Louis Police Officer Association. A quick look at Roorda’s love of (or not) recording devices of various kinds.

    So the Oath Keepers. They were around, the police kicked them out, now they’re back: ‘Oath Keepers’ are back on the rooftops in Ferguson despite St. Louis County ordinance

    “The reason the Oath Keepers were not allowed to remain on the rooftops is that the individuals from the group did not adhere to St. Louis County ordinance regulating security officers, couriers, and guards,” St. Louis County police spokesman Shawn McGuire said Tuesday in a prepared statement.

    He said ordinance 701.115 lays out the requirements.

    “As a matter of public safety, the St. Louis County Police Department must adhere to our policies that ensure security personnel have the required background and qualifications to perform such a role,” he added.

    Sam Andrews, a local leader of Oath Keepers who in the original Post-Dispatch story on this topic wouldn’t provide his last name, said Tuesday that the guards returned to their posts after being told of the county’s regulation.

    “Once we read the statute, we laughed at it,” he said. “Then, the next night, we were there.”

    He pointed out part of the ordinance that describes a security guard as a person who is “employed.” He said the Oath Keepers active in Ferguson include former or off-duty police officers, as well as people with extensive military experience. He said all are unpaid for the work they are doing above a strip of stores and apartments two blocks from the Ferguson police and fire departments.

    “This is not America,” he said. “We don’t tax volunteers.”

    Since they’ve been back on the rooftops, Andrews said police haven’t tried to enforce the ordinance.

    So, they’re allowing white people with guns on rooftops, while keeping black people off the streets, to paraphrase Sarah Kendzior on Twitter.

    I think this was posted? Police investigating if Michael Brown’s stepfather intended to incite riot. Because he was angry and protestors would have quietly gone home had he not expressed his grief.
    Right.

  22. Pteryxx says

    That Rawstory article reminded me of something. There’s a rumor going around that prosecutor Bob McCulloch was involved in fundraising for Darren Wilson, which as far as I know is incorrect: BackStoppers not associated with Darren Wilson fundraiser (St. Louis American)

    However, St. Louis Police Officer Association manager Jeff Roorda, currently slamming the Rams, *was* involved in fundraising for Darren Wilson: Ferguson fundraiser mystery solved — or is it? (LA Times)

    Roorda is vice president of Shield of Hope — the charitable wing of the Fraternal Order of Police union, to which Wilson belongs — as well as a Democratic candidate for state Senate.

    (Earlier this year, Roorda sponsored a bill that, in addition to other changes, would have kept the names of officers involved in shootings secret unless they were charged. Roorda told The Times he is no longer pushing for that legislation.)

    Roorda said Shield of Hope — whose officers include a spokesman for the Ferguson Police Department and a Florissant city council member — created the second Wilson fundraising page after the girl’s mom asked the union to take over.

    and Roorda’s close to Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon: House of Cards level corruption in Ferguson and beyond (Shaun King at DailyKos)

    As a sign of just how twisted the justice system is in St. Louis, Roorda, who lost the appeal of his termination, was then hired as a police chief the next town over and, instead of being set back for his misconduct, began to shoot up through the political ranks as a man who would stand up for police officers by any means necessary. Soon he became head of the St. Louis Police Union and a leader in the charity, Shield of Hope, which is behind the $500,000 in funds that have been raised for Darren Wilson.

    To connect just a few more dots, you must understand that Roorda is one of the closest and most faithful political allies Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has in the entire state of Missouri. Not only has Nixon personally campaigned and fundraised for Roorda, he has openly done so in the past month since the murder of Mike Brown in spite of Roorda’s connection to the Darren Wilson fundraiser and now public knowledge of Roorda’s past termination for police misconduct.

    The strange loop fully closes when you see that Roorda was the primary author and sponsor of legislation this year in Missouri, which aimed to completely conceal the identity of police officers being charged in shootings.

  23. rq says

    Via Giliell, How to really understand white privilege. Excellent cartoon.

    Rekia Boyd’s Family Hurt After Ferguson but Hopes for ‘a Little Justice’

    Sutton, whose sister was killed by a Chicago police officer, said the Missouri case hurt because “I felt like that was my family that it happened to.”

    “It’s always in the back of my mind that the officer [who shot my sister] may not be found guilty. The chances look slim to us that they will actually put this officer behind bars,” Sutton said.

    myLAPD: About Ezell Ford’s Autopsy Results

    Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, in theory, has 30 days to release the autopsy record of 25-year-old Ezell Ford who was shot and killed on Aug. 11 by officers from the Newton Area Division of the LAPD. Notice, I did say in theory.

    The mandate (but really more of a request) that the autopsy report be released before year’s end came from Mayor Eric Garcetti who like Beck and 9th District Councilmember Curren Price Jr., are under pressure from the community for answers after the Ford, who was Black, was found to be unarmed and identified as being mentally ill. Witnesses said he was shot in the back while lying on the ground and complying with officer’s orders.

    The police say that during an “investigative stop,” a struggle ensued in which Ford “turned, grabbed one of the officers.” After that, “they fell to the ground,” and Ford allegedly attempted to pull an officer’s handgun from its holster. The “partner officer then fired his handgun and the officer on the ground fired his backup weapon” at Ford.

    But here’s what you need to understand about police shootings that kill people involving the LAPD.

    An autopsy report that involves a person who was shot to death is going to give you very basic information. Where the bullet went in and where it came out, if it did at all. The coroner only examines the ballistics and the point of entry and exit of the bullets.

    Given family members statements that Ford had a history of mental illness the completed autopsy results could take longer because the coroner MIGHT try and see if they can prove that fact with their investigation by performing a brain tissue examination, conducting family history interviews, and looking at prior incidents related to his mental illness.

    Unfortunately, the coroner does not determine if it was a bad shooting. No that’s the job of the LAPD’s Force Investigation Division, otherwise referred to as FID. […]

    The FID will hand deliver the final investigation to Chief Beck who will ultimately decide what direction to go in. Beck will present the findings to the Police Commission. However, long before they ever get a hold of it a decision will have been made on the justification of the shooting by Beck. You can trust and believe that.

    So at the end of the day all of this really falls on Chief Beck because he is really the one who has to judge the shooting—hence his unwillingness to have the autopsy report released. Dragging it out for as long as he can is in his best interest—especially if he is not going to call it a bad shooting.

    I am almost sure that Chief Beck has seen the results of the autopsy and knows the direction of the FID’s investigation. He is after all the Chief of Police of the Los Angeles Police Department.

    So while everyone is understandable awaiting the results and release of Ford’s autopsy record, that’s only tip of the iceberg. […]

    In addition, now seems like a good time to remind people that the Police Commission usually meets once a week on Tuesday at around 9:30 a.m. Chief Beck is usually in attendance. From what I am told there are usually plenty of seats available as the public, while they have a lot to say about the LAPD, rarely show up to put their concerns on the record. The way I figure it, there’s plenty of pressure to go around. Apply some there.

    Now for my Angeleno’s anxiously awaiting this autopsy report, please don’t be surprised if it’s released just as night falls on December 24. I mean this is the LAPD we are talking about and because the more you know…

    Ferguson Commission time! They recently had their first meeting. Did it go smoothly? Angry residents interrupt Ferguson Commission’s first meeting. I guess not.

    After three-and-a-half hours of deliberate, sensitive discussions, several residents interrupted the meeting, shouting down commissioners, sobbing and arguing that the commission didn’t represent the community, wasn’t there to help them and discourteously made them wait to speak.

    “We’re hurting!” said Dell Taylor. “You’re killing our babies. You’re disrespecting us as people. We’re tired.”

    “I understand,” said commission co-chairman Starsky Wilson. “I’m hurting too, sweetheart.”

    But his empathy did little to quell the anger.

    The outburst lasted at least a half-hour and threw a wrench in the works of the meeting’s careful progression. Several got up and spoke, yelling from their seats, walking to the front or stepping into an aisle. They accused the commission of representing politicians who didn’t care about Ferguson, of having degrees and titles but no experience on the streets, and, more than anything, of too much talk and not enough action.

    Same topic, just with video, via KSDK.com on Ferguson Commission.

    Ferguson waits and hopes that truce will become lasting peace. Well, the question is what is lasting peace? Return to the status quo? Not like;y to happen easily. Better race relations? Also not going to happen overnight. Whatever happens, I doubt this will blow over all that quickly. Not anymore.

  24. rq says

    Oh, those police! Cop Fired for Beating a Non-violent, Handcuffed Man On Video, Gets Job Back AND Back Pay. Yes, you read that right.

    Even when police officers are held accountable, it can be eventually negated by the power of their unions and the level of collective bargaining leverage they possess. [..]

    The arrest was caught on all of the officer’s lapel cams and paints a clear picture of excessive force, to which the city responded to by firing Denton.

    However, the Fraternal Order of Police, who apparently agreed that Denton was simply “protecting himself” by stomping on a man’s head, nearly breaking both of his arms, and elbowing him, filed a grievance which was heard by federal mediator Edward Valverde in March of 2012.

    I’m all for unions protecting the rights of workers. But reinstating people who simply cannot do their jobs? Bull.Shit.

    Another interesting read: Ferguson and the Problem With Incentives

    Three major incentives tend to govern police force behavior.

    First, the police monopoly on protection means that anyone who wants to save lives, protect innocent people, and be a hero is funneled into 911. Due to the monopoly, they have few other ways to exercise these instincts. That leads to stories of, for instance, policemen rushing into a burning building to save an elderly woman and a baby. […]

    The second incentive is more dangerous. Police officers have significant privileges in society, from the ability to ticket civilians to the power to kill suspected criminals. These privileges attract some people who want to abuse them. […]

    The third incentive is on even fuller display in Ferguson: police have a financial incentive to militarize. The Pentagon gives them leftover war equipment, and tells them to either find a use for it or give it back. Most police forces don’t want to give away new toys—so they find a use. The result is that police increasingly dress like, and use the tools of, soldiers. That in turn affects how they behave—as evidenced in Ferguson.

    Alternatives and suggestions at the link, though there seems to be a definite libertarian angle to the article. Just as a warning.

    An old story, worth re-reading: St. Louis Officer Called Boss of Real Estate Agent Who Criticized Police on Twitter

    The Post-Dispatch’s story from October said the police department was investigating Novara’s actions, which could be considered inappropriate because he contacted Maibes’ boss in an official capacity as an officer. No further updates on Novara’s status have been reported. A call to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department to inquire about the outcome of the investigation was not answered (as in, the “Media Relations” phone line rang indefinitely without being picked up or connecting to voice mail). Contacted via Twitter, Maibes said she does not know whether Novara was disciplined and has not been contacted by any police investigators.

    A St. Louis Police Officers Association official named Jeff Roorda defended Novara at the time, arguing that his behavior was protected by the First Amendment. Roorda, who made news this weekend by demanding an apology from the St. Louis Rams after several Rams players made a “hands up” protest gesture, was fired from a police job in 2001 after being found to have lied on multiple official reports.

    That Roorda, firstamending his way around everything, using his right to say anything at all – even if it isn’t true! A champion for personal rights everywhere.

  25. A. Noyd says

    Why am I not surprised the cops can’t tell a classic not-pology from the real deal.

    ~*~*~*~*~*~

    @toska
    Try @iJesseWilliams and @ShaunKing too.

  27. rq says

    A. Noyd
    Good call on both those, there’s also a Chris King (no relation as far as I can tell), who isn’t mostly Ferguson, but he has some good commentary every now and then. Journalist, I think.

    +++

    Protest action in Melbourne (yes, Australia!) on Friday!

    Haha. Yes, Roorda, are you? Roorda u demanding apologies from them as well? #Ferguson .

    John Stewart on the Rams and Roorda, though without mentioning him by name. Good for the exposure. Oh, also on black-on-black crime:

    But Stewart then brought on correspondent Larry Wilmore to tackle issues conservatives say aren’t being talked about, like black-on-black crime. Wilmore had a succinct take on what he thinks of people making that argument: “They should probably go fuck themselves.”

    He said of course there’s a conversation about black-on-black crime, but it’s a “black-on-black conversation” that white people aren’t privy to. And Wilmore had to point out that if the actions of a few black people in Ferguson are suddenly giving a bad name to all black people, then “shitty white people” have to be equally scorned.

    Protestors in New York.
    Protestors in DC.
    More protestors in DC.

  28. rq says

    An awesome article on youth activism: this is what it’s like to be a youth activist in ferguson

    Due to Brittany’s experiences as an organizer on the front lines of America’s biggest story, she has the kind of firsthand accounts that aren’t covered in the news. She’s one of many in Millennial Activists United, a women-lead grassroots collective that came together over common goals: They wanted to rebuild their community, educate other young people about racism, and create a sustainable movement. According to Brittany, it’s the job of millennials to “pick up the baton that the Civil Rights movement dropped.” She says, “Racism never ended, but the civil rights movement did.”

    For her, inaction is simply not an option. “If we don’t do it, who will?”

    In the past week, Brittany has noticed a tangible heightening of emotions, but the decision to not indict Darren Wilson didn’t come as a surprise to her. She says it’s the presence of over two thousand National Guardsmen and “police armed with heavy military gear like shields and helmets” that’s escalating tensions right now, at this very moment—not the people demonstrating. “We’re not a threat to anyone or anything except the corrupt system,” she says, “And that’s what they’re afraid of.”

    In fact, she says that—despite sensationalist media coverage to the contrary—the demonstrations have been overall peaceful. She takes issue with the media’s overuse of words like “protesters,” “rioters,” and “looters” to describe what they’re doing, saying that those words don’t accurately portray the people on the ground: “It makes us sound less than human. Like zombies or monsters without intention.” Indeed, there has been some destruction of property, but Brittany deliberately did not describe those events as part of the work she is doing. […]

    It’s bigger than racism, too. As a woman, she’s experienced firsthand how sexism can appear, even within social justice movements. “Women have been leading this since the very beginning,” she says.”We’ve been carrying it on our backs.” She continues, “With that being the case, that’s when sexism rears its ugly head. Women are at the forefront but their voices aren’t being heard in the media and in the community.” Not one to ignore injustice, Brittany has been calling people out in person, letting them know that women are “due of a spot at the table.” She says it’s paid off: More women are being represented and listened to. “Racism and patriarchy go hand in hand,” she says. “And from those two things come sexism, ageism, homophobia, and more, all under that umbrella. It’s so important to make sure that while you’re fighting for racial justice you don’t ignore the intersections.” […]

    Beyond that, Brittany thinks people should go to Ferguson and be part of the movement in person. “The fact that black people have been slain all over this nation but Ferguson has decided to stand up to it is something worth seeing. We were thrown into this, but we worked together and we organized because we understood that it was bigger than us. It was time for a change.”

    KU Journalism Major Shreds “Case” Against Mike Brown

    “Alright y’all. I’d like to clear a few things up. This is a general address to the long list of misconceptions and inconsistencies and abuses of power that exist surrounding the killing of Mike Brown. I have researched these points and provided sources in case you wish to do some reading of your own.

    There is a whole list of misconceptions, starting with the reasons Mike Brown was stopped, to Darren Wilson’s size, and more.

    Ferguson protest marches through South LA

    In Los Angeles, the action was in South L.A., where a group of 30 clustered at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Newton Division waving signs that declared, “Ferguson is everywhere.”

    Then some protestors took to a bullhorn to tell stories of just how the events of Ferguson are linked to their own lives in Los Angeles – particularly the cases of Ezell Ford and Omar Abrego, both killed by officers from Newton Division last August.

    Pictures and some audio at the link.

    Wonkette has another opinion: Gun-Humpers Awfully Quiet About 12-Year-Old Dead Boy Tamir Rice’s Open-Carry Rights. Huh.

    And so you sort of have to wonder why we haven’t heard a peep from Open Carry fans about the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who wasn’t just harassed for standing around with a replica of a gun, he was shot dead within two seconds (no, really, two seconds) of Cleveland Police arriving on the scene.

    Actually, it isn’t quite accurate to say the Open Carriers have been silent — they were quick to inform Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, that she knows absolutely nothing about guns when she posted a twitter message last week pointing out what she considered an irony in a couple of recent police shootings […]

    From the replies to that tweet, we learned why the deaths of Tamir Rice and John Crawford (who was shot dead as he carried a toy replica of an AR-15 around a Wal-Mart) don’t have anything to do with Open Carry. They just don’t, OK? We’ve been looking around the interwebs, and we’re just not finding a lot of support for Tamir Rice among the gun-fondling set. In fact, just about the only thing we’ve seen has been people asking, like David Frum did the other day, why the Open Carry bunch just doesn’t have a lot to say about the execution of a child pretending to exercise his Second Amendment rights.

    Goign after the parents again: Darrien Hunt’s mother charged in confrontation with police

    Susan Hunt, whose son Darrien Hunt was shot and killed by two Saratoga Springs police officers in September, reportedly came across two other officers who were conducting a routine traffic stop on Oct. 19. Hunt’s attorney, Robert Sykes, had earlier reported that Susan Hunt stopped and “apparently got into it” with the officers.

  29. rq says

    Awesomeness: Ferguson Protesters Take Lead in TIME’s Person of the Year Poll. Well, that was then – they have now fallen behind the Indian prime minister, who is entirely deserving. But still. Click some more, if you can.

    Georgia? Students stage die-in.

    Cleveland cop who shot & killed 12-year-old #TamirRice was denied a position with the NYPD in March 2010 – documents . He has also been denied positions at two other police departments.

    I’m crying tears of sadness abotu this. The previous sentence may contain traces of snark. Ferguson mayor: Holder made up mind about Ferguson PD before trip to St. Louis. Because McCullogh, for instance, hadn’t made his mind up before even convening the Grand Jury. Nothing to complain about there.

    Ferguson Mayor James Knowles said US Attorney General Eric Holder made up his mind about the Ferguson Police Department before even arriving in Ferguson, and without speaking with local officials.

    Art and activism combined in improvisational short video: NYC x Ferguson x Dev Hynes Piano Improv November 25 2014 Protest.

    Eric Garner Chokehold Death Grand Jury Decision May Be Imminent. Twitter even says it could be today or tomorrow. Brace yourselves. (Autoplay video at the site, dammit but I hate autoplay video!)

  30. rq says

    I guess maybe Obama isn’t so serious about it after all? PCJF blasts Pres. Obama’s appointment of Charles Ramsey to lead presidential task force on militarized policing

    “If the President’s idea of reforming policing practices includes mass false arrests, brutality, and the evisceration of civil rights, then Ramsey’s his man. That’s Charles Ramsey’s legacy in D.C.,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the PCJF. “President Obama should immediately rescind his appointment of Commissioner Ramsey, who is a mass violator of civil rights and civil liberties.”

    Carl Messineo, PCJF Legal Director, stated: “For civil liberties advocates, Chief Ramsey became synonymous with militarized and repressive policing. If this task force is under his command it does not stand a chance of substantially changing the status quo. Keeping Ramsey as the leader of the task force will demonstrate that President Obama is only seeking to provide window dressing rather than to create meaningful reforms.”

    During his tenure as Chief of Police in Washington D.C., Ramsey implemented, oversaw and deployed a militarized policing force including against peaceful protesters, engaging in mass false arrests, brutality and evisceration of fundamental rights. He ultimately cost the city tens of millions of dollars for civil rights violations as a result of lawsuits brought by the PCJF on behalf of more than 1,000 people.

    Hm. Perhaps he has changed his ways.

    Ooooh, some guy put out death threats (or something very similar) about Darren Wilson, and he is getting charged. (pdf), and the press release. I wonder if they’ll be that quick about death threats to specific protestors.

    How Police Unions and Arbitrators Keep Abusive Cops on the Street

    When Frank Serpico, the most famous police whistleblower of his generation, reflected on years of law-enforcement corruption in the New York Police Department, he assigned substantial blame to a commissioner who failed to hold rank-and-file cops accountable. That’s the classic template for police abuse: misbehaving cops are spared punishment by colleagues and bosses who cover for them.

    There are, of course, police officers who are fired for egregious misbehavior by commanding officers who decide that a given abuse makes them unfit for a badge and gun. Yet all over the U.S., police unions help many of those cops to get their jobs back, often via secretive appeals geared to protect labor rights rather than public safety. Cops deemed unqualified by their own bosses are put back on the streets. Their colleagues get the message that police all but impervious to termination.

    That isn’t to say that every officer who is fired deserves it, or that every reinstated cop represents a miscarriage of justice. In theory, due process before a neutral arbiter could even protect blue whistleblowers from wrongful termination. But in practice, too many cops who needlessly kill people, use excessive force, or otherwise abuse their authority are getting reprieves from termination.

    More at the link.

    There was a city council meeting in Ferguson last night, with National Guard present. Lots of grievances aired, didn’t get all the tweets. I hope there will be an article soon.

  31. rq says

    More on Obama: Dear Mr. President: A Letter From Tef Poe:

    In St. Louis, our police force has a history of abusing its power while torturing black people. We have cried out for help, and your response earlier this summer basically condemned us. Like many other young people from my community, I was confused.

    The police attacked us for taking to the streets to resist police brutality, and our beloved black president seemingly endorsed it. I’m sure you will say this isn’t the case, but as a young black man in America I speak for a large demographic of us that has long awaited our black president to speak in a direct tone while condemning our murders. From our perspective, the statement you made on Ferguson completely played into the racist connotations that we are violent, uneducated, welfare-recipient looters. Your remarks in support of the National Guard attacks upon us and our community devoured our dignity. […]

    Many of us, whether we admit it or not, looked to you for some form of moral support. We do not want to die. We do not want race riots in our city. We previously lived very normal lives outside the overly aggressive dealings we’ve often experienced with those who are sworn to uphold the law. […]

    In Geneva, Switzerland, a few of us visited the U.S. ambassador, yet unfortunately this display was a waste of time and energy. He did his job. He heard our concerns, but he was not emotionally moved to stop this massive act of violence from the state. And I say to you, Mr. President, your silence is consent as well. We will remember you according to your work. When you leave the Oval Office and return to society as one of us, we will judge you accordingly. Your party is being judged accordingly.

    Governor Jay Nixon is your colleague, but through a lack of sound judgement and sincere analysis he has morphed into the everlasting enemy of oppressed black people in Missouri. Senator Claire McCaskill has a bit more dignity than Nixon, but her decision to remain idle on this subject has also signified to the community that she is not one of us. […]

    I have never looted or violently struck a police officer. We do lift our voices to yell, and yes, we often use profanity. We are more aggressive than protesters in the past, primarily because we are in a state of emotional disbelief. Mike Brown spent four and a half hours in the street, baking and bleeding on the hot summer pavement. We know you know this is wrong, so the disconnect between your words and your personal convictions has raised many questions in the black community.

    Now we are organizing against you and members of your party as though we didn’t vote for you to begin with. This saddens me, because we rooted for you. We love you and want to sing praises of you to our children, but first we need a statement of solidarity from you to the young black people facing the perils of police brutality. We will not get this statement, and we know it.

    I wish you could remember your days as a grassroots organizer in your own community. I beg you to find time to reflect back and remember when you were in the same position as we are. You are a career politician, so your opinions may not have been as radical as mine, but remember back to when you were organizing at this level. […]

    Me and my friends are young. We voted for you because initially you spoke our language. We believed you would be more of an activist than a typical suit-and-tie teleprompter politician. Are you not outraged by the treatment of your own people by law enforcement? Why is it so difficult for you to display a moment of honesty and reflection to the public about your own blackness?

    Your children will grow up with black skin. They have black parents. We will want to champion them as honorable reflections of the black American experience. Will your decisions to not address these issues play a role in their acceptance into the black progressive community when they are older?

    I address you respectfully and with great admiration for your accomplishments. As a black man talking to another black man, we can no longer afford to allow you, as our highest voice in the highest office, to remain idle on the issue of race and equality in America. We can no longer allow you, as one of the most respected and admired black men on the planet, to ignore our cries for help. Most of us don’t have the privilege of the Oval Office. Even with that privilege, at the wrong place and time, you too can become a victim of this violence. Please help us fight these monsters. The right side of history awaits you. I love you and respect you, like a younger brother watching his older brother from the bleachers.

    I am simply asking you to help us.

    Elsewhere, in protesting: While Seattle smolders, Tacoma Ferguson protesters talk.

    About 200 people turned out at a march and public meeting to discuss the shooting in Ferguson, Mo. But rather than shouting and throwing rocks, there was plenty of thoughtful conversation.

    Urban League CEO and Tacoma Deputy Mayor Victoria Woodards said she was inspired to put the event together just before Thanksgiving in the days following a grand jury’s decision to not indict Ferguson officer Darren Wilson.

    “I just felt we had to do something and bring people together,” she said.

    After reaching out to community leaders from the NAACP and other organizations, she realized more voices needed to come together – including city leaders. […]

    The group marched through downtown before gathering at Shiloh Baptist Church, where speakers, black and white, addressed the crowd before a number of groups broke off for smaller, more intimate conversations.

    While the march and conversations remained peaceful, they weren’t lacking in emotion. Many displayed signs expressing outrage over the decision not to indict Wilson and emphasizing the theme of the march “Black Lives Matter.”

    “We did not hold hands and sing Kumbaya. We did not grab hands and say everything is perfect here,” Woodards said.

    “There was tension and dialogue that was uncomfortable, but we were able to hang with each other and have the uncomfortable dialogue.”

    Tacoma Mayor Marilyn Strickland told the gathering the failure of a grand jury to indict officer Darren Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown deprived people of justice, and said there’s still plenty of work to do to bridge racial divides that clearly still exist.

    “Pointing this out doesn’t make me a militant, crazy racist,” she told the Tacoma News Tribune. “It just makes me someone describing the American experience.” […]

    Woodards said community leaders are discussing future events to continue the dialogue, but she said it’s important for neighbors to take the initiative themselves.

    “We don’t need a leader to pull us together to make change. We can make change right in our own neighborhoods.”

    But regardless of what happens, she emphasized clashes with police won’t be a part of the plan – a sharp contrast to what’s been going on in Seattle and elsewhere.

    “We love and recognize that we all have a role to play in our community, so we treat each other with dignity and respect,” she said.

  32. says

    Given Wilson’s established response to feeling threatened by a Black man, I suppose we ought to be glad he didn’t throw in some jaywalking, or Roorda and McCulloch would have more whitewash to splash around.

    /grimly not-quite-humourous tone

  33. rq says

    And in the whitewashed, grimly-humourous aisle, they made him apologize: Michael Brown’s stepfather apologizes. Because black grief- and injustice-induced anger is scary!!!

    Brown’s stepfather didn’t hold back as news of a grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson reached Ferguson. As throngs in front of the Ferguson Police Department listened to St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch’s announcement on cell phones and radios, Louis Head stepped onto a platform above the crowd and embraced his wife, Brown’s mother. He then turned to the demonstrators — some of them shouting “F— the police!” — and yelled, “Burn this motherf—er down!” and “Burn this bitch down!”

    His comments drew widespread attention in the aftermath of the violence as a video of his reaction, recorded just after McCulloch’s announcement, circulated online.

    No charges have been filed against Head, but police have interviewed people who know Head and who were with him November 24, the day a prosecutor announced that Wilson would not be indicted in the August 9 shooting, Police Chief Tom Jackson said Tuesday.

    Head isn’t being singled out, but he’s one of the people being “looked at as part of an ongoing investigation into the activities surrounding Nov 24 pertaining to the rioting, looting and arsons,” Ferguson spokesman Jeff Small said.

    Brown’s mother has defended her husband’s reaction. Last week, CNN’s Sunny Hostin asked her about accusations that her husband’s words single-handedly started rioting and fires.

    “I say that that’s impossible,” Lesley McSpadden said. “These things have been going on since August 9th, when it first happened.” […]

    “He just spoke out of anger. It’s one thing to speak, and it’s a different thing to act. He did not act. He just spoke out of anger,” she said. “When you’re that hurt and the system has did you this wrong, you may say some things as well. We’ve all spoke out of anger before.”

    Brown family attorney Benjamin Crump has previously called Head’s remarks inappropriate but asked the public not to condemn the family for being human. More recently, he told CNN to remember that Brown’s mother and father have repeatedly asked protesters to remain peaceful. […]

    Also, Fuentes said, it’s likely many people who’d gathered in Ferguson as the grand jury’s decision was announced were already determined to act.

    “I think the cause and effect of his words will be hard to prove,” Fuentes said.

    Hostin, a CNN legal analyst, said prosecutors should also weigh what impact charging Head could have on the community.

    “I think any prosecutor that looks at a case like this, given what is going on, what has gone on in Ferguson, would never touch this case,” she said. “You would have to be really tone deaf to the larger issues that are at play here to bring a case like that.”

    You know what I find suspicious? This wee little group of sentences: “When the prosecutor finally revealed the grand jury’s long-awaited decision last week, it wasn’t long before Ferguson erupted again.

    St. Louis County Police tweeted their first reports of looting less than 15 minutes later.” 15 minutes. On West Florissant. Just seems odd that black people’s first reaction would be to torch their own community businesses. 15 minutes. 15.
    And here’s a picture of the grieving man.

    Ferguson activist shares experience in Washington D.C. – with autoplay videooooo!

    President Obama invited Aldridge, Brittany Packnet and T-DubbO, three Ferguson activists to talk to him about the protests.

    “We’re at the White House voicing our concerns with the Commander In Chief. We want him to come out and have accountability for police, we want him to acknowledge our pain, and that we have been peaceful,” Aldridge said.

    He knows the President understands his cause. Obama used to be an activist on the South Side of Chicago before he ran for president in 2008.

    “This man starts speaking about hope and change and you felt it. I remember staying home when he got inaugurated and staying on the phone with my grandmother watching every state primary exit polls, he was my idol, he was a person I thought about it every single day,” Aldridge said.

    Aldridge said the president inspired him to get involved. He was 15-years-old when he started fighting for minimum wage workers. That was five years ago. He took his grandmother to the protests.

    “Rasheen said we were going to get arrested, and he said did I want to get arrested with him, and I said yes! I was handcuffed, they handcuffed us and put is in the paddy wagon, they sure did,” Aldridge’s grandmother, Dorothy Finley, said. […]

    “Those same feelings from 2008 was not there when I met him yesterday, I felt disappointed,” Aldridge said.

    The president listened and agreed with Aldridge’s cause but he didn’t commit to action Aldridge said. He said he’ll continue to protest, 813 miles from DC, back on the street, where it all began when Mike Brown died on August 9.

    And some positive news from New York, semi-racially-related (well, actually quite a bit): Stop-and-Frisk Fades Away Under New Mayor, Crime Goes Down Anyway

    Robberies, considered the most telling indicator of street crime, are down 14 percent across New York City from last year. Grand larcenies — including the thefts of Apple devices that officials said drove an overall crime increase two years ago — are also down, by roughly 3 percent.

    And after a record-low 335 homicides in 2013, the city has seen 290 killings in the first 11 months of this year, a number unheard-of two decades ago. “When I came into this job, people always talked about last year — last year was an amazing year in this city in terms of bringing down crime,” Mr. de Blasio said. “We saw what was possible. The city’s crime rate continues to go down.”

    Previous police commissioners have insisted that New York’s mass stop-and-frisk program was an essential part of the city’s fight against violent crime. “No question about it,” said Ray Kelly last year after a federal judge struck down the program. “Violent crime will go up.” And mayor Michael Bloomberg agreed: If you try to so much as reform stop-and-frisk, he warned the city council, you’re “playing politics with people’s lives.” But as you can see from the chart on the right, stop-and-frisk did indeed go down and violent crime did not go up. Instead it went down. Just like it has for the past 20 years.

    It almost makes you think that something else entirely must be going on.

  34. rq says

    And in the whitewashed, grimly-humourous aisle, they made him apologize: Michael Brown’s stepfather apologizes. Because black grief- and injustice-induced anger is scary!!!

    Brown’s stepfather didn’t hold back as news of a grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson reached Ferguson. As throngs in front of the Ferguson Police Department listened to St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch’s announcement on cell phones and radios, Louis Head stepped onto a platform above the crowd and embraced his wife, Brown’s mother. He then turned to the demonstrators — some of them shouting “F— the police!” — and yelled, “Burn this motherf—er down!” and “Burn this b*tch down!”

    His comments drew widespread attention in the aftermath of the violence as a video of his reaction, recorded just after McCulloch’s announcement, circulated online.

    No charges have been filed against Head, but police have interviewed people who know Head and who were with him November 24, the day a prosecutor announced that Wilson would not be indicted in the August 9 shooting, Police Chief Tom Jackson said Tuesday.

    Head isn’t being singled out, but he’s one of the people being “looked at as part of an ongoing investigation into the activities surrounding Nov 24 pertaining to the rioting, looting and arsons,” Ferguson spokesman Jeff Small said.

    Brown’s mother has defended her husband’s reaction. Last week, CNN’s Sunny Hostin asked her about accusations that her husband’s words single-handedly started rioting and fires.

    “I say that that’s impossible,” Lesley McSpadden said. “These things have been going on since August 9th, when it first happened.” […]

    “He just spoke out of anger. It’s one thing to speak, and it’s a different thing to act. He did not act. He just spoke out of anger,” she said. “When you’re that hurt and the system has did you this wrong, you may say some things as well. We’ve all spoke out of anger before.”

    Brown family attorney Benjamin Crump has previously called Head’s remarks inappropriate but asked the public not to condemn the family for being human. More recently, he told CNN to remember that Brown’s mother and father have repeatedly asked protesters to remain peaceful. […]

    Also, Fuentes said, it’s likely many people who’d gathered in Ferguson as the grand jury’s decision was announced were already determined to act.

    “I think the cause and effect of his words will be hard to prove,” Fuentes said.

    Hostin, a CNN legal analyst, said prosecutors should also weigh what impact charging Head could have on the community.

    “I think any prosecutor that looks at a case like this, given what is going on, what has gone on in Ferguson, would never touch this case,” she said. “You would have to be really tone deaf to the larger issues that are at play here to bring a case like that.”

    You know what I find suspicious? This wee little group of sentences: “When the prosecutor finally revealed the grand jury’s long-awaited decision last week, it wasn’t long before Ferguson erupted again.

    St. Louis County Police tweeted their first reports of looting less than 15 minutes later.” 15 minutes. On West Florissant. Just seems odd that black people’s first reaction would be to torch their own community businesses. 15 minutes. 15.
    And here’s a picture of the grieving man.

    Ferguson activist shares experience in Washington D.C. – with autoplay videooooo!

    President Obama invited Aldridge, Brittany Packnet and T-DubbO, three Ferguson activists to talk to him about the protests.

    “We’re at the White House voicing our concerns with the Commander In Chief. We want him to come out and have accountability for police, we want him to acknowledge our pain, and that we have been peaceful,” Aldridge said.

    He knows the President understands his cause. Obama used to be an activist on the South Side of Chicago before he ran for president in 2008.

    “This man starts speaking about hope and change and you felt it. I remember staying home when he got inaugurated and staying on the phone with my grandmother watching every state primary exit polls, he was my idol, he was a person I thought about it every single day,” Aldridge said.

    Aldridge said the president inspired him to get involved. He was 15-years-old when he started fighting for minimum wage workers. That was five years ago. He took his grandmother to the protests.

    “Rasheen said we were going to get arrested, and he said did I want to get arrested with him, and I said yes! I was handcuffed, they handcuffed us and put is in the paddy wagon, they sure did,” Aldridge’s grandmother, Dorothy Finley, said. […]

    “Those same feelings from 2008 was not there when I met him yesterday, I felt disappointed,” Aldridge said.

    The president listened and agreed with Aldridge’s cause but he didn’t commit to action Aldridge said. He said he’ll continue to protest, 813 miles from DC, back on the street, where it all began when Mike Brown died on August 9.

    And some positive news from New York, semi-racially-related (well, actually quite a bit): Stop-and-Frisk Fades Away Under New Mayor, Crime Goes Down Anyway

    Robberies, considered the most telling indicator of street crime, are down 14 percent across New York City from last year. Grand larcenies — including the thefts of Apple devices that officials said drove an overall crime increase two years ago — are also down, by roughly 3 percent.

    And after a record-low 335 homicides in 2013, the city has seen 290 killings in the first 11 months of this year, a number unheard-of two decades ago. “When I came into this job, people always talked about last year — last year was an amazing year in this city in terms of bringing down crime,” Mr. de Blasio said. “We saw what was possible. The city’s crime rate continues to go down.”

    Previous police commissioners have insisted that New York’s mass stop-and-frisk program was an essential part of the city’s fight against violent crime. “No question about it,” said Ray Kelly last year after a federal judge struck down the program. “Violent crime will go up.” And mayor Michael Bloomberg agreed: If you try to so much as reform stop-and-frisk, he warned the city council, you’re “playing politics with people’s lives.” But as you can see from the chart on the right, stop-and-frisk did indeed go down and violent crime did not go up. Instead it went down. Just like it has for the past 20 years.

    It almost makes you think that something else entirely must be going on.

  35. Pteryxx says

    Of course de Blasio talks about “bringing down” crime instead of crime continuing to drop, as if his folks were responsible for “bringing down” an ebbing tide.

    rq:

    You know what I find suspicious? This wee little group of sentences:

    “When the prosecutor finally revealed the grand jury’s long-awaited decision last week, it wasn’t long before Ferguson erupted again. St. Louis County Police tweeted their first reports of looting less than 15 minutes later.”

    15 minutes. On West Florissant. Just seems odd that black people’s first reaction would be to torch their own community businesses. 15 minutes. 15.

    Were they counting from the start of McCulloch’s 20-minute statement, the middle, or the end? /snark

    Just saw an even more disgusting reaction to Brown’s stepfather’s grief: Rawstory, warning for Fox News being Fox News:

    Fox News Medical A-Team member and resident psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow on Wednesday argued that Michael Brown’s stepfather should be charged not only for inciting riots, but because his lack of respect for the police made him “culpable” for his stepson’s death.

    A St. Louis County Police spokesperson said on Tuesday that stepfather Louis Head was under investigation for yelling angry comments — including “Burn this bitch down!” — just moments after learning that a grand jury had refused to charge Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson with Brown’s death.

    “The man has to be charged,” Ablow insisted to the hosts of Fox & Friends on Wednesday. “Michael Brown’s stepfather should be charged with attempting to incite a riot because that’s what he’s doing there. There’s nothing to suggest that he doesn’t have that intent.”

    “What about the fact that he could be so-called grieving,” Fox News host Brian Kilmeade wondered. “Some people cry, some people get angry. And he was hugging somebody one minute, next minute thing you know, it seemed impromptu. What about that?”

    “This doesn’t look like grief to me,” Ablow argued. “It looks like retribution, and for a perceived injustice that the courts say did not occur.”

    According to the Fox News pundit, the grand jury should have been considering charges against Head for the death of his stepson, even though the unarmed teen had been shot to death by Officer Wilson.

  36. Pteryxx says

    rq mentioned in #30 above the Atlantic article How Police Unions and Arbitrators Keep Abusive Cops on the Street. In keeping with the Techdirt article about the bad-cop revolving door, I wanted to cite some paragraphs showing just how prevalent and egregious this is: (bolds mine)

    Let’s begin in Oakland, California, where the San Jose Mercury News reports that “of the last 15 arbitration cases in which officers have appealed punishments, those punishments have been revoked in seven cases and reduced in five others.”

    Hector Jimenez is one Oakland policeman who was fired and reinstated. In 2007, he shot and killed an unarmed 20-year-old man. Just seven months later, he killed another unarmed man, shooting him three times in the back as he ran away. Oakland paid a $650,000 settlement to the dead man’s family in a lawsuit and fired Jimenez, who appealed through his police union. Despite killing two unarmed men and costing taxpayers all that money, he was reinstated and given back pay.

    Another Oakland police officer, Robert Roche, was present at the 2011 Occupy protest where Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen, a protester, was shot in the head with a lead-filled beanbag, fracturing his skull and causing brain damage. After Olsen collapsed onto the asphalt, a group of fellow protesters quickly gathered around to help the wounded man. That’s when Roche tossed a flash grenade in their midst. […]

    Roche was fired after being identified as the perpetrator, but appealed with the help of his union and was reinstated. Federal Judge Thelton Henderson later ordered an investigation of the Oakland Police Department’s disciplinary appeals process, declaring that “imposition of discipline is meaningless if it is not final.”

    *****

    “In Philadelphia, an inquiry was recently completed on 26 cases where police officers were fired from charges ranging from domestic violence, to retail theft, to excessive force, to on duty intoxication,” Adam Ozimek writes in a Forbes article on reforms to policing. “Shockingly, the Police Advisory Committee undertaking the investigation found that so far 19 of these fired officers have been reinstated. Why does this occur? The committee blamed the arbitration process.”

    and citing the Pittsburgh City Paper:

    Each of these men, who were all Pittsburgh Police officers at the time of the incidents, shares a common experience: They all were fired, charged criminally, cleared of those charges … and then got their jobs back through arbitration. And they’re not alone. Nine officers were fired by the city between 2009 and 2013, but five of those terminations were overturned by an arbitrator, according to Pittsburgh Public Safety Director Mike Huss. (In all, says Huss, the city filed 269 disciplinary-action reports in that period, 33 of which involved suspensions.) In the cases where terminations were appealed by the police union through arbitration, officers got their jobs back close to 70 percent of the time, according to figures provided by Huss.

    Commentary from the Forbes article, which is an opinion posted on the Modeled Behavior economy blog: Making The Police Less Powerful

    Another implication of police power is political. For example, the Miami-Dade police union recently blocked body cameras for police officers. And when Wisconsin limited collective bargaining rights for public sector workers it exempted police and firefighter unions. A similar bill earlier this year in Missouri, where Ferguson is located, would also have excluded police.

    What can be done about excessive police power? I’d propose a few reforms. First, remove collective bargaining for police officers entirely. They should be employed at will, and should be able to be fired without any arbitration whatsoever. Workplace protections can be good for workers, but retaining the public’s trust in the police is far more important than making police officer be a nice job for someone.

    Second, if a police officer shoots someone who is unarmed they should be fired even if they can prove they reasonably felt threatened. Self-defense can be a good reason to not bring criminal charges against a police officer for shooting someone, but it’s not necessarily a good reason to let them keep their jobs.

    […]

    Maybe knowing they will lose their jobs with certainty will lead to less wrongful shootings. Even if it doesn’t, I think the public deserves to know when a cop shoots someone wrongfully they will be fired. When most people mess up at work their bosses don’t need arbitration to determine whether they can be fired. Even if the error was “reasonable” people can be fired just to please the customer. Police should be as accountable to the public as the rest of us our to our employers and customers. I don’t think “fairness” towards the police is a very important public policy concern relatively speaking.

    The police are extremely powerful in this country. With the public’s trust justifiably falling, it’s time to strip them of job protections and political power that lead to unaccountability and injustice. Being a police officer should be the kind of job where if you mess up a little bit you get fired.

    Obviously this writer doesn’t think much of unions in general, and I’m not sure at-will employment would solve the systemic problem here, but this permissive arbitration process has to stop.

  37. Pteryxx says

    …and now I wonder how often the arbitration process reinstates *black* cops.

    *ahem*

    I meant to transcribe this photo from a tweet linked way back in rq’s #332 (previous page). Original tweet – “This is the epitome of “what the fuck” “

    [Image description: a side by side comparison of a black man (Dawon Gore) on the left, hands raised, wearing a T-shirt, with a white police officer in uniform (Darren Wilson) on the right. They’re both screenshots taken, respectively, from Wilson’s award ceremony (the same photo that was the only one available for weeks) and from an interview Dawon Gore gave to The Free Thought Project in August. (Link to article with video)

    Text across the top: Explain This

    Text on the left: St. Louis Cop, Dawon Gore
    Has confrontation with man, uses non-lethal force, doesn’t arrest the man or make a report, drives man home

    Charged with assault, suspended with no pay, awaiting termination

    Text on the right: St. Louis Cop, Darren Wilson
    Has confrontation with man, uses lethal force, doesn’t make a report.
    Suspended with pay, no charges, receives a fortune in donations]

    what the fuck, indeed. Note particularly: charged with assault. Yes, yes he was. Source – St. Louis Public Radio (from July)

    A 13-year veteran of the St. Louis County police force was suspended without pay Friday after being charged with second-degree assault for breaking a man’s hand with his police baton.

    County Police Chief Jon Belmar said Dawon Gore, 44, has not been at work since the April 21 incident at the North Hanley MetroLink station. Gore had been serving as an officer in the MetroLink unit.

    “I want to make it clear that the department stands by our officers who are required to use force as we conduct our duties,” Belmar said. “However, this alleged unprovoked use of force — outside the bounds of department policy and without cause — cannot be tolerated.”

    […]

    Belmar said investigators first presented the case to county prosecutor Bob McCulloch on May 6. McCulloch’s spokesman, Edward Magee, said they were unable to file charges until they got Wilson’s medical records. which the office received this week.

    Magee said he can’t remember the last time the prosecutor filed assault charges against a St. Louis County officer.

    Summary of Dawon Gore’s interview from the Free Thought Project link above:

    On Tuesday, August 27, The Free Thought Project’s Cassandra Rules, met up with the officer on W. Florissant in Ferguson where protesters have been gathering in the streets since the murder of unarmed teenager Mike Brown. Gore wanted to explain the parallels, and differences, between him and Darren Wilson. He also wanted to show how rampant racism in the police force is not only directed at the people, but also at officers themselves. Anyone with the guts to speak out against them also faces a slew of backlash.

    “I’ve been embedded in St. Louis County for 14 years and I am going to tell you this on camera, that’s the worst entity I have ever worked for. I’ve been in the military, I’ve served the St. Louis metropolitan police department… but when I got there I ran into this big wall of cultural bias that I had never seen before.”

    Gore began by candidly giving The Free Thought Project the play by play on the events leading to his charges. He explains the corruption during his investigation, points out his PTSD, and speaks out against seeing our streets littered with the weapons that he saw on the field at war.

    Gore tells the Free Thought Project how he would have reacted, had he been told to come and oppress the protesters in Ferguson.

    “I wouldn’t have came down here (to Ferguson) and stood on those front lines, I would have taken my uniform off and have resigned. I didn’t have to come down here, but I would not have come down here and oppressed these people.”

    Gore explained the intimidation happening within the force. When asked if it was directed at black officers Gore replied, “Black officers, or any other officer, I won’t just say black; anyone who pushes back or stands up for themselves.”

    Officer Gore is currently suspended without pay after using non lethal force on a man who attacked him in front of witnesses. Gore later gave this same man a ride home, and didn’t charge him with anything. Now, let’s compare that to Officer Darren Wilson, who is on a PAID suspension after he shot and killed an unarmed man.

    […]

    After being exposed to the corruption in the St. Louis police department, this officer vows to never put a uniform on again.

  38. rq says

    Writing about racial divide in another STL municipality. No legal standing, but this was in comm contract until 2008:

    l) That no building shall at any time be occupied by Negroes or Malays, except in the capacity of bona fide servants or employes [sic];

    Protestors.

    Black Police Association in St. Louis take bold stand to support the Rams football players

    The black police officer’s association in St. Louis issued a bold statement declaring their complete support for the players. Gloria McCollum, general counsel for their association, just issued the following statement on their behalf.

    THE ETHICAL SOCIETY OF POLICE, is the primary voice of African
    American Police Officers in St. Louis City, and as such it COMPLETELY SUPPORTS THE ACTIONS OF THE ST. LOUIS RAMS FOOTBALL PLAYERS IN WHICH THEY SHOWED SUPPORT FOR THE FAMILY OF MICHAEL BROWN BY ENTERING THE STADIUM WITH THEIR HANDS UP.

    We think that their actions were commendable and that they should not be ridiculed, disciplined or punished for taking a stand on this very important issue which is of great concern around the world and especially in the community where these players work.

    THE STATEMENTS OF THE ST. LOUIS POLICE OFFICERS
    ASSOCIATION DO NOT REFLECT THE OPINIONS OF THE MAJORITY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN POLICE OFFICERS IN THE DEPARTMENT BECAUSE THERE ARE NO AFRICAN AMERICAN OFFICERS ON THEIR GOVERNING BOARD AND THEY HAVE A MINIMAL AMOUNT OF AFRICAN AMERICAN MEMBERS.

    The Ethical Society of Police has been the primary bridge between African American community and the police department for many years. The Ethical Society will use its best efforts to continue to work with the community leaders and the Department of Justice to address issues that affect our community such as racial profiling, police brutality and disparities in hiring and disciplining practices of African American Officers.

    While it is often widely assumed that black and white officers feel the same about issues of race and police brutality, it is clear that this is not the case in St. Louis and that the divide between officers there echoes the deeper divide in the city itself.

    Good for them!

    As the Grand Jury decision on Eric Garner is looming, there will msot likely be more articles on him and New York.
    ‘I’ve been going through hell,’ Eric Garner’s father says as he awaits grand jury decision

    Justice would be an indictment.

    “It would take a lot of pressure off if he’s (officer Daniel Pantaleo) indicted,” Ben Garner said in Tompkinsville Wednesday morning. “I’ve been going through hell.”

    Garner, like the entire community and the city, is anxiously awaiting the special grand jury decision on whether to indict Pantaleo in connection with Eric Garner’s chokehold death in police custody July 17 in Tompkinsville.

    A decision could come down Wednesday afternoon.

    “I think they’re going to charge him,” Garner said. “But I think they will give him something light, like a pat on the back. It’ll be a damn insult (if he’s not indicted). But nothing can bring Eric back.”

    Garner said that the district attorney’s office has not been in touch and hasn’t kept him abreast of the proceedings. […]

    The residents and some of the business owners feel there’s going to be an indictment, and point to the video as the most damning evidence. On the tape, Garner can be heard saying, “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe” several times.
    Eric Garner dies after incident with police in Staten Island Amid calls of police brutality and racism from witnesses and social media users, law enforcement sources maintain that Eric Garner died following an incident with police in Tompkinsville on Thursday afternoon “absolutely resisted arrest” prior to his death.

    Pantaleo can be seen in the video placing Garner in a chokehold while attempting to arrest him for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes.

    “I think the decision is going to be to indict,” said Tompkinsville resident Doug Brinson. “They got to. But I think it will be a lesser charge. The whole world is watching this decision.”

    Well, the world was watching Ferguson, too, though perhaps less than this grand jury, coming so close on the heels of the Ferguson one.

    Staten Island businesses wait warily as Eric Garner grand jury decision looms

    “There’s going to be problems for sure,” Steve Ali, who owns Steve’s Deli across from Tompkinsville Park, said Tuesday. “From what the people coming in and out of the store are saying, it sounds like it’s going to be a big problem if they let the cop go.”

    Ali said he planned to close up shop and take off the minute he finds out the grand jury has reached a decision, which sources said could come as early as Wednesday.

    “Look at what happened in the other states, what happened in Missouri, they’re burning down everything down,” he said. “I’m going to shut it down and not take a chance.” [… – thank you, media, for your skewed reporting]

    “The people that live here, that are from here, they’re not going to do anything stupid or crazy, but who knows about people that come from other places,” said Charlene Thomas, 65, who knew Garner. “Who knows what might happen if this cop doesn’t get indicted.” […]

    A bodega owner on the block said he wouldn’t close unless “it gets wild or too crowded or something like that.

    “I think people will come to march or protest or whatever either way, but I don’t think it will be like in Missouri,” said Mohammed Alamin, who owns the Amin Grocery & 99 Cent store. “We had the big march a few months ago and I closed that day because there were so many people, no one could get through, but it was not violent, there were no problems, nice and peaceful.”

    Alamin said his regular customers were not a problem.

    “The ones who cause problems, none of these people are from here,” he said. “They come from Brooklyn, the Bronx, other parts of the city, they don’t belong here.”

    St Louis Public Radio link dump on the Ferguson Grand Jury and the aftermath. Some good links within.

  39. rq says

    Something to soothe the heart, a little bit: Jennings students turn fear and hope into poetry

    They were inspired by images their teacher, Angela Keys, had placed on their desks — photographs of a National Guard Humvee, the burned-out shell of the QuikTrip on West Florissant, a woman registering new voters beside an “I Love Ferguson” sign.

    Her small dry-erase board blank, Jeania Cash looked at the illustration of the Gateway Arch depicted as half black, half white.

    She thought aloud.

    “The picture is the separation of the communities and what different races think of each other,” she said.

    “It shows us not together,” Arshyana Aldridge added.

    And then she started writing.“The whites and blacks need to come together again so the arch can be grey.” […]

    At Jennings schools, teachers over the weekend met with counselors about how to channel emotions and anxieties of the past week into constructive energy. Brown was shot just a few miles up the road. He went to Jennings High School his freshman year.

    “It’s disheartening, it’s sad, but it’s also an opportunity,” Superintendent Tiffany Anderson said. “An opportunity to change.”

    Staff delivered food over the weekend and on Monday to families near West Florissant Avenue, hit hard by last week’s violence. […]

    Not far from him, Kelci Smith stared at the Humvee in the photograph. She’s seen these tank-looking vehicles parked outside shopping centers, patrolling streets in and around Ferguson. To some people, they bring a feeling of security. To others, they bring a feeling of fear.

    Kelci took blue marker to her dry-erase board:

    “To end the violence

    That’s been going on

    A few brave soldiers

    Decided to come along

    They want us to protest

    But do it peacefully

    So that a difference can be made

    Without hurting you and me.”

    As they wrote, the students talked. Camille Johnson said her mom used to get gas at the QuikTrip – the one that burned after Brown’s death in August. The image still haunts her. “One QuikTrip gone, another one built,” she said as she jotted down the thought. Then she erased the words and started over. [… – funny how they still don’t seem to emphasize the peacefulness of most of the protesting]

    “Violence,” wrote Dyshia Johnson.

    “People say it is

    But people hurting the communities

    I say it’s just a quiz.

    They’ll never win

    I suggest they stop

    Peace and love will

    Stop the cop.”

    The students talked about the good relationship they have with their school resource officer. They debated whether building relationships with other Jennings police would make a positive difference. […]

    Tia looked at photo of the woman registering voters, and then the words started to fill the board.

    “In the heart of Ferguson

    Protesters cry out loud

    For they want peace not war

    Every step to change has a beginning

    But violence is not an option

    For change should not include war.

    The national guards have come

    they have come to protect us

    from those with evil hearts.

    Violence is not allowed.

    Not in our community….”

    And they also talked about the protests — the demands for change, which have been largely peaceful with flashes of violence.

    Protestors.

    Ah, ‘improving conditions’. Yes. With ‘improving conditions’ in Ferguson, Nixon scales back National Guard

    Gov. Jay Nixon announced Tuesday that “improving conditions” have allowed him to scale back guard operations in the area. In a statement, Nixon said the guard has completed its duties in the city of St. Louis, and has begun to “systematically reduce” its presence in St. Louis County.

    As of 1 p.m. Tuesday, there were 1,268 guardsmen stationed in the region, he said.

    The guard has served admirably, Nixon said.

    The Missouri Highway Patrol will continue working with local police in Ferguson and St. Louis County.

    The release said that the unified command — leaders of the highway patrol, plus St. Louis and St. Louis County police — agreed to reduce guardsmen.

    A list of Ferguson fundraisers, there’s about 20 – some with goals reached, some with not.

    This is from January, but it’s telling – they needed two grand juries. And the perfect black victim. Second Grand Jury Indicts Officer in Shooting Death

    On Monday, she got closer to her answers. A grand jury indicted Officer Randall Kerrick, 28, who joined the city’s animal control division in 2010 as a pathway to his police job, on a charge of voluntary manslaughter. He was the first Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer charged in a fatal shooting in more than 30 years.

    Mrs. Ferrell said one thought came into her head when her lawyers told her Monday afternoon that the Mecklenburg County grand jury had indicted Officer Kerrick: “God’s will must be done.”

    It was the second time a grand jury had heard the case. The first panel, which convened a week ago, did not indict the officer, but suggested instead that prosecutors come back with a lesser charge. Community outrage was strong. Roy Cooper, the attorney general and a likely Democratic candidate for governor, decided to present the case again, this time with four witnesses instead of two, and to a full panel of 18 jurors instead of 14.

    Although the proceedings are secret, lawyers for the family said there was a good probability that the jurors saw footage of the shooting taken from a patrol car that night — something the family has not been allowed to view.

    What they saw, according to people who have seen the video, was a 24-year-old man who was approaching officers with his hands outstretched. In the confusion, it is difficult to discern whether the bullets or commands from the officers came first. Either way, according to one lawyer who has seen the video, there was little time for Mr. Ferrell to respond.

    “In some of these cases of excessive force you can say, ‘Yeah, but he shouldn’t have been there in the first place’ or ‘He was doing something he shouldn’t have,’ ” said Charles Monnett, a lawyer in Charlotte, who is representing the family. “There is no ‘but’ in this case. It’s just a tragic case.”

    White America’s scary delusion: Why its sense of black humanity is so skewed

    These protests have been met at best with a kind of studied indifference and at worst with a kind of unrighteous indignation that truly baffles the mind. For instance, Black Friday sales dropped an estimated 11 percent from last year’s totals. While some decrease in revenue had been predicted, double-digit decreases were not. The New York Times coverage of the decline managed to not even consider the possibility that the massive, social media-driven boycott of Black Friday, through hashtags like #BlackoutBlackFriday and Rahiel Tesfamariam’s #NotOneCent, had contributed at all to the downward shift in sales.

    Then on Sunday, after the protest by Rams players, the St. Louis Police Officers Association sent a letter demanding an apology and condemning the players’ peaceful protest as “tasteless, offensive, and inflammatory.”

    Unfortunately, key players in this case, buttressed by a particularly clueless segment of white America, actually seemed to believe that a grand jury decision in favor of Darren Wilson would simply be accepted by black America. The outrage from the St. Louis Police Officers hearkens back to an era when black people were expected to willingly endure white people’s routine horrific act and humiliations committed against them. That this decision feels like a travesty worthy of literally stopping traffic in locales all over the country is an affective response that seems to escape white notice, an apparent casualty of the well-documented racial empathy gap, among white Americans. Though many white people do understand the racial magnitude of last week’s devastating decision – the sense it offers that black people, and in particular young black men, are simply sheep for the slaughter — far too many white people do not understand this. […]

    There is a real disconnect between what white people know and what black people know in this country. Philosophers and political theorists understand these as questions of “epistemology,” wherein they consider how social conditions shape our particular standpoint, and ability to apprehend the things that are supposed to be apparent to us. “How do we know what we know?” is one way we might ask the question.

    It is deeply apparent to most black people that the legal proceedings in the grand jury deliberations were a farce. Whether we consider the deliberate incorrect instructions given to jurors by the prosecutor, or the refusal to challenge the incendiary and inhumane characterizations of Michael Brown as “it,” “demon” and “hulk,” black people know that a lie has been perpetrated.

    Too many white people lie comfortably in bed each night with the illusion that justice was served, that the system worked, that the evidence vindicated the view that they need to believe – that white men do not deliberately murder black boys for sport in this day and time and get away with it. Most well-meaning white people need to believe this. For me as both teacher of different kinds of epistemology and as a black person, I do not have the luxury of believing this. I do not have the luxury of stepping over the bodies of Eric Garner, John Crawford and Tamir Rice, leaving my unasked questions strewn alongside their lifeless bodies. […]

    The invisibility of black rage, black pain and black humanity are all elements of the same problem. That problem is a framework problem. Because Darren Wilson did not use any racial slur to refer to Michael Brown, our current racial frameworks are inadequate for helping your average all-American white people think through the contours of this encounter. That problem has plagued us since the beginning of this case; it dogged us throughout the Zimmerman trial; and it is helped along by the deep emotional dishonesty that characterizes race relations in the country. […]

    For instance, to believe that Michael Brown charged at Darren Wilson in the midst of a hail of gunfire is to believe that black people are monsters, mythical superhuman creatures, who do not understand the physics of bullets, even as they rip through flesh. To white people, who co-sign Wilson’s account of events, this seems like an entirely reasonable assertion, one helped along by a lifetime of media consumption that represents black masculinity as magical, monstrous and mythic.

    That is the supreme irony of the police taking offense at the image of five black football players walking out on the field in a poise of surrender-as-protest. As long as those large, strong football players used their brawn to run a ball down the field, to entertain the mostly white spectators at the game, there are no problems. That they might be human beings, with thoughts and feelings, with politics and connections to communities, with sentiments and spirits attuned to injustice, made them seem threatening, disrespectful and unruly. And frankly, ungrateful. For so many black men, it is sports that saved them from a fate akin to Michael Brown’s. They are supposed to demonstrate their gratitude through silence.

    Black bodies have been used in this country for labor, entertainment and sport. The symbolic import of the Rams protest matters as an assertion that those black men in those mythic, hyper-athletic black male bodies refused to accept an injustice done to a young man that many of us see as a little brother, or cousin, or nephew. […]

    That inability to see black people as human, as vulnerable, as children, as people worthy of protecting is an epistemology problem, a framework problem, a problem about how our experiences shape what we are and are not able to know. The limitations of our frameworks are helped along by willful ignorance and withholding of empathy. […]

    Until white people are ready to relieve themselves of an all-consuming belief in a colorblind legal system, ready to recognize the violence at the core of the ideology of whiteness (which is, I hope you hear me saying, different from calling all white people violent), ready to adopt a new framework, we can’t talk. We can’t talk because y’all can’t hear me. To remix the words of Trayvon’s mom, since you can’t hear us, we will make you feel us, through our protests, through our acts of civil disobedience, through our stoic faces that refuse you the comfort of our smiles. And in the words of Notorious B.I.G., “if you don’t know, now you know.”

    And that fear of black people’s anger – its invisibility – is one of the reasons why Louis Head should never have been asked to apologize. Instead, his pain should have been seen and understood for what it was, not an incitement to violence, but an expression of deepest grief and frustration.

  40. rq says

    Police a-misbehavin’ – 90-plus arrests of D.C. cops in under 4 years

    Metropolitan Police Department officers have been nabbed within the District and as far away as Florida. They’ve been arrested on charges ranging from to child pornography to murder. The majority are DUI and domestic violence arrests, though some cases stand out.

    — Detective Richmond Phillips was arrested in June 2011 in Prince George’s County and accused of killing his girlfriend and their 1-year-old daughter.

    — A month later, Officer Larry Seay was indicted on nine counts involving alleged sexual abuse of three women.

    — Last weekend, Capt. Lamar West was charged with assault after he allegedly choked his wife in the backseat of an SUV before being subdued by another passenger.

    By contrast, Philadelphia — a city whose police force dwarfs Washington’s, with 6,600 sworn officers to D.C.’s 3,800 — saw just six officers arrested this year as of July, according to statistics from the Philadelphia Police Department. D.C. has seen 19 officers arrested this year. Only 18 officers were arrested in Philadelphia in 2011, compared with 29 in D.C.

    “My impression is that the Washington numbers are just unprecedented,” said Samuel Walker, a professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and an expert on police accountability. “The other occasions when you’ve had large numbers of arrests are a major corruption scandal. Those are sort of clustered when you get a major scandal. Washington appears to be different on that score.” […]

    Kris Baumann, the head of D.C.’s Fraternal Order of Police chapter, says rank-and-file officers are embarrassed by the large numbers of arrests in their department and want the MPD to reinstitute its Police Officer Standards and Training Board — which, they allege in a lawsuit, has not operated since 2007. Crump declined to comment on the lawsuit.

    Last week, the MPD also disbanded its unit that investigates officer-involved shootings, saying it was no longer necessary and seven of its officers and all of its caseload will be folded into the Bureau of Internal Affairs.

    In contrast, a Philadelphia police spokesman said Friday that Philadelphia’s department has added 50 personnel to its Internal Affairs Division to investigate wrongdoing by cops.

    Baumann says his union isn’t interested in defending officers accused of crimes and has pushed the D.C. Council to institute better hiring standards in the department. He slammed what he alleged is a departmental culture by which officers aren’t held accountable for wrongdoing.

    Holder to announce new anti-profiling guidelines

    “In the coming days, I will announce updated Justice Department guidance regarding profiling by federal law enforcement. This will institute rigorous new standards — and robust safeguards — to help end racial profiling, once and for all,” Holder said. “This new guidance will codify our commitment to the very highest standards of fair and effective policing.”

    Tensions between police and the community in Ferguson boiled over into violent confrontations in August after a white police officer shot a black teenager. Protests turned violent again last week after a grand jury declined to indict officer Darren Wilson in the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

    Holder’s meeting in Atlanta included a closed roundtable discussion with law enforcement and community leaders followed by a public interfaith service and community forum.

    The meeting came on the heels of President Barack Obama’s request to federal agencies Monday for recommendations to ensure the U.S. isn’t building a “militarized culture” within police departments. The White House also announced it wants more police to wear cameras that capture their interactions with civilians. The cameras are part of a $263 million spending package to help police departments improve their community relations. […]

    Holder also told the crowd that the meetings he’s convening around the country are just the beginning and that he wants to start a frank dialogue and then translate that into concrete action and results.

    Holder’s comments were well-received by the audience. When a group of people interrupted his speech with chants and was escorted out, Holder applauded their “genuine expression of concern and involvement” and got a standing ovation from the crowd.

    Several dozen protesters chanted and waved signs referencing Ferguson outside the doors of church.

    Holder, who plans to leave the position once a successor is confirmed, has identified civil rights as a cornerstone priority for the Justice Department and speaks frequently about what he calls inequities in the treatment of minorities in the criminal justice system. He has targeted sentences for nonviolent drug crimes that he says are overly harsh and disproportionately affect black defendants and has promoted alternatives to prison for non-violent offenders.

    It was pointed out that the first comment on this article should be read, to see the cop reaction to anti-profiling measures, so here it is:

    No matter what standards are written there will be folks who still act with bias and people who refuse to believe you did not act with bias. How do you effectively measure such subjective behavior unless some officer is very overt and makes their prejudice clear. Here Eric Holder, you stop a vehicle at 0300 hrs with tinted windows for a traffic violation and tell me before approaching the car what this person’s ethnicity, nationality and threat level is.

    At least, I hope that’s the right comment, things have moved on since it was originally posted.

    AND THIS JUST IN: No Charges in Eric Garner Chokehold Case for Officer. Going to pull the blockquotes next comment. Because. Just let that sit there for a while.

  41. Pteryxx says

    You beat me to it, rq. No indictment though the chokehold is banned and the NY medical examiner ruled Eric Garner’s death a homicide…

  42. rq says

    An indictment was considered only against Officer Pantaleo, who testified last, on Nov. 21, his lawyer, Stuart London, said. The other officers received immunity, he said.

    The case exposed lapses in police tactics – chokeholds are banned by the Police Department’s own guidelines – and raised questions about the aggressive policing of minor offenses in a time of historically low crime. The officers, part of a plainclothes unit, suspected Mr. Garner of selling loose cigarettes on the street near the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, a complaint among local business owners.

    Mr. Garner’s death hastened an effort to retrain all the department’s patrol officers and brought scrutiny on how officers who violate its rules are disciplined. Officer Pantaleo has been stripped of his gun and badge.

    It was unclear whether Officer Pantaleo would return to enforcement duties. He still faces potential punishment from the Police Department, including possible termination.

    Police cars in advance of the announcement, in New York.

    Statement from Michael Brown’s stepfather about his shouts to “burn it down” on night of GJ announcement

    Please attribute the following statement to Mr. Louis Head:
    “Something came over me as I watched and listened to my wife, the mother of Michael Brown, Jr., react to the gut-wrenching news that the cop who killed her son wouldn’t be charged with a crime. My emotions admittedly got the best of me. This is my family.

    I was so angry and full of raw emotions, as so many others were, and granted, I screamed out words that I shouldn’t have screamed in the heat of the moment. It was wrong and I humbly apologize to all of those who read my pain and anger as a true desire for what I want for our community. It wasn’t.

    But to place blame solely on me for the conditions of our community, and country, after the grand jury decision goes way too far and is wrong as the decision itself. To declare a state of emergency and send a message of war, and not peace, before a grand jury decision was announced is also wrong. It set the stage for my outbursts.

    In the end, I’ve lived in this community for a long time. The last thing I truly wanted was to see it go up in flames. In spite of my frustration, it really hurt to see that.

    Now it’s time to rebuild. If we are to honor Michael Brown’s memory, we need to work together to make rebuilding happen.

    I plan to remain here and do my part in earnest and in truth.”

    And from the Chicago Tribune, What the police don’t want us to know

    But any way you look at it, something is wrong. Perhaps the training given officers is inadequate. Perhaps the procedures they follow are wrong. Perhaps an “us versus them” mentality estranges some police departments from the communities they are sworn to protect.
    cComments

    Its beyond obvious that the author of this article has never been the police. Or been involved with any sort of long term exposure of what police in CERTAIN areas face on a daily basis. While its easy to arm-chair quarterback what the police should and should not do, its not so easy to actually…
    Gordy Clownbottom
    at 1:09 PM December 03, 2014

    Add a comment See all comments
    5

    Whatever the reason, it is hard to escape the conclusion that police in this country are much too quick to shoot. We’ve seen the heartbreaking results most recently in the fatal shooting of 28-year-old Akai Gurley, an unarmed man who was suspected of no crime, in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project, and the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was waving a toy gun around a park in Cleveland.

    Which brings me to the issue of race. USA Today analyzed the FBI’s “justifiable homicide” statistics over several years and found that, of roughly 400 reported police killings annually, an average of 96 involved a white police officer killing a black person.

    Two years ago, D. Brian Burghart, the editor and publisher of the Reno (Nev.) News & Review, launched FatalEncounters.org an ambitious attempt to compile a comprehensive crowdsourced database of fatal police shootings. Reports of the October 2012 killing of a naked, unarmed college student by University of South Alabama police made Burghart wonder how many such shootings there were; the fact that no one knew the answer made him determined to find it.

    Burghart recently summed up what he has learned so far: “You know who dies in the most population-dense areas? Black men,” he wrote on Gawker. “You know who dies in the least population-dense areas? Mentally ill men. It’s not to say there aren’t dangerous and desperate criminals killed across the line. But African-Americans and the mentally ill people make up a huge percentage of people killed by police.”

    Burghart and others who have attempted to count and analyze police shootings shouldn’t have to do the FBI’s job. All law enforcement agencies should be required to report all uses of deadly force to the bureau, using a standardized format that allows comparisons and analysis. Police departments that have nothing to hide should be eager to cooperate.

  43. rq says

    Buzzfeed on Eric Garner – Reports: Grand Jury Clears NYPD Officer Of Charges In Eric Garner Chokehold

    What We Know So Far

    A grand jury in Staten Island cleared a New York Police Department officer of any charges in the chokehold death of Eric Garner in July, according to several media outlets citing anonymous sources.
    City officials are preparing for protests similar to those in Ferguson, Missouri, after a grand jury decided to not charge an officer in the shooting death of Michael Brown.
    On Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said protesters can make their voices heard but that police would “act very assertively” if public safety is compromised.
    On Wednesday, Eric Garner’s son told the Daily News said that protests would not turn violent.
    Some NYPD officers in high-crime precincts will begin wearing body cameras on Wednesday.
    The chokehold incident, which came under scrutiny after this video was released, has led to a wide-scale retraining of NYPD officers on the use of force.

    Updates further in the link.

  44. rq says

    So protestors have been preparing for this, and it’s Shut down the Rockefeller Tree lighting. Tonight. No longer business as usual. #EricGarner, among many other calls to action – either in New York, or elsewhere.
    This is what got a free pass today.

    Medical Examiner Rules Eric Garner’s Death a Homicide, Says He Was Killed By Chokehold The medical xaminer ruled it a homicide (slightly different definition than in law), and still no indictment. The. Fuck.

    The medical examiner said compression of the neck and chest, along with Garner’s positioning on the ground while being restrained by police during the July 17 stop on Staten Island, caused his death.

    Garner’s acute and chronic bronchial asthma, obesity and hypertensive cardiovascular disease were contributing factors, the medical examiner determined.

    I know this is a repost, but here it is again: Strange Stains in Ferguson. Yes, and not only Ferguson.

    NYCLU – Grand Jury Decision Underscores Need for Wholesale Reform of the NYPD (if they disbanded the NYC PD, wow…)

    December 3, 2014 — In response to press reports that a Grand Jury has failed to indict a police officer for the chokehold death of Eric Garner, a father of six accused of selling loose cigarettes illegally, the leadership of the New York Civil Liberties Union issued the following statement. It is attributable to NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman.

    “The failure of the Staten Island Grand Jury to file an indictment in the killing of Eric Garner leaves New Yorkers with an inescapable question: How will the NYPD hold the officers involved accountable for his death? And what will Commissioner Bratton do to ensure that this is the last tragedy of its kind? Unless the Police Department aggressively deals with its culture of impunity and trains officers that they must simultaneously protect both safety and individual rights, officers will continue to believe that they can act without consequence.”

    The NYCLU also called on lawmakers to swiftly pass the Right to Know Act, a pair of bills currently before the City Council which would require police officers to identify themselves formally to people they stop and, if there is no arrest or summons, provide a business card and require officers to obtain proof of consent before searching someone when there is no warrant or probable cause.

  45. rq says

    … And I can’t help but think that once again this timing was planned out. Thanksgiving just ended, christmas and all that hustle and bustle is nearly upon us – they’re counting on the protestors disrupting as much of white life as possible, in order to reap the benefits of the increased animosity.
    It’s disgusting. DISGUSTING.

  46. rq says

    The mayor’s appearance tonight at the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting has been canceled. Coward.

    OK, so much for the argument that body cameras will make a difference. #EricGarner #NYPD #PoliceBrutality. Yes. Obama? Any thoughts?

    Remember him like this: Eric Garner was a 43-year-old father of 6.

    Spike Lee Edits Footage of Black Man’s Death at Hands of Staten Island Police w/ Radio Raheem Scene from ‘Do The Right Thing’.

    Can’t get any worse? Despite his testimony, grand jury indicted Ramsey Orta, chokehold filmer, on gun charge: prosecutor (with video)

    Orta, 22, who filmed an NYPD officer’s fatal chokehold of Eric Garner last month, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in state Supreme Court, St. George.

    Cops allege Orta stuffed an unloaded .25 caliber handgun into the waistband of Alba Lekaj, 17, outside the Hotel Richmond at 71 Central Ave., St. George, two weeks ago. Officers recovered the weapon, said police.

    The defendant contends the charges are trumped up in retaliation for filming the Garner incident on July 17 in Tompkinsville.

    Can the Horde crowdsource me a Mars lander, please? All welcome.

    Eric Garner’s death in NYPD chokehold case ruled a homicide … but not sufficiently homicidal to warrant charges against the murdering officer.

    On July 17, officers approached Garner and questioned him. He was believed to be selling untaxed cigarettes, a charge on which he had been arrested several times previously. Videos of the incident show that Garner repeatedly said he had done nothing wrong and asked the officers to leave him alone. As police tried to make an arrest, one of the officers placed his arm across Garner’s throat and wrestled him to the ground. Garner can be heard repeatedly saying, “I can’t breathe,” while another officer presses his head against the sidewalk.

    Two officers, Daniel Pantaleo and Justin D’Amico, face an internal investigation in connection with Garner’s death. Pantaleo was placed on modified duty, meaning he was stripped of his gun and badge, while D’Amico was placed on desk duty.

    “My administration will continue to work with all involved authorities, including the Richmond County district attorney, to ensure a fair and justified outcome,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.

    Well, here’s your fair and justified outcome, Mr Mayor. Go show up at the christmas tree lighting, I date you. Face the city like a leader. I dare you.

  48. rq says

    ThThat Buzzfeed article from above also has new developments, including the reaction of Eric Garner’s widow:

    Eric Garner’s widow: “are you serious?”

    Esaw Garner spoke to the Daily News after the grand jury decided against charging the NYPD officer:

    “Oh my God, are you serious?” Esaw Garner, her voice rising in shock and anger, told The Daily News. “I’m very disappointed. You can see in the video that he (the cop) was dead wrong!”

    “The grand jury kept interviewing witnesses but you didn’t need witnesses,” the anguished widow said. “You can be a witness for yourself. Oh my God, this s—- is crazy.”

    Esaw Garner said she is now placing her hopes for justice with the U.S. Department of Justice.

    “Well, I guess I have to go with the next step,” she said.

    Also, statement from the killing cop:

    Here is Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo’s statement, released by his union:

    “I became a police officer to help people and to protect those who can’t protect themselves. It is never my intention to harm anyone and I feel very bad about the death of Mr. Garner. My family and I include him and his family in our prayers and I hope that they will accept my personal condolences for their loss.”

    Patrick Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen Benevolent Association, the police union, said: “While we are pleased with the Grand Jury’s decision, there are no winners here today. There was a loss of life that both a family and a police officer will always have to live with. It is clear that the officer’s intention was to do nothing more than take Mr. Garner into custody as instructed and that he used the take down technique that he learned in the academy when Mr. Garner refused. No police officer starts a shift intending to take another human being’s life and we are all saddened by this tragedy.”

  49. toska says

    I love seeing young people speaking out this way:

    Hundreds of East High School students in Denver walked out of class Wednesday morning in protest of the situation in Ferguson, Missouri.

    The students left class at approximately 10 a.m. and walked through downtown Denver. They gathered at the Capitol to protest a grand jury’s decision to not indict police officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson.

    It was estimated that nearly 1,000 people had gathered near the Capitol at 11:30 a.m.

    Student organizers of the walkout told CBS4 they started distributing fliers on Tuesday but didn’t think the walkout would be as large as it became.
    The students shouted “Hands up, don’t shoot!”
    The students then walked from the Capitol and over Denver’s City and County Building and then to the 16th Street Mall.

    “I can’t go to Ferguson to change the laws, I can’t go back and make him not get shot,” student protester Donna Lea Bridges said. “But this is something I can do and I felt like I needed to.”
    One student told CBS4 that their teachers support them, although not publically, and plan to give them an excused absence.
    The school principal did not comment on the walkout, only saying that they heard about the plan.
    An organizer told CBS4 they planned to walkout around 10 a.m. and go back to school after lunch, but many students said they planned to take the rest of the day off.
    The protest disrupted traffic all around Capitol Hill during the march.

    http://denver.cbslocal.com/2014/12/03/east-high-students-walk-out-of-class-to-protest-ferguson-decision/

  50. Pteryxx says

    from Xeni Jardin at BB:

    The fact that these legal outcomes are not surprising does not make them any less outrageous. It makes them more so.

  51. rq says

    toska
    Yes, and I hope those young people keep the lessons learned throughout their adult lives!!!

    +++

    So many calls to (peaceful) action floating up on twitter.
    One more set of links (small one) then I’m calling it a night, I can’t do this tonight for an extended period of time. I honestly thought Eric Garner would be different, as there was so much more tangible material in the case. *sigh*

    I’m Dreaming of a White Privilege Christmas. A comic. That is not so comic.

    Officer who fatally shot Tamir Rice judged unfit for duty by police in 2012

    A police officer who shot a 12-year-old dead in a Cleveland park late last month had been judged unfit for police service two years earlier by a small suburban force where he worked for six months, according to records released Wednesday.

    Officer Timothy Loehmann, who killed Tamir Rice on 22 November, was specifically faulted for breaking down emotionally while handling a live gun. During a training episode at a firing range, Loehmann was reported to be “distracted and weepy” and incommunicative. “His handgun performance was dismal,” deputy chief Jim Polak of the Independence, Ohio, police department wrote in an internal memo.

    The memo concludes with a recommendation that Loehmann be “released from the employment of the City of Independence.” Less than a week later, on 3 December 2012, Loehmann resigned. […]

    The Independence police memo describes an episode in which a supervising officer suspended gun training with Loehmann after Loehmann had an emotional breakdown about a girlfriend.

    “During a state range qualification course, Ptl Loehmann was distracted and weepy,” Polak wrote, naming the trainer as Sgt Tinnirello. “[Loehmann] could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal. Sgt Tinnirello tried to work through this with Ptl Loehmann by giving him some time. But, after some talking it was clear to Sgt Tinnirello that the recruit was just not mentally prepared to be doing firearm training. …

    “Ptl. Loehmann continued with his emotional meltdown to a point where Sgt. Tinnirello could not take him into the store, so they went to get something to eat and he continued to try and calm Ptl Loehmann. Sgt Tinnirello describes the recruit as being very downtrodden, melancholy with some light crying. Sgt. Tinnirello later found this emotional perplexity was due to a personal issue with Ptl. Loehmann’s on and off again girlfriend whom he was dealing with till 0400 hrs the night before. (Pti. Loehmann was scheduled for 0800 the morning in question).

    Some of the comments made by Ptl Loehmann during this discourse were to the effect of, “I should have gone to NY”, “maybe I should quit”, “I have no friends”, “I only hang out with 73-year-old priests”, “I have cried every day for four months about this girl.”

    In recommending Loehmann’s dismissal, Polak listed what he said were other performance shortcomings, including Loehmann’s having left his gun unlocked, lied to supervisors and failed to follow orders.

    “Due to this dangerous loss of composure during live range training and his inability to manage this personal stress, I do not believe Ptl Loehmann shows the maturity needed to work in our employment,” Polak concludes. “For these reasons, I am recommending he be released from the employment of the city of Independence. I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies.”

    As per above, he was unable to transfer to any other departments because his performance ratings were always so low. And then this.
    Some people just aren’t meant to be cops.

  52. Pteryxx says

    NYPD’s clueless PR person via Jezebel:

    Here’s what NYPD’s Community Affairs Officer Joanne Jaffe tweeted after the grand jury’s decision came down:

    The #NYPD is committed to rebuilding public trust. #Wehearyou

    — Chief Joanne Jaffe (@NYPDCommAffairs) December 3, 2014

  53. toska says

    rq

    Some people just aren’t meant to be cops.

    I’ve heard so many people defend cops by saying it’s a high stress job and anyone can pull a gun on them in a routine traffic stop, so they are “understandably” too quick to react sometimes. It’s such bullshit. If someone is so traumatized by their job that they are a safety to the public, they need to be removed from that position. This is true for any profession, but particularly one where ensuring the safety of the public is supposed to be the whole point. Imagine if sex workers (who are in a much more dangerous profession in the current US system) killed clients at the same rate police officers killed people? Police should not get murder passes when anyone else would be held to a much higher standard.

  54. says

    I didn’t think my heart could sink any further. But then I heard about the non-indictment for the murder of Eric Garner. I need to go drown my frustration in a bottle of Fireball.

  56. Saad says

    Unbelievable. Even with full video and audio evidence, cause of death by medical examiner, Mr. Garner’s clearly audible pleas that he can’t breath, etc. This suggests that if someone had recorded the killing of Michael Brown, the jury still wouldn’t have indicted.

    I think I’m done with being hopeful about this whole entire topic. Fuck it.

  57. Saad says

    A while back, I came across a link here to a chronological list of police brutality on black people by year. At least I’m pretty sure it was here. Could someone help me out and repost it?

  58. toska says

    Eric Garner’s last words:

    Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today. [ . . .] I’m minding my business, officer, I’m minding my business. Please just leave me alone. I told you the last time, please just leave me alone. Please. Please, don’t touch me. Do not touch me. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

    https://twitter.com/johngreen/status/540329728964841472?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=fb&utm_campaign=johngreen&utm_content=540329728964841472

    I read each “I can’t breathe” separately. I was weeping by number 3. There are no more words . . .

  59. rq says

    Saad
    It may have been here, though PZ had that post “Last Words” that had some of the better-known cases, and if you lurk long enough, I’m sure it will turn up again here, too.

    More later, lots of crowds, lots of action, all peaceful so far. HUGE in New York, I’ll have some photos after I get back from taking Eldest to school. Huge in Seattle, in Oakland, in Washington.

  60. rq says

    People were out in the streets last night:
    Stanford students – More than 100 Stanford students briefly stop traffic on SB 101 at University Av to protest NY chokehold decision. ;
    St. Louis – Demonstrators block a street in St. Louis, MO as protests spread across the US over #EricGarner grand jury decision;
    Denver – Denver turns out for #EricGarner. #DenverForFerguson;
    Seattle – Protesters staging a die-in at 3rd and Pike in downtown Seattle:.

    I can’t transcribe them, but read some cop comments on a cop forum. Not so much ‘can’t’ as ‘don’t want to’. Sickening, the rejoicing at this decision – ‘good news for cops in use of force incidents’, indeed.

  61. rq says

    In Denver, it got shut down either way, and everyone knows why, whether it was cops or protestors. Denver: DPD reportedly shut down I-25 to prevent hundreds of protesters from taking highway. Either way, I-25 was shut down. #EricGarner.
    Richmond, VA – A++ pic of protestors’ kickass square formation in Richmond, VA! “@tjwtf: #SHUTITDOWN #ICANTBREATHE #RVA #VCU ” @deray; and @deray Via @ChelseaCBS6… Protestors Shutting down Broad and Belvidere in Richmlnd chanting “we have to fight back”;
    More St Louis – Massive Die-In downtown St. Louis. #Ferguson #mikebrown#EricGarner @cgagneASN;
    Oakland – Sure we’re drenched, but the pigs look even more miserable. #ericgarner #oakland #ItStopsToday.

  62. rq says

    New York – In addition to the NYPD cruiser, cars torched tonight apparently includes a bunch of the 77th precinct cops’ personal vehicles #EricGarner;
    Insane amount of cops in an intersection during one of the #JusticeForEricGarner marched in NYC tonight #ICantBreathe (WHOA!!!);
    West Side Highway NYC shut down in both directions #EricGarner LIVE NYC DC LA;
    Grand central – Photo from @hanrmiller: #EricGarner protestors flood Grand Central station #c4news #Icantbreath;
    DC – In Ferguson, this situation would have likely resulted in many violent arrests. In DC, police just redirect traffic.

    Working on the movement – Feelin so geeked/privileged for being able to be a part of this time, this movement- thank you all;

  63. rq says

    Remember those Ferguson activists walking to Jefferson City? Marchers walk from Ferguson to MO. State Capital #JourneyforJustice. The reception in Rosebud, MO. Pic: @Missourinet. That picture.

    Rep. Barbara Lee weighs in: Death of #EricGarner was a tragedy & decision not to indict is an outrage. #BlackLivesMatter #TheSystemIsBroken, with picture.

    Let’s start a collection for Roorda to keep his mouth SHUT: Roorda on CNN just said: “The lesson learned by #MichaelBrown and #EricGarner is comply with the police.” @Nettaaaaaaaa @deray @brownblaze. HOW. VILE. CAN. A. PERSON. GET.

    In Ferguson, Frantic scene in CWE, man in minivan hits protesters, flashes gun at protesters who surrounded his car #Ferguson #stl ;
    Again, NYC – #EricGarner. West Side Highway. .

    Oh and he wasn’t a good cop: MT @KWestSavali: Eric Garner’s racist killer Daniel Pantaleo, had at least 2 civil rights lawsuits against him.

  65. rq says

    Articles: Southeast Asian Activists Urge ‘Solidarity With Black People’ Post Garner Non-Indictment

    OPEN LETTER TO OUR SOUTHEAST ASIAN COMMUNITY ON BLACK SOLIDARITY: PLEASE SHARE

    To our loved Southeast Asian people,

    WE HAVE BEEN WITNESS TO SEVERE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AGAINST THE BLACK COMMUNITY, AND WE HAVE HEALING AND ORGANIZING TO DO: On Monday November 24th, a St. Louis County prosecutor announced that Mike Brown’s killer will not be indicted. We are heartbroken with rage and sadness that another Black child was murdered in the street and no one will be held accountable. And again today, justice has been denied as the system chooses to hold no one accountable in the murder of Eric Garner by the NYPD. We cry for the families of Mike Brown and Eric Garner as they are forced to find peace through their own means and struggle. We are pained to our core that the community’s truth is so violently and publicly stripped away through legal system processes that weren’t built to honor our truth.

    WE NEED TO DO OUR WORK OF CONNECTING OUR STRUGGLES TO THOSE OF OUR BLACK SISTERS, BROTHERS, AND KINFOLK: On Monday, our world stopped. But for many in our community, it didn’t. We know what it means for our lives to be taken by armed bodies of US government while no one pays attention, here and in our homelands. We know what it means to be forced to find peace with our trauma, and find justice on our own without solidarity from the outside world. We know what it means for the truth of our experience to be stripped from us by the system, and then have to live with our truth in the shadows and be invisible in our intergenerational trauma and pain. As Black communities charge genocide, war and state violence on their lives and futures by the forces that are meant to protect them, we know deeply the meaning of these very words and experiences as we carry the weight and history of mass human rights violations against our people from one side of the world to the other.

    AS A SOUTHEAST ASIAN COMMUNITY, LET US REMEMBER OUR DEEP RESILIENCE AND COLLECTIVE HEALING THROUGH OUR OWN STRUGGLES, AND OFFER OURSELVES, OUR LOVE, AND OUR SOLIDARITY TO THE BLACK COMMUNITY: Our solidarity work must begin with organizing and transforming ourselves, our families, and our loved ones by understanding how anti-black racism has impacted our own community. Let us feel the division and injustice that systemic colorism and anti-blackness has done to our community, as we are taught to value those of us who are light-skinned over those of us who are dark-skinned. Let us see that the struggle of Black communities against police and state violence directly impacts our community’s survival as we face that violence as well. Let us be clear through this understanding that while our oppressions are connected, our oppression is not the same. Black bodies are systemically and historically dehumanized in this country in ways we will never face. We must now also own our failure as a Southeast Asian community to be in solidarity with the Black community in times of crisis and movement. And we must do better, right now.

    WE MUST READY OUR MINDS AND HEARTS FOR A BLACK LIBERATION MOVEMENT THAT ALL OF OUR LIVES DEPEND ON, BECAUSE OUR LIBERATION AS SOUTHEAST ASIANS MUST DEMAND THAT PEOPLE AND THE SYSTEM TRULY BELIEVE THAT BLACK LIVES MATTER: Now is the time for us to show up and unveil the raw truth of our beings as Southeast Asian survivors and warriors, and bring it with our Black family. We will not remain calm. We will not believe that property is more valuable than life. We will not turn our heads as Black people are shot every 28 hours by police or vigilantes in this country. We will respect and follow the leadership of those most marginalized on the ground – Black youth, Black queer folk, Black trans folk, Black mothers, and Black sisters. We will be guided by those who have been in the streets for over 100 days using their voices and bodies to demand justice and dignity. It is no longer enough to watch. We will roll up our sleeves, hit the streets, and do our part to make the world stop.

    In love,

    Your family of the Southeast Asian Freedom Network (SEAFN)

    Please see bolded bits for moments of extra excellence. Obviously written by someone(s) who actually understand. That’s the kind of thing that can reinstate some of the lost trust in humanity.

    A Grand Jury Did Indict One Person Involved In Eric Garner’s Killing — The Man Who Filmed It. That’s right.

    In August, less than a month after filming the fatal July 17 encounter in which Daniel Pantaleo and other NYPD police officers confronted Garner for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes, a grand jury indicted Orta on weapons charges stemming from an arrest by undercover officers earlier that month.

    Police alleged that Orta had slipped a .25 caliber handgun into a teenage accomplice’s waistband outside a New York hotel. Orta testified that the charges were falsely mounted by police in retaliation for his role in documenting Garner’s death, but the grand jury rejected his contention, charging him with single felony counts of third-degree criminal weapon possession and criminal firearm possession.

    Sounds legit to me. Not.

    Seattle march in photos.

    And then there was Anthony Baez – Brother of Anthony Baez sees heartbreaking parallel to Eric Garner’s death

    “This one, it kind of hit home, because ya know, the way that my brother was killed, was the same way that Garner was killed,” said Baez.

    That was 1994.

    David, now 37-years-old, was just a teenager back then.

    He was here that night in front of his family’s Bronx home, long before the days of video camera equipped smartphones, playing touch football with his big brother Anthony Baez.

    “My brother tried to ask him, why am is being locked up for no reason. And he just grabbed him and put him in a chokehold. Basically,” said Baez.

    Anthony died that night. Sound familiar? […]

    She says time and technology, in other words the video, should help craft a more accurate narrative in the Garner investigation.

    “With Anthony Baez for example, they said that he was overweight, he was obese, he had asthma, he died of an asthma attack. Well nothing was on camera! So it was really the testimony of those officers that were there against the family,” said Anderson.

    It took two trials and several years, but David Baez says his family finally got some measure of justice after former officer Francis Livoti served six and a half years in federal prison.

    I have some more on the chokeholds next.

    The NYPD banned chokeholds 20 years ago, but hundreds of complaints are still being filed

    This is what the NYPD patrol guide says, per the New York Law Journal:

    Members of the New York City Police Department will NOT use chokeholds. A chokehold shall include, but is not limited to, any pressure to the throat or windpipe, which may prevent or hinder breathing or reduce intake of air.

    That’s explicit. And it has been the department’s policy since 1993, shortly after an five officers were put on trial (four of whom were acquitted) for killing a 21-year-old by “traumatic asphyxia.”

    In fact, the NYPD has been warning officers, at least in writing, about the dangers of using chokeholds for decades. In 1985, according to the law journal, then-police commissioner Benjamin Ward limited their use, mandating that they not be used “routinely,” and disallowing their use unless an “officer’s life is in danger or some other person’s life in danger and the choke hold is the least dangerous alternative method of restraint available to the police officer.”[…]

    Between June 2013 and July 2014, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent city agency that examines accusations of police misconduct, received more than 200 chokehold complaints. Extend the period back to 2009, and the total number soars into the 1000s. Nearly 200 complaints have been filed on average each year since 2001. […]

    But even if a minority of cases involve chokeholds, it raises an important question: Why are police officers in New York City still allegedly using the maneuver if it is explicitly banned?

    The answer might be because the department is not enforcing the rule stringently. A recent study (pdf) by the review board says that:

    Put simply, during the last decade, the NYPD disciplinary decisions in NYPD administrative trials of chokehold allegations failed to enforce the clear mandate of the Patrol Guide chokehold rule. In response to these decisions which failed to hold offending officers accountable, the CCRB and NYPD Department Advocate’s Office [internal affairs] failed to charge officers with chokehold violations pursuant to the mandate of the Patrol Guide chokehold rule.

    By failing to properly punish officers who have used a banned method of apprehension, the department effectively shapes the understanding of the rule by officers, the study says.

    In essence, in their respective charging decisions, the CCRB and the Department Advocate redefined a “chokehold” to require force to the neck during which an officer actually and substantially interfered with a complainant’s breathing rather than “pressure” to the neck which “may” interfere with breathing. In this respect the chokehold rule “mutated” to adapt to the NYPD disciplinary process, rather than the disciplinary process following the NYPD rule.

    Defenders of the officer involved say he was using a proper technique — one he had learned in the academy that stays away from a person’s throat and neck. The New York City medical examiner’s office has called Garner’s death a homicide resulting from “compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.”

    Still, it’s clear that the police have not closely followed a rule that requires that they “stay away from the neck.” It’s possible that a lighter and less-asthmatic man might have survived the apparent chokehold — as some police officers argue — but that is not the point.

    So they still teach something awfully similar to a chokehold.
    Disgusting.

    This is the ’93 article from the New York Times on banning chokeholds: Kelly Bans Choke Holds By Officers

    The policy in New York grew from concern about the rising number of deaths in police custody over the last eight years, including that of Federico Pereira, a 21-year-old Queens man who in 1991 died of what the medical examiners called “traumatic asphyxia.” Five officers were charged, but the charges against four were dropped and the fifth was acquitted. Order Called a Clarification

    Chief John F. Timoney, commander of the department’s office of management analysis and planning, said the deaths coincided with the rise of crack, which often made suspects harder to restrain and which was shown to contribute to some deaths. The new policy — which he said was part of a broader review of police procedure — is aimed at restraining difficult suspects in the safest possible way, he said.

    “We are in the business of protecting life, not taking it,” Chief Timoney said. “We’re in the business of officer safety. The bottom line of the whole thing is that if somebody is emotionally disturbed they really need police help and we should render it in the most humane and professional way possible.”[…]

    New York City has not trained police cadets in the use of choke holds for at least 10 years, Chief Timoney and other experts said, and their use here has been less controversial and apparently apparently less widespread than in Los Angeles. In that city between 1977 and 1982, 16 people died in cases in which the choke hold was used — twice as many as in the 20 other largest police departments combined, said James J. Fyfe, a professor a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and a former city police officer who has studied police brutality.

    Chief Timoney said the number of deaths in police custody in New York, including some involving choke holds, had been rising in recent years. He was unable last night to provide the exact number of such deaths, though he noted that many resulted from drug overdoses rather than the use of force by officers.

    In 1980, under the threat of several lawsuits, Los Angeles banned the use of one especially lethal choke hold — called the bar-arm hold, which cuts off the air supply by crushing the larynx — and many large police departments followed suit, Professor Fyfe said. In many cases, the departments also banned or restricted use of a less dangerous hold, the carotid hold, which compresses the carotid arteries in the neck and temporarily cuts off blood to the brain. [..]

    Chief Timoney said the city policy specifically did not distinguish between various types of holds, but rather banned them categorically. It also prohibited other restraints or tactics — like standing on a suspect’s chest or transporting a suspect in a face-down position — which might impede breathing.

    “Basically, stay the hell away from the neck,” he said. “That’s what it says.”

    Joseph Mancini, a spokesman for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said the union opposed the ban because it could endanger the life of an officer trying to subdue a dangerous suspect. He also called it a method of “last resort,” and as such he said officers rarely used it. Officers Divided on Ban

    “A choke hold can be lethal,” Mr. Mancini said, “but to prevent a cop from using it when it is necessary force is to take a weapon away from a cop that he or she might need to protect his or her life or the life of an innocent bystander.”

    Chief Timoney said that he could imagine “extreme circumstances” in which a choke hold might be used legitimately and each case would be reviewed afterward on its individual merits. But, he said, “as a matter of policy choke holds are forbidden.”

    All of that seems pretty clear to me. So, grand jury, why no crime in the case of Eric Garner?

  66. rq says

    Officer Told Grand Jury He Meant No Harm to Eric Garner

    “He wanted to get across to the grand jury that it was never his intention to injure or harm anyone,” Mr. London said. “He was really just describing how he was attempting to arrest someone.”

    His testimony, on Nov. 21, seems to have swayed the grand jurors who, on Wednesday, decided not to charge him with a crime. But the officer’s testimony, as recounted by Mr. London, seemed at times to be at odds with a video of the encounter, such as his stated attempt to get off Mr. Garner “as quick as he could.” […]

    Officer Pantaleo testified that when he put his hands on Mr. Garner, he was employing a maneuver taught to him at the Police Academy, hooking an arm underneath one of Mr. Garner’s arms while wrapping the other around Mr. Garner’s torso, Mr. London said. The move is meant to “tip the person so they lose their balance and go to the ground,” as seen in wrestling, Mr. London said.

    But then things changed. As the struggle continued, one of Officer Pantaleo’s arms moved around Mr. Garner’s neck. Officer Pantaleo told the grand jury that he became fearful as he found himself sandwiched between a much larger man and a storefront window.[… – let us say that it’s not the storefront window that he’s actually afraid of]

    On the video, the men toppled to the ground, but the arm around Mr. Garner’s neck did not appear to move. Officer Pantaleo told jurors he continued to hold on to Mr. Garner as he struggled to regain his balance, Mr. London said. He said he wanted to make sure that Mr. Garner was not injured by other officers rushing in, as well as to prevent Mr. Garner from possibly biting one of them.

    On the video, Mr. Garner, 43, can be heard saying that he could not breathe. Officer Pantaleo told the grand jurors he heard those pleas. […]

    “He knew he was committing no misconduct so it didn’t bother him,” Mr. London said.

    Officer Pantaleo’s testimony must have followed a series of deliberate strategic decisions, lawyers who have handled similar cases said.

    “In the majority of cases, defendants do not testify in front of a grand jury,” said James J. Culleton, who has represented police officers in high-profile police shootings, including those of Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell.

    But police cases are different, he said.

    “The justification defense — put it in front of the grand jury,” he said. “I believe the grand jury wants to hear what a police officer has to say. What happened? What was happening around him at the time?”

    An officer brings a heightened level of credibility before the grand jury, and perhaps, some sympathy from the prosecutor, said Paul P. Martin, another lawyer from the Bell case.

    Well him and that entire grand jury can go fuck themselves. Seriously. The article finishes with the autopsy report, that lists contributing factors to the death, and that the grand jury couldn’t actually say whether the officer caused Garner’s death. Well he put him in a fucking chokehold, assholes, eliciting an asthma attack. Sounds pretty conclusive to me. Fuckers.

    More on the chokehold ban: We’ve only regressed since the NYPD banned chokeholds in 1993

    The 1993 ban was described at the time as a clarification and enhancement of an earlier, 1985 rule against choke holds. As Fisher explained, however, that rule had “an exception when an officer’s life was in danger and the choke hold was the ‘least dangerous alternative method of restraint'” while “the new policy allows no exceptions.” The NYPD’s union opposed the chokehold ban at the time, and Fisher rather presciently cast some doubt on the question of whether it would even be followed.

    “It’s not a good regulation,” said the officer, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We need all the means necessary to defend ourselves. I was trained to use it and based on my training it would be difficult for me not to use it. Then again, we’ll try not to use it.”

    A bit less than 21 years later, a police officer choked Eric Garner to death in broad daylight — on video no less — on the streets of Staten Island. This time, there will be no indictment. No trial. Despite the video. Despite the ban on chokeholds. It’s easy to see this as a frustrating lack of progress. But the frightening reality is that it’s more like regress.

    A Search for Justice in the Eric Garner Case

    The imbalance between Mr. Garner’s fate, on a Staten Island sidewalk in July, and his supposed infraction, selling loose cigarettes, is grotesque and outrageous. Though Mr. Garner’s death was officially ruled a homicide, it is not possible to pierce the secrecy of the grand jury, and thus to know why the jurors did not believe that criminal charges were appropriate.

    What is clear is this was vicious policing and an innocent man is dead. Another conclusion is also obvious. Officer Pantaleo was stripped of his gun and badge; he needs to be stripped of his job. He used forbidden tactics to brutalize a citizen who was not acting belligerently, posed no risk of flight, brandished no weapon and was heavily outnumbered.

    Any police department that tolerates such conduct, and whose officers are unable or unwilling to defuse such confrontations without killing people, needs to be reformed. And though the chance of a local criminal case is now foreclosed, the Justice Department is right to swiftly investigate what certainly seem like violations of Mr. Garner’s civil rights. […]

    New Yorkers, at least, have a mayor and Police Department that have not fully squandered their credibility with the public. Mr. de Blasio’s and Mr. Bratton’s vows to retrain the police force top to bottom in defusing conflict, to reduce unwarranted arrests and restore community trust, remain credible, if far from fulfilled.

    Those who seek justice should remain hopeful, if skeptical and wary. Indeed, if not for a bystander with a cellphone, the police officers’ version of events would have been the prevailing one: that Mr. Garner “resisted arrest” and had to be subdued.

    Mr. Garner, who was 43, and left a wife and six children, cannot speak for himself. But the video, at least, speaks for him. It’s a heartbreaking, damning exhibit, showing Mr. Garner’s final moments alive, and his final words: “I can’t breathe.”

    “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”
    ‘I Can’t Breathe’ Is Echoed in Voices of Fury and Despair

    “I can’t breathe,” Eric Garner had gasped after the officer put his neck in a chokehold on a hot July day on Staten Island, a fatal encounter captured on video and viewed by millions of people. On Wednesday, after a grand jury declined to indict the officer, the words — and the video — were revived in a wave of despair and fury that rolled as far out as the corridors of Capitol Hill and the streets of Oakland, Calif.

    Elected officials in New York and Washington, too, did not hold back, offering an extraordinary outpouring of stunned reaction that seemed to mirror — and perhaps calm — protesters’ anger.

    As demonstrators rushed to Staten Island, hundreds of people marched north from Times Square, trying, and failing, to push through police barricades to disrupt the annual Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Center. Protesting from midafternoon to late into the night, they blocked traffic on the West Side Highway, disrupted it on the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge and at the Lincoln Tunnel, sat en masse at Columbus Circle, and held “die-ins” at Grand Central Terminal and near Radio City Music Hall. “We can’t breathe,” they chanted. […]

    “You can see the video,” said Diane Moss, 63, of Staten Island, her voice strained with disbelief. “It’s one thing if it’s ‘he said, she said,’ but when you see the video — the guy wasn’t resisting.”

    Her neighbor, Marjorie Fabre, 53, seethed next to her.

    “They keep on showing the tape on TV, over and over and over,” she said. The officer, Daniel Pantaleo, had been trying to arrest Mr. Garner for selling loose cigarettes. “I mean, over a cigarette?” […]

    “We had a video. How can we win? We can’t win,” said a man who gave his name as James.

    Nearby, Daniel Skelton, 40, ripped cigarettes from a pack of Newports, flung them to the ground and stomped on them.

    “Black lives,” he shouted. [..]

    “The failure to indict is a stunning miscarriage of justice, and makes clear that equal protection under the law does not exist for all Americans,” said Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from Brooklyn who, along with other members of New York’s congressional delegation, spoke at the Capitol to call for a federal investigation into Mr. Garner’s death.

    “What more does America need to see?” Mr. Jeffries said. “We are better than this as a country.”

    Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, called Mr. Garner’s death “a tragedy that demands accountability.”

    “Nobody unarmed should die on a New York City street corner for suspected low-level offenses,” she said.

    Mayor Bill de Blasio canceled an appearance at the tree-lighting ceremony to speak at a church on Staten Island.

    At Grand Central, dozens of protesters lay on the ground amid commuters to symbolize black men killed by the police. “I cannot believe I live in a country where this is happening in 2014,” said Talibah Newman, 30.

    Outside the courthouse, Rosalyn Warren, 52, a Legal Aid staff member, recalled her childhood on Staten Island, where the largely white South Shore was all but off limits to her. And now? “Different year, same faces, same views,” she said. She shook her head.

    “History,” she said, “was not going to be made on Staten Island today.”

    The Gentle Giant Cut Down by Cops

    The 43-year-old had just broken up a fight by a pocket park near the Staten Island ferry on July 17 when two plainclothes cops approached him. They had apparently responded to a report of a dispute, but it was over by the time they got there.

    With no real crime in evidence, they decided to arrest Garner for selling “loosies,” single cigarettes, most likely out of an untaxed pack. Loosies are generally bought by cigarette addicts who have trouble affording a whole pack at the taxed rate. […]

    Garner became the Gandhi of loosies, offering only the most passive resistance as the police moved to arrest him. Officer Daniel Pantaleo put him in what looked like a chokehold, which is specifically prohibited by the NYPD patrol guide.

    Pantaleo continued to apply the hold after he and his partner had brought Garner down. Pantaleo and his partner and other officers who piled on all seemed deaf to the words the lifelong asthma sufferer Garner repeated again and again, words that were written on T-shirts worn by some of the mourners attending Wednesday night’s funeral at Bethel Baptist Church in his native Brooklyn.

    “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”

    The funeral no doubt would have been a much smaller event with little public notice were it not for a video shot by a 22-year-old named Ramsey Orta, who was welcomed with applause when he was called to the pulpit during the service.

    “He said, ‘This is wrong, I’m going to video it!’” Rev. Al Sharpton told the mourners.

    Sharpton might have also praised Ken Murray, an old school New York Daily News photographer who got wind of the video. The Daily News posted the footage and subsequently obtained an internal NYPD report prepared before the police became aware of the video’s existence. One sergeant is quoted saying that Garner “did not appear to be in great distress.” Another is reported saying, “The perpetrator’s condition did not seem serious and that he did not appear to get worse.” […]

    In Garner’s case, death seems to have come not as a result of fear, but as a result of indifference. Sharpton spoke of the moment they had all seen in the video when Pantaleo kept Garner in a headlock despite his pleas.

    “When does your decency kick in?” Sharpton asked. “When does your mortality kick in? You don’t need no training to stop choking a man saying, ‘I can’t breathe.’” […]

    “He didn’t die because he stopped breathing on his own,” she said. “Somebody took his breath away.”

    And not in that super-sweet romantic-love way, either.

    The lonesome death of Eric Garner. Contains transcript of the video just after Garner went down and the cops finally backed off. Going to TW just because it’s horrible.

    Large and African-American, Garner is facedown on the concrete and apparently unconscious. A couple of cops have their hands on him, as if trying to move or steady him. Others (none of whom appear to be black)chat in a loose semicircle, occasionally barking at the crowd off-camera. Among them, to the camera’s right, is Pantaleo.

    VOICE OFF-CAMERA: “He didn’t do nothing. He was breaking up a fight.”

    VOICE OFF-CAMERA: “Where’s the ambulance?”

    COP CHORUS: “Back up. Back up. C’mon, let’s go. Back up.”

    Garner coughs loudly. He is still unresponsive. Cops roll him off his stomach and onto his side.

    COP: “Sir, can you step back please? We’re trying to give him some air.”

    COP: “Let’s go. Back up.”

    They issue the commands even though no one is obstructing them, nor are any of the cops doing anything to assist Garner.

    PASSING CAR, PUMPING NICKI MINAJ: “Pills and potions / We’re overdosing / I’m angry but I still love you.”

    COP TO GARNER: “Sir, EMS is here. Answer their questions, OK?”

    VOICE: “He can’t breathe!”

    EMT Nicole Palmeri checks Garner’s pulse but does nothing else.

    PALMERI: “Sir. It’s EMS. C’mon. We’re here to help, all right. We’re here to help you. We’re getting the stretcher. All right?”

    GARNER: Silence.

    Palmeri walks off.

    A bit later, the cops and medics finally decide to get Garner into an ambulance.

    COP: “We’re going to try to get him up on the stretcher. It’s going to take like six of us.”

    They hoist him up and literally drop him onto a gurney. Or at least the left side of him. One cop catches his legs falling off.

    Another holds Garner’s shirt, apparently to keep the rest of him from rolling off the gurney. Garner’s belly is exposed. He appears to be unconscious.

    VOICE: “Why nobody do no CPR?”

    VOICE: “Nobody did nothing.”

    COP (as he walks by): “Because he’s breathing.”

    The camera turns to Pantaleo, about 20 feet away. He waves and steps out of the picture. The camera shifts back to Garner strapped to the gurney and being wheeled away.

    The cops walk off behind him. A few people walk out of a store, back to the street.

    (END SCENE)

    Garner had a heart attack in the ambulance, and died.

    As he lay dying, he was treated like a piece of meat. By Pantaleo. By the other cops on the scene. Even by the medical technicians. […]

    But fear of police and lost faith in justice are real, corrosive forces. That fear makes decent people of color feel that society places a lower value on their lives. It makes parents and their children fear the very people who are supposed to be protecting them. Good policing demands community buy-in, so perception itself matters.

    And that fear is not only in people’s minds. Just open your eyes and watch the videos.

  67. rq says

    thisisthemovement, installment #63:

    Darren Wilson’s Story Changed ___ Times The story Darren Wilson told his squad supervisor is different than the story he told the St. Louis detective, which is different than the story he told the FBI, which is different than the story he told the grand jury. This article points out all other discrepancies in Wilson’s story over 100+ days. Must read.

    “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” Is Bigger Than Ferguson and Bigger Than The Rams This commentary expertly situates the Rams situation into the larger context of the movement and pushes further to ask and address the question(s) of the value of Black life in America. Simply put, this piece is excellent. Absolute must read.

    What White People Need to Know, And Do, After Ferguson This might be one of the best pieces re: white privilege in the context of Ferguson that’s come out yet. Not sure what “after Ferguson” means, but the commentary itself is strong. Absolute must read.

    Numbers Don’t Lie “The racial divide found in the poll speaks to the racial disparities in the criminal justice system: both black and Hispanic Americans are more likely to be stopped or arrested by the police than their white counterparts.” Solid read.

    Activism Has No Age Limit On Tuesday morning, hundreds of students participated in an organized protest by walking out of their classes. The teens met and rallied in the school common area before walking out of the buildings and marching in protest. Interesting read.

    #DCFerguson Protests Make an Impact Since the grand jury announcement last week, nationwide protests have occurred as people stand in solidarity with Ferguson. Protesters in DC have staged “die-ins”, blocked highway traffic multiple times, and shut down malls throughout the city. Powerful read.

    Nixon Scales Back the National Guard Gov. Nixon, noting “improving conditions” has decided to reduce the number of National Guardsmen in St. Louis.

    Reflecting on AG Eric Holder’s Speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church This commentary summarizes AG Holder’s speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church into 5 major points. Interesting read.

    Black Motherhood In the Midst of Ferguson In this commentary, the author reflects on the fears and hopes that manifest as a black mother in the midst of the death of Mike Brown and the non-indictment of Darren Wilson. Important read.

    Some good articles in there, several that I have missed here. Go look!

    No charges for NYPD officer in apparent chokehold death; Justice Dept. to investigate

    The Justice Department will launch a federal civil rights investigation after a Staten Island grand jury declined to bring charges in the case of Eric Garner, an African American who died this summer after a white New York City police officer placed him in an apparent chokehold during an arrest.

    As protesters gathered in New York, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced an “independent, thorough, fair, and expeditious investigation,” which Garner’s family and activists have called for in recent months. […]

    President Obama, speaking at an event in Washington, declined to make specific comments about the Staten Island grand jury’s decision, referring instead to his plans to promote better relations between police and the citizens they serve. “We are not going to let up until we see a strengthening of the trust and a strengthening of the accountability that exists between our communities and our law enforcement,” Obama said. […]

    Pantaleo commented on the decision in a statement released through the NYC Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. “I became a police officer to help people and to protect those who can’t protect themselves,” he said. “It is never my intention to harm anyone and I feel very bad about the death of Mr. Garner. My family and I include him and his family in our prayers and I hope that they will accept my personal condolences for their loss.”

    When asked at a press conference about whether she accepted Pantaleo’s apology, Esaw Garner flatly declared: “Hell no.”

    “The time for remorse would have been when my husband was yelling to breathe. That would have been the time for him to show some type of remorse or some type of care for another human being’s life—when he was screaming 11 times that he can’t breathe,” Esaw Garner said. “There’s nothing that him or his prayers or anything else will make me feel any different. No, I don’t accept his apology. No, I can care less about his condolences. He’s still working, still getting a paycheck, still feeding is kids when my husband is six feet under and I’m looking for a way to feed my kids now.” […]

    The New York City medical examiner’s office has classified Garner’s death as homicide due to “compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.” The office also mentioned Garner’s asthma and hypertensive cardiovascular disease as contributing factors. […]

    Other officers present on July 17 were not facing indictment as they were offered immunity in exchange for testimony.

    Authorities may make public evidence considered by the grand jury. Richmond County District Attorney Daniel M. Donovan Jr. is seeking a court order that would allow him to release “specific information in connection with this grand jury investigation,” a statement read.

    According to Donovan’s office, “over 38 interviews were conducted, yielding 22 civilian witnesses who reported to have seen some part of the interaction between Eric Garner and members of the NYPD.” […]

    Bratton, speaking at the same news conference, said this concerning potential protesters: “Will they engage in some type of demonstration no matter which way the jury goes? Certainly. But I think that there will be an ability — that people will get to have their voices heard without disturbances.”

    I think because possibly they haven’t been so completely failed by leadership as is the case in Ferguson and St Louis.

    Oh, cops treat everyone the same? Riiiight. Giuliani’s daughter arrested on shoplifting charge

    “My daughter I love very much,” Giuliani said. “I have great respect for her, and I’m really proud of her. And I don’t comment on children because I want to give them the maximum degree of privacy. I think children in situations like this deserve to have the maximum degree of privacy. And the best way to preserve that is, except to point out that you love them and care about them and you’re very, very proud of them, just don’t comment about it.”

    So where’s the arrest and extensive jail time, not to mention the mass condemnation of the white community, white-on-white crime, and picking out horrible details from Giuliani’s daughter’s past? All the same.

    This reads like a repost, though it s a recent date: Inside the Twisted Police Department That Kills Unarmed Citizens at the Highest Rate in the Country. Albuquerque, that is.

    With his death, Alan Gomez joined the list of at least 27 people killed by Albuquerque police officers since 2010, and the more than 40 wounded by gunfire. In a city of just over 540,000, the body count is staggering. Indeed, the rate of officer-involved shootings by Albuquerque police is eight times that of the NYPD and two times higher than in Chicago, a megalopolis with one of the steepest levels of violent crime in the country.

    Alan Wagman, an assistant public defender who served on Albuquerque’s Police Oversight Commission, told me he observed a pattern of brutality that extended well beyond the shooting of unarmed people. He described witnessing numerous cases of officers applying a technique known as a “sternum rub” to homeless people. “They take their knuckles and hold it against the breastbone, push and rub back and forth,” Wagman explained. “The pain is so extreme only a comatose person wouldn’t wake up. So cops will come upon a passed out drunk, give him a sternum rub, the person wakes up and hits the cop and they charge him with assault on a peace officer. I’ve seen this more than once. It’s clear they’re trained to do this.”

    Wagman described the Albuquerque police as the most violent department he has ever encountered in his career as a public defender. “I think they’re trained to kill people,” he said. “I can’t understand it any other way.”

    A damning report released this April by the Department of Justice concluded that the “Albuquerque police department engages in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional use of deadly force.” It went on to accuse members of the department of having “shot and killed civilians who did not pose an imminent threat of serious bodily harm or death to the officers or others.” The report singled out Wallace for killing Gomez when “no one’s life was in danger and an APD negotiator was on his way to the scene.” […]

    Wallace joined the Albuquerque police in 2007 during an ill-fated push to expand the force to 1000 officers. He was among four officers who had just been fired from the New Mexico State Police for taking payments from Wackenhut, a private security contractor, while on duty as state cops. The four barely averted prison terms for the double-dipping scandal.

    When the rejects were hired by the Albuquerque PD, then-Deputy Police Chief Mike Castro pledged, “They do not carry guns, they are not going to be badged.” Almost as soon as Wallace reported for duty, however, he was sporting a badge and bearing an assault rifle.

    Besides killing Alan Gomez, Wallace has shot two other unarmed people in his short career — one died — and terrorized an untold number of others. He was named in a federal lawsuit for ramming the car of a wanted man driving his family to school, then handcuffing the man’s children as their schoolmates watched in horror. Though his killing of Gomez cost Albuquerque $900,000, part of a whopping $26 million tab in settlements paid out to families of citizens killed by cops since 2010, Wallace has received nothing but rewards from his superiors. (The first time he killed an unarmed person, Wallace cost the city $235,000.) […]

    This April, just two weeks after the DOJ released its report on the Albuquerque police, Dear shot and killed a 19-year-old named Mary Hawkes under suspicious circumstances. Dear claimed Hawkes had stolen a truck, then drawn a .32 pistol on him when he attempted to arrest her. In the end, Hawkes was found shot three times at a 60-degree downward angle, indicating she was lying down when killed.

    Curiously, Dear could not produce any video from his lapel camera that captured his shooting of Hawkes. It was the fourth time that video from his camera had mysteriously disappeared. At Police Chief Eden’s press conference on the incident, he displayed a replica of the gun Hawkes was accused of pointing at Dear, raising questions about the whereabouts of the real pistol. To Hawkes’ bereaved friends and supporters, it appeared the department was determined to sweep another killing under the rug along with the life of a homeless young woman city leadership seemed to view as disposable. [… – SEE BOLDED PART, re: discussion in the Lounge]

    This month, Dear was fired for repeatedly turning off or tampering with his lapel camera. But it remains unlikely that he will ever be indicted for killing Hawkes. Meanwhile, Police Chief Eden has declared that the department’s most violent elements may be intractable. [… – intractable, or he just doesn’twant to face up to them?]

    Though it is only comprised of a handful of members, the ROP is responsible for at least one out of every 10 officer-involved shootings since 2005. The videotaped shooting this April of a mentally ill homeless man, James Boyd, by ROP detective Keith Sandy was far and away the team’s most notorious killing, sparking a storm of protest and forcing a national spotlight on the Albuquerque police’s culture of brutality. (Watch the embedded video at the bottom of this article.)

    Like Wallace, Sandy was among the four rejects fired from the state police for accepting payments from Wackenhut while on duty. Somehow, he worked his way through elite units until he reached the ROP team, where he received military-style training at the Department of Energy facility.

    As soon as he arrived at the Eastern Mountain ravine where Boyd was found camping without a permit, Sandy remarked in murky audio captured by a fellow cop’s dashcam, “That fucking lunatic, I’m gonna shoot him with a [unintelligible] shotgun.” Others who examined the audio heard Sandy pledge to “shoot him in the penis with a shotgun.”

    After a three-hour standoff, Boyd suddenly gathered his belongings and appeared ready to surrender. Just then, the officers inexplicably fired a flash-bang round at his feet and released a police dog, prompting Boyd to reach for two small knives. When Boyd turned his body in apparent compliance with an order to get down on the ground, Sandy fired three bullets into his back with a modified M-4 assault rifle. Sandy’s partner, Dominique Perez, riddled him with bullets as well. The cops spent the next minute pelting Boyd’s lifeless body with beanbag rounds.

    Footage of the killing astonished Joe Kennedy, a civil rights attorney who had previously won a $10 million settlement from the Albuquerque PD. “I’ve never seen a murder captured on videotape before,” Kennedy told the local news outlet, Channel 7. “If this doesn’t convince this chief and this mayor that officers are out there killing people without justification, I don’t know what will.” […]

    In 2006, at a roadblock set up by the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department, Albuquerque police veteran Sam Costales’ life changed forever. Ordered to help turn back traffic, Costales witnessed several sheriffs brutally arrest the famed race car driver Al Unser Sr. as he attempted to return to his home in the neighborhood they had blocked off. When Unser was baselessly charged with resisting arrest, Costales agreed to testify in his defense, helping to exonerate the local legend.

    While none of the officers who violently arrested Unser faced punishment, Costales was disciplined for wearing his uniform while testifying in Unser’s defense. (Albuquerque cops are only allowed to appear in police dress as witnesses for the prosecution). For violating what he called “the blue wall of silence,” Costales was about to be destroyed.

    After then-Police Chief Ray Schultz condemned Costales for testifying in Unser’s defense, Costales fell victim to a retaliatory campaign orchestrated by the Albuquerque Police Officers Association, the main police union. “APOA started writing nasty shit on me on chat forums,” Costales told me. “They said, ‘Don’t give him backup, he will inform on you.’ I had to do my job totally alone without backup on calls and was eventually ordered to see a psychiatrist. They said I was a danger to myself and others.”

    In 2009, Costales successfully sued the city of Albuquerque in a federal court for $662,000 for the police department’s role in forcing him out of his job after 23 years.

    As one of the few members of the Albuquerque PD to speak out about the culture of violence he witnessed throughout his career, Costales is left to wonder if the retaliation will ever end. “I’m alone today,” he said. “I’ve got no friends at the police department. I never carried a gun for 24 years as a cop when I was off duty, but I do now.” [… – yup, that’s what happens to the good (better?) cops]

    Mike Gomez shares Costales’ skepticism. “There’s gonna be nothing but some new training for the cops,” he said. “There’s no accountability and there won’t be any indictments. We’ve gotta show them that they might go to court if they kill. Right now their badge is a license to kill and they know it.”

    After three years of struggling in vain for a taste of justice, Gomez suddenly finds himself battling against hopelessness. “Sometimes I just want to walk away,” he said. “I can only do so many years of this stuff.”

    Oh, and again, no racial divide? Remember this incident? Knox County cop fired immediately after photos show brutal choking of student

    According to a police report, Dotson ignored repeated instructions to go inside, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported. Deputy Brandon Gilliam wrote in the official report that Dotson “began to physically resist officers’ instructions to place his hands behind his back, and at one point grabbed on to an officer’s leg.”

    Messner, a freelance photographer who documented the incident, told The Washington Post that Dotson showed no signs of resisting arrest.

    Messner’s still pictures, arranged by The Post in the GIF below, show two officers cuffing Dotson’s hands behind his back when Phillips came over and choked Dotson until he collapsed to his knees. Messner said that as Dotson was being pulled up he was smacked in the back of the head, “a snap-out-of-it kinda smack under the circumstances.”

    And now patrolmen are disputing medical evidence. PBA slams medical examiner’s report on Eric Garner’s death: ‘It is not a chokehold’. I saw the video. I’m pretty sure that’s what you call a chokehold.

    “It is not a chokehold,” Lynch insisted. “It was bringing a person to the ground the way we’re trained to do to place him under arrest.”

    Lynch, who is not a doctor, also said the ME’s office was “mistaken” when it concluded after an autopsy that the 43-year-old Garner’s death was a homicide.

    “I’ve never seen a document that was more political than that press release by the ME,” Lynch said. “Chokehold. That’s not a medical term.” […]

    Flanked by Sergeants Benevolent Association President Ed Mullins, Lynch decried the “insulting and unjustified manner in which police officers are being portrayed by politicians, race baiters, pundits and even our elected officials.”

    Check out how white he is. Also, that last quoted sentence? The poor oppressed little soul.

  68. rq says

    Holder makes statement on NYC chokehold decision

    Attorney General Eric Holder delivers comments following the NYC grand jury decision to not indict the officer involved in the chokehold death of Eric Garner. (Associated Press )

    The live event has ended, but there’s probably a recording out somewhere.

    The Perfect-Victim Pitfall
    Michael Brown, and Now Eric Garner

    The argument is that this is not a perfect case, because Brown — and, one would assume, now Garner — isn’t a perfect victim and the protesters haven’t all been perfectly civil, so therefore any movement to counter black oppression that flows from the case is inherently flawed. But this is ridiculous and reductive, because it fails to acknowledge that the whole system is imperfect and rife with flaws. We don’t need to identify angels and demons to understand that inequity is hell.

    The Mike-or-Eric-as-faces-of-black-oppression arguments swing too wide, and they miss. So does the protesters-as-movement-killers argument.

    The responses so far have only partly been specific to a particular case. Much of it is about something larger and more general: racial inequality and criminal justice. People want to be assured of equal application of justice and equal — and appropriate — use of police force, and to know that all lives are equally valued.

    The data suggests that, in the nation as a whole, that isn’t so. Racial profiling is real. Disparate treatment of black and brown men by police officers is real. Grotesquely disproportionate numbers of killings of black men by the police are real.

    No one denies that police officers have hard jobs, but they volunteer to enter that line of work. There is no draft. So these disparities cannot go unaddressed and uncorrected. To be held in high esteem you must also be held to a higher standard. […]

    Yet people continue to make such arguments, which can usually be distilled to some variation of this: Black dysfunction is mostly or even solely the result of black pathology. This argument is racist at its core because it rests too heavily on choice and too lightly on context. If you scratch it, what oozes out reeks of race-informed cultural decay or even genetic deficiency and predisposition, as if America is not the progenitor — the great-grandmother — of African-American violence.

    And yes, racist is the word that we must use. Racism doesn’t require the presence of malice, only the presence of bias and ignorance, willful or otherwise. It doesn’t even require more than one race. There are plenty of members of aggrieved groups who are part of the self-flagellation industrial complex. They make a name (and a profit) saying inflammatory things about their own groups, things that are full of sting but lack context, things that others will say only behind tightly shut doors. These are often people who’ve “made it” and look down their noses with be-more-like-me disdain at those who haven’t, as if success were merely a result of a collection of choices and not also of a confluence of circumstances.

    Today, too many people are gun-shy about using the word racism, lest they themselves be called race-baiters. So we are witnessing an assault on the concept of racism, an attempt to erase legitimate discussion and grievance by degrading the language: Eliminate the word and you elude the charge. […]

    Racism is interpersonal and structural; it is current and historical; it is explicit and implicit; it is articulated and silent.

    Biases are pervasive, but can also be spectral: moving in and out of consideration with little or no notice, without leaving a trace, even without our own awareness. Sometimes the only way to see bias is in the aggregate, to stop staring so hard at a data point and step back so that you can see the data set. Only then can you detect the trails in the dust. Only then can the data do battle with denial.

    I would love to live in a world where that wasn’t the case. Even more, I would love my children to inherit a world where that wasn’t the case, where the margin for error for them was the same as the margin for error for everyone else’s children, where I could rest assured that police treatment would be unbiased. But I don’t. Reality doesn’t bend under the weight of wishes. Truth doesn’t grow dim because we squint.

    We must acknowledge — with eyes and minds wide open — the world as it is if we want to change it.

    Tony above told off Charles Barkley. Kenny Smith’s open letter to Charles Barkley about Ferguson:

    Dear Chuck,

    I hope this finds you in the way I always see you, in great spirits, with great joy and full of life. There are some things I want to openly say to you that sometimes in conversation get lost.

    Firstly I lied! You ARE the greatest Power Forward of all time. It’s not (Tim) Duncan or (Karl) Malone, they had size and height that you weren’t blessed with and you never had near the talent around you that they were blessed to have. Contrarily you took your teams to similar heights. Secondly, you are a champion in my book. Effort and determination is what makes a champion, not a ring.

    Lastly, you are the most entertaining person in sports television (partly because I throw you so many assists lol).

    However, what I consistently find interesting is how writers and media members view your insights in politics, and now race relations, with the same reverence as your insights in sports.

    They did it in the Trayvon Martin trial and now with Mike Brown and the decision in Ferguson. It’s not that you shouldn’t ever have an opinion, but you are often quoted alongside the likes of Al Sharpton and even President Obama. I would hope that Sharpton or President Obama would never be referenced with you when picking the next NBA Champs!

    The body of work that our Black Civil Rights leaders put in by planning, executing and activating does not justify you being in the conversation. While your body of work on the court very few compare to nor should be mentioned when you are giving your expert analysis. Again, I respect that you have an opinion on Ferguson. And here’s mine.

    The question must be asked: Why is there so much distrust in the police and the legal system from the African American community? Without manifesting what the effects of slavery still have today, Dec 1st still marks only 59 years since Rosa Parks sat on that memorable bus. Many of our parents and grandparents have lived through those times and have passed those stories on to all of us. Those civil rights changes were at one time the law! They were not illegal.

    So did the protection of the law by the courts and police make it right? Obviously not, so as African Americans we still know and feel that there are laws and jurisdictions that severely penalize the poor and, most importantly, African Americans greater than any other group. Some laws were initially made without us as equals in mind; that’s just the facts. So the thought process that it’s not for us or by us will unfortunately lead to distrust.

    When someone is in “the struggle”, which many of our black communities are in, they are living with a lack of educational facilities, high unemployment and poor recreational facilities. The masses involved in “the struggle” will react in several ways. They can overcome it, challenge it, live in it, or fall victim to it … For those of us who are decades removed from “the struggle” because of our life through sports or business, we now have to acknowledge that every option listed exists. If not, then we are the ignorant ones.

    That leads me to the looters and civilians burning buildings which you referred to as “scumbags”. Here’s an analogy: If you put 100 people on an island with no food, no water, no hope of a ship coming, then some will overcome it and be resourceful, some will live in it, others will panic and others will show horrific character, which is wrong. But not to understand that all alternatives are possible is wrong as well.

    I was also disheartened to see the reaction of burning buildings and looters by some. However, when you are in “The Struggle” to not expect that that potential reaction is foolish on our part.

    The real issue is learning to positively manage your anger so you can be heard. It’s not that they are “scumbags”, their emotions won’t allow them to rationally think through their anger. I applaud that you have done a great job in your anger management in recent times … but not always.

    Mike Brown wasn’t about race relations, nor Trayvon Martin or even Hurricane Katrina for that matter. It’s about trust. Do I trust you to help me off the island? If so, do you have my best interests at heart? Do I trust that you will you send a ship or allow me access to build my own ship?

    And you were right Chuck, let’s not discredit that there are great police officers in all neighborhoods, but let’s not credit that we shouldn’t have doubt.

    See you Thursday night!

    Kenny Smith

    Yes, I posted it all. Nyah.

    And it continues: Phoenix police: Suspect unarmed when killed by officer

    Phoenix police quickly released a detailed account of the killing for the media on Wednesday morning in what officials said was an effort to promote transparency, especially in light of the unrest that has played out in Ferguson and New York City following the deaths of unarmed Black men at the hands of White officers. But portions of that account have already been challenged by some witnesses and community activists who say that the officer’s use of force was excessive and that Brisbon’s death was unwarranted.

    With autoplay video. And officer accounts differ from witness accounts? I am not surprised.

    Photo: NYPD 1964 vs. NYPD 2014. 50 years, and no difference.

  69. rq says

    And now for some bitter laughs, via the Onion:
    Nation Throws Hands Up, Tells Black Teenagers To Do Their Best Out There

    In addition, the citizenry said that it’s basically gotten to the point where African-American teens need to avoid walking alone, hanging out in groups, or even minding their own business, especially if they are planning to do any of those things in public.

    Moreover, the nation told reporters that it’s pretty clear all black teenagers—whether they live in inner-city Chicago or the Florida suburbs—are pretty much on their own now, and the sooner they understand that nobody will be able to help them, the better off they’ll be.

    “I mean, what can I say? You have no legal system to turn to, the police are out to get you, and everyone is immediately suspicious of you,” said Denver real-estate agent Kelly Martin, adding that she has been racking her brain trying to think of helpful advice for the teenagers, but that all she could come up with was, “Try to stay alive if you can.” “If you’re a black teen, you’re basically living in the Wild West right now. Not exactly words of encouragement, but there you have it.”

    “You have to be able to defend yourself, and if you can’t defend yourself, I’m sorry,” she continued. “I’m truly, truly sorry.”

    Tips For Being An Unarmed Black Teen

    Here are The Onion’s tips for being an unarmed black teen in America:

    Shy away from dangerous, heavily policed areas.
    Avoid swaggering or any other confident behavior that suggests you are not completely subjugated.
    Be sure not to pick up any object that could be perceived by a police officer as a firearm, such as a cell phone, a food item, or nothing.
    Explain in clear and logical terms that you do not enjoy being shot, and would prefer that it not happen.
    Don’t let society stereotype you as a petty criminal. Remember that you can be seen as so much more, from an armed robbery suspect, to a rape suspect, to a murder suspect.
    Try to see it from a police officer’s point of view: You may be unarmed, but you’re also black.
    Avoid wearing clothing associated with the gang lifestyle, such as shirts and pants.
    Revel in the fact that by simply existing, you exert a threatening presence over the nation’s police force.
    Be as polite and straightforward as possible when police officers are kicking the shit out of you.

    And here’s one that almost qualifies if it weren’t so true: How Many More Black Teenagers Have To Die Before Racism Just Sort Of Goes Away On Its Own?

    The racial discrimination and animosity that stained our country’s early history are alive and well today, and they will continue to flourish until they all just sort of stop. But when? How many more stories like Trayvon Martin’s or Michael Brown’s must we hear before racism just kind of fizzles out without me having to do anything about it? How many police officers will be placed on paid administrative leave for committing a heinous crime against a minority before the dire and awful realities that plague this country suddenly stop being so dire and awful?

    It’s hard to say. It seems like so many of us have done our part by waiting for racism to take care of itself. We’ve blogged about racism’s prevalence in a supposedly “post-racial America.” We’ve complained about it on Facebook and occasionally signed petitions. Yet racism persists, and all we can do now is wait for the day when this whole thing more or less sorts itself out. […]

    Now, more than ever, we need to stand idly by for the day when well-behaved black kids can finally go outside and play without fear of unwarranted searches, incarceration, or worse. We must never stop waiting for the injustice to cease on its own.

    Actually it’s pretty badly done satire, but it has a point.

  70. rq says

    Amnesty International speaks: Urge the Department of Justice to take action on the use of lethal force by police. Actually, it’s a form letter to send to the DOJ, full text:

    I am deeply concerned regarding the number of incidents of the use of lethal force by police around the country. The United States government can and must do much more to ensure policing practices nationwide are brought into line with international human rights standards, and to address systemic racial discrimination.

    The shooting death of Michael Brown, as well as other recent cases involving the use of lethal force by police, such as that of Kajieme Powell in St. Louis, Ezell Ford in Los Angeles and Eric Garner in New York City among others, has ignited a nationwide discussion about the persistent and widespread pattern of racially discriminatory treatment by law enforcement officers across the United States, including unjustified stops and searches, ill treatment and excessive, and sometimes lethal, use of force. We welcome the investigation your office has initiated into the shooting of Michael Brown as well as the review of policing practices of the Ferguson and St. Louis County Police Departments. The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson is not an isolated incident. Hundreds of individuals may be shot and killed by law enforcement annually. However, due to the failure of the Department of Justice to collect accurate, comprehensive national data on police use of force, including the numbers of people killed or injured through police shootings or other types of force, it is impossible to truly understand the enormity of the issue across the country. It is imperative that your office begin collecting and publishing this data (disaggregated on the basis of race, ethnicity and gender) annually, in accordance with the Violent Crime Control and Enforcement Act (1994). The Department of Justice should play a key role in collecting and publishing data on police shootings in order to determine whether shootings are indicative of trends for individual officers or law enforcement agencies.

    The recent spate of incidents of lethal force used against men of color by law enforcement from New York to Los Angeles has demonstrated the need to take a deeper look at policing tactics on a national level. Law enforcement policies on the use of force vary widely from agency to agency and state to state and may not meet international standards. International standards provide that law enforcement officers should only use force as a last resort and that the amount of force must be proportionate to the threat encountered and designed to minimize damage and injury. Officers may use firearms as a last resort – when strictly necessary to protect themselves or others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury. The intentional lethal use of firearms is justified only when “strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.”

    I welcome the recent announcement that the Department of Justice will undertake a broad, national review of police tactics, including the kind of deadly force that prompted recent protests in Missouri and New York. This review is urgently needed and should be implemented without delay.

    Furthermore, the Department of Justice should champion the need for a special law enforcement commission, to comprehensively examine and produce recommendations on policing tactics, including use of force and lethal force, discriminatory policing, the militarization of police and the policing of protests to produce recommendations and ensure adherence of all law enforcement agencies to human rights standards for law enforcement.

    I respectfully urge the Department of Justice to demonstrate leadership on this issue, including by collecting national data on police use of force, as it is required to do by law; implementing a nationwide wide review of police tactics; and championing a special law enforcement commission to make recommendations on policing policies and tactics more broadly.

    Thank you.

    Protesting in Oakland: Oakland, S.F. protesters denounce police killing of Eric Garner

    Satima Flaherty, 27, of Oakland, led the crowd in chants of “Justice for Eric Garner!” and “Justice for Oscar Grant!” Grant was shot and killed Jan. 1, 2009, by a BART police officer who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter after testifying the shooting was accidental.

    “They’re killing us and it’s not just black people — it’s all people of color,” Flaherty said to the crowd. “Who out there is a person of color? Raise your hands. Raise your hands. It could be you. It could be you.”

    The march made its way up Broadway but was blocked by a line of officers near Napa Street in the Rockridge neighborhood about 7:30 p.m. Some protesters knocked over trash cans, but others quickly picked them up as the crowd, still numbering about 100, winded through side streets to avoid police lines before returning to Broadway and heading south back toward downtown.

    Eric Garner’s Last Words Were So Much More Than a Final Plea for Air

    But as freelancer reporter Brooke Jarvis points out, Garner’s final words were far more than a last gasp for air. Weeks before the shooting death of Michael Brown sparked the chants of ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ and affirmations that #BlackLivesMatter, Garner was taking a stand for more than just his life. He was taking a stand for his own dignity, and for the dignity of thousands of black Americans who came before him — and who will undoubtedly come after:

    After the indictment, Garner’s words have become a symbol of anger and frustration, the refrain of protesters who crowded Times Square to take a stand against a broken justice system. But ‘I can’t breathe’ isn’t just a memorial for Garner; it’s also an indictment of America’s entire criminal justice system. […]

    It’s that institutional pressure, that dysfunction over centuries which Garner was railing against. Garner was tired. He was tired of being accosted for minding his own business, for having to be twice as good. He wanted to be left alone. he wanted to breathe. But how could he? Our system was designed, unconsciously or not, to suffocate him from the moment he was born, as it did with Michael Brown. Or Oscar Grant. Or Trayvon Martin.

    Eric Garner couldn’t breathe. And in the streets of New York on Wednesday night, thousands of people were gasping for air.

    Article on New York protests: New York Protests Held Over Grand Jury Decision Not To Indict Cop Responsible For Eric Garner’s Death

    In Times Square around 300 protesters gathered, cordoned in by police barricades. “I can’t breathe,” some shouted. Others chanted, “How do you spell murderers? N.Y.P.D”. That hardy perennial “fuck the police” was occasionally thrown in, alongside, “No indictment is denial. We want a public trial.”

    Speaking to AP, 33-year-old Amanda Seales, a African American marcher from Harlem, said activists needed to leave social media and congregate in the streets. “For black people, this isn’t new,” she said. “And this cannot continue.”

    Several different protests were held around Times Square and the Rockefeller Centre, the latter the scene of the annual lighting ceremony of the Christmas lights. “No justice, no tree,” shouted the protesters, hoping to disrupt the event.

    Although mostly peaceful the atmosphere was tense, with demonstrators of mixed ethnicities moving around the city’s famous Midtown area, arms aloft, shouting, “hands up, don’t shoot,” a phrase that has become the emblem of the latest round of perceived injustices blighting the nation. By midnight, around 30 people had been arrested, according to reports.

    Speaking about the decision, President Obama said that events in Staten Island and Ferguson highlighted the frustration that many African-Americans feel towards a criminal justice system they believe is implicitly discriminatory. “When anybody in this country is not being treated equally under the law, that is a problem, and it’s my job as president to help solve it,” he said.

    Well, he’s been doign a crappy job addressing it in the first place. Pictures at the link.

    More photos of protest last night.

    CBS Local (they seem to have a pretty good view of local news within each local CBS branch): Stanford Student Protesters Block Highway 101 Over NYPD Chokehold Death

    “The biggest thing we’re trying to do right now is let people know that we will be seen, and we will be heard, and we will continue to disrupt their everyday life until they recognize that,” said Clayton Evans, a student protester.

    In the Bay Area, protests were also held in Oakland and San Francisco.

    And John Stewart again, at a loss for words. Jon Stewart Gets Serious On Depressing Eric Garner Case. We’re Not Living In A Post Racial Society

    Jon Stewart opened Wednesday night’s Daily Show dropping the comedy to tackle the “utterly depressing” non-indictment in the Eric Garner case. He said, “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know what to say. If comedy is tragedy plus time, I need more fucking time.”

    At least with Ferguson, Stewart said, there was conflicting testimony, “but here there is none of that.” And there’s no question about unreliable witnesses because there’s video and “we are fucking watching it.”

    Stewart wrapped by literally just showing a video of kittens to cheer everyone up… but even then he couldn’t escape race issues.

    Not a fan of his frustrated yelling, but the things he says…

  72. Ichthyic says

    not a single protest matters one bit if nothing changes in the things that underlie the problems in places like Ferguson to begin with, if there are no changes to the adversarial way in which cops are trained, if there is no real dialogue on the still existing issues of race in America.

    if none of that changes, you can protest till you’re blue in the face, and it means nothing.

    I remember Rodney King. I remember the Watts Riots.

    nothing.

    changed.

    if you have to tear down the system to fix, get the fuck on with it.

  73. rq says

    Cross-posting Lynna‘s three links from the Lounge:
    1: Rep. Peter King: Health issues led to Eric Garner’s death

    “If he had not had asthma and a heart condition and was so obese, almost definitely he would not have died from this. The police had no reason to know that he was in serious condition,” the New York Republican said Wednesday on CNN’s “Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”
    […]
    “I know people were saying that he said 11 times or seven times, ‘I can’t breathe.’ Well, the fact is, if you can’t breathe, you can’t talk,” King said.

    The congressman added that police hear “all the time” from people resisting arrest comments such as “you’re breaking my arm” or “you’re choking me.”
    [… – funny, maybe because they are???]

    King said he has “no doubts” that if it were a white man, he’d be treated the exact same way and said the senior officer on the scene was a female African-American officer. “So I don’t know where the racial angle comes in,” the congressman said.

    Ignorant, or just another liar?

    2: DOJ to investigate Eric Garner case

    Paul Butler, former federal prosecutor, now a professor at Georgetown Law, talks with Rachel Maddow about Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement of a Department of Justice investigation into the death of Eric Garner by police chokehold.

    3: In 2010 veteran St. Louis Police officer lost lawsuit for $850,000 after hanging noose up in office

    In 2010, 22-year veteran St. Louis police officer James Murphy and three white officers he supervised lost a lawsuit filed by two African-American officers after white officers hung a noose up in the office to intimidate black officers. Murphy, the supervising officer, refused to take it down, and said it was all in good fun. The lawsuit also stated that Murphy had a long history of discrimination in the department and regularly passed over more decorated and experienced black officers for promotions to advance the careers of inexperienced white officers.
    None of the white officers involved were fired or even suspended for incident.

    Certainly, when you now view the recent statement made by the black officers association in St. Louis regarding how Jeff Roorda and the white police officers association doesn’t speak for them regarding the protest by the Rams or issues of police brutality in general, it all makes so much more sense when you understand the history of strife and racism in their department.

    No small history of racism there.

  76. says

    Arrgh, #73 for rq’s comments and links, not “173.” And what we have here is proof that rq is also more accurate and more detail oriented than I am.

  77. jrfdeux, mode d'emploi says

    Hi all — this is just a repeat post from The Lounge as per rq‘s request.

    Over on The Concourse (a blog at Gawker media) there’s an article titled “The American Justice System Is Not Broken.”
    It’s not a screed about how those uppity brown people deserve what they’re getting. It’s a dismal, stomach-turning essay about how the justice system in the US is doing exactly what it is designed for: “It processes black and brown bodies into white power.”

  78. says

    5 Ohio deputies investigated over racially charged texts

    A southwest Ohio sheriff says two white deputies accused of exchanging racially charged text messages on their personal phones have been put on leave, and three more officers are under investigation.

    CBS affiliate WHIO reports the deputies work for Montgomery County Sheriff Phil Plummer. He says they “tarnished the office” by sending messages that included racial slurs and jokes and comments directed at two black deputies. That might violate the department’s code of conduct.

    Plummer says the messages were sent between November 2011 and January 2013, sometimes while the deputies were on duty.

    Dayton NAACP President Derrick Foward says an anonymous source provided the texts to the civil rights organization in August, and it investigated the messages’ authenticity before bringing them to the sheriff’s attention last week.

    Jason Matthews, an employment attorney, told WHIO that even though the text messages were private, the deputies’ jobs could be in jeopardy because the sheriff was made aware of the texts.

    The station reports that the police department code of ethics section includes these excerpts: “I will keep my private life unsoiled as an example to all” and “I will never act officiously or permit personal feelings, prejudices, animosities, or friendship to influence my decisions.”

    That last paragraph makes me weep. People can vow not to permit their prejudices to influence their decision all they want, but some biases and prejudices are deeply ingrained. To the point that many people don’t realize they have them, so they continue their daily routine as if they don’t hold any biases. If you’re not even aware of your prejudices, how can you stop them from influencing your decisions?

    ****

    Esaw Garner, widow of the late Eric Garner, rejects apology by the officer who killed her husband

    Eric Garner’s widow, Esaw Garner, firmly rejected condolences from the officer who was investigated in the death of her husband.

    “Hell no,” said Esaw Garner during a Wednesday press conference. “The time for remorse would have been when my husband was screaming to breath. That would have been the time for him to show some type of remorse or some type of care for another human being’s life, when he was screaming 11 times that he can’t breathe.”
    Her statement came after a grand jury decided not to charge New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo in her husband’s death. Pantaleo was videotaped holding Garner in an apparent chokehold during an arrest. The 43-year-old Garner had been suspected of selling cigarettes illegally. He died in the incident.
    Pantaleo issued a statement after the grand jury decision:
    “It is never my intention to hard anyone and I feel very bad about the death of Mr. Garner,” Pantaleo said. “My family and I include him and his family in our prayers and I hope they will accept my personal condolences for their loss.”

    “No, I don’t accept his apology,” said Esaw Garner. “No, I could care less about his condolences. No, I could care less. He’s still working, he’s still getting a paycheck, he’s still feeding his kids, and my husband is six feet under, and I’m looking for a way to feed my kids now. Who’s going to play Santa Claus for my grandkids this year? Cause he played Santa Claus for my grandkids — who’s going to do that now?”

  80. says

    Despite predictions by Ray Kelley (former Commissioner of the NYPD) that eliminating ‘Stop & Frisk’ would cause violent crime to go up, stop and frisks are down 79% and violent crime has not increased.

    Stop-and-frisks, which almost exclusively targeted black and Hispanic men, are down 79 percent through the first nine months of 2014. And instead of descending into chaos and crime, New York has also seen less violent crime. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Tuesday the city’s crime rate fell 4.4 percent in the first 11 months of the year.

  82. jrfdeux, mode d'emploi says

    Very interesting article on racism in terms of neuroscience over at Mother Jones:

    Science offers an explanation for this paradox—albeit a very uncomfortable one. An impressive body of psychological research suggests that the men who killed Brown and Martin need not have been conscious, overt racists to do what they did (though they may have been). The same goes for the crowds that flock to support the shooter each time these tragedies become public, or the birthers whose racially tinged conspiracy theories paint President Obama as a usurper. These people who voice mind-boggling opinions while swearing they’re not racist at all—they make sense to science, because the paradigm for understanding prejudice has evolved. There “doesn’t need to be intent, doesn’t need to be desire; there could even be desire in the opposite direction,” explains University of Virginia psychologist Brian Nosek, a prominent IAT researcher. “But biased results can still occur.”

    The IAT is the most famous demonstration of this reality, but it’s just one of many similar tools. Through them, psychologists have chased prejudice back to its lair—the human brain.

    We’re not born with racial prejudices. We may never even have been “taught” them. Rather, explains Nosek, prejudice draws on “many of the same tools that help our minds figure out what’s good and what’s bad.” In evolutionary terms, it’s efficient to quickly classify a grizzly bear as “dangerous.” The trouble comes when the brain uses similar processes to form negative views about groups of people.

    But here’s the good news: Research suggests that once we understand the psychological pathways that lead to prejudice, we just might be able to train our brains to go in the opposite direction.

    Full article here.

  83. rq says

    Nice one, jrfdeux.

    +++

    Horrible article to start things off: Blame only the man who tragically decided to resist.

    Demagoguery rises to an art form in such cases — because, again, the police generally win. (Though not always, as a moment’s reflection before the Police Memorial in lower Manhattan will underscore.) And because those who advocate for cop-fighters are so often such accomplished beguilers.

    They cast these tragedies as, if not outright murder, then invincible evidence of an enduringly racist society.

    No such thing, as a matter of fact. Virtually always, these cases represent sad, low-impact collisions of cops and criminals — routine in every respect except for an outlier conclusion.

    Not citing anymore, if you want to delve into that garbage, go to the link.

    State lawmaker appointed to committee looking into Ferguson violence, with non-autoplay video!

    State lawmakers are holding a special meeting to find out, among other things, why the National Guard was not deployed to Ferguson in great numbers and in a timely fashion that could have prevented raging fires that destroyed dozens of businesses in Dellwood and in Ferguson the night the grand jury’s decision was announced in the Michael Brown case. Senator Jamilah Nasheed says she was appointed to the Joint Committee for Governmental Accountability Tuesday. The group is tasked with finding out what went wrong in Ferguson and why state government failed in its response to the crisis. The meeting could be held at the capital in Jefferson City as early as next week.

    Is this the original Barkley article? Charles Barkley: It’s ridiculous to think white cops are out there killing black people … Cops are absolutely awesome.

    “The notion that white cops are out there just killing black people is ridiculous. It’s flat-out ridiculous,” Barkley said on CNN, which is owned by the same company, Turner, that employs Sir Charles.

    “I challenge any black person to make that point. Cops are absolutely awesome. They’re the only thing in the ghetto (separating this place) from this place being the wild, wild west.”

    I wonder how long until he meets some racist cops.

    Compare the New York Post and the New York Daily News. Perspective, perspective.

    And a reminder, It’s personal. That could have been my dad. Or my brother. That’s what some people don’t get. It’s not abstract: It’s Black people’s lives. Nothing abstract.

  84. says

    39 dramatic photos of the Eric Garner protests in NYC

    His name will be remembered. Protests in the name of Eric Garner in NYC.

    New York City police force to be retrained in the wake of the Eric Garner case.

    Hillary Clinton on Michael Brown and Eric Garner:

    “Now more broadly, each of us has to grapple with some hard truths about race and justice in America. Because despite all the progress we’ve made together, African Americans, most particularly African-American men, are still more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer prison terms,” Clinton said Thursday at the Massachusetts Conference for Women in Boston. “And when one stops and realizes a third of all black men face the prospect of prison during their lifetimes, what devastating consequences that has for their families and their communities and all of us.”
    “The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population, yet we have almost 25% of the world’s total prison population. Now, that is not because Americans are more violent or criminal than others around the world, in fact that is far from the facts,” Clinton said. “But it is because we have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance. And I personally hope that these tragedies give us the opportunity to come together as a nation to find our balance again.”

    She may mean well, but she’s darned ignorant if she thinks the criminal justice system was ever balanced in the U.S.

  85. rq says

    … And the rest will have to be put up tomorrow, the computer is not co-operating.
    But just as a note, in tandem with #CrimingWhileWhite, there is #AliveWhileBlack. A very, very striking contrast, if anyone has a chance to look it up – will post article summaries tomorrow (I have at least one).
    ‘Night!

  87. A. Noyd says

    rq (#83) [#583]

    Horrible article to start things off: Blame only the man who tragically decided to resist.

    What the fucking fuck is that piece of shit on about? We should all be allowed to nonviolently resist the cops without getting killed for it.

    Also, if you come up behind someone and grab them, they tend to reflexively try to shake you off. It’s not something one decides. Garner wasn’t cooperative (as should have been his right), but in the video he didn’t look like he was resisting hardly at all for being manhandled like that.

  88. rq says

    Speaking of #CrimingWhileWhite, What Cops And Other Law Enforcement Officials Think About #CrimingWhileWhite

    David Chipman, a former special agent for the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms who now works for law enforcement tech firm Shotspotter tells Fast Company that although he encountered confessions of past wrongdoings on Postsecret before, this was the first time he’s seen people confessing to crimes online as part of a spontaneous campaign. A big part of it, he added, is that it brings attention to the confessors just as much as to law enforcement officials who have “enormous discretionary power” to arrest or look the other way.

    Speaking off the record, an East Coast-based beat cop added that it was an open question whether law enforcement would reopen cases based on Twitter hashtag confessions. While they said the odds were small for petty crimes, they said it could be more likely for major cases. They also noted that a big part of the way they treated people caught in the act of drug use depended on the context; a “scumbag” who’s smoking a joint in public is more likely to be arrested while use by teenage smokers is more likely to be tolerated.

    Washington Post on the hashtag: #Crimingwhilewhite: White people are confessing on Twitter to crimes they got away with.

    Boehner: ‘A lot of unanswered questions’ in Michael Brown, Eric Garner cases.

    Boehner said he wouldn’t rule out having House committees hold hearings into the matter. “I do think that the American people deserve more answers about what really happened here and was our system of justice handled properly,” he said.

    Boehner’s comments a few hours after Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the fourth-ranking House Republican, said she “absolutely” thinks the House should hold hearings into the matter.

    “We all have a lot of serious questions that need to be addressed and we need to understand what happened, why this decision was made,” she said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Thursday. “I would call for the House to have those hearings so that we can better understand. But we need to take action, appropriate action, making sure our local law enforcement have the training, that they’re using appropriate force, which — I think we all recognize these are tragedies and it has raised a lot of questions.”

    Ferguson Commission member charged with assault of City Hall guard

    Videos of the incident posted online show the group shouting, “We shut (blank) down,” while storming toward marshals who were blocking City Hall’s south door. At one point, something appeared to have been thrown, making a loud thud at the door. At another, a marshal is struggling as several members of the crowd attempted to rush him.

    Aldridge, 22, wearing a gray stocking cap, is seen in the front being held back by a marshal. At one point, he appeared to shove the marshal.

    Eventually the crowd was dispersed after police used pepper spray. Police said the gathering became unlawful when protesters “made contact” with the City Hall marshals.

    Check out Mayor Slay’s Person of the Year list. 2014 St. Louis Person of the Year Preliminary Voting. Here’s the list:

    Who do you think should be the 2014 St. Louis Person of the Year?
    St. Louis City Police Chief Sam Dotson
    County Executive-elect Steve Stenger
    Variety St. Louis Woman of the Year Noémi K. Neidorff
    T-REX (standing for the STL start-up scene, not the Science Center dinosaur or the political donor)
    Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Superintendent Tom Bradley
    Young Activist United Director Rasheen Aldridge, Jr.
    Great Rivers Greenway Director Susan Trautman
    PROMO Executive Director A.J. Bockelman
    Local Journalists
    Sunflower + Project StL Co-Founder Richard Reilly
    St. Louis IKEA
    Cardinal OF Oscar Taveres
    Health Department Director Pamela Walker
    SLU Law Dean Michael Wolff
    St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch
    Taxicab Commissioner/Pi Pizzeria Owner Chris Sommers
    Teach for America Executive Director Brittany Packnett
    STL 250 Birthday Cakes
    Magdalene St. Louis Director Tricia Roland-Hamilton
    Recorder of Deeds-elect Sharon Q. Carpenter
    Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson
    12, 11, 89, 13, 81
    The “#Ferguson” hashtag
    Moose the Carriage Horse (standing for growing awareness of treating animals well)
    International Institute Director Anna Crosslin
    Other; Use the comment field on the results page to cast your vote

    It says a lot about the mayor. And his world-view.

    A word from a supporter of McCullogh, via autoplay video. Outrage undiminished week after Michael Brown ruling in Ferguson

    Rachel Maddow rounds up the protests that took place in cities across the United States through the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and continuing today, indicating that feelings between communities of color and police are as tense as ever.

    Apparently he never meant to indict. Soorpreeze!

  89. rq says

    A piece of history: The Wealthiest Black Community in America Was Destroyed and No One Remembers It Happened

    The wealthiest black community in America was destroyed in 1921, and no one remembers it happened. Oh, we’ll get the 17th film about Martin Luther King Jr. to be sure, but that’s because it’s safe history. It’s a history where we’re comfortable labeling the bad guys “bad” because we can make them caricatures and know they lose. It’s the same reason Abraham Lincoln and the end of slavery. But we don’t mention the long, dark time between. Just fold the pages of the history books over, Hollywood, and pretend that Selma happened the page after the Emancipation Proclamation.

    Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921 was a seething center of racial hatred. Historians estimate that active members of the Ku Klux Klan numbered some 3,000 out of the 70,000 in the city. Systematic segregation was the order of the day, but taken to a sort of level rare even in the darkest parts of the South in those years. There was a section of town called Greenwood and dubbed Negro Wall Street, though one imagines that the actual term used wasn’t quite so polite. The black businesses were there, the black homes were there, the hospitals, schools, parks. It was the richest black neighborhood in the country, almost self-sufficient in the way it was carved off from the rest of the city. Top to bottom, this was where blacks of all social classes lived and worked, the civilized American take on the model of the Warsaw ghetto. […]

    A mob formed, demanding Rowland be turned over to them. The sheriff refused, repeatedly, despite the swelling crowds. Over in Greenwood, black leaders argued over what could be done. The old counseled patience, fearing for the wrath that could fall on the community. But the young, many of them Great War veterans, decided there would not be another lynching, that after a decade of terror in the state in which 30 had been lynched, they would draw the line there. That they would rather fight than watch another innocent butchered. With rifles and shotguns, they armed themselves and went to the courthouse.

    The hours stretched out into the night, the tension building. A hundred men facing a mob 2,000 strong outside the courthouse. A shot rang out; the tension exploded. During the course of two days, dozens were killed as violence raged uncontrolled through the city. The American Red Cross estimated 300 blacks were killed, most thrown into mass graves since disappeared and never searched for. The official count was only 36 deaths. Because that’s the easy lie that always comes after the violence. After the National Guard has been called in to put down the “Negro Uprising”; after old World War I aircraft are used against civilians; after 6,000 blacks are rounded up into containment centers; after 1,200 homes and 200 businesses are burned to the ground; after there are no real figures on black deaths or injuries anyway since the two black hospitals were burned down. Read that again: they burned down the hospitals. […]

    The memories are long faded, most of the survivors long scattered and dead, their stories so rarely told even to their descendants that the event is a ghost between the pages of histories. The local newspaper archives no longer have the articles that give all the details of those days, because someone has long since removed them. Even the microfiche is gone for the pages that once held those articles.

    “Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.”

    That… is probably not something you want to strt your morning with.

    Remember those police telling parents how to tell their kids to behave with police? St Louis police rebuked for Facebook warning after Tamir Rice shooting. Not only we were outraged.

    In a Facebook post headed “Kids will be Kids?”, St Louis County police told parents to warn their children that if they prompted an emergency call by playing with toy guns in public, “police will respond as though it is a real gun”. The post was linked to from the department’s Twitter account. […]

    Dilks prefaced his post by stating that he was not making a judgment on whether the shooting was justified. “This is about the Fenton Precinct making residents aware of a ‘hot’ topic and learning from this incident so Fenton never loses a child’s life,” he wrote. […]

    “I realize the message was insensitive to Tamir’s family and the sorrow they are currently experiencing,” said Belmar. “Our continued thoughts and prayers go out to Tamir’s family in this trying time.”

    Belmar said he was not aware of the post before it was published and added that the department’s social media policies had been altered as a result of the furore.

    Eric Garner’s last words, all of them.

    Another depressing read: NYPD’s Long History Of Killing Unarmed Black Men

    It’s a familiar course of events. NYPD officers have a long history of killing unarmed individuals. They’re rarely punished for their actions. And the majority of their victims, like Garner, are black men.

    Earlier this week marked the 50th anniversary of the death of James Powell, a 15-year-old black student who was shot and killed by a white police officer outside a Harlem apartment building. Powell’s death sparked a series of riots across the country in what came to be known as the “long, hot summer.”

    As City Councilman Jumaane D. Williams pointed out in a statement following Garner’s death, not much has improved since then. “Garner joins a list that every male of more color in New York City knows they are a candidate for and every mother of more color dreads,” he said.

    Below are the stories of some of the men (and boys) on that list.

    It’s only a partial list, and even for that, far longer than it should be.

    Buzzfeed link: Black Twitter Shares Stories Of Police Encounters With #AliveWhileBlack (to complement #CrimingWhileWhite).

    Cartoon showing whites just can’t relate. Black man holding sign ‘I can’t breathe’; white man holding sign ‘I can’t see’.

    Body cameras won’t stop police brutality. Eric Garner is only one of several reasons why.

    Ultimately, body cameras could do more harm than good to the cause of protecting citizens from police violence. Pinned to officers’ chests, these cameras face outward — capturing the behavior of citizens, but not of the police. Their footage provides a one-sided view of the interaction, allowing outsiders to scrutinize the citizens’ every move, but leaving them blind to the police officers’ behavior. For instance, while protesting in Ferguson, I witnessed police pointing guns at nonviolent citizens. Media cameras and citizens’ cellphones captured some of that behavior, as well. But police body cameras only would have shown citizens’ angry reactions out of context, missing the officers’ provocation. Body cameras do much more to capture evidence against citizens than to protect them.

    It’s lax laws that prevent us from holding police accountable, not a lack of evidence. But the presence of police body cameras will simply lull the country into believing that we can solve the problems of racial profiling and police violence without holding police accountable for their actions. In an environment where state excessive force laws make criminal conviction of police officers for murder almost impossible, a police officer literally has nothing to lose by killing unarmed black men. Even in civil suits, officers are never personally financially responsible for paying for damages — state and local governments cover it for them. For the officers involved, there is a miniscule chance of either serving time in jail or paying a dime in damages, regardless of whether or not the incident is recorded. This is the textbook definition of impunity.

    In addition to their ineffectiveness, the information captured by body cameras raises serious questions about citizen privacy. The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable search and seizure and many jurisdictions prohibit recording of a person without his or her consent if the surveillance takes place in an area of expected privacy. Police enter areas of this type every day. Also, the recent scandals surrounding NSA surveillance of telephone and Internet activity has already demonstrated the nation’s uneasiness about the proliferation of digital surveillance capacity among law enforcement under the guise of keeping us safe. We have yet to fully explore the Fourth Amendment ramifications of this type of constant recording of citizens by police officers. The big brother state stands in direct contradiction to the freedom from unreasonable searches that the Fourth Amendment guarantees us.

    A reduction would be a nice start, in conjunction with better training in dealing with community and an eradication of the superior attitude.

  90. rq says

    (And accountability, please add to list above, a heckuvalot of accountability.)

    Oakland Riot police assaulting Oakland protesters

    Riot police pushing Oakland protesters off of freeway, into metal barricade, crushing them. Several Ferguson solidarity protesters, including the cameraman, were trampled as a result. 11/24/14

    Don’t go to protests then, geez.

    Cleveland under scrutiny: Feds Find Shocking, Systemic Brutality, Incompetence In Cleveland Police Department

    “Accountability and legitimacy are essential for communities to trust their police departments, and for there to be genuine collaboration between police and the citizens they serve,” said Attorney General Eric Holder in a press conference on Thursday.

    Holder announced the measure during his trip to Cleveland, where police officers fatally shot an unarmed black child last month. In Cleveland, Holder has attended a series of meetings about rebuilding community trust between law enforcement and the public, even as protests erupted nationwide over the non-indictment of police officers who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City. Following his visit to Cleveland, Holder intends to visit Chicago and Philadelphia, as well as Memphis, Tennessee, and Oakland, California, for additional roundtable meetings.

    In his remarks Thursday, Holder said that he and President Barack Obama believe there is more to be done on the issue of use of lethal force by police departments.

    The Justice Department began investigating the use of force in Cleveland’s police division in March 2013. A few months prior, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson had requested that the agency look into the issue. Jackson’s request came after a high-profile police chase in November 2012 that resulted in Cleveland police dispatching at least 62 vehicles, firing 137 bullets and killing two unarmed black suspects, who each sustained more than 20 gunshot wounds.

    There have been numerous other occasions when Cleveland police are alleged to have used excessive force. Most recently, on Nov. 22, a Cleveland police officer fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was playing with a toy gun in a park. Footage of the incident shows the officer firing his gun within two seconds of pulling up to the boy in his car. The Guardian reported on Thursday that Timothy Loehmann, the officer who shot Tamir, was judged unfit for police work in 2012 by his then-employer, the police department of Independence, Ohio. An Independence official described Loehmann’s “dismal” handgun performance in an internal memo.

    According to the DOJ report, Cleveland police officers “carelessly fire their weapons, placing themselves, subjects, and bystanders at unwarranted risk of serious injury or death.” For example, the agency pointed to an incident in 2011 where officers “fired 24 rounds in a residential neighborhoods,” with six rounds striking houses and 14 hitting parked cars. In another case, “an officer’s decision to draw his gun while trying to apprehend an unarmed hit-and-run suspect resulted in him accidentally shooting the man in the neck.”

    The Justice Department also claimed to have identified “several cases” where “officers shot or shot at people who did not pose an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury to officers or others.” For example, in 2013, the report noted that police shot at a kidnapping victim after he fled from his assailants wearing only his boxers. The sergeant said he believed the victim had a weapon because he raised his hand.

    And then Tamir Rice. Are we surprised?

    In Phoenix, Arizona Police Officer Shoots Dead Unarmed Black Man During Scuffle.

    The Phoenix Police Department said Rumain Brisbon, 34, was sitting in a black Cadillac SUV outside a convenience store on Tuesday evening, and that two witnesses told the officer the occupants of the vehicle were selling drugs.

    With police forces across the country under increased scrutiny over killings of unarmed black men, Phoenix police said in a statement that its officer called for backup, and then saw Brisbon appear to remove something from the car’s back seat.

    It said the officer, a seven-year veteran of the department, gave him several commands to show his hands, before Brisbon “placed one or both hands in his waistband area” and then fled.

    The officer chased and caught up with him, it said, and during a struggle the policeman believed he felt the handle of a gun while holding the individual’s hand in his pocket.

    Here’s another cartoon: Help for Trigger-Happy Cops, “Better call Police-Pal Prosecutor!”

    Belmar on the St Louis police statement re: kids, cops and behaviour:

    A message from Chief Jon Belmar regarding this morning’s Facebook post:

    “On Thursday, December 4, 2014, an officer assigned to the St. Louis County City of Fenton Precinct made a post on the precinct Facebook site that spoke about the death of 12 year-old, Tamir Rice of Cleveland, Ohio. The intention of the post was to inform citizens about the potential danger of airsoft or pellet guns resembling real guns. However, the post was a misguided communication strategy and was offensive to many people.

    As Chief of Police, I apologize to Tamir’s family and anyone who was offended by the post. While the post did not originate from the Chief’s Office and I was unaware of its presence prior to its release, I realize the message was insensitive to Tamir’s family and the sorrow they are currently experiencing.

    The post conveyed the message that my officers respond to calls involving a child with a gun with indiscretion and little regard for life. I want to emphasize that my officers respond to calls with discernment, and have the highest regard for human life. We train officers to take all facts and circumstances into consideration when making decisions about using force.

    The Facebook post has been removed and because of this incident, the social media policy has been altered in order to prevent future occurrences. I know social media is an effective way to provide the public with information, and I will make every effort to ensure that we do it in a responsible manner. Our continued thoughts and prayers go out to Tamir’s family in this trying time.”

    Ah, a word on McCullogh, haven’t heard much on hims for a bit. Group Considers Filing Ethics Complaint Against McCulloch

    A group headed by Dr. Christi Griffin with the Ethics Project will meet tonight to determine whether it will file an ethics complaint against McCulloch with the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel, an agency of the Missouri Supreme Court.

    Griffin says initial reports from the Ferguson police chief that Darren Wilson did not know that Michael Brown was suspected in an earlier convenience store robbery were changed in testimony before the grand jury, and she believes that represents perjury.

    “He is the one that is allowing that perjured testimony to be presented to the grand jury, and that is a direct violation of the Code of Professional Ethics,” she says

    And some satire. Police Officer Demonstrates Proper Technique For Subduing Grand Jury

    aying that the maneuver was 100 percent effective if administered correctly, police captain Matthew Carlson demonstrated the proper technique for subduing a grand jury to a group of younger officers Thursday. “First and foremost, it’s important to get a strong, firm hold on the state-level district attorney’s office before you do anything else—that way, you’re making sure you never put yourself in any direct danger,” said Carlson, who explained a series of self-defense moves that would ensure grand jurors interpret the law in such a way as to give police the widest latitude in justifying the use of force, adding that performing the moves correctly would cause jurors to submit to the officer’s will “in no time at all.”

  91. rq says

    This link won’t open, something about a probe into cleveland police?

    At the spot where Garner was killed, more reflective than raucous. Heavy-hearted not fiery. Here, they stand vigil.

    San Diego: Protesters outside SanDiego courthouse happening now. Broadway closed #ICantBreath @YourAnonNews.

    Las Vegas: DIE IN AT FASHION SHOW MALL #LasVegasForFerguson #DieIn #HandsUpDontShoot #RIPMikeBrown #RIPEricGarner #Fergsuon .

    Boston: @deray @Nettaaaaaaaa we’re trying, trying to disrupt, trying to listen here in #Boston #EnoughIsEnough #MichaelBrown.

    Ferguson: #Ferguson protesters burn flag, National Guard soldiers walk across St. & collect burned remnants to properly dispose.

  92. rq says

    DallaS: Protesters laying down in front of American Airlines Ctr in Dallas. PD discussing whether to remove them.

    Chicago: Die-in at Michigan & Wacker #EricGarner #Chicago #BlackLivesMatter #ThursdayNightFootball #MikeBrown #Ferguson and 4 hrs & countless miles later, marching south on inner Lake Shore Drive. Chicago really #shutitdown! #ICantBreathe.

    Minneapolis: A few pics from today’s Minneapolis #ShutItDown #tcshutitdown action:.

    Link won’t open for me. In Florida, two police officers quit after being outed as members of KKK.

    Cartoon: Survival strategies for existing while black.

  93. rq says

    In New York itself:
    @deray buses full of detained people in Times Square ;
    I have never seen anything like this before…inmates pounding on windows in solidarity. Amazing. #EricGarner ;
    8th and 51st. NYPD are not letting protesters leave this block and are making arrests. #ThisStopsToday #EricGarner;
    Angry motorist attempts to drive into #EricGarner march #ICantBreathe;
    Moment of silence Herald Square #ThisStopsToday #ShutItDown .

    thisisthemovement, installment #64:

    “These Cops Don’t Like it! We Want An Indictment!” On Wednesday, December 3rd the grand jury decision NOT to indict NYC police officer Daniel Pantaleo in the killing of Eric Garner was announced. Nationwide protests have already been underway, many showing solidarity to the city of Ferguson. Wednesday night, however, New Yorkers took to the street and led the nationwide movement in protest.

    #CrimingWhileWhite White privilege is real. “A grand jury’s decision that a police officer shouldn’t face charges over the death of Staten Island man Eric Garner has sparked anger and protests – along with a twitter conversation about the idea that police treat people differently based on their race.” This brilliant hashtag highlights the role privilege plays re: policing. Absolute must read.

    21 Things You Can’t Do While Black This is a sobering list of 21 things from the past 5 years that become potentially deadly, criminal, or hazardous to ones health & safety when done while black. Interesting and important read.

    Justice for Rekia Boyd A pre-trial hearing has been ordered for January for the Chicago police officer who shot and killed Rekia Boyd in 2012. Detective Dante Servin is charged with involuntary manslaughter and other felony offenses. Servin was in plain clothes when he shot at a group of young people in an alley after getting into an argument with them. Rekia died from her injuries. Necessary read.

    The Justice Department Launches Another Federal Civil Rights Investigation Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has announced to conduct an “independent, thorough, fair, and expeditious investigation,” into the death of Eric Garner. Garner was killed on July 17, 2014, by a NYC officer who used a banned tactic, a chokehold, to “subdue” him, which caused Garner to lose his life.

    Mayor Slay Requests 160 Additional Police Officers It appears that Mayor Slay is using Ferguson as a reason to justify the request for 160 additional permanent police officers in the City of STL. As you read, tune into the slant that subtly blames the protests for a spike in crime in STL. Must read.

    On-Duty Rhode Island Firefighter Disciplined For Raising Fist In Support of Protestors A firefighter in Providence, Rhode Island is being disciplined for “inciting the crowd” as he raised his fist in support of protestors. You can watch the video, here. Important read.

    Man Hits Protestors With Minivan Then Pulls Gun on Protestors During protests in the Central West End neighborhood of STL, a man hit protestors with his minivan and then pulled a gun on protestors. Absolute must read.

    Attorney General Nominee Loretta E. Lynch to Lead the Garner Civil Rights Investigation Loretta Lynch, the nominee to replace AG Holder, will lead the federal civil rights investigation into the death of Eric Garner. Solid, quick read.

  95. rq says

    chigau
    Can I get mine implanted inside my right eye and have it glow red? I’d love to be a cyborg.

    +++

    Organizing 4-mile march, “to honor the victims of police violence and demand law enforcement reform.” Join a march or organize your own!

    Ta-Nehisi Coates Says Fatalism Is Not An Option In Battle Against Racism

    “We have this long history of racism in this country, and as it happens the criminal justice system has been perhaps the most prominent instrument for administering racism,” Coates said. “But the racism doesn’t actually come from the criminal justice system. It doesn’t come from the police. The police are pretty much doing what the society that they originate from want them to do.”

    However, Coates also told Hayes that it was important to avoid fatalism.

    “I’m the descendent of enslaved black people in this country. You could’ve been born in 1820, if you were black and looked back to your ancestors and saw nothing but slaves all the way back to 1619. Look forward another 50 or 60 years and saw nothing but slaves.

    There was no reason at that point in time to believe that emancipation was 40 or 50 years off. And yet folks resisted and folks fought on. So fatalism isn’t really an option. Even if you think you’re not going to necessarily win the fight today in your lifetime, in your child’s lifetime, you still have to fight. It’s kind of selfish to say that you’re only going to fight for a victory that you will live to see.

    As an African-American, we stand on the shoulders of people who fought despite not seeing victories in their lifetime or even in their children’s lifetime or even in their grandchildren’s lifetime. So fatalism isn’t really an option.”

    Check out the full video above, which also includes remarks from former RNC chair Michael Steele.

    No, really? Man who filmed Eric Garner in chokehold says grand jury was rigged

    “I think they already had their minds made up,” Ramsey Orta told the Daily News a day after the panel voted not to charge NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo with a crime.

    “I feel like it wasn’t fair at all,” he said. “It wasn’t fair from the start.”

    Orta said he arrived at the Staten Island courthouse on Sept. 1 prepared to be grilled for hours about what happened on July 17, when cops confronted Garner on a Tompkinsville street for selling unlicensed cigarettes.

    Ten minutes later, Orta said, he was done.

    “When I went to the grand jury to speak on my behalf, nobody in the grand jury was even paying attention to what I had to say,” Orta said. “People were on their phones, people were talking. I feel like they didn’t give (Garner) a fair grand jury.

    “People was on their phones, people were having side conversations, like it was just a regular day to them,” he said of the jurors.

    I just bet it was a regular day for them. Nothing to see here, move along.

    On New York last night, New York protesters paralyse the streets, vent anger over police killings

    Thousands of protesters paralysed streets in New York to condemn police killings of black suspects as details of a new racially tinged death emerged. It was the second night of rallies in America’s largest city of 8.4 million after a grand jury on Wednesday decided not to indict a white officer for the death by chokehold of an unarmed black father-of-six. Thousands of activists massed in New York’s Foley Square, near the city police headquarters shouting ‘Shut it down’ and carrying placards saying ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Racism Kills.’ Protests in New York have been overwhelmingly peaceful but police arrested 83 people following Wednesday’s decision not to press charges in Garner’s death.

    Oh, man, tissues. Dem Rep. Recites ‘I Can’t Breathe’ Poem for Eric Garner on House Floor

    Johnson published the text of his words on his YouTube page this afternoon:

    Black men and boys killed by police.

    I can’t breathe.

    Impunity for the killers – no justice, no peace.

    I can’t breathe.

    Militarized police met peaceful protesters on their knees.

    I can’t breathe.

    Weapons of war – a show of force on our streets.

    I can’t breathe.

    Disenfranchised youth driven to violence as speech.

    I can’t breathe.

    Cynical media think this makes great TV.

    I can’t breathe.

    This cowardly Congress afraid of losing our seats.

    I can’t breathe.

    Half-hearted reform when there’s more that we need.

    I can’t breathe.

    Just thinking about the despair that this breeds.

    I can’t breathe.

    Black lives matter. Hear my pleas.

    I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

    It’s the ‘I can’t breathe’ that gets to me.

    And to the point: No Such Thing as Racial Profiling

    Here is the man who aspired to become the first black President counselling calm following the acquittal of the officers who shot and killed Sean Bell, an unarmed black man, on the eve of Bell’s wedding, in New York, in 2006.

    Obviously there was a tragedy in New York. I said at the time, without benefit of all the facts before me, that it looked like a possible case of excessive force. The judge has made his ruling, and we’re a nation of laws, so we respect the verdict that came down.

    Here is that same man, having now attained the office, counselling calm in the wake of the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who killed the seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin, another unarmed black man, in Sanford, Florida, in 2012.

    The death of Trayvon Martin was a tragedy. Not just for his family, or for any one community, but for America. I know this case has elicited strong passions. And in the wake of the verdict, I know those passions may be running even higher.

    But we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken. I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son.

    Two weeks ago, we saw the President, now in the last years of his second term, urge patience following the non-indictment of Darren Wilson, who shot and killed the eighteen-year-old Michael Brown, who was unarmed.

    First and foremost, we are a nation built on the rule of law. And so we need to accept that this decision was the grand jury’s to make. There are Americans who agree with it, and there are Americans who are deeply disappointed, even angry. It’s an understandable reaction. But I join Michael’s parents in asking anyone who protests this decision to do so peacefully.

    Last night’s statement from the President regarding the unprosecuted death of Eric Garner establishes that history does not repeat itself verbatim—it usually changes the proper nouns.

    Some of you may have heard there was a decision that came out today by a grand jury not to indict police officers who had interacted with an individual [named] Eric Garner in New York City, all of which was caught on videotape and speaks to the larger issues that we’ve been talking about now for the last week, the last month, the last year, and, sadly, for decades, and that is the concern … of too many minority communities, that law enforcement is not working with them and dealing with them in a fair way.

    None of this is President Obama’s fault; yet all of it reflects upon him. All of these redundancies indict the anodyne calls for “healing” that inevitably come in their wake. Here we don’t heal. We scar. […. – well, I gotta say, he’s remarkable consistent on this]

    The fact that Americans die at the hands of other Americans is, one would naïvely suspect, an American problem—but if those Americans are black, it is considered anything but. This is the alchemy by which racial category takes precedent, yet again, over supposed citizenship. This is the skewed thinking that forms the context in which black people die in the United States.

    Contrary to the thinking of its most indignant critics, the slogan “Black Lives Matter” is not an argument that deaths that come at the hands of the police warrant outrage, while those caused by common citizens warrant disregard. It’s a statement that these forms of violence reinforce each other in a vicious cycle of human devaluation. If there’s particular outrage about police violence, that’s because it strips us of the possibility of recourse for other violations.

    A democracy of grief binds those of us who survive people who were violently dispatched from this life—those who die at the hands of civilians, those who die from the wrongful actions of people empowered by the state. The sole difference between these deaths is that only with the former do we already know it’s a crime.

    The stuff in between is good, too. This was posted to twitter with the tagline, “There’s no such thing as racial profiling, only racism”.

  96. rq says

    Changed my mind, I want the bodycam in my left eye, it sees worse as is.

    +++

    Protest:
    New York, Foley Square; Hollywood Boulevard; New York arrests.

    I don’t know how many of those people in the streets over the past several days will keep up with the movement, how many will end up moving beyond getting out into the streets and working towards change – and maybe nothing will change, yet again. But people are out there, and engaged, and maybe right now that’s the best most of them can do. From following Ferguson, I know there are people also doing the heavy lifting of actually coming up with proposals for change, trying to do something.
    Is that the same as tearing down the system? No. But we’ve all seen the equipment at the system’s disposal – I leave the methods of change up to those most directly involved and most likely to experience direct repercussions.
    I am, at the very least, glad that people are even out there and being aware of the injustice, and being made aware, and making others aware. This is a good thing, too.

    Black man and white man commit same crime to see what happens: Black Guy Breaks Into A Car.

    Is there a difference between a white guy trying to break into a car vs a black guy? Two guys test a well-known stereotype on the streets of Los Angeles.

    He’s lucky he didn’t get shot.

  97. Pteryxx says

    rq, here’s the link from your #91: Chicago Tribune

    Attorney General Eric Holder announced Thursday that the Justice Department has found a pattern or practice of “unreasonable and unnecessary use of force” by the Cleveland Police Department, and it comes at a moment of heightened national scrutiny of police tactics, particularly in minority communities.

    His announcement of the findings of an investigation by the department’s civil rights division, launched in March 2013, follows the fatal shooting 16 days ago of a black 12-year-old, Tamir Rice, by Cleveland police officers. The findings also come the day after a grand jury in New York declined to bring charges in the death of Eric Garner, a black 43-year-old Staten Island, N.Y., man who died in July after a New York police officer placed him in an apparent chokehold during an arrest.

    The Cleveland probe was opened after a local newspaper, the Plain Dealer, revealed in May 2011 that six officers accused of brutality had used force on 29 suspects during a two-year period.

    The paper also reported that police management often “overlooked” conflicting statements in use-of-force investigations, leading to a high clearance rate for abusive officers.

    But the most egregious incident cited by the Justice Department occurred on Nov. 29, 2012, when more than 100 officers launched the high speed-chase that killed Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams. The pair had driven by the local Justice Center in downtown Cleveland when officers heard a noise they took to be gunfire.

    The massive chase, involving at least 62 police vehicles, some of them unmarked, lasted 25 minutes at speeds as high as 100 miles an hour. When Russell and Williams were finally cornered outside the city limits, 13 officers fired 137 shots at the car, killing both of them.

    In all, about 37 percent of the on-duty force was involved in the incident. It turned out the initial “gunshots” were actually from the car’s muffler backfiring.

    […]

    In the 58-page report, civil rights division investigators found that Cleveland officers used excessive deadly force, including shootings and head strikes with impact weapons; the unnecessary, excessive or retaliatory use of less lethal force including Tasers, chemical spray and fists; and excessive force against people who are mentally ill or in crisis.

    “We saw too many incidents in which officers accidentally shot someone either because they fired their guns accidentally or because they shot the wrong person,” the report said.

    The Justice Department and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson have signed an agreement to develop a court-enforceable consent degree that will include a requirement for an independent monitor to oversee reform efforts.

    and from your #92: USA Today

    Echoing the once-segregated South, a Florida deputy police chief has resigned and an officer has been fired after the FBI reported that both belonged to the Ku Klux Klan

    Fruitland Park Deputy Chief David Borst has denied involvement with the notorious white-hooded hate group that emerged after the Civil War and continued to terrorize and murder blacks through the mid-20th century.

    The 49-year-old Borst, a department veteran of more than 20 years, was also fire chief for the Lake County city of 5,000, about 40 miles northwest of Orlando. He resigned both posts Thursday after being confronted with the FBI report.

    Officer George Hunnewell, who was demoted last year over performance and attitude complaints, was fired Friday by Chief Terry Isaacs.

    […]

    It the second time in five years that Klansmen have been found in the Fruitland Park Police Department. In 2009, Officer James Elkins resigned after photographs showed him in a white robe and pointy hood, and he later admitted he was a leader of the local KKK.

    […]

    Chief Deputy State Attorney Ric Ridgway, whom Isaac contacted for advice, told the Orlando Sentinel that the report contained “a lot of fairly substantial evidence that tends to support” Borst’s and Hunnewell’s Klan membership.

    But he pointed out that it’s not illegal to belong to the KKK “even if you are the deputy chief.”

    “It’s not a crime to hate people. It may be despicable, it may be immoral, but it’s not a crime,” he said.

    Because of that, Fruitland Park officials had to decide whether Borst and Hunnewell had violated city standards and ethics.

    -_-

  98. says

    rq @92:
    Here’s the USAToday article you couldn’t read:

    Echoing the once-segregated South, a Florida deputy police chief has resigned and an officer has been fired after the FBI reported that both belonged to the Ku Klux Klan

    Fruitland Park Deputy Chief David Borst has denied involvement with the notorious white-hooded hate group that emerged after the Civil War and continued to terrorize and murder blacks through the mid-20th century.

    The 49-year-old Borst, a department veteran of more than 20 years, was also fire chief for the Lake County city of 5,000, about 40 miles northwest of Orlando. He resigned both posts Thursday after being confronted with the FBI report.

    Officer George Hunnewell, who was demoted last year over performance and attitude complaints, was fired Friday by Chief Terry Isaacs.

    The state attorney’s office is reviewing every arrest made by the officers and giving particular scrutiny to cases involving minorities, Isaacs said.

    It the second time in five years that Klansmen have been found in the Fruitland Park Police Department. In 2009, Officer James Elkins resigned after photographs showed him in a white robe and pointy hood, and he later admitted he was a leader of the local KKK.

    In the current cases, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement gave Isaacs a summary of an FBI investigation based on information from a confidential source who linked both officers to the Klan. No criminal wrongdoing was found, and the FBI said no other officers were linked to the white supremacists.

    Chief Deputy State Attorney Ric Ridgway, whom Isaac contacted for advice, told the Orlando Sentinel that the report contained “a lot of fairly substantial evidence that tends to support” Borst’s and Hunnewell’s Klan membership.

    But he pointed out that it’s not illegal to belong to the KKK “even if you are the deputy chief.”

    “It’s not a crime to hate people. It may be despicable, it may be immoral, but it’s not a crime,” he said.

    Because of that, Fruitland Park officials had to decide whether Borst and Hunnewell had violated city standards and ethics.

    “We cannot nor will we tolerate any philosophy that is inherently morally corrupt or one that espouses bigotry or any intolerance aimed at any groups or individuals because of their race, religion, ethnicity or gender or sexual orientation,” said City Manager Gary La Venia.

    Isaacs initially told the Orlando Sentinel on Friday that Borst was resigning for “personal family issues,” and he would not address the Klan allegations.

    “We are here, we are in place, and I want the public to know this type of conduct will not even be remotely tolerated,” Isaacs told News 13.

    The federal government needs to take a look at every law enforcement agency in the country, to root out people like this.

    ****

    This isn’t race related, but it’s a case of a cop doing something right, only to be penalized. One of the many complaints about the killing of Eric Garner, Darrien Hunt, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and anyone else killed by police officers under questionable circumstances is that excessive force is often deployed without trying other tactics first. This officer did that and is now facing the possibility of being fired:

    Statewide University Police Association (SUPA) president Jeff Solomon said the unidentified officer, a corporal, is currently on leave and could be fired in connection with a February incident involving a student at the California State University’s Monterey Bay campus.

    “Our officer said and felt that there was no need for the level of force that was applied, and my understanding was that’s why he didn’t deploy his Taser,” Solomon said.

    The officer, a 20-year police veteran who had been working at the school for 8 years, responded to the incident before being joined by three Marina officers. The Monterey Herald reported that, according to Marina Police Chief Edmundo Rodriguez, the student had a knife and hammer in his room when the officers reached him, and may have attempted to light himself on fire.

    “He was clearly a danger to himself and he was in crisis,” Rodriguez said. “We were trying to keep him from accessing the weapons or leave, to get him medical attention.”

    The Salinas Californian reported that Soloman said the Monterey Bay officer managed to calm the student and get him to sit down before his colleagues from Marina reached the scene.

    But the other officers used their Tasers on the student after their college colleague left the room to fulfill the student’s request for a glass of water. The campus officer subsequently refused to follow an order to use his own Taser on the student. The student was treated at a local hospital for superficial cuts but was not seriously injured.

    Rodriguez’s department later issued a “failure to act” complaint against the campus officer, accusing him of not engaging in a “highly agitated situation.”

    “It defies logic and is extremely disappointing that, at a time when law enforcement is under fire for using more force than necessary, an officer is being terminated for attempting to use civilized methods to resolve a situation,” the student’s father said.

    The university said in a statement that the case was “more complex” than Solomon’s union had described it.

    It’s like they encourage excessive force.

  99. says

    Oops, I see Pteryxx pasted it before I did. Oh well.

    ****

    Eric Garner grand jury heard from 50 witnesses and viewed 60 exhibits.
    Fuck. It’s like they were holding their own trial, rather than trying to indict the murderous officer.

    ****
    Cop caught on video choking a woman is allowed to resign one week after a video is released showing his use of excessive force

    ****

    Ex-South Carolina police chief indicted on murder charge for shooting a black man.
    Whaaaaaaaat?! This can happen? Of course I’ll be surprised if he’s found guilty. At least he’ll have to see the inside of a courtroom.

    The indictment of ex-chief Richard Combs came on Wednesday, the Orangeburg County Clerk of Court said, following decisions by grand juries in New York City and Missouri not to indict white police officers involved in deaths of black men this year.

    Combs fatally shot Eutawville resident Bernard Bailey after they scuffled, according to the Times and Democrat newspaper. Combs has argued he shot Bailey in self defense, the newspaper reported.

    Combs was indicted in August 2013 on a misconduct in office charge in connection with the case, with a grand jury finding that his use of deadly force in the May 2011 shooting was unjustified, according to court records.

    The earlier charge is pending.

    ****

    Unarmed black man and daughter shot at by police while dad tries to save girl from asthma attack

    Florida man, Brian Dennison, 29, and his daughter were rushing home. Dennison’s daughter was having a severe asthma attack and needed medication right away. Jacksonville Sheriff, J.C. Garcia, mistakenly thought Dennison had a gun and fired his weapon. According to Dennison, he was holding his daughter at the time.

    Dennison describes the altercation with police to Francesca Amiker of News4JaX:

    “Last night was very scary. I had my daughter in the car with me, coming home from the basketball court, and she was having a asthma attack at the time, and I was trying to rush her back to the house.”

    Dennison was driving his daughter home when he noticed her simple asthma attack turned severe. As he tried to relate the seriousness of the situation to police, Garcia pulled the trigger. Dennison says,

    “As I’m rushing back to the house, cops came behind me and they actually were trying to pull me over. I waived the cop down to tell them to just hold on and when I got out of the car, the cops still proceeded to come towards me as I had my hands up, I was explaining to him the situation with my daughter and he took a shot at me. While my daughter was in my hands and at that moment in time right then and there, I thought I was shot or she was shot.”

    Reflecting on the incident and expressing concern for his daughter, Dennison said

    “You don’t want your child to ever be in no type of situation like that, she’s only 6 years old, so for her to be scared and for her father to show fearfulness and in hindsight, I’m her protector, so for me to be scared and her to be scared, it wasn’t a good sight for her.”

    According to Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO), Officer J.C. Garcia saw that Dennison’s license plate was expired. Garcia flipped on his police lights, signaling to Dennison that he wanted him to pull over. Dennison didn’t stop. He continued driving until he arrived at a nearby apartment complex. When Dennison exited his car to get his daughter, Garcia thought he had a small handgun and fired his weapon at him. Garcia claims Dennison’s daughter was not in his arms at the time.

    Garcia then realized there was no threat. He was made aware of the immediate medical emergency and told Dennison to go upstairs to retrieve his daughter’s inhaler.

    Dennison was arrested on a charge of knowingly driving with a suspended, cancelled or revoked license. He appeared in court on Tuesday, posted bond and was released.

    While Garcia hasn’t been suspended or placed on any kind of restricted duty, the case is under investigation. A response and resistance review board will investigate the matter and the case will then be referred to a panel within the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.

    Thankfully, neither Dennison or his daughter were injured or killed.

    Thankfully indeed.
    What the hell is up with law enforcement officials jumping to conclusions and assuming that black men have guns? And why don’t they do the same thing with white people?

    Yeah, I know the answer, but fuck me, this is beyond disheartening.

  100. rq says

    Tony
    The Eric Garner grand jury was a lot similar to the Michael Brown grand jury, up to and including allowing the killer cop to testify himself – and I think it significant that Panteleo only testified on November 21, well after Darren Wilson himself testified, probably assured that this would sway results more in his favour.
    Thanks to you and Pteryxx for retrieving those articles, they wouldn’t open for me – the computer couldn’t find the sites.

    +++

    USC Iggy Azalea Concert Targeted by Anonymous Protesters’ Planned ‘Die-In’

    The two grand jury decisions have provoked waves of protests, many of them including “die-ins” that involve participants lying down in the street to simulate the sometimes deadly effects of police violence.

    Thursday’s planned “die-in” at USC was expected to draw hundreds of protesters to Azalea’s concert, which was set for students only. The concert was set to be streamed online for free by Yahoo!

    NYPD supposedly using sound cannon. Here and here (that’s just a photo…).
    The Brooklyn Bridge.

    And today on Meet the Racist Asshole, Meet Dan Donovan, the Prosecutor Who Let Eric Garner’s Killer Walk

    All that is, except for Dan Donovan, the Staten Island district attorney who failed to win the indictment, and failed too to use the opportunity to get his face before the television cameras. Donovan, a four-term DA, is in many ways the anti-Bob McCulloch, the Ferguson, Missouri, district attorney, who used a similar moment to launch a prime-time diatribe against the media, social or otherwise.

    Even those who have been leading protests against the verdict have praised Donovan.

    “Personally, Dan Donovan and I are friends. I try to separate the job that he has done and our friendship,” said Debi Rose, a liberal city council member from Staten Island’s urban north shore. “In this particular instance, I find that because of the DA’s relationship with the police department, that outcome wasn’t surprising.”

    To understand Donovan, and to understand how the Garner grand jury could reach the verdict, it is first necessary to understand something about Staten Island. Officially a borough of New York City, although it wants to deny it, Staten Island voted Republican in the 2013 mayor’s race, though Democrat Bill de Blasio won citywide by nearly 50 points. It is a place where its lone congressional representative, Michael Grimm, faces a 20-count indictment, threatened to throw a television reporter off a balcony, and still won re-election by ever larger numbers. […]

    There has been much talk in Island political circles that Donovan would run for Congress one day if Grimm is in fact forced to step down due to his legal troubles. Most politicos there, though, think that the way he handled the grand jury could only help him in a district with a substantial number of active or retired police officers.

    “When the dust settles, I just don’t see it hurting him,” said Rich Flanagan, a professor of political science at the College of Staten Island. “This is no place for unreconstructed New York liberals.”

    Molinari, the Island power-broker who launched Donovan’s career, agreed.

    “[Garner] is saying ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,’ but how do you interpret that? They were trying to arrest him, he was resisting, and he is a big guy, so it took quite a few cops to do that, and a tragedy occurred. It can happen any place.”

  103. rq says

    NY Daily News Makes Huge Statement With Front Page On Eric Garner Decision;

    The American Justice System Is Not Broken

    In July, New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo choked unarmed black man Eric Garner to death, in broad daylight, while a bystander caught it on video. That is what American police do. Yesterday, despite the video, despite an NYPD prohibition of exactly the sort of chokehold Pantaleo used, and despite the New York City medical examiner ruling the death a homicide, a Staten Island grand jury declined even to indict Pantaleo. That is what American grand juries do.

    In August, Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson shot unarmed black teenager Michael Brown to death in broad daylight. That is what American police do. Ten days ago, despite multiple eyewitness accounts and his own face contradicting Wilson’s narrative of events, a grand jury declined to indict Wilson. That is what American grand juries do.

    In November 2006, a group of five New York police officers shot unarmed black man Sean Bell to death in the early morning hours of his wedding day. That is what American police do. In April 2008, despite multiple eyewitness accounts contradicting the officers’ accounts of the incident, Justice Arthur J. Cooperman acquitted the officers of all charges, including reckless endangerment. That is what American judges do.

    In February of 1999, four plainclothes New York police officers shot unarmed black man Amadou Diallo to death outside of his home. That is what American police do. A year later, an Albany jury acquitted the officers of all charges, including reckless endangerment. That is what American juries do.

    In November of 1951, Willis McCall, the sheriff of Lake County, Fla., shot and killed Sam Shepherd, an unarmed and handcuffed black man in his custody. That is what American police do. Despite both a living witness and forensic evidence which contradicted his version of events, a coroner’s inquest ruled that McCall had acted within the line of duty, and Judge Thomas Futch declined to convene a grand jury at all.

    The American justice system is not broken. This is what the American justice system does. This is what America does. […]

    Policing in America is not broken. The judicial system is not broken. American society is not broken. All are functioning perfectly, doing exactly what they have done since before some of this nation’s most prosperous slave-murdering robber-barons came together to consecrate into statehood the mechanisms of their barbarism. Democracy functions. Politicians, deriving their legitimacy from the public, have discerned the will of the people and used it to design and enact policies that carry it out, among them those that govern the allowable levels of violence which state can visit upon citizen. Taken together with the myriad other indignities, thefts, and cruelties it visits upon black and brown people, and the work common white Americans do on its behalf by telling themselves bald fictions of some deep and true America of apple pies, Jesus, and people being neighborly to each other and betrayed by those few and nonrepresentative bad apples with their isolated acts of meanness, the public will demands and enables a whirring and efficient machine that does what it does for the benefit of those who own it. It processes black and brown bodies into white power.

    That is what America does. It is not broken. That is exactly what is wrong with it.

  105. rq says

    PZ lovelily links to this article in his newest post, wherein Chris Rock is obviously the real racist around here, and that article has a link to this article: Ferguson marchers met with gunfire, racial slurs, fried chicken, and a melon. These are the folks marching to Jefferson City for justice.

    Counter-protesters, including children, shouted racial slurs and carried signs urging the marchers to “go home,” reported the Columbia Missourian.

    Residents of Gerald and Rosebud, where the marchers arrived about noon, set up a display of fried chicken, a melon, and a 40-ounce beer bottle in the street.

    Some of the counter-protesters wore improvised Ku Klux Klan hoods, and they set up homemade signs supporting law enforcement and the grand jury’s decision not to charge Darren Wilson in the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. [..]

    “I support the police,” said former Rosebud mayor Clyde Zelch, who stood before a sign reading “Grand jury got it right! Justice was served.”

    “We may have a system that needs to be improved on, but it’s a system our Founding Fathers gave us, and what the NAACP acts like is that we’re supposed to throw out everything that’s worked for 200 years, and the only version that they want is one in which they win every time,” Zelch said. “It should not be us against them. This is just simply criminal committing crimes and having to pay a price for that.”

    He said about 175 counter-protesters had joined him, but news reports placed that number closer to 50. […]

    One of the marchers, Rhea Willis, said the hostile response reminded her of the attitudes her parents faced as civil rights activists in the 1960s.

    “The comments that we saw are pure ignorance,” Willis said, adding that racism is learned, not innate.

  107. rq says

    How chokehold death inspired Twitter confessions

    “The reason for sharing this was to highlight the disparity,” Kellogg said. The deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin cases – all black men killed by white men, who were never charged – inspired her to share the story, she said.

    “When I read the #aliveWhileBlack hashtag, I’m horrified,” she added.

    Jamilah Lemieux, senior digital editor for Ebony magazine, started that Twitter hashtag on Thursday, in response to #crimingWhileWhite.

    “I also felt it was important us for us to talk about the unique experiences blacks have with law enforcement, and that it’s not just these really tragic stories like Eric Garner and Michael Brown, but that we’re just routinely treated poorly by people who are supposed to serve and protect us,” Lemieux said on Thursday.

    Police are “supposed to be members of our community and people we can turn to when we’re in need of help, and that’s just not the experience most of us have,” she said.

    The movement has an anthem – Glory by John Legend.

    More on the South Carolina officer actually indicted: Grand jury indicts white police officer in shooting death of unarmed black man. The shooting happened in 2011 and he is being indicted only now.

    Number of arrests mounts – 223 Arrested as Protesters, Police Clash in New York City Over Eric Garner Decision. With autoplay video.

    HANDS UP: Dave Chappelle Raises His Arms Amidst Nationwide Protests At GQ Men Of The Year Red Carpet (PHOTOS)

    Several celebrities have shared their disappointment in the decision, some even joining protesters on the street like J. Cole. Dave Chappelle, who was named Man of the Year by the men’s magazine, used his red carpet appearance at the party to make a political statement by raising his hands up in the air, a gesture against police violence emblematic of the case involving Mike Brown.

    Protest, in photos. I forget which city and I don’t see any indications. But nice pictures.

  108. rq says

    Feds: Pair stole 39 guns, discussed selling them to Ferguson protesters

    Dakota R. Moss, 19, told investigators that after a store burglary Nov. 29, he and a juvenile accomplice, 17, discussed traveling to Ferguson. They also allegedly had plans to loot Ferguson stores, although local police called it just “big talk.”

    The two used a pickup stolen from a high school in Centralia to ram security gates of a Buchheit farm and home store, according to an affidavit by Special Agent Adam Ulery of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Centralia is about 60 miles east of St. Louis.

    They allegedly made three trips to the store to haul off 29 pistols, nine rifles and a shotgun.

    Centralia police Lt. Greg Dodson said the burglary occurred at the tail end of a two-day “crime spree” by Moss, who allegedly had stolen multiple vehicles from two different locations. Dodson said the two had no connections in Ferguson.

    But plans for looting in Ferguson were ‘just talk’. I bet if they were black, the story would be a whole lot different. Bets, anyone?

    Can Different Training Make Police Officers Guardians, Not Warriors?

    “We are guided by the underlying goal of producing officers who are guardians as opposed to warriors,” says Bales, who himself has more than three decades of law enforcement experience.

    “The most common corresponding emotion to fear is anger, and anger does not facilitate ongoing compliance,” he adds. “We teach recruits that when they mistreat people they actually may make that person more dangerous.”

    The program is hardly a cakewalk. In one exercise, described in an article published last year in the Seattle Times, recruits are doused twice in the face with pepper spray and asked to complete a series of tasks that frequently includes reciting the federal and state statutes governing the use of force.

    Bales says the purpose of the exercise is to demonstrate to officers that they can focus, think, problem solve, defend themselves and even deescalate while under extreme duress.

    “When an officer has confidence in their abilities, they are less likely to overreact out of fear,” he says. […]

    Reining in police militarization (another goal of the Obama administration’s new proposal) is a vital first step to repairing the damage. But even the most deadly weapon is just a mindless tool. It’s the attitude and character of the police officer holding it that matters.

    In a statement provided to Next City, Chief Ramsey acknowledged the importance of officer behavior in informing the overall tone of police-community relations: “We as police departments have an obligation to build public trust and that starts with transparent behavior and developing police legitimacy across the board.”

    A report released last March by the Police Executive Research Forum, which Ramsey heads, also highlighted the critical role police “legitimacy” and the related concept of “procedural justice” play in effective law enforcement. The latter concept refers to the belief, supported by decades of scholarly research, that processes that are perceived to be fair are the most likely to generate favorable outcomes.

    Criminologists such as Yale’s Tom Tyler, who has spent decades studying the effect of officer behavior on law abidance, have found that citizens are more likely to gauge their interactions with police based on the perceived fairness of law enforcement rather than its effectiveness or lawfulness. […]

    Over the last five years, the Richmond PD has expended just eight bullets on five people. That’s nearly as many bullets that Officer Darren Wilson fired into Mike Brown. (It’s worth noting that Wilson’s grand jury testimony also suggests that Ferguson police are given the discretion over whether to carry non-lethal weapons such as Tasers.)

    On September 14th, Richmond experienced its first fatal officer involved shooting since 2007, to which the city responded with two separate investigations and a concerted community outreach effort. Both the police chief and his deputy attended the victim’s funeral in civilian clothes to avoid provocation.

    Chief Magnus’s ability to think empathetically about his impact on the community he serves has won him high praise both inside and outside of Richmond. In September, he was summoned to Ferguson as one of two law enforcement experts tapped by the DOJ to review civil rights charges in connection with the Mike Brown killing.

    As they move forward with their mission it’s fair to say the members of the President’s new trust-building task force can learn a lot from the experiences of forward-thinking leaders like Magnus.

    So a short while ago, amid protests, a Bosnian man was murdered in Ferguson. It’s not an event directly connected, but obviously it has an impact on the community. Ferguson, Zemir Begic, the Agenda of White Supremacists and Bosnian Americans

    The next day I followed up on the news of Zemir Begic’s murder and noticed a disturbing pattern. White supremacists, neo-Nazi, and ultra-conservative websites began posting about the murder. Zemir Begic, a Bosnian Muslim immigrant, suddenly became the poster child for “black on white” crime, with all of these articles referencing Begic’s attackers as of the Latino and Black race. The irony was seemingly lost on those who were using Zemir Begic’s murder to further promote their own racism and anti-blackness. In any other circumstance, these same pundits would consider Zemir Begic a terrorist, a dirty immigrant and a barbaric Muslim. The same people who are hardly advocates of immigrants or Muslims, were expressing their love and solidarity with the Bosnian community to further their own racist agendas. Certain members of this same Bosnian community joined in and supported the black on white framing of the brutal murder.

    In addition, social media sparked a comparison between Begic’s murder and that of Mike Brown, the 18 year old who was heading to college, and was shot 6 times by Officer Darren Wilson for walking in the street in Ferguson. He posed a threat to the officer has been the ongoing statement by these pundits. In comparison, Zemir Begic, a “white man”, they cite, was the 32 year old newly engaged man, beaten to death by 4 “black” teenagers for no apparent reason.

    To compare these two horrid murders to one another is to do a great disservice to both the Bosnian community and the African-American community. This comparison is far more problematic as it reveals deeper racial issues in America then they would admit to. Mike Brown was killed by an officer of the state. He was killed by those who are supposed to be protecting civilians even though he was unarmed, had his hands up (per the autopsy report) and was 148 feet away from Officer Wilson. Zemir Begic was killed by 4 criminals who are charged as criminals and will be going to trial as criminals. Mike Brown’s body was left in the street for 4.5 hours before being pulled away by some sort of an unidentified vehicle. Zemir Begic’s body was removed and put in the ambulance as soon as the police arrived on the scene. Mike Brown’s killer was never arrested, never indicted, and most certainly will not be going to trial. Zemir Begic’s killers have been arrested, charged, and will be going to trial.

    The comparison of the two murders is false equivalence. Mike Brown did not get his justice, but Zemir Begic has and hopefully will continue to when the killers are put on trial.

    Iowa City
    St Louis Alderpeople
    Sarah Kendzior: Protesters do a wonderful job articulating long-held grievances. But needs to be direct line between the still neglected and those in power.

  109. rq says

    Huh, is someone taking action over there? SC Has Indicted 3 Cops in 4 Months for Shooting Unarmed Black Men

    Bailey’s family, who have already settled a civil lawsuit against the small town, welcomed the indictment. “We don’t know what brand of justice they serve in Ferguson. We don’t know what brand of justice they’re serving in New York City. But here in South Carolina, we believe in the jury system, and we believe in what the grand jury has brought as a charge with this indictment,” the family’s attorney, Carl B. Grant, told AP.

    “Law enforcement, due to the nature of their jobs, are given wide berth,” Pope said. “But you’re sworn to certain things, and when you go outside those requirements, you can’t hide behind your badge and gun.”

    The other two indictments of law-enforcement officials, according to AP, are an August indictment for misconduct in office of a North Augusta cop, who shot a 68-year-old unarmed black man to death at his residence after a pursuit; and a September indictment for assault and battery of a state trooper who shot a driver who was reaching for his wallet after being pulled over.

    The defense, of course, is all ‘why you making this about race?’.

    Ferguson business owners say business is down 50% as they rebuild

    Business owners and their employees in and around Ferguson are facing life-altering financial losses as a result of property damage to their storefronts from looting and burning that followed the Michael Brown decision. Donations and support have flooded in, they say. But it may not be enough. There is unfinished business here: internal rifts, anger, and the question of what will happen when the dust settles.

    At least 25 structures and 27 businesses in Ferguson and the adjacent areas were damaged by fire in the days following the news Darren Wilson would not be indicted, the Ferguson fire department confirmed Monday. Official figures have yet to be released. These numbers do not include structures damaged by means other than fire.

    But even those businesses that have not been damaged are facing heavy financial losses. One block away from Greene, all businesses but for one barber shop, which suffered fire damage and has closed, were left intact by the unrest. Owners say business was down by as much as 50% – on a steady decline since August.

    Protestors in Capitol.

    That guy, Akai Gurley, shot accidentally in a stairwell by a rookie cop? That cop. EXCLUSIVE: Rookie NYPD officer who shot Akai Gurley in Brooklyn stairwell was texting union rep as victim lay dying. He did not even call EMT. He texted his union rep. As a black man lay dying. Holy fuck priorities none, asshole.

    Right after rookie cop Peter Liang discharged a single bullet that struck Gurley, 28, he and his partner Shaun Landau were incommunicado for more than six and a half minutes, sources said Thursday.

    In the critical moments after the Nov. 20 shooting, the cops’ commanding officer and an emergency operator — responding to a 911 call from a neighbor and knowing the duo was in the area — tried to reach them in vain, sources said. […]

    “That’s showing negligence,” said a law enforcement source of the pair’s decision to text their union rep before making a radio call for help.

    “The guy is dying and you still haven’t called it in?”

    To make things even worse, the officers were uncertain of the exact address of the building in the Pink Houses they were in, according to their text messages, the sources said. […]

    Adding to the tragedy surrounding Gurley’s death, the officers involved were not supposed to be doing a patrol in the stairways, the sources said.

    Deputy Inspector Miguel Iglesias, then the head officer of the local housing command, ordered them not to carry out such patrols, known as verticals.

    He opted instead for exterior policing in response to a spate of violence at the East New York housing project. […]

    When Liang and Landau finally resurfaced on the radio, they reported an accidental discharge, added the source. Authorities have said they didn’t immediately know anyone was struck with the bullet.

    The stairwell was pitch-black because the lights were out. The superintendent had asked NYCHA to fix the lights months before the fatal encounter. The problem was finally resolved hours after Gurley died.

    While the shooting may have been a mishap, the cops’ subsequent conduct can amount to criminal liability, court insiders said.

    And Frank Serpico on cops and their crime: Serpico: Incidents like Eric Garner’s death drive wedge between police and society. A matter of stating the obvious, I should think.

    In the old days, they used to put a gun or a knife on somebody after a shooting. Now they don’t even bother.

    But today, we have cops crying wolf all the time. They testify “I was in fear of my life,” the grand jury buys it, the DA winks and nods, and there’s no indictment. […]

    Murphy could have emptied his gun in him. Instead, he disarmed the man and put him in cuffs. What’s happening today in the performance of some officers can only be described as sheer cowardice. They don’t belong in the uniform, and they shouldn’t have weapons — whether they’re cops or not. […]

    The people want justice, and they need justice. And the police are supposed to be protecting their civil rights

    Why would a kid in the inner city call a cop? When I was growing up, my mother would say “Any problem, call a cop.” He would show up and assess the problem, and you wouldn’t become the victim.

    I want to be clear. I’m not talking about all police. There are plenty of good police, and I hear from them on a daily basis.

    But the police are becoming our enemy, and society is becoming the enemy of the police.

    Somebody with clear, objective and impartial thinking needs to come to their senses and find a solution.

  111. says

    I stumbled across a new site called Diversity Inc, which had an interesting article. It doesn’t cover any new ground, but it is a white voice speaking up about racism:

    In my opinion, the complete lack of accountability in the aftermath of Ferguson is an assault on the senses, but it is a teachable moment about the profound lack of accountability in white affirmative action. I coined the term white affirmative action as a counterpoint to the civil-rights-era affirmative action, which opened jobs that were closed to anyone but white people. We get dozens of emails a month from people deriding affirmative action to justify their own lack of success. This erroneous perception is a cherished, commonly held and self-comforting platitude among certain elements of the majority—just like Ronald Reagan’s fictitious welfare queen and the “wilding” Central Park rapists (all of whom were innocent).

    It is an amazing negative illumination of our society to note that a 6’4”, 210-pound police officer with a car, badge, gun and backup on the way couldn’t figure out a peaceful resolution to confronting two unarmed teenagers—but got to keep his job, until his resignation this weekend, facilitated by the system’s conspiratorial process. And after more than three months of preparation, having all of the tricks handed to him by a prosecutor invested in the racist law enforcement that has existed in St. Louis environs for decades, he could not think of another thing to say other than to call Mike Brown, the teenager he shot to death more than 100 feet from his car, a “demon.”

    Shootist Wilson gets to resign his position (and collect more than $500,000 donated to him). The police chief gets to keep his job. The governor skates above it all after bumbling the first response to community outrage immediately after the killing, then doubling down on the same tactics to provoke yet more destruction in the community. The smirking prosecutor who presided over a law-enforcement community in St. Louis that preyed upon Black people—even though its own evidence showed that white people, on a percentage basis, had more criminal involvement—gets to keep his job. He knew he was on thin ice with this case, so he used the grand jury to avoid a trial in which the evidence would not have stood up. When he got the results he was looking for, he released the information—after a long, slow buildup—at 8 p.m. to allow the National Guard and militarized police to provoke people into the kind of response that would clear his subversion of justice off the front page.

    Nobody in Officer Wilson’s chain of command gets fired for allowing Wilson to clean off his own hands without supervision or photographs, to keep his gun after the killing and put it in an evidence bag by himself with no supervision, and to allow Wilson to submit a blank incident report.

    It is an astounding cavalcade of incompetence, prosecutorial arrogance, callous indifference to Black life and self-righteous justification of repetitively using law-enforcement practices that were proven to be wrong. Yet for the police chief, the prosecutor, the governor and other assorted people—like the medical investigator (with 25 years’ experience, no less) who couldn’t take pictures because he had a camera with dead batteries and who decided not to take any measurements because “it was self-explanatory what happened. Somebody shot somebody”—get to keep their jobs. Nobody gets fired. Nobody goes to prison for malfeasance. Nobody even resigns in humiliation.

    What’s even more interesting to me is that the pattern of outright lies: The distance between Wilson and Brown, whether or not Wilson knew that Brown had shoplifted, even the videotape of the shoplifting incident is in question. But that pattern of lies doesn’t scare white people—which, if you think about it, it should. What would you think your chances of justice would be if you got caught up in a crime investigation and there was no chain of evidence, the people charged with taking pictures and making measurements didn’t do either, and the prosecutor was well known to be in the pocket of the police? Yet, it seems that most of the public would prefer to believe “It couldn’t happen to me,” that bumbling racist incompetence is OK, and Mike Brown is a “demon” and “deserved what he got.” As detrimental as it is for white people, confronting reality is still too painful for this country.

    I think it’s fair to sum up the Ferguson disaster as “white affirmative action”—the traditionally practiced way for incompetent white people to attain and maintain positions they are clearly incompetent and unqualified to hold. It’s assumed that the police chief, prosecutor, medical examiner and governor are competent, and despite a repetitive drumbeat of news that shows they are not, the popular press goes after the victim and the people provoked. “Why are these people destroying their neighborhood?”

    It’s great to see another white person “get it”, and speak up in opposition to racism (and yeah, I left a comment over there much to that effect).

  112. says

    Here’s another article from the same site:

    As we hold our breath waiting for the grand-jury decision on whether Officer Darren Wilson was justified in killing Michael Brown, an unarmed, 18-year-old Black man in Ferguson, Mo., I wonder what effect the decision will have on work spaces of many corporations that boast inclusive cultures with zero tolerance for discrimination.

    If you are responsible for leading people and project success and have asked yourself, “Why should I care about what is happening in Ferguson?” let me tell you a story that could happen at even the most progressive organizations.

    A group is having lunch in a campus cafeteria of a large U.S.-based company. There are five white men, two white women, one Asian man, one Latina and one Black woman. The news is on and a correspondent is talking about the coming grand-jury decision in the violent death of Michael Brown. A white male coworker says, “What’s the big deal? The cop was defending himself. This isn’t about race.” The Black woman looks up from her lunch but doesn’t say anything because this falls into the politics/religion category and she doesn’t engage in this type of conversation at work.

    She unlocks her handheld device that has a picture of her 18-year-old Black son as the wallpaper. She thinks about the discussion she had with her son that morning in which she explained to him, as she did when Trayvon Martin was killed two years ago, that the police he encounters might not see the smart, thoughtful, charismatic young person she and her husband are raising. She explained to him that his opinion of what is right or fair and how he expresses it might be the difference in living to see another day or becoming the next morning’s fatal social-injustice headline.

    Then it happens. She saw it coming but hoped it wouldn’t. Her coworker calls her name and says, “You’re level-headed, right? You don’t think this is all about race, do you? Why does everything have to be about race?” Her manager, also a white man, is there, too, and looks in her direction as if he is waiting for her response.

    At that moment, her career flashes before her eyes. She has successfully completed projects with most of the people at the table, hung out during networking events, even gone to happy hours together. So why now is she being put on the spot and being asked to share her views about the situation? Is it just because she is Black? She has to make a decision. Does she bite her tongue and continue to be “go along to get along Jeremiah,” or does she tell him and the group how she really feels and possibly be labeled as being too sensitive about race or a rabble-rouser?

    While this story focuses on a Black woman, understand that people who have adopted Black children or have biracial children who look Black can be impacted by a situation like this. In an article 7 Things I Can Do That My Black Son Can’t, a white man talks about what life will be like for his biracial three-year-old son, who is dark-skinned.

    According to the Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

    • Blacks make up 12 percent of the workforce. That’s about 18,758,000 out of 155,000,000 people.

    • Sixty-four percent of Black women are in white-collar positions and 50 percent of Black men are in similar roles.

    From a survey for the report “Uncovering Talent: A New Model for Inclusion,” Deloitte University (Deloitte is No. 11 on the 2014 DiversityInc Top 50 list) found that 79 percent of Blacks and 66 percent of women reported that they downplay their differences at work, which negatively impacts their sense of self. Forty-five percent of white men also admitted to “covering,” which focuses on four areas:

    1. Appearance: Altering hair, clothing and mannerisms to blend in.

    2. Affiliation: Avoiding behaviors associated with their identity. Mothers might not talk about their children, or a gay man might not talk about his partner.

    3. Advocacy: How much a person will stick up for his or her group. In the story above, a Black woman is concerned about how she will be viewed if she shares how she really feels about Michael Brown being killed and how she fears for her own child’s life on a regular basis. This could even include not wanting to join resource or networking groups at work that are for Black employees.

    4. Association: Not wanting to be associated with other Blacks at work who are labeled as troublemakers or people with an attitude problem.

    Leaders should be very concerned and tuned in to how the current events are impacting the productivity and retention of their employees. The way in which situations like this are handled signals to other high-potentials in the organization how they will be treated when the news cycle shifts to their respective groups.

    Here are some tips:

    1. Use your employee resource groups to communicate the organization’s values, especially at times like these.

    2. Offer cultural-competence training to all managers throughout the year.

    3. Understand what is happening with your mid-level high-potential employees.

    4. Don’t exclude your white male employees from your diversity-management initiatives. They make up most of middle management and, if provided the proper training and development, could be the difference between your nonwhite male employees staying or going to work for your competition.

    http://www.diversityinc.com/diversity-management/ferguson-impacts-employees-black-children/

  114. Ichthyic says

    The governor skates above it all after bumbling the first response to community outrage immediately after the killing, then doubling down on the same tactics to provoke yet more destruction in the community.

    actually the most egregious thing he did was not listen to the legal advice given him that he should nominate a DIFFERENT prosecutor to handle the Wilson case… than the guy who went 0/5 in getting cops indicted.

    sorry, but that borders on criminal in and of itself, and I can’t believe the media haven’t been hounding him on that decision.

    or wait, maybe I can believe it. the media by and large is filled with morons any more.

  115. rq says

    The blizzard outside has ended, but it will be a blizzard of links in a moment! Because I took a break last night and this morning, and tonight’s going to be the same.

  117. rq says

    St. Louis police post tips on how to keep your child from being shot by police (repeated for the sheer idiocy);

    Aha! Grand Jury In Eric Garner Case Wasn’t Asked To Consider ‘Reckless Endangerment’ Charge: Report

    An unnamed source familiar with the case told the station that District Attorney Daniel Donovan only asked jurors to consider charges of manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide as they heard evidence.

    Under New York law, reckless endangerment entails conduct that causes a substantial risk of serious physical injury or death to another person. Garner, a 43-year-old asthmatic, died after Pantaleo put him in a chokehold in July.

    The jury determined that there was no probable cause to indict Pantaleo in Garner’s death Wednesday, a decision that has been met with criticism from people across the political spectrum and sparked nationwide protests.

    Although grand jury proceedings are typically sealed by law, Donovan petitioned a judge to release limited information about them, according to ABC New York. None of the evidence presented was included in the release, only the following:

    Jurors sat for nine weeks
    Testimony was heard from 50 witnesses
    Those witnesses included 22 civilians and 28 cops, EMTs or doctors
    There were 60 exhibits, including videos, records and photos
    The grand jury was instructed in law regarding physical use of force

    The D.A.’s office issued a statement Thursday that said he was “constrained by New York law to reveal nothing further regarding these proceedings.”

    This and that else at the link.

    Via skepchick, Cop Cameras Are a Band-Aid Fix for a Centuries-Old Wound.

    Body cameras for police officers will only help stem the tide of racialized police brutality when cops stop painting African-American men as superhuman threats (and juries stop buying into their story). When we stop erring in favor of the upward-end of the power differential and start listening to those who have been victimized. But most importantly, when law enforcement agencies, justice systems, and everyone in between simply starts recognizing that black lives matter.

    Can St. Louis Business Owners Help Push For Systemic Change?

    “Nobody should have any fear factor and they should know that we will get as much relief as possible,” said Joe Reagan, the Chamber’s president and CEO. “We’re talking to all of our partners about the need for significantly more aid to businesses as if this were a tornado or a natural disaster to stabilize the area and get these entrepreneurs the support they need to get back up and running.”

    The Chamber’s work isn’t happening in a vacuum. The St. Louis Business Council’s Reinvest North County Fund announced on Thursday they’re awarding $119,500 to support businesses and school districts. And some key players within the St. Louis business community promised relief to riot-stricken businesses as well as millions of dollars to help bolster the region’s poorest communities.

    But can those efforts make a difference? At least two professors with experience in community building efforts noted that a high-profile effort to rebuild Los Angeles after the riots in the early 1990s there fell flat. They worry that big companies are more focused on philanthropy than with empowering communities.

    “I think it gets them out of their comfort space,” said Todd Swanstrom, a political science professor at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. “The standard operating procedure over the years has been to fund social service projects in communities. And to get involved in community organizing is to literally give up some control.”

    “Because obviously what you’re saying is the agenda will be set by the community — not by the corporation,” he added. […]

    “There’s been a lot more efforts to raise wages for the low-wage workers, to clean up the environment, to provide more affordable housing,” Dreier said. “And that has come from the bottom up, not from the top down. And it’s made the business community more responsible, although some have done it kicking and screaming.”

    UMSL professor Swanstrom said that some big corporations tend to invest in result-oriented projects — such an effort to shelter the homeless or provide book bags to schoolchildren. They may be less inclined to invest in, say, programs that teach neighborhoods how to conduct meetings or vie for funds themselves.

    “In case of the events of Ferguson, I think the corporate community in St. Louis needs to think more broadly about what generated these issues in the first place,” Swanstrom said. “It is certainly fine to have some service-oriented projects that help people in the community cope with their condition. But we need more forward-thinking projects that address the problems of rising concentrated poverty, weak institutions, fiscal stress and political empowerment.”

    Added Dreier: “What Ferguson and the other cities around St. Louis that have similar problems of poverty and racial segregation need is not more charity. They need more justice. They need more jobs.

    “When it comes to sort of the root causes and the underlying grievances of any urban riot — or in this case a suburban-urban riot — it’s really mostly about jobs and poverty,” Drier said. “It’s probably about racism and racial profiling and discrimination. But the root cause has to do with long-held grievances about being poor and left behind.” […]

    “We’re not saying that someone owes us something,” Andrews said. “But you know, we were put in this state because of civil unrest. I would just appreciate it on behalf of not just myself, but the businesses that are suffering. We know all of the businesses didn’t suffer, because a lot of them are back up and running.”

    “But like me, I’m down,” Andrews said. “I don’t even have any income coming in right now.”

    Andrews knows the climb back won’t be easy. But she’s committed to setting up shop again.

    And getting people like Andrews to succeed could be a small test for the St. Louis business community in the midst of some very great challenges.

    “A lot of mistakes that I made when I first started, it made me better,” Andrews said. “I believe that this happening to me is not my end. But it’s actually opening up the door to bigger things — so I can be able to serve my community.”

    Eric Garner protests in New York: The NYPD’s Moment of Restraint Is Over: 200+ Arrested . Now they can do battle with LA over most protestors arrested.
    Hope and Anger at the Garner Protests

    In city after city, white and nonwhite citizens have surged through the streets chanting or bearing signs with Mr. Garner’s final words: “I can’t breathe.” Others chanted: “Hands up; don’t shoot” or “Black lives matter” — slogans from the racially troubled town of Ferguson, Mo., where another grand jury declined to indict the officer who shot to death 18-year-old Michael Brown.

    The viral spread of the demonstrations — and the wide cross section of Americans who are organizing and participating in them — shows that what was once seen as a black issue is on the way to being seen as a central, American problem.

    The question of the moment is whether the country’s political leadership has the will to root out abusive and discriminatory policing — corrosive, longstanding problems that bore down on minority communities, large and small, urban and suburban.

    The scope of the problem is evident from the work of the Justice Department, which has opened 20 investigations into local police departments over the last five years and is currently enforcing reform agreements with 15 departments, some of which were investigated in previous administrations. […]

    Congress will have an opportunity to discuss this issue soon, during the Senate confirmation hearings of Loretta Lynch, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, who has been nominated to succeed Mr. Holder as attorney general.

    Ms. Lynch’s office will oversee the federal civil rights investigation into the Garner case. Some in Congress clearly understand that the grand jury’s failure to indict the officer — despite a clear video showing him choking the man — deserves review, not just on its face, but because it goes to the heart of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

    Others, however, seem poised to argue that the federal government, which has a clear responsibility to enforce civil rights laws, should not be taking the lead. Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, for example, asked, “Why does the federal government feel like it is its responsibility and role to be the leader in an investigation in a local instance?” That sounds like something out of the Jim Crow era, when Southern states argued that they were entitled to treat black citizens any way they wished.

    Mr. Holder was on the mark when he said that the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice raised urgent, national questions about the breakdown of trust between minority communities and the police forces that are supposed to serve and protect them.

    That so many are in the streets protesting police abuse shows that outrage over these injustices is spreading. Now it is up to the nation’s political leaders to confront this crisis.

    Ah, some cops (barely) punished for behaving badly. Ohio cops suspended for years of racist texts leaked to civil rights group. Note, they were suspended after the texts were leaked to a civil rights group. So protect yer technologies better for freeze peach, amirite?

  119. rq says

    Miami protestors block highway, with autplay video.

    The group was upset over the lack of action on the Reefa Hernandez case along with the grand jury decisions in Ferguson, Missouri and New York.

    The group initially locked arms to block traffic in both directions on I-195. The road is a major entrance way into Miami Beach and comes as Art Basel is in full swing.

    Protesters began gathering around 5 p.m. and began marching shortly after 6 p.m. The group stopped blocking the road and began walking through the westbound traffic a little after 6:30 p.m. […]

    Protesters moved off of the I-195 Causeway and allowed traffic to begin moving again shortly before 7 p.m. The group then moved down to Biscayne Blvd and NE 36th Street in downtown Miami. They moved through the streets of Wynwood before returning to the intersection of 36th and 1st Avenue where the protest started.

    “To see that the gallery owners and the artists are coming out, it show that it’s not an either or, it’s not us vs. them, it’s us vs. the system,” said Sherika Shaw, a protest organizer.

    Shawn King looks into the cover-up surrounding Tamir Rice’s killing: Tamir Rice: The story behind the senseless killing, character assassination, and resulting cover-up

    Not knowing that a camera recorded the entire incident, the police told what appear to be at least five lies about what happened.

    1. Police said that Tamir Rice was seated at a table with other people.

    2. Police said that as they pulled up, they saw Tamir Rice grab the gun and put it in his waistband.

    3. Police said they got out of the car and told Tamir Rice three times to put his hands up but he refused.

    4. Police said that Tamir Rice then reached into his waistband and pulled out the gun, and was then shot and killed by Officer Timothy Loehmann.

    5. Timothy Loehmann was described as a rookie.

    MSNBC’s Chris Hayes very adeptly narrates us through the video of the shooting to show us that these five essential points aren’t true at all.

    See link for video of 911 call, as well as Chris Hayes video.

    . Tamir Rice as not seated at a table with other people.

    2. Tamir Rice does not appear to grab the gun and put it in his waistband.

    3. Police shot and killed Tamir in less than two seconds and could not have told him to put his hands up three times.

    4. Tamir Rice absolutely does not pull the air gun out of his waistband and brandish it in any way. This fact is so crucial.

    5. Timothy Loehmann was not a rookie, but had been an officer for over two years.

    We later learn that the officers on the scene refused Tamir Rice any type of first aid for four crucial minutes of his life. It was only when an FBI agent who happened to be near the scene arrived that he began giving Tamir the life support he needed, making it appear as if the officers may have actually wanted Tamir Rice to die after the shooting. […]

    This never should’ve happened. Blaming their fear of Tamir or blaming their training, or lack thereof, or implying that the officer was too inexperienced on the job, are all completely unacceptable excuses and do nothing to give Tamir’s family or the community even a small sense of peace or hope that anyone will be held responsible or that this won’t continue to happen again and again.

    Missouri High School Students Warned They Risk Serious Penalties For Walkout Protests

    After Hazelwood high school students walked out on Tuesday, Superintendent Grayling Tobias issued a statement noting that the district does “not condone disruptive behavior.” On Wednesday, he provided an update warning that students will face consequences if they “choose to be disruptive.”

    Students who participated in walkouts could face consequences affecting “A+ status, attendance at prom or graduation, participation in athletic or other extracurricular activities and academic grades,” Tobias announced. That “A+ status” refers to a program that awards students two tuition-free years at a junior college.

    Tobias, who sits on the new Ferguson Commission formed by Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D), stated that the school district respects its students’ First Amendment rights. But he encouraged parents to talk with their children about “the importance of attending class.”

    Parents responded on Facebook to Tobias’ letter. Some expressed approval of the threatened consequences and increased security, while others felt that more should be done to shield students from any disruption in their education.

    One post read, “Wrong tactic to take. You should be more concerned about the students that stayed in class and were trying to learn something. Obviously you are not the person we should be trusting our children’s safety too.”

    “Shut it Down!” Demonstrators Take to D.C. Streets. Still so much action out there, which is awesome to see.

    Protests Erupt For A Third Night Over Eric Garner Chokehold Decision. A nice overview and summary, including picture and video, of protest actions around the country.

  121. rq says

    Racial profiling apparently works well enough for some people: Racial profiling will still be allowed at airports, along border despite new policy

    Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected early next week to detail long-awaited revisions in the Justice Department’s rules for racial profiling, banning it from national security cases for the first time. The changes­ will also expand the definition of profiling to prevent FBI agents from considering factors such as religion and national origin when opening cases­, officials said.

    But after sharp disagreements among top officials, the administration will exempt a broad swath of DHS, namely the Transportation Security Administration and key parts of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, according to law enforcement officials.

    The announcement of the new policy comes at a time of rising national protest over allegations that police engage in profiling when investigating and using force against minorities. The debate has been fueled by the recent deaths of three unarmed African Americans at the hands of police in Ferguson, Mo., New York and Cleveland, and the absence so far of criminal charges against the white police officers who were involved.

    Civil rights groups and Democratic lawmakers have been pressuring the administration to expand anti-profiling protections since President Obama’s election in 2008, and the Justice Department has been working on the changes­ for five years.

    UN has an opinion. Eric Garner death: UN fears over no-charge jury decisions

    “I am concerned by the grand juries’ decisions and the apparent conflicting evidence that exists relating to both incidents,” UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Rita Izsak, said in a statement.

    A trial process would ensure the evidence is considered in detail, she said.

    “The decisions leave many with legitimate concerns relating to a pattern of impunity when the victims of excessive use of force come from African-American or other minority communities.”

    Human rights expert Mireille Fanon-Mendes-France, who currently heads the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, said the cases add to existing concerns.

    She pointed to “longstanding prevalence of racial discrimination faced by African-Americans, particularly in relation to access to justice and discriminatory police practices”.

    The UN findings come amid ongoing protests over the death of Eric Garner, a black man held in an apparent chokehold by a white New York police officer.

    IMPORTANT READ, concering intersectionality: 5 Ways to Amplify the Voices of Women and Trans People in the #BlackLivesMatter Movement

    1. If people talk about the black “men and children” who are dying from state sanctioned violence, correct them. If the names of women or trans people or gender nonconforming folks are missing from a list of victims, add them.
    […]

    2. If people refer to a group of gender diverse organizers as men, correct them.

    […]

    3. Be aware of who you look to for direction.

    […]

    4. Bring women and trans people into conversation with media.
    […]

    5. Literally amplify the voices of people, especially women, who are speaking but cannot be heard. […]

    Black trans women, cis women, gender nonconforming/non-binary folks, and trans men are criminalized, and they are at the forefront of this movement. Together, we can make sure that when we say #blacklivesmatter, we mean all of them.

    These rules are detailed below each number, and are easy to follow. Important to remember. Very.
    And I love the name of that blog: Disrupting Dinner Parties.

    Lorraine Hotel;
    Georgia State University;
    more Miami.

  122. rq says

    Fuck that, I’m going to post up the entire article on amplifying those less-heard voices. Read it:

    I’ll be honest, the last week (month? year? decade?) or so has not been fun. The U.S. “justice” system is intent on communicating its lack of regard for black life. But, the silver lining has been witnessing the growth of a persistent and powerful nationwide movement to declare that #blacklivesmatter.

    The last thing we need in this moment of pain and opportunity is a movement that ignores trans women, cis women, gender nonconforming/non-binary folks, and trans men who are impacted by state enacted and state sanctioned violence, or that silences the voices of all the bad ass people from those communities who are fighting against it. If you are part of this movement- on social media, in the streets, in your cubicle, or anywhere else- here are some steps you can take to make sure these voices are amplified:

    1. If people talk about the black “men and children” who are dying from state sanctioned violence, correct them. If the names of women or trans people or gender nonconforming folks are missing from a list of victims, add them.

    Add them to your tweets and your Facebook posts. Add them to your rally posters. Add them to your cries of grief and the names you speak when you call out to the ancestors. If you don’t know their names- names like Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Duanna Johnson, Rekia Boyd, Kathryn Johnston, and Yvette Smith- make it your business to learn them.

    Tell other people to add them too; it can be very simple. At a Mike Brown action in DC last week, a friend of mine saw protesters carrying a bedsheet covered with names. No trans people were on it. She tapped them on the shoulder and informed them of the issue. Cell phones were whipped out, googling occurred, and names were added.

    2. If people refer to a group of gender diverse organizers as men, correct them.

    At the same Mike Brown action, a speaker took out time to commend and encourage the “young men” who had planned the die-in. About ten people yelled out “AND WOMEN!” and the speaker quickly corrected himself. If we (and particularly the men among us) had not spoken, our silence would have made an equally loud statement.

    3. Be aware of who you look to for direction.

    We all drink the patriarchal punch on a daily basis, so it’s easy to assume that the tallest, loudest, or most charismatic man in the crowd is the leader of an action, a rally, or a teach-in. But…. don’t.

    4. Bring women and trans people into conversation with media.

    Members of the media drink the punch too! Often reporters on the scene will be drawn towards interviewing the (literal) hypemen in the crowd. You can’t help that, but you can smoothly turn a solo interview into a joint interview between you and your femme friend who’s standing next to you. You can decline your third interview, and point the reporter in the direction of someone else who you know will do an equally great job instead.

    5. Literally amplify the voices of people, especially women, who are speaking but cannot be heard.

    At a recent rally I attended, a fierce black woman and labor organizer stepped up to the stage to talk to a crowd of at least 1,000 people. Several men had gone before her with no problem. As she began to speak, it became clear that no matter how loud she screamed, her voice simply was not carrying to the back of the crowd. People started yelling “speak up!”, unrest grew, and at some point the back half of the crowd stopped listening entirely and broke into chants. But then, something beautiful happened: after each sentence she spoke, hundreds of people in the front of the rally began repeating her words in unison so that everyone could hear them. The crowd had collectively decided that this woman would be heard.

    This strategy is called the Human Megaphone. When this type of dynamic becomes apparent, it only take one person to begin amplifying a voice. That person can be you.

    Black trans women, cis women, gender nonconforming/non-binary folks, and trans men are criminalized, and they are at the forefront of this movement. Together, we can make sure that when we say #blacklivesmatter, we mean all of them.

    There. Now none of you have any excuse.

  123. rq says

    Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, brace yourselves.
    Man Allegedly Armed With Knife Fatally Shot by LAPD Officers at Hollywood and Highland. Witness accounts differ as to whether he actually had a knife or not (surprise),

    The deadly confrontation occurred in the middle of a busy intersection in the heart of Hollywood and was witnessed by dozens of stunned bystanders.

    “I heard like five shots go off and then all of a sudden I saw police run across and they’re pointing a gun at this guy that’s lying on the ground,” said local resident Neil Barnett.

    A number of tourists staying at a nearby hostel were stunned by what they saw.

    “We heard a couple of gun shots … and we ran to the window and we just saw the cops standing there aiming their guns [at] the guy,” said tourist Hanna Forspend.

    No officers were injured.

    Video at the link, and I’m appending a tweet with rather graphic photos here.
    NBC Los Angeles with the same story.
    The man has since died (the original headline had him in critical condition).

    Washington;
    Oakland and more Oakland.

  125. rq says

    Via Jezebel, Cop Who Shot Akai Gurley Texted Union Rep While Unarmed Victim Died. Repeat information.

    Video compilation of protests: To All Those Who Cannot Breathe.

    Oh, let’s shed a tear for the cops: Eric Garner outcry has many NYPD officers reeling, feeling misunderstood, supporters say

    Officers say the outcry has left them feeling betrayed and demonized by everyone from the president and the mayor to throngs of protesters who scream at them on the street.

    “Police officers feel like they are being thrown under the bus,” said Patrick Lynch, president of the police union.

    The grand jury this week cleared a white patrolman, Daniel Pantaleo, who was caught on video applying what appeared to be an illegal chokehold on the black man. Mayor Bill de Blasio said the case underscores the NYPD’s need to improve relations with minorities.

    But Lynch said: “What we did not hear is this: You cannot go out and break the law. What we did not hear is that you cannot resist arrest. That’s a crime.”

    At the noisy demonstrations that have broken out over the past few days, protesters have confronted police who had nothing to do with the case. Signs read: “NYPD: Blood on your hands,” ”Racism kills” and “Hey officers, choke me or shoot me.” Some demonstrators shouted, “NYPD pigs!” More than 280 people have been arrested in the city, and more demonstrations were planned Friday.

    In private and on Internet chat rooms, officers say they feel demoralized, misunderstood and “all alone.”

    Some are advising each other that the best way to preserve their careers is to stop making arrests like that of Garner’s, in defiance of the NYPD’s campaign of cracking down on minor “quality of life” offenses as a way to discourage serious crime.

    Or, you know, on second thought, let’s not waste any tears.

    Here’s more on vile people. NYC Police Union Head Says Garner Made the Choice to Resist Arrest on The Day He Was Killed. Because he was all about resisting arrest, as per the video. Just because he was large doesn’t make him non-compliant.

    But according to police reports, there was at least one plainclothes supervising sergeant at the scene of Garner’s arrest on July 17, who provided testimony. Because the supervisor is responsible for the situation, the sergeant, who is black, testified under immunity that it was not the fault of his subordinate, and therefore Pantaleo shouldn’t be indicted. […]

    The same evening, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, also expressed their disappointment at the decision during a meeting with Garner’s father and community leaders in Staten Island. De Blasio took to the podium, saying it was a “a very painful day,” and that as the father of a black man, he would have “to talk to [his son] for years about the dangers that he may face” when encountering police. […]

    Then, last night, the head of the police department’s union further inflamed tensions by telling reporters that Garner caused his own death and shouldn’t have resisted his arrest on July 17 for selling loose, untaxed cigarettes (also known as loosies).

    “We feel badly that there was a loss of life,” Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) President Patrick Lynch said. “But unfortunately Mr. Garner made a choice that day to resist arrest.”

    Lynch also said that officers felt they had been “thrown under the bus” by the mayor’s comments and defended Pantaleo, saying the officer had a “difficult job” and that he was “mature police officer who’s motivated by serving the community. He’s literally an Eagle Scout.”

    For now, Pantaleo remains on desk duty, and has had his gun and badge taken away pending an internal investigation into the incident. His attorney, Stuart London, said Thursday he was confident Pantaleo would not be prosecuted federally.

    “There’s very specific guidelines that are not met in this case,” London said. “This is a regular street encounter. It doesn’t fall into the parameters.”

    Lots of other good materials and several videos at the link.

    Amnesty International also weighs in: Eric Garner Case Highlights Urgent Need to Review US Policing Practices

    Law enforcement policies on the use of force vary widely from agency to agency and state to state and may not meet international standards. International standards provide that law enforcement officers should only use force as a last resort and that the amount of force must be proportionate to the threat encountered and designed to minimize damage and injury. Officers may use firearms as a last resort – when strictly necessary to protect themselves or others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury. The intentional lethal use of firearms is justified only when “strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.”

    However, as much attention that these cases have received, we truly do not know how many cases happen each and every year. Hundreds of individuals may be shot and killed by law enforcement annually. However, due to the failure of the Department of Justice to collect accurate, comprehensive national data on police use of force, including the numbers of people killed or injured through police shootings or other types of force, it is impossible to truly understand the enormity of the issue across the country. […]

    It is imperative that the Justice Department begin collecting and publishing this data (disaggregated on the basis of race, ethnicity and gender) annually, in accordance with the Violent Crime Control and Enforcement Act (1994). The Department of Justice should play a key role in collecting and publishing data on police shootings in order to determine whether shootings are indicative of trends for individual officers or law enforcement agencies.

    Furthermore, the Department of Justice should champion the need for a special law enforcement commission, to comprehensively examine and produce recommendations on policing tactics, including use of force and lethal force, discriminatory policing, the militarization of police and the policing of protests to produce recommendations and ensure adherence of all law enforcement agencies to human rights standards for law enforcement.

    Amnesty International is urging the Department of Justice to take these crucial steps to ensure that all Michael Browns, Eric Garners, Akai Gurleys, Kajieme Powells, Ezell Fords, Tamir Rices — that all people, especially men of color in the U.S., do not continue to die at the hands of law enforcement in the future. Join us in taking action today!

    Live blog: Protesters hit Chicago streets on Friday. This one is crashing my browser, but it’s just a summary, incl. pictures and video, of action in Chicago.

  126. rq says

    From The Nation, ‘This Is Not a Protest—It Is an Uprising’.

    Cold rain in Washington on Tuesday night didn’t keep people away from a town-hall meeting at Busboys and Poets, where the room reserved for the event was so full that latecomers watched on a projection screen hung in the main dining room. Over more than two hours, a panel and the audience talked about harnessing the energy and anger unleashed by the non-indictment.

    “This is not a protest—it is an uprising,” said Kymone Freeman, an artist and activist who’d recently visited Ferguson, by which he meant: people thousands of miles from Ferguson aren’t shutting down streets only because Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown with impunity, because cops turned a town into a battlefield, and because local officials were either incompetent or malicious; but also because similar expressions of racism surface everywhere. “Ferguson is Anyhood, USA,” said Eugene Puryear, another activist on the panel, who ran for a seat on the DC City Council in November.

    In DC, the Metropolitan Police Department has long been criticized for racial discrimination; at an October city council hearing, residents told a number of illustrative stories, including one about police asking a teenager if his bike was stolen because it looked expensive, and another about officers storming a barbeque and shooting a dog after a report of marijuana use. “From day one, we’ve made it about local issues here, and the ability to take the energy of a mass movement and bring it home to make somebody here in Southeast DC want to be a part of it,” DC Ferguson organizer Salim Adofo said at the meeting. One of the reforms that the group is calling for in DC is an end to “jump-outs,” where officers in unmarked cars suddenly stop and detain people in the street. [‘d never heard of jump-outs before… who comes up with these ideas???]

    An agenda put forward by the activist group Black Youth Project 100 includes a number of other reforms that could be implemented at the local level, such as establishing or strengthening community police-review boards (elected bodies with independent authority to investigate police misconduct); ending police presence and zero-tolerance policies in schools; and decriminalizing marijuana. Adam Inyang, who works with BYP100’s DC chapter, told me at a demonstration last week that the group would be pressuring city officials to move on those changes in the coming months, particularly for the creation of a review board. “A lot of people are concerned that this whole thing is gonna taper off, is gonna end, is gonna die out like many of the other situations. But we’re stepping up to continue to organize and to continue to drive these points forward,” Inyang said. “That’s what we can strive to now.” [… – look at these people go, all you people insisting black people are lazy and not willing to address major issues or improve their own communities, look!]

    Small-scale reforms—requiring police to wear body cameras, for example—have attracted most of the attention from politicians and the media, but Puryear was talking about mobilizing for more fundamental change. “If we recognize the system doesn’t work for us, we need a new system,” he said. “If you want to get rid of that system, then you’re talking about getting rid of capitalism. I know people are afraid to say that, but it’s true.” [Whether it’s capitalism spec. at fault can probably be debated, but that the system is corrupt? Yes.]

    What was clear from the meeting at Busboys was that activists in DC are ready to escalate, not to back down. “We’re going to shut stuff down, I promise you that,” said Erika Totten, who described herself as a soccer mom from Alexandria, Virginia, and said she was trying to protect her children.

    Several speakers expressed frustration with President Obama’s tepid response, particularly the claim he made after the grand jury announcement that he’s “never seen a civil-rights law or a healthcare bill or an immigration bill result because a car got burned.” Maryland Democrat and Congressional Black Caucus member Elijah Cummings attended the meeting, and he and other members of his caucus came under fire for not supporting an effort in the House to end the transfer of military equipment to local police forces through the Pentagon’s 1033 program.

    “Guess what, President Obama? It was over 100 days of peaceful protest, but we didn’t get a meeting with you then. But now, when Ferguson burns, when protests are happening all over the country, now all of a sudden we can get your attention,” said activist and hip-hop artist Jasiri X. “Now when it burns down you want to have a conversation about putting cameras on police. Well, guess what—it was a video camera that showed Eric Garner being choked by NYPD.” (On Wednesday, a grand jury in Staten Island declined to indict the officer in the case, despite video evidence showing unarmed Garner saying he couldn’t breathe.)

    Ronald Hampton, former executive director of National Black Police Association, noted that “the civil rights struggle wasn’t a quiet struggle, it wasn’t, ‘Can you give this to me?’ ” He went on, “I’m not condoning violence, but I’m telling you I’m tired of doing this. I’m tired of doing this. So it’s time for us to be serious about what it’s going to take. And it’s going to take us being up in the street.”

    I took out very little of that article, and have bolded some items that struck me the most.
    And did you get that??? There’s even a National Black Police Association, it’s not just official segregation at the local level!!!

    Rabbis Recite Kaddish, Jewish Mourning Prayer, For Eric Garner, Later Arrested In NYC Protest

    B’nai Jeshurun’s Rabbi J. Rolando Matalon said the ceremony was planned months in advance, and when the grand jury decision was announced it was clear to him and others that a demonstration of their concern was in order.

    “It was all very peaceful and respectful but carried a great deal of concern and the commitment that we have to make serious change in our justice system and in our society to eradicate racism,” Matalon told HuffPost over the phone. “These incidents which are now a recurring pattern of the deaths of black men at the hands of police are issues of tremendous concern.”

    The protesters recited the kaddish, a Jewish mourning prayer delivered in memory of loved ones — video of which several participants posted to Facebook and can be viewed below. During the prayer attendees read the names of more than 20 black individuals who had been killed by New York police, followed by the statement, “I am responsible.”

    Matalon said the purpose of the kaddish was to deliver a “symbolic action” of community solidarity and to offer some hope for the future.

    And then they got arrested. Woot!

    Not sure if this is the same video as above (I only watched the previous one, sorry), but here’s another: NYC 12/04/14: Shut It Down For Eric Garner

    On December 4th, 2014, thousands of protesters shutdown large parts of New York City including the Holland Tunnel, the West Side Highway, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, the Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive, Times Square and the Lincoln Tunnel to protest a grand jury and prosecutor’s failure to indict the police for killing Eric Garner. The protests began at 5:30 PM and lasted until almost 3:00AM. By the end of the night, there were over 200 arrests. This footage follows demonstrators as they shut down the Holland Tunnel, the West Side Highway, Broadway, Times Square, and the Lincoln Tunnel.

    CNN on protests, Protests feature demands, die-ins and calls for justice

    Streets in major cities throughout the United States — Boston, Chicago, Miami and New Orleans, among them — filled again Friday night with protesters.

    And while crowds appeared to be smaller than previous nights, marchers were just as passionate about their voices being heard.

    One sign held by a young black man in Washington read simply: “I could be next.”

    The protests are a response to the decision Wednesday by a New York grand jury not to charge police Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the chokehold death of Eric Garner during his Staten Island arrest, which was captured on cell phone video.

    They come a week after another decision not to indict by a grand jury in St. Louis County, Missouri, examining the killing of African-American teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer.

    In New York, protesters in the rain passed out a list of demands to the media regarding the Garner death in July.

    The top demands were for all officers involved to be fired, for a special prosecutor to be appointed to investigate all complaints of excessive force and for the state Legislature to make a chokehold punishable by significant penalties. […]

    Protesters flooded Macy’s iconic Herald Square location and staged a die-in as holiday shoppers looked on. Later, the flood of demonstrators shut off Times Square to traffic for 10 minutes before the crowd headed down 42nd Street, shouting, “This is what democracy looks like.”

    They stopped again in Bryant Park and ringed a set of shops. Many of the workers in those stores came out and, in support, raised their hands in the air. […]

    In Washington, the demonstrators held several four-minute long silent die-ins to empathize with the family of Michael Brown, a Missouri teenager who lie in the street for four hours after he was fatally shot by a police officer.

    “I’m not an angry black man. I’m an outraged, hurt black man,” [THIS!!!] one of the protest organizers told CNN. […]

    In Chicago, Elizabeth Huston, a paralegal, joined in for the first time.

    “So many people realize this is a problem. This is disproportionally affecting black men and women,” she said.

    In Cleveland, protesters there marched over the death of Tamir, 12, who police say had a lifelike air gun and didn’t comply with an officer’s commands.

    “CPD what do you say? How many kids have you killed today,” they yelled. […]

    The demand for change in how law enforcement deals with minorities has been broad, with protests involving untold thousands of demonstrators from coast to coast, in towns both large and small.

    “It’s happening in every city, every town. It’s happening here in Pittsburgh,” Julia Johnson told CNN affiliate WPXI on Thursday.

    In many ways, it appears to be based on the Occupy Wall Street movement, which generated protests in New York and elsewhere in 2011 over inequality, corporate influence and other issues.

    The largely leaderless and underground movement is using social media to organize protests, which have morphed from a wide-ranging agenda to a tight focus on the issue of police violence against black men.

    The mostly peaceful protests shared many similarities with the protests of the Civil Rights era — marches, signs, civil disobedience.

    One Asian-American protester felt inspired by the 1960s marches, but said she believes that struggle shows change will take a long time. “If you think about the civil rights movement, it took 10 years for anything to happen between the protests and the boycotts of the buses to the actual Civil Rights Act,” she said.

    Author and CNN commentator Michaela Angela Davis was marching in a mixed crowd of mostly white students chanting “black lives matter.”

    The blocked streets didn’t bother her so much. It’s democracy, she said.

    “I feel like we are seeing the American project at work. It is messy; it is difficult.”

    Some more at the link, but that’s the general gist.

    And in the case of Akai Gurley, Brooklyn district attorney confirms he will convene a grand jury in police shooting of unarmed black man in stairwell. It’s just a link to the headline, will look for article later.

  127. rq says

    Truman State. That one should have gone with some of the others, it’s the last of its kind left in my open tabs.

    Attention, Canadiens. From Canada, a video on police brutality and militarization in Toronto: TRAILER: What World Do You Live In?

    A collaborative video and activism project between long-time community filmmaker Rebecca Garrett and Sanctuary, a church community drop-in, evolves into an unflinching documentary immersion into the world of police and security guard violence against people who are poor, homeless, and racialized in Toronto.

    “We have to stop calling the police,” says activist Anna Willats. The message resonates in dozens of stories collected by street pastor Doug Johnson Hatlem.

    Stunning testimony, images, and commentary are woven together with unique video of police assaults and previously unreleased footage from multiple important events in Toronto.


    Conflict erupts over nonviolent responses to overwhelming police impunity. Meanwhile, the increasing militarization of public spaces forces us all to ask: What World Do You Live In?

    And it’s official: Missouri AG confirms Michael Brown grand jury misled by St. Louis DA

    The background of this situation: Lawrence O’Donnell reported that after reviewing the transcripts of the grand jury, his analyst discovered that the assistant district attorneys working for Bob McCulloch gave the jurors an outdated copy of Missouri law, which stated all that was required for an officer to use deadly force is their “reasonable belief” that there was a threat.

    In 1985, in Tennessee v. Garnerdirectly before Darren Wilson’s testimony giving the impression that all that was required under the law for Wilson to kill Michael Brown with impunity was his belief that he was in danger, without the additional requirement of probable cause for such a belief.

    The Missouri AG now proclaims that was wrong, and that the Missouri Law needs to be changed and updated to reflect the Supreme Court’s ruling.

    […]

    O’Donnell: The Missouri Attorney General says “The Police Use of Deadly Force Law in Missouri must be changed.” in response to my question to the Attorney General he said:

    “Among the problems tha Ferguson has brought to light is the need to update Missouri’s use of deadly force statute. This statute is inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s holding in Tennessee v. Garner. Consequently, it is important this statutue be amended by the Missouri legislature to incorporate the Garner decision to avoid confusion in the criminal justice system”

    Chris Koster
    Missouri Attorney General

    O’Donnell: As I have stated on this program there should be no confusion in the criminal justice system because the United States Supreme Court clarified the proper, and legal, and constitutional use of deadly force by police, 29 years ago.

    There are two clear possibilities here. Either the St. Louis County District Attorney’s Office was aware of this conflict and deliberately attempted to give the Grand Jury a false impression of the law, only to slip in a unclear, unexplained “correction” at the last minute which would be far too weak to override the prevailing impression gained from weeks of testimony which had been reviewed through a jaundiced lens…

    Or…

    The St. Louis County and other DA’s throughout the state have been regularly misleading juries and grand juries with the mistaken and wrong impression that probable cause is not required for law enforcement before deliberate deadly force can be deployed legally because they just don’t know any better.

    And worse even still, are Officers walking the streets of Missouri – or other states – also under this incorrect impression that all they need to use deadly force is to “feel threatened”?

    The answer seems to be ‘yes’.

    What The Justice Department Finds When It Investigates City Police Is Truly Disturbing

    The Justice Department doesn’t bring a case against state or local police unless it has reason to believe officers are systematically depriving citizens of their rights — which means reviews are often compelled by particularly egregious allegations of law enforcement violations, or at the request of an official or a group that has collected complaints from the community. This process has been used to investigate dozens of police departments across the nation. Only a handful of these reviews have focused on cities, but when they have, they’ve found disturbing parallels regarding the widespread use of excessive force by police. The fact that it often takes a highly publicized tragedy for the Justice Department to get involved raises questions about just how pervasive this issue is in cities across the United States, given that such incidents may not always receive national attention.

    Below are excerpts from the reviews of five city police forces investigated by the Justice Department. The details found in the complete reports are far more unsettling.

    Read at your own peril. Albuquerque, New Orleans, Newark, Portland and Seattle are on the short list published here. I have no doubt that there are many, many, many more (up to and including St Louis) that could be included on that list.

  128. rq says

    Durham North Carolina.

    OMG and there’s a rumour that a second Ferguson witness has been murdered (related to the most recent LA cop-shooting story?), but here’s the thing: no Ferguson witnesses have been murdered. Deandre Joshua, who died during the protests following the GJ announcement, was not a witness at the GJ.

    As if that man couldn’t be loved any more: Idris Elba on Eric Garner, ‘Mi Mandela,’ and Selling Weed to Dave Chappelle The relevant bit:

    As far as mi Mandela goes, Mandela helped put an end to Apartheid in South Africa, but in America, there are big problems when it comes to race, as evidenced by the fates of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. I hate to use such a tired cliché, but it does feel like the more things change, the more they stay the same.

    It’s very frustrating. It’s been this way for a very long time in America, and there are waves where it becomes more publicized. It’s an absolute shame that there is no justice for Eric Garner. It’s an absolute shame. That is bound to put a dent in public confidence in the police. It’s bound to. And that’s where the situation gets circular. It’s a damn shame because it really does not feel like people are paying attention to that rising issue. It’s a crisis, and people don’t seem to be paying enough attention.

    You can’t really have more evidence than that Garner video.

    Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

    You lived in New York City about 15 years ago before you really blew up. Did you ever have any bad run-ins with the NYPD?

    No, I didn’t.

    Aw dang, that’s all. Boo. Other interesting stuff in there, touching on being a black actor in the Hollywood movie industry. So partially relevant anyway.

  129. says

    Ye gods and fishes, that’s vile – for that NYPD union arsehole to be saying they’re being ‘thrown under the bus’ by being criticised for standing behind their killer colleagues. I do not believe it is coincidence, but projection, that leads them to choose the image of ‘something heavy is on top of me’ to characterise this criticism, like Wilson’s pathetic bullshit about being a child against Mike Brown’s demonic bulk (they were of similar heights, actually, and Wilson had a car, firearms, a gang of willing thugs on the way for backup, and body armour, vs Brown’s dark skin – but we’re to believe he was the terrified one, not the unarmed teen he executed in the street for not respectin’ his authoriteh). Once again, the illegal punishments they dole out for the failure to kowtow are claimed as the rhetorical equivalent to being criticised for them, leading to false equivalencies and positioning them as the oppressed group.

    It makes as much sense as the Fox News’ War on Christmas does, which is to say, none, but it’s a very effective propaganda tool for getting whites to be comfortable with those illegal killings when it becomes (as I believe is the intent) conflated with the original shocking uppityness that the police blame for them.

    That is, it provides a preemptive justification for the next one – because there’s always a next one – by planting the idea that if these kinds of ‘disrespect’ are what cops have to face just as criticism, imagine how badly the poor dears must be treated when they’re bravely trying to enforce the law! What choice do they have, really, right?

    My physics is a bit shaky. It’s totally possible for a bunch of meteors to spontaneously descend and fortuitously wipe everyone who looks like me out? I know, there are a few of us who try, but fuck, it’s nowhere near enough, and if POC ever did to us who are white 1/10th of what we do to them, there’d be a lot more loud voices calling for genocide against them. I think we’ve earned it, haven’t we? I’m so disgusted by what we’ve built.

  131. says

    Toronto Police Services Board Chair Alok Mukherjee posted this image on his facebook page (poster saying “Americans killed by ISIS: 3; Americans killed by Ebola: 2; Americans killed by police: 500+ every year” with caption “Just a reminder of who is the enemy in this world.”) with the comment “I can’t breathe”. He was reprimanded by the mayor and others & forced to apologise (& presumably pull down the post). The Toronto police union has called for his resignation.

  132. says

    From rq’s CNN link @126:

    The largely leaderless and underground movement is using social media to organize protests, which have morphed from a wide-ranging agenda to a tight focus on the issue of police violence against black men.

    (bolding mine)
    What was that about erasing women from the picture? ::sigh::

    ****

    Police kill another unarmed black man:

    Phoenix, Arizona – Tuesday night, 34-year-old Rumain Brisbon was shot and killed by a police officer, because the officer mistakenly thought that he was carrying a gun. The Phoenix Police Department has not yet revealed the name of the officer responsible for the murder, but the smear campaign, by the media, against the victim has already begun.

    According to police, the officers involved were investigating Brisbon because some neighbors allegedly told them that someone in an SUV was selling drugs in a nearby apartment complex. From the start, this story seems suspicious as police often use fabricated “anonymous” tips as a justification to search and harass people who they are interested in profiling. The family also suggests that a false report may have been possible.

    Brisbon’s family says that he was simply going out to get dinner, and had returned home with two McDonald’s bags when he was attacked by police.

    The officers claim that they approached Brison’s SUV, and say that he seemed to be moving things around in his vehicle and moving things around in his pockets. When police attempted to interrogate him, Brisbon reportedly fled into the apartment complex.

    The officer hunted him through the apartment complex and tackled him, wrestling the man into the doorway of his own apartment. In the scuffle, the officer shot and killed Brisbon in the doorway of his home, in front of his girlfriend and their small children. After searching the man’s body, police found that the object in Brisbon’s pocket was just a bottle of pills, and that he was actually unarmed during the chase.

    “When our officer lost his grip on the suspect’s hand — in close quarters with the suspect — our officer fired two rounds, striking the suspect in the torso with both rounds, ending the confrontation with the individual,” Phoenix Police Sergeant Trent Crump said in a statement.

    When police went back and searched his SUV, they did find a legally owned firearm. However, Brisbon actually made the conscious decision to leave that gun behind so it stands to reason that he had no intent on hurting the officer.

    Also found in the car was a small amount of marijuana, which he was also legally licensed to possess under Arizona state law, a friend of the family told The Free Thought Project this week.

    As for the bottle of pills in his pocket, his family says that they could have been legally prescribed to him from a work-related injury. The police department has neglected to mention these facts to the media, but instead, has instructed them to paint Brisbon as a criminal, suggesting that the legally owned weapon and legally prescribed drugs were evidence that the man was a drug dealer. Even if he was a drug dealer, which it seems that there is a very good chance he was not, the police should not have a right to take his life.

    The mainstream media will surely latch onto the small and irrelevant details about the marijuana in the car, or Brisbon’s prior drug charges to justify the actions of this officer. However, is having a prior drug conviction grounds for a death sentence? Is running away from police or disobeying an officer grounds to be killed?

    Sadly, according to police departments, juries, and mainstream media organizations all over the country, anyone who commits a non-violent offense or disobeys a police officer deserves whatever violence is inflicted upon them. It is this prevailing attitude which allows these murders to continue on a daily basis.

    “Let’s be very clear: The officer was doing what we expect him to do, and that is, investigating crimes that neighbors are telling him are occurring in that apartment complex. This one went bad, from the standpoint of how it ended, but the officer was doing exactly what we want him to do,” Police Sergeant Crump said.

    However, the victim’s family tells a different story.

    “While grieving, the family has to endure false media headlines, that accuse Rumain for being “a drug dealer and the cop as a hero.” This false accusation led to his death and his hero is nothing more than a murderer with a badge. As an open to carry firearms state (in Arizona), police found a small handgun in Rumain’s vehicle. He didn’t take the gun out to shoot back at any policemen. It was simply left behind and he ran away unarmed. It’s been reported, the drugs that claim to have been found, was of no large amount for any type of distribution,” the family said in a statement.

    People from the community that Rumain lived in are speaking out and saying that he was a good man who was no threat to anyone. Supporters have planned a rally for Rumain on December 4th, at 8pm at 424 N Central Ave, Phoenix, Arizona 85004.

    You can also donate to the family’s legal fund at this LINK.

  134. rq says

    A few things tonight, but not too much right now.
    Portland;
    sign: if you are neutral, you are on the side of the oppressor (“the standard you walk past is the standard you accept”);
    Paris (yes, France!).

    Ferguson businesses wary of GoFundMe fraud while rebuilding

    A few days later Mershon decided she would begin rebuilding with a GoFundMe account. Mershon says her request was rejected when she tried to do it online. “There was a campaign opened on my behalf which I was very surprised, because I didn’t know the person who started the campaign.”

    After reporting the issue to the site`s fraud department Mershon learned a woman in Georgia set up the account the day after the businesses burned. That bogus account was quickly shut down.

    Mershon says donations are appreciated but she has a message for consumers. “I wanted people to know that you have to beware, you never know and to get out there and research yourself.”

    The account only generated $100 before it was shut down. Kaye Mershon never got any of that. But she did start her own GoFundMe account and it is available for those who want to help. She says the kindness of strangers has a healing effect.

    St. Louis Board of Aldermen Meeting 12/05/2014 . It’s two hours, and I’m really sorry, there was a specific reason I had that open, but I forget what it was. I leave it up there.

  135. rq says

    ‘Kay, this is a terrible one on more bigotry in Kansas City, potentially racism, potentially islamophobia, also all of the above. And it is gruesome, so TW on this. Muslim-hating man rams Missouri teen with SUV, severing his legs and killing him

    The second boy was not seriously hurt in the impact, but the deceased 15-year-old’s legs were severed at the scene and he reportedly lost a tremendous amount of blood. Paramedics rushed him to Children’s Mercy Hospital where a surgical team labored in vain to save him.

    The suspect reportedly rammed the boys and the second car, then tried to flee the scene, but his vehicle was too badly damaged. Police said that he then tried to run away, but was apprehended.

    The boy’s family and other people involved with the Somali Center told WADF that the suspect has been threatening them for months, even waving a gun at some attendees and telling them he was going to kill them for being Muslim.

    This is the only article I can find on this right now. Muslim teen “Adam” Hussein run over/ killed outside of Kansas City mosque. Why no national media? #ICantBreathe. He looks black, so I vote all of the above. Post-racial America.

    Seattle.

    Waiting to hear more on the man shot in LA for wielding a pocket knife. At least he wasn’t black (and prepare for this to be used as a ‘police kill everybody!’ defense to counter the hundreds of black lives lost to police bullets).

  137. rq says

    And this happened at one of the Eric Garner memorial marches. No joke.

    Are we surprised? Mayor de Blasio pushes back against upcoming Council bid to criminalize NYPD use of choke hold. No, we are not surprised!!!

    Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Queens) plans to introduce legislation on Thursday that would make it against the law for an officer to use a choke hold.

    “Relying on NYPD policy to eliminate choke holds isn’t working very well. We need to up the ante,” Lancman told the Daily News on Wednesday night. […]

    De Blasio noted Wednesday that retraining cops on the protocol is “the best way to handle that.”

    “What’s going to happen is the retraining of the entire police department on a variety of approaches, including the fact that the choke hold is not an appropriate tool to use,” de Blasio said Wednesday.

    In September, the mayor previously expressed his opposition to any effort to make a choke hold an illegal police action, saying that “there has to be some flexibility” for police.

    More uplifting: Meet the BART-stopping woman behind “Black Lives Matter”

    The protesters then walked into a BART car headed for San Francisco and locked themselves down to the safety rails inside with cables and bicycle u-locks. Then they locked themselves to each other, forming a human chain that extended out of the car and onto the platform. With the doors blocked, the train couldn’t leave the station. Their goal was to shut down BART for four and a half hours — the length of time that Michael Brown’s body lay in the street. They lasted about an hour and a half; the police ended up disassembling part of the BART car to remove them.

    Who were these people? I wondered. It wasn’t just that there was a protest; ever since a grand jury had refused to indict Darren Wilson for murder the week before, protests had been playing out in both San Francisco and Oakland. Then I learned that one of the BART occupiers — an organizer with the National Domestic Workers Alliance named Alicia Garza — had actually devised the slogan “Black Lives Matter” years ago, with two other organizers: Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi. I had to know more.

    I was in luck. Both Garza and Cullors made the time to talk about civil rights, the trouble with charismatic figureheads, and what it’s like to have the project that you created with your friends turn into the chosen slogan of a mass movement. […]

    Q. This phrase that you came up with, Black Lives Matter – it’s now being used by everyone. What has that been like, seeing this phrase that you came up with turn into the catchphrase of the movement?

    A. Garza: We’ve been humbled at how so many folks across the country have come together under this banner. It’s been used in a whole bunch of different ways, some of which are not appropriate. All Lives Matter. Animals Lives Matter. All kinds of stuff. So when people approach us and want to change it, we ask the question — why do you want to change it? When we start to say “All lives matter” we start to represent this post-racial narrative that quite frankly isn’t true. Of course all lives matter.

    Language is something that is malleable and mutable and that’s one of the beautiful things about it. But we also have to think about what’s embedded in our culture, and what’s embedded in our culture is a real fear of black folks and black lives. And a real disdain for black lives. For us it’s a not about being proprietary. It’s about, “What are you actually saying?”

    Q. How did you meet each other?

    A. Garza: Patrisse and Opal and I are all part of a network called Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD). That’s some of how we know each other. Opal is the executive director for an organization called the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. And so — we cross paths through different circles.

    Cullors: A lot happens through social media. Conferences. Hearing about each other. Especially being black organizers, there are not a whole lot of us in the states. I think BOLD has been a guide in bringing us together. And then the murder of Mike Brown brought people who have been doing this for years, like Alicia and I — together with a significant number of black people, and allies.

    Q. But Black Lives Matter dates back to Trayvon Martin, right?

    A. Garza:Very good! Yes, Black Lives Matter did start after George Zimmerman was acquitted after the murder of Trayvon Martin. Opal and Patrice and I were on pins and needles to see what the verdict would be. When the verdict was announced and George Zimmerman was acquitted, we saw a lot of things in our community — black folks, but also progressives across the country — that we thought needed to be shifted.

    Q. What needed to be shifted?

    A. Garza: We were hearing “Well, he’s never going to be convicted for killing a black child.” And, “I’m not surprised.” And “What do you expect?” That was not an acceptable response. We do know that the justice system often does not work on our behalf. But we though it was important not to carry a message of resignation, but instead to carry a message of indignation, and resistance.

    The fundamental question is: how do we create a world where black lives matter? Where there are no more Trayvon Martins walking to the store with a hoodie on and talking to their girlfriend on the phone and being mistaken for a threat. How do we make sure that there are no more Jordan Davises, or Renisha McBrides?

    The reality is that George Zimmerman going to jail, or not, is not the fundamental question. It’s bigger than policing. It felt really important that the narrative out there about black men being the only ones to be impacted by state violence isn’t true. Black trans folks are also black folks, and they are disproportionately targeted. When we’re talking about Black Lives Matter, we’re talking about all black lives.

    Q. Someone sent me a link to a video of Philip Agnew. He’s part of the group of Ferguson activists who met with Obama recently. In the video he mentioned queer people — which was interesting, because usually in progressive circles, you don’t hear about queer people unless someone is specifically organizing around queer issues.

    A. Cullors: That’s right. He should have mentioned them. This is our generation. There’s no leaving people behind. This is not about respectability politics. This is not about the black person in the suit and tie, the black person who goes to church on Sunday. This is about all black people — our relationship to this country and its relationship to us.

    Q. Were there other instances of people using the phrase widely between then and Ferguson?

    A. Cullors: Imagine having a significant amount of grief. It was a call of desperation. It was an “enough is enough call.” It was not, “feel sympathetic and be sorry for black people.” We were proclaiming that black lives matter no matter who you are, no matter what you are, no matter what you think. […]

    Q. One of the things that I noticed when I was writing about Ferguson was just how many stories there are like it – many of them happening right around the same time. Why do you think people coalesced around this case?

    A. Cullors: I think that St. Louis and Ferguson caught wind because there was an uprising. And folks kept coming back. Mike Brown was murdered on Aug. 9. One of my closest friends was like, “Patrisse. Are you looking at Twitter.” Our Twitter feed was flooded with an image of a young black body lying on the ground for hours and no one at law enforcement doing a thing about it.

    And then as the day goes on, people protest and hold a candlelight vigil and the police arrive with M16s and dogs. This juxtaposition of the black protestor up against these police officers — mostly white, male police officers — essentially trying to hold space for the grief that comes from witnessing such a tragedy, and what’s coming back is tear gas and rubber bullets. I think the act of people coming back every day and saying “enough is enough” with their bodies — just showing up — was what moved me and what moved black folks across the country to say, “This happens in our own communities.” There were protests about Oscar Grant but those died down. There was a need for us to keep this going. So three weeks later, with Darnell Moore, we organized cities across the country — 500 people across the country to ride to Ferguson as part of a Black Lives Matter ride.

    Q. One thing that I’ve noticed about the protests this week is that they feel very organized. Were they planned? It seems unlikely that they would be totally spontaneous.

    A. Cullors: That’s because they weren’t. The uprising after Mike Brown’s murder was spontaneous. But what you’ve seen in the last month — there’s been a significant amount of organization. Alicia and I have been on the ground in Ferguson a handful of times now.

    There’s a certain naiveté about how protests happen. What people don’t understand is that we’re organizers. That means we’re organized. A lot of people have put a significant amount of work into doing this across the country. Around putting together a set of demands. Around the call Black Lives Matter. Direct Action is one tactic. There is a strategy. And whether or not we’re blasting it on social media, that is happening.

    Garza: People see each other out in the streets, night after night, and start to get curious about who each other are. People build relationships with each other. The other thing that’s important to understand — a lot of where the lack of comprehension comes is that this is a new movement.

    We are rejecting a lot of the things that don’t work — things that we’ve done in the past. It’s important to not keep doing the same thing over and over, and expect to get different results. There’s an activist in St. Louis called Tef Poe and he always says, “This is not your grandparents civil rights movement.” Without being disrespectful to the real sacrifices people made, what’s real is that this is our generation’s time. We’re going to do it the way that we know how. […]

    Q. What will winning look like? Will it be a national database that will track incidents of police violence? Will it be body cameras for police?

    A. Cullors: I think there’s obviously policy changes — you know, Michelle Alexander calls it the new Jim Crow. We would see less funding towards law enforcement. We would see more funding in black communities towards shelter and food and education.

    But we have to do more than that. We have to shift culture. Darren Wilson killed Mike Brown because he thought he looked like a demon. Policy is not going to shift that. Jim Crow laws are gone, but we still have Jim Crow hate.

    Obama just pushed for this hundred-something million dollars toward body cameras. OK, that’s an interesting first step. That was definitely one of the demands. But we can’t think that body cameras are going to change policing. We have to actually think about public safety from a holistic view. Often when people talk about public safety they mean policing — but public safety also means when people don’t have to go to bed hungry and when people have a roof over their heads. That’s what makes communities safe.

    Garza: One thing I am really grateful for is the demand to create a national plan of action around racial justice. We need a comprehensive plan for how to address these things. It does feel really important that we really break open what is racism and how does it work and how do we fix it. People who want the protests to stop and the unrest to stop don’t realize that it’s not just about people being nice to each other — that there’s this whole complex web of ways where some people have lower life chances than others.

    Q. What do you think a national plan of action would look like? Are there precedents for this?

    A. Garza: After decades of unrest around racism. the federal government in the late ’60s and early ’70s did create a whole set of agendas that were intended to really dive into this issue of why we have inequity in this country. So we had the War on Poverty — which, with the rise of neoconservatives, became the War on Drugs, which was actually a war on black people.

    People think, “Well, you had the civil rights movement, and now black people are equal, so what are you complaining about?” It’s important that we really talk about how that is a stage in an unfinished project that really has been going on for hundreds of years.

    It’s a great interview.

  141. rq says

    Oh ye NEGs.
    Bar in St. Joseph, MO advertises 6 shot “Michael Brown” special    .

    Amidst claims that we live in a “post racial society” and a popular uprising against police murder, white racists in America have been coming out of the woodwork, particularly in Missouri. Just as residents and police from Rosebud, MO were creating a corridor of hate around the “march for justice” that was heading to Jefferson city, a bar called “Mugshots” in St. Joseph Missouri advertised a “six shot Michael Brown Special.” […]

    This is not an isolated incident. There are 6 other unconfirmed St Joe bars running this special. People are confronting the owners, but the bars are just one arm of systematic white supremacy in the US. The St. Joseph Police arrest black people 309 times more than non-white, per 1000 people.

    Quite possibly one of the most aggravating and ridiculous aspects of these situations is the outright denial of blatant racism. Mugshots posted these memes trying to exploit the memory and message of Martin Luther King Jr. for their own messages of hate and intolerance.[…]

    Mug Shots location is 1720 St. Joe Avenue, and their phone number is 816-279-2484. Concerned citizens are encouraged to call and complain.

    Boulder;
    Union Square.

  142. says

    Even war criminal George W Bush finds Eric Garner decision hard to understand

    George W. Bush, one of the architects of two illegal wars in search of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, and defender of torture as a means of information extraction, may not be the first, second, third, or ninety-seventh person to whom one would look for moral guidance, but the former President’s reaction to a New York grand jury’s failure to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the choking death of Eric Garner is one shared by many: How could this happen?

    “You know, the verdict was hard to understand,” he said in an interview with CNN. “But I hadn’t seen all the details — but it’s sad that race continues to play such an emotional, divisive part of life.” Bush said that he found the video of Garner being mercilessly choked to death was “sad,” but noted that the United States has improved since the “race riots with cities being burned” he remembers in the 1970’s.

    The former President said that he and his Iraq war sidekick Condoleezza Rice discussed the unrest that has followed the recent failures to indict two white police officers for the deaths of two African-American men.

  143. toska says

    Video of broadway stars doing a street performance about the recent Eric Garner decision. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpfTos6NroM

    “Let’s discuss this … let our mouths be our muskets … this congregation has come together to discuss it’s dissent of police matters … how can you question your suspects once they lay dead at your hands? … it’s suspect, how quickly your suspects turn to victims … it’s a slippery slope, it’s your job to bear arms, but not to wrap your bare arms around throats like rope, like, boa constrictors, “I cant breathe!” being screamed in a whisper, so, for those of you who wear the blue, let’s get this clear … I fear, that until the injustice stops, red, white and blue will go down in history represented by the blood unjustly stained on the uniforms of cops … this is how we shoot back.”

  144. says

    Georgia school teacher fired for protesting Michael Brown decision

    ****
    Fuck, I didn’t know the NYPD deployed a Long Range Acoustic Device (aka LRAD) against protesters

    Shay Horse, an independent photojournalist who was on the scene, posted on the internet that “The NYPD began using it after glass bottles were thrown at them when they made several violent arrests when a march tried to cross Madison Ave.”

    One person who was present at the scene, Moth Dust, a photographer, said people became aggravated after the LRAD was used and began throwing trash and rocks in the direction of police. She said she was affected by the sound waves.

    “I thought I was fine until I realized I was getting dizzy and migraine was spreading to all over my face,” she said.

    LRADs were used in the first days of unrest in Ferguson Missouri, and have been used by police at protests throughout the world. They were developed by the US military after an insurgent attack on the US.S. Cole in Yemen in 2000, and were used by the NYPD against Occupy Wall Street protesters.

    According to Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty,

    “The LRAD can reach decibel levels as high as 162. For comparison, a normal conversation is usually 60 decibels, while a lawn mower can reach to 90 decibels. A level of 130 decibels is typically considered the average pain threshold for most humans.”

    Furthermore, Informed Health Online notes that a jet engine registers at about 140 decibels. Anything at or above this range, IHO explains, “is called acoustic trauma. Depending on how long the ears are exposed to the sound and how intense it is, it may damage the eardrum, the middle ear and/or the inner ear. Damage like this is usually temporary, but some hearing loss may remain.”

    The head investor and media relations for the LRAD Corporation in San Diego, California, told Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty that the weapon is so precise that those “standing behind or next to” the device can hardly hear it. However, the YouTube footage shows dozens of people scurrying away from the sound blasts, which can be heard clearly on film.

    No coverage of the LRAD use was reported in the mainstream media. Earlier in the night, around 11 PM , CNN correspondent Brooke Baldwin praised the behavior of protesters and the NYPD’s response to the protests, remarking on live television, “This is exactly how it’s supposed to be.”

    Noel Leader, a former 20 year sergeant of the NYPD and co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, was incredulous about the possibility that an LRAD had been used.

    “I haven’t heard anything about that,” he told AlterNet. “I’d be surprised if that was the case, because most of the protesters have been nonviolent and peaceful, even though they have been disruptive.

  145. toska says

    I completely missed this story when it happened. Unarmed black woman, Tanisha Anderson, was slammed to the ground by police and died of her injuries.
    http://www.newsnet5.com/news/local-news/investigations/cleveland-woman-praying-lords-prayer-moments-before-dying-in-police-custody

    Sources say family members called 911 for mental health and medical assistance for Anderson the night of Nov. 12.

    But instead, sources say police used a violent “take down” move and Anderson collapsed and was left on the sidewalk in the cold until an ambulance arrived.

    Another family member, Sherman Anderson, called what happened “a classic case of police cover up, police brutality.”

    A police report obtained by newsnet5.com shows a notation that Anderson was “not violent.”

    Meanwhile, Cleveland Police are withholding a 911 call recording placed by family members that sources say confirms they simply were asking for mental health and medical assistance.

    I know black men are particularly targeted by police, but I also feel like the stories of black women victims are being forgotten or erased in this movement. I never see them listed when recent male victims are discussed as a group. It seems like another case of WOC being treated as invisible.

  152. rq says

    Berkeley. Livestreams apparently just went down.
    And violent protestors? Think again: White men in black masks are breaking windows in Berkeley while Black and Brown folks are trying to protest peacefully. This is problematic. With photo.

    Students vs. Cops.

    What was that about ‘equal before the law’ and that ‘if s/he had been white, of course things would be the same’ or ‘if s/he was a black officer, of course things would be the same’?
    Off Duty Black Officer SHot 28x’s by White Officers then Sentenced to 40 Years for Self-Defense     . He begs to differ.

    Morgan was an off duty officer working as a Detective for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, a Black man working the railroad, when he was reportedly pulled over for driving the wrong way down a one way street around the corner from his home. Was the driving on the one way the IDGAF attitude that most police officers have, or a citizen who knows his neighborhood and one tired night just hit that corner? Who knows, but he ended up being shot 28 times by four White Officers that pulled him over. He allegedly fired his weapon in return for purposes of self defense….
    Picture
    After he was shot, miraculously he lived, and was charged with four counts of attempted murder; three counts of aggravated battery and one count of aggravated discharge of a firearm at a police officer…. as a police officer. Makes me think of the lyrics in Askari X’s Uhuru Sasa “Have you ever seen a Black po-po acting like he don’t know he’s on the wrong side?” I bet Mr. Morgan is questioning his previous allegiance to the police department after learning about the level of respect the police have for their own Black officers.

    It has come to light that there was never any forensic investigation to prove that he ever fired his weapon, and the officers would not manage to produce the vest that allegedly was struck by one of Morgans bullets hitting an officer in the chest; they only provided a replica. That’s funny because he’s convicted at this point to 40 years because the last jury to hear his case was not aware that the previous jury had dropped three of the charges he was facing, including the discharge of his weapon.

    So what, they tried him and tried him until they got the conviction they wanted? Yeah, totally equal. Lookin’ at you, Misters Wilson and Panteleo and… all of you.

    Ah, white people. Megyn Kelly ‘Forgets’ To Mention That Her Cop-Defending Garner Guest Is A Convicted Felon

    The segment was clearly designed to suggest that this latest example of a police killing of an unarmed African American has nothing to do with race. But while Kelly was combative, rude and dismissive to National Urban League’s Marc Morial, who tried to explain the African American perspective earlier in the show, she was a vision of hospitality to Kerik.

    Kelly played a brief clip of last night’s protesters before she introduced Kerik. She said, “Joining us now for the other side of this debate, Bernard Kerik, who’s a former New York City police commissioner and a former NYPD officer who received the New York City Police Department medal for valor.”

    But Kelly left out a few details of Kerik’s background. […]

    I’m all for giving a guy a second chance but those are the kinds of facts a network claiming, “we report, you decide” should tell its viewers, don’t you think?

    Especially when Kelly thought it relevant to mention Garner’s record.

    At about 2:48 into the interview, Kerik said he thought both Garner and Ferguson’s Michael Brown would be alive had they not resisted arrest. “And I don’t give a damn what color they were,” Kerik said.

    Kelly added helpfully, “You think if Eric Garner – you know, 300+ pounds, you know, convicted felon – had been white, they would have treated him exactly the same.”

    Yeeeesssss, exactly the same. Dead. So, basically, you’re admitting that you’re okay with cops killing people. That it’s okay for cops to kill anyone, not just black people (they just happen to kill more black people somehow by accident, right?).

    The Stages of What Happens When There’s Injustice Against Black People

    Stage 1: Another Black person is beat up, arrested or killed senselessly
    […]
    Stage 2: People are enraged by the injustice
    […]
    Stage 2.5: People are too tired to be outraged[…]
    Stage 3: Smear Campaign and victim blaming […]
    Stage 3.25: Media asks “What did he/she do?” […]
    Stage 3.5: FOX News confirms that it’s THE WORST […]
    Stage 3.75: The “None of us were there” people […]
    Stage 4: What about Black on Black crime? […]
    Stage 5: Reminding us that “Not All White People” […]
    Stage 5.75: And this is the part where folks let us know that they’re colorblind and they don’t really see race and “This is clearly not about race, YOU GUISE!” […]
    Stage 6: Create a Twitter hashtag to unite the conversation […]
    Stage 7: People protest and are told to be calm […]
    Stage 7.5: Calling protesters rioters […]
    Stage 7.75: Quote MLK to call for peace […]
    Stage 8: You learn how the people you know really feel […]
    Stage 9: The killer walks free […]
    Stage 10: We get to work on dismantling the system brick-by-brick […]

    Awesome art at the link at the end there, check it out.
    Also, stage 8 kind of permeates all the other stages. Some people show their true faces early on, others wait until the killer cop walks free. Meh, it’s all the same in the end.

    Ah, see more Darrick Rose in his shirt. Waiting for the condemnations.

    The Day I Used Eric Garner’s Voice

    That fed-up, tear-stained, sick-of-this-BS voice. That throwing my hands straight up in the air voice, that I don’t care if you think my upraised hands are dangerous or not voice. The voice of Eric Garner, outside his corner store, not theirs. Living his life, not theirs. Minding his own business, not theirs. Moments before he died.

    Scratch that. Eric Garner didn’t “die.” Such a weak, irregular, mismatched verb, “die.” Plop. Jump. Die.

    Eric Garner didn’t just die. His own, personal neck and chest were compressed by five other men until 43 years of life and spirit seeped away. Eric Garner was bent over, wrestled down, spread out, and squeezed until he popped. Call it what you want, but it’s not a regular death.

    But back to that voice. I watched Garner die on tape and wondered why I was crying so hard when I am not that much of a cryer at all. And I thought—Jesus (sincere petition, I try to talk to him with some frequency)—Jesus, the last time I cried these same stupid salty tears, I was using that same voice. Eric Garner’s voice before he died. […]
    The cops are yelling and I sense not just anger in their eyes but also their fear. The thoughts race—I didn’t think I was someone to be afraid of? Maybe I am?

    Should I have worn my suit that day? Called out my credentials? Maybe taken the cold pizza and shut my mouth?

    Wait—what? Why should I have to do any of those things? I am not wrong. My personhood, my place on this earth, and my spot in this goddamn pizza shop are not wrong. There is nothing wrong with me. They are wrong, and I am going to tell them.

    So I tell them, with my Garner voice on full tilt, bent over that table, until the officer tells me that if I say one more word I am “going in the van.” So I have a choice to make.

    Shut up, take it, and leave. Or keep protesting and go to jail.

    Most rational people would do the former, but I am too pissed to be rational. Through tears and anger I keep talking until my dear friend, not handcuffed, covers my mouth with his hand and reminds me that my wife will want to see me that night. That I have an important meeting the next day. That I should just go home.

    So that’s what we do. Go home. Furious, insulted, humiliated, but alive and free. […]

    Unlike Eric Garner, I have the luxury to wonder, to think those thoughts, because after that petty, stupid confrontation, I’m still here.

    And what still haunts me about Garner is his voice. My voice. The same voice that black folks use around this country every day. Watch the video again. Listen to what he said.

    Garner’s dying phrase—“I can’t breathe”—is important, and trending worldwide. But it’s what he proclaimed a few moments before that matters even more.

    “Every time you see me you want to mess with me.”

    “Please just leave me alone.”

    “I’m tired of it. It stops today.” […]

    Importantly, this will not just be about law enforcement. Racism and bias, explicit or implicit, is beginning to be confronted in nearly every aspect of American life, from the classroom to the boardroom to the newsroom, from Silicon Valley to the halls of Congress, and folks will be forced to confront it in their own souls as well as the delusions of a post-racial society crumble and fall.

    Folks are finding their voice. That desperate, honest, human voice, a voice willing to see change, or die, but in any event never to back up again.

    “I’m tired of it. It stops today.”

    Made me cry, that one did.

    Oakland police: Injured, suicidal man lunges at officers, dies at scene Yup that’s the police killing another man, another ‘suicide by cop’?

    Police responded to the 5000 block of Congress Avenue after receiving a call from the man’s roommate that the man was suicidal and acting aggressively after cutting his own wrists and stabbing himself multiple times, Officer Johnna Watson said in a news release.

    Emergency medical personnel were sent to the area to stage until the scene was secure. When officers arrived the man, who was bleeding profusely, came toward them with a knife, Watson said. Officers then used their Tasers to subdue and disarm the man. On-site medical personnel were unable to save him and he died at the scene, Watson said.

  153. rq says

    Splitting this comment, somehow I got 9 links into it without noticing. :P

    Berkeley. Livestreams apparently just went down.
    And violent protestors? Think again: White men in black masks are breaking windows in Berkeley while Black and Brown folks are trying to protest peacefully. This is problematic. With photo.

    Students vs. Cops.

    What was that about ‘equal before the law’ and that ‘if s/he had been white, of course things would be the same’ or ‘if s/he was a black officer, of course things would be the same’?
    Off Duty Black Officer SHot 28x’s by White Officers then Sentenced to 40 Years for Self-Defense     . He begs to differ.

    Morgan was an off duty officer working as a Detective for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, a Black man working the railroad, when he was reportedly pulled over for driving the wrong way down a one way street around the corner from his home. Was the driving on the one way the IDGAF attitude that most police officers have, or a citizen who knows his neighborhood and one tired night just hit that corner? Who knows, but he ended up being shot 28 times by four White Officers that pulled him over. He allegedly fired his weapon in return for purposes of self defense….
    Picture
    After he was shot, miraculously he lived, and was charged with four counts of attempted murder; three counts of aggravated battery and one count of aggravated discharge of a firearm at a police officer…. as a police officer. Makes me think of the lyrics in Askari X’s Uhuru Sasa “Have you ever seen a Black po-po acting like he don’t know he’s on the wrong side?” I bet Mr. Morgan is questioning his previous allegiance to the police department after learning about the level of respect the police have for their own Black officers.

    It has come to light that there was never any forensic investigation to prove that he ever fired his weapon, and the officers would not manage to produce the vest that allegedly was struck by one of Morgans bullets hitting an officer in the chest; they only provided a replica. That’s funny because he’s convicted at this point to 40 years because the last jury to hear his case was not aware that the previous jury had dropped three of the charges he was facing, including the discharge of his weapon.

    So what, they tried him and tried him until they got the conviction they wanted? Yeah, totally equal. Lookin’ at you, Misters Wilson and Panteleo and… all of you.

    Ah, white people. Megyn Kelly ‘Forgets’ To Mention That Her Cop-Defending Garner Guest Is A Convicted Felon

    The segment was clearly designed to suggest that this latest example of a police killing of an unarmed African American has nothing to do with race. But while Kelly was combative, rude and dismissive to National Urban League’s Marc Morial, who tried to explain the African American perspective earlier in the show, she was a vision of hospitality to Kerik.

    Kelly played a brief clip of last night’s protesters before she introduced Kerik. She said, “Joining us now for the other side of this debate, Bernard Kerik, who’s a former New York City police commissioner and a former NYPD officer who received the New York City Police Department medal for valor.”

    But Kelly left out a few details of Kerik’s background. […]

    I’m all for giving a guy a second chance but those are the kinds of facts a network claiming, “we report, you decide” should tell its viewers, don’t you think?

    Especially when Kelly thought it relevant to mention Garner’s record.

    At about 2:48 into the interview, Kerik said he thought both Garner and Ferguson’s Michael Brown would be alive had they not resisted arrest. “And I don’t give a damn what color they were,” Kerik said.

    Kelly added helpfully, “You think if Eric Garner – you know, 300+ pounds, you know, convicted felon – had been white, they would have treated him exactly the same.”

    Yeeeesssss, exactly the same. Dead. So, basically, you’re admitting that you’re okay with cops killing people. That it’s okay for cops to kill anyone, not just black people (they just happen to kill more black people somehow by accident, right?).

    The Stages of What Happens When There’s Injustice Against Black People

    Stage 1: Another Black person is beat up, arrested or killed senselessly
    […]
    Stage 2: People are enraged by the injustice
    […]
    Stage 2.5: People are too tired to be outraged[…]
    Stage 3: Smear Campaign and victim blaming […]
    Stage 3.25: Media asks “What did he/she do?” […]
    Stage 3.5: FOX News confirms that it’s THE WORST […]
    Stage 3.75: The “None of us were there” people […]
    Stage 4: What about Black on Black crime? […]
    Stage 5: Reminding us that “Not All White People” […]
    Stage 5.75: And this is the part where folks let us know that they’re colorblind and they don’t really see race and “This is clearly not about race, YOU GUISE!” […]
    Stage 6: Create a Twitter hashtag to unite the conversation […]
    Stage 7: People protest and are told to be calm […]
    Stage 7.5: Calling protesters rioters […]
    Stage 7.75: Quote MLK to call for peace […]
    Stage 8: You learn how the people you know really feel […]
    Stage 9: The killer walks free […]
    Stage 10: We get to work on dismantling the system brick-by-brick […]

    Awesome art at the link at the end there, check it out.
    Also, stage 8 kind of permeates all the other stages. Some people show their true faces early on, others wait until the killer cop walks free. Meh, it’s all the same in the end.

  154. rq says

    In Berkeley, cops put on gas masks

    Ah, see more Darrick Rose in his shirt. Waiting for the condemnations.

    The Day I Used Eric Garner’s Voice

    That fed-up, tear-stained, sick-of-this-BS voice. That throwing my hands straight up in the air voice, that I don’t care if you think my upraised hands are dangerous or not voice. The voice of Eric Garner, outside his corner store, not theirs. Living his life, not theirs. Minding his own business, not theirs. Moments before he died.

    Scratch that. Eric Garner didn’t “die.” Such a weak, irregular, mismatched verb, “die.” Plop. Jump. Die.

    Eric Garner didn’t just die. His own, personal neck and chest were compressed by five other men until 43 years of life and spirit seeped away. Eric Garner was bent over, wrestled down, spread out, and squeezed until he popped. Call it what you want, but it’s not a regular death.

    But back to that voice. I watched Garner die on tape and wondered why I was crying so hard when I am not that much of a cryer at all. And I thought—Jesus (sincere petition, I try to talk to him with some frequency)—Jesus, the last time I cried these same stupid salty tears, I was using that same voice. Eric Garner’s voice before he died. […]
    The cops are yelling and I sense not just anger in their eyes but also their fear. The thoughts race—I didn’t think I was someone to be afraid of? Maybe I am?

    Should I have worn my suit that day? Called out my credentials? Maybe taken the cold pizza and shut my mouth?

    Wait—what? Why should I have to do any of those things? I am not wrong. My personhood, my place on this earth, and my spot in this goddamn pizza shop are not wrong. There is nothing wrong with me. They are wrong, and I am going to tell them.

    So I tell them, with my Garner voice on full tilt, bent over that table, until the officer tells me that if I say one more word I am “going in the van.” So I have a choice to make.

    Shut up, take it, and leave. Or keep protesting and go to jail.

    Most rational people would do the former, but I am too pissed to be rational. Through tears and anger I keep talking until my dear friend, not handcuffed, covers my mouth with his hand and reminds me that my wife will want to see me that night. That I have an important meeting the next day. That I should just go home.

    So that’s what we do. Go home. Furious, insulted, humiliated, but alive and free. […]

    Unlike Eric Garner, I have the luxury to wonder, to think those thoughts, because after that petty, stupid confrontation, I’m still here.

    And what still haunts me about Garner is his voice. My voice. The same voice that black folks use around this country every day. Watch the video again. Listen to what he said.

    Garner’s dying phrase—“I can’t breathe”—is important, and trending worldwide. But it’s what he proclaimed a few moments before that matters even more.

    “Every time you see me you want to mess with me.”

    “Please just leave me alone.”

    “I’m tired of it. It stops today.” […]

    Importantly, this will not just be about law enforcement. Racism and bias, explicit or implicit, is beginning to be confronted in nearly every aspect of American life, from the classroom to the boardroom to the newsroom, from Silicon Valley to the halls of Congress, and folks will be forced to confront it in their own souls as well as the delusions of a post-racial society crumble and fall.

    Folks are finding their voice. That desperate, honest, human voice, a voice willing to see change, or die, but in any event never to back up again.

    “I’m tired of it. It stops today.”

    Made me cry, that one did.

    Oakland police: Injured, suicidal man lunges at officers, dies at scene Yup that’s the police killing another man, another ‘suicide by cop’?

    Police responded to the 5000 block of Congress Avenue after receiving a call from the man’s roommate that the man was suicidal and acting aggressively after cutting his own wrists and stabbing himself multiple times, Officer Johnna Watson said in a news release.

    Emergency medical personnel were sent to the area to stage until the scene was secure. When officers arrived the man, who was bleeding profusely, came toward them with a knife, Watson said. Officers then used their Tasers to subdue and disarm the man. On-site medical personnel were unable to save him and he died at the scene, Watson said.

  155. rq says

    The most powerful piece at Art Basel Miami Beach is a drawing of the Ferguson police. It is an incredible charcoal drawing of riot police in tear gas back in August. Incredible.

    Untitled (Ferguson Police, August 13, 2014) was drawn by Robert Longo, a New York artist whose photorealistic drawings of pummeling waves and great white sharks convey extreme power. This piece, however, like Longo’s recent seven-panel drawing of the US Capitol Building, conveys something darker, commanding viewers—especially American ones—to pay attention to their current moment and place in society.

    Longo used a composite of photojournalists’ images of the rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, in the days after Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9. A grand jury last week decided not to indict Wilson for Brown’s death.

    “My intent with this work is to evoke the tradition of epic historical battlefield paintings,” said the artist in a statement. “The innumerable amount of images of massed militarized riot police in the streets was shocking to me. It was surreal to see this kind of show of police force on the streets of America, amongst the McDonald’s and Exxon stations…This was not a Hollywood movie. This was not Russia or China or the Middle East. It was here in America on an American street where a violent response to protest had reached an extreme level.”

  156. rq says

    Berkeley.
    More military-style ammunition used against us. #Berkeley #EricGarner #ICantBreathe #FTP ;
    VIDEO: Police use rubber munitions, tear gas and flash bang grenades during #berkeleyprotest http://youtu.be/_cwjIOMMHCk #ICantBreathe;
    Berkeley Police use tear gas to break up #EricGarner protests. Double meaning to #ICantBreathe for protestors.;
    Protesters pick up something that looks like a rubber bullet #berkeleyprotests ;
    So @cnn repeatedly shows looting in Berkeley but never shows police batons smacked over protestor bodies. Such bias. Thank God for streams.

    Remember these are mostly students in Berkeley right now.

  157. says

    rq @154:
    That image is powerful…striking…surreal…frightening.

    Did you see this article at the same site? It’s an animated map showing Twitter users from around the world before and after the grand jury verdict in the Eric Garner case, as well as early 12/4 as protests got underway in New York.

  160. Ichthyic says

    yeah, there’s something wrong with the scripting on Alternet. it’s totally broken on Firefox; can’t even click links.

  162. rq says

    This is supposed to be an updated livestream from Berkeley but it’s not opening for me.

    Found on the street by student protester;
    cops just burst forward with batons and arrested a few protestors, didn’t see what caused it #berkeley ;
    In Berkeley people protesting due to Ferguson, outside sisters friends window;
    cops shooting tear gas and marching down telegraph #berkeley ;
    ashby/telegraph. lot of confusion. some folks getting tear gas out of their faces, and ppl yelling at anarchists to quit messing with stuff.

    Lots of tear gas first aid and other advice going around on twitter, esp. from Ferguson protestors who were out in August, such as dealing with the aftermath and that it’s oaky to go home (“Just remember to come back tomorrow, and the next day, and the next!”), calling on others to come out and show that they will not be silenced.

  165. rq says

    PS Going to check in with CBC and the Toronto Star while there. See how they skew the protests.

  166. rq says

    Just made that picture (at the QZ link) my desktop background at work.

    From the CBC, this article appears to be from Friday. Still nothing on yesterday/today in Berkeley.
    Anyway, Eric Garner chokehold death leads to nationwide protests.

    They gathered in downtown Manhattan’s Foley Square and chanted “I can’t breathe” and “No justice, no peace” before marching across the Brooklyn Bridge, carrying replicas of coffins. Another group started in Harlem. The marchers also disrupted traffic near the Holland Tunnel, the Manhattan Bridge and on the Westside Highway.

    In Boston, several thousand rallied peacefully although some blocked city streets while marching to Boston Common, where the city’s annual tree lighting ceremony was underway. Demonstrators toted signs saying “Justice for All” and “Black Lives Matter” as they chanted. They later gathered outside the Statehouse. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said he too was frustrated and discouraged by the grand jury’s decision.

    Protests were held in several cities on Thursday. Among them:

    Atlanta, where demonstrators gathered downtown, roughly 100 turning out near the Five Points MARTA train station.

    Chicago, where hundreds blocked Lake Shore Drive along Lake Michigan. Protesters were thwarted in their efforts to march to Soldier Field, where a Bears-Cowboys football game was scheduled. They reversed course and at the city’s Dan Ryan Expressway, about two dozen demonstrators darted onto the road and briefly blocked five lanes.

    Detroit, where protesters lay down on the ground for a “die-in” at the city’s Campus Martius at midday as temperatures hovered around freezing.

    Denver, where students from at least four high schools joined in protest. Students from Abraham Lincoln High School left class and walked about nine kilometres to the Capitol, snarling traffic. Buses were sent to pick up the students after the protest.

    Minneapolis, where demonstrators decrying police treatment of minorities stopped traffic for several hours on Interstate 35W near downtown before rallying at City Hall. Some protesters were fast-food workers demanding higher wages and union rights.

    Some photos at the link, too. And as you can see, this is an extremely short list. I don’t post every protest photo I get, but I try to get at least a single shot from each city that gets mentioned in my timeline. And every day there’s at least one new city (alongside the usual suspects like NY, Oakland, Ferguson, etc.). And they’re all over America. Go, protestors, go!

  167. rq says

    Sorry, one mroe thing I want to mention before I forget again, re: Robert Longo and his piece Untitled (Ferguson Police, August 13, 2014). Note what he says:

    It was here in America on an American street where a violent response to protest had reached an extreme level.

    “A violent response to protest had reached an extreme level”. Catch what is different about that, different from the usual media portrayals of protest in Ferguson? That it was the exaggerated response to protest at fault, not protest itself. Yes. That is the message that must get out, in Ferguson in August, and right now in Berkeley. It’s the response, not the protest, that is at issue re: violent actions. Remember that.
    (Also, since August, and also now, seeing how the Berkeley police actions are being spun, and everything in between, I’m less and less inclined to believe any media story that highlights how those Brave police officers saved a community from yet another marauding mob of violent protestors. “Yeah, right” is going to be my loud and insistent response from now on, until someone can prove otherwise.)

  169. rq says

    Ah, the CBC again:
    1: Berkeley crowd protests police violence, 2 officers hurt. No mention of how many protestors hurt or injured or otherwise detained, arrested and harrassed.

    Scores of law officers from several surrounding agencies joined Berkeley Police Department in trying to quell unrest that went on for hours, into early Sunday morning.

    She said several businesses on University Avenue were vandalized, including Trader Joe’s, Radio Shack and a Wells Fargo Bank branch. Some squad cars were also damaged.

    “A small splinter group from the original protests continues to march in Berkeley,” Coats said in a statement issued around 11 p.m. PT. “Unfortunately this group has become violent and continues to throw objects, including rocks and bricks at officers.”

    She said officers attempting to get the crowd to depart used tear gas.

    “Several dispersal orders have been given, and the crowd has ignored the orders. In response to the violence officers have utilized tear gas and smoke in an effort to disperse the crowd,” she said.

    Some people were still protesting in the streets early Sunday morning, police said.

    Authorities did not provide further details of any injuries or arrests.

    “The total number of arrests and injuries is not known at this time,” Coats’ statement said.

    2: Body cameras: Can they reduce confrontations with police?

    Garner died in July after a confrontation with police in which he was subdued by several officers and placed in a chokehold by Pantaleo. The incident was video-recorded on a bystander’s cellphone — as numerous police shootings and violent confrontations have been in recent years.

    In the smartphone age, there has been no shortage of controversial police incidents caught on video, yet they continue to happen — most recently last Tuesday with the fatal police shooting of Rumain Brisbon, an unarmed black man, in Phoenix. So, will video recording the actions of police make any difference?

    Some experts think so.
    […]

    “Video evidence … provides the public with crucial information about how police operate,” he wrote in a blog post on the ACLU website. “It’s in large part because of the video footage that the nation is so outraged at Garner’s killing. We know what happened — we may not have all the evidence the grand jury had, but we know a lot more than if no video existed.” […]

    A randomized controlled trial in Rialto, Calif., which introduced body cameras for its 50 officers in 2012 after several police misconduct scandals, found that in the 12 months that body cameras were used, there was a 60 per cent drop in use-of-force incidents and an 88 per cent drop in citizen complaints about police behaviour. Studies in Phoenix and Mesa, Ariz., had similar results.

    All were based on a raw comparison of numbers and provided no details of how police and citizens actually behaved during the encounters, said Michael D. White, a criminologist at Arizona State University who reviewed these trials and others for the U.S. Department of Justice.

    “You know that there was this 60 per cent reduction in the use of force, but you don’t really know why,” he said. “Was it driven by citizens being more compliant and co-operative? Was it driven by police officers being more respectful, which then changed the tone of the encounter? We don’t know.”

    The reduction in complaints, for example, could be the result of people being intimidated by the presence of cameras and deciding not to report an incident when under other circumstances they would have. One of the reasons police departments like body cameras is that they reduce frivolous complaints and cut down on litigation costs, but they may also dissuade legitimate complainants. [seems like an important point]
    […]

    The Mesa study found that officers with body cameras conducted fewer stop-and-frisks, suggesting the presence of a camera may have led them to “think more carefully about what constitutes reasonable suspicion,” according to Justin Ready and Jacob T.N. Young, the authors of the study, who described their findings in Slate. […]

    This has already led to problems in some jurisdictions. Police officers in Oakland, Calif., were the subject of numerous citizen complaints after they selectively turned their body cameras on or off during the 2011 Occupy Oakland protests, and in Albuquerque, N.M., a police officer involved in a fatal shooting of a 19-year-old woman was fired for not turning on his lapel camera during the incident. […]

    Cameras can actually hinder some types of police work such as domestic violence calls, providing assistance to the injured or mentally ill and intervening in everyday disputes, they said.

    “The device can be a physical reminder to crime victims that they are on camera at times when they are most vulnerable and in need of privacy,” they write.

    The ACLU, too, has raised concerns about the potential for invasions of privacy in certain situations such as home searches as well as about the long-term storage and use of the video police collect.

    “It’s vital that this technology not become a back door for any kind of systematic surveillance or tracking of the public,” the ACLU said in a 2013 position paper.

  170. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/protesting-tell-pbs-newshour/

    To try to capture the reasons and commentary behind these protests, we want to hear directly from protesters across the country.

    Are you or someone you know protesting in the wake of the Eric Garner and Michael Brown grand jury decisions? Or, are you demonstrating to show support for law enforcement? Why? Post a video on Instagram or Vine, tagging @NewsHour, or upload a video to YouTube and title it “PBS NewsHour: This is why I’m protesting.”

  172. rq says

    This is what the police are using on UC BERKLEY students. #BerkeleyProtest #ICantBreathe .

    Chicago;
    1928 – 1928, NY Judge tells jury police can’t just “shoot and kill any offender who may not yield to his command…”
    Yale – I’ll keep posting this cause I’m so proud RT @deray: To My Unborn Son. Yale. #Ferguson.

    A personal account of being a police officer in St Louis: Being a cop showed me just how racist and violent the police are. There’s only one fix.

    So in 1994, I joined the St. Louis Police Department. I quickly realized how naive I’d been. I was floored by the dysfunctional culture I encountered.

    I won’t say all, but many of my peers were deeply racist.

    One example: A couple of officers ran a Web site called St. Louis Coptalk, where officers could post about their experience and opinions. At some point during my career, it became so full of racist rants that the site administrator temporarily shut it down. Cops routinely called anyone of color a “thug,” whether they were the victim or just a bystander.

    This attitude corrodes the way policing is done.

    As a cop, it shouldn’t surprise you that people will curse at you, or be disappointed by your arrival. That’s part of the job. But too many times, officers saw young black and brown men as targets. They would respond with force to even minor offenses. And because cops are rarely held accountable for their actions, they didn’t think too hard about the consequences. […]

    I liked my job, and I was good at it.

    But more and more, I felt like I couldn’t do the work I set out to do. I was participating in a profoundly corrupt criminal justice system. I could not, in good conscience, participate in a system that was so intentionally unfair and racist. So after five years on the job, I quit.

    Since I left, I’ve thought a lot about how to change the system. I’ve worked on police abuse, racial justice and criminal justice reform at the Missouri ACLU and other organizations.

    Unfortunately, I don’t think better training alone will reduce police brutality. My fellow officers and I took plenty of classes on racial sensitivity and on limiting the use of force.

    The problem is that cops aren’t held accountable for their actions, and they know it. These officers violate rights with impunity. They know there’s a different criminal justice system for civilians and police.

    Even when officers get caught, they know they’ll be investigated by their friends, and put on paid leave. My colleagues would laughingly refer to this as a free vacation. It isn’t a punishment. And excessive force is almost always deemed acceptable in our courts and among our grand juries. Prosecutors are tight with law enforcement, and share the same values and ideas.

    We could start to change that by mandating that a special prosecutor be appointed to try excessive force cases. And we need more independent oversight, with teeth. I have little confidence in internal investigations.

    The number of people in uniform who will knowingly and maliciously violate your human rights is huge. At the Ferguson protests, people are chanting, “The whole damn system is guilty as hell.” I agree, and we have a lot of work to do.

    A map of witnesses to Michael Brown’s shooting – One shooting, conflicting accounts. They place witnesses with their statements on a map where you can see their line of sight and what they may or may not have seen.

  173. rq says

    Rubber bullets, tear gas in Berkeley as police disperse #EricGarner, #Ferguson rally

    The scene in this liberal college town remains chaotic Saturday night as reports of injured protesters at the hands of the police begin emerged. The protesters took to the streets to express their anger over a series of high-profile incidences involving the death of black Americans at the hands of white police officers – all of whom were cleared of any wrongdoing by the courts.

    According to police, some of the protesters took to more violent methods of expression.

    In video, Berkeley Cops Beat Protestors 12/6/2014 #BlackLivesMatter .

    Add mental illness to blackness. My Son Is Black. With Autism. And I’m Scared Of What The Police Will Do To Him..

    I keep thinking about what would happen if a cop is wearing gloves and puts his hands on my son. And my son pulls away because the texture of the gloves bother him. Or if my son just doesn’t like being touched by strangers. Or doesn’t react well when people point or raise their voices at him. Right now, the best way to get Langston to follow instructions is to get at eye level with him and explain very calmly what we need from him. What if that’ll always be the best way to communicate with him and a cop sees my son’s inability to process orders as an act of disobedience. What if my son pulling back from a cop is seen as an act of aggression? What if a simple repetitive motion is mistaken for an attempt at physical confrontation? If a cop is yelling at my son and he doesn’t respond because he doesn’t understand, what’s stopping the cop from murdering my boy in cold blood? […]

    I’ve cried too damn much in the last couple of months. I’ve worried and lost sleep, mentally punching at empty spaces and feeling physically exhausted as America chokes the air from our lungs. My son wasn’t just diagnosed with autism. He was diagnosed with a target on his head and the fear of a cop aiming at that target is crippling. There was a time I wanted police to protect my family, but I don’t want them anywhere near us. I don’t want the police to serve or protect us. I just want them to leave my boy the hell alone. Maybe that will be the best thing they can do to help save his life.

    More at the link.

    Living in Black and White on Twitter: Why #AliveWhileBlack is Much More Important than #CrimingWhileWhite.

    So, this week, when liberal white Americans began tweeting about crimes that they’d purportedly committed and gotten away with using the hashtag #CrimingWhileWhite, many black Americans were not at all surprised, nor did we feel the stories in any way gave legitimacy to our longtime arguments about inequalities in the justice system. Rather, many black Americans like myself felt saddened that our cries of injustice were evidently still not enough to warrant mainstream acknowledgement on their own.

    More often than not, when a black person talks about a white person getting away with a crime due to white privilege, he or she is immediately accused of ‘reverse racism.’ When a white person does the same, the effort is lauded by every news network in existence as a “brave show of solidarity.”

    While I can appreciate that #CrimingWhileWhite was likely created with good intentions in mind, there are several reasons why I believe that the counter hashtag #AliveWhileBlack is much more important.

    The #AliveWhileBlack hashtag was created by Ebony Magazine’s Senior Digital Editor, Jamilah Lemieux who said she learned about #CrimingWhileWhite and felt she had to create a counter narrative.

    “I felt like the #CrimingWhileWhite hashtag started from a good place, but it was kind of annoying for black people to see, over and over again, that there’s a different standard of treatment for whites. And the timing of it was painful,” Lemieux said.

    The #CrimingWhileWhite hashtag was created on Wednesday shortly after a grand jury announced its decision not to indict an NYPD police officer responsible for the caught-on-camera chokehold death of 43-year-old father of three, Eric Garner. Lemieux launched #AliveWhileBlack early Thursday.

    In addition to the Twitter meme being untimely, #CrimingWhileWhite reinforces the idea that messages, in general, are more readily received by the masses when presented by a white person. […]

    The protests that are being held all over the country are being organized by people who feel they have no voice; that if they want to share a message about an injustice, no one will hear them unless they “die-in”, sing, or march in protest. That is why it is extremely important that we create opportunities for the stories of black people to be heard so that we can teach the nation–and the world–to acknowledge black voices on their own merit, and without the need for a stamp of legitimacy from whites.

    So, thanks but no thanks #CrimingWhileWhite, because we simply must fight some parts of this battle for ourselves and by ourselves.

    And another one for white people, Dear White People: Here Are 5 Reasons Why You Can’t Really Feel Black Pain

    1. White people control the media. According to a recent Pew study, nearly 90 percent of reporters who work in America’s newsrooms are white and mostly male. The issue with news coverage created by middle-aged white men is that much of the news America views is reported through the white gaze. […]
    2. The criminal justice system works in white people’s favor. The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of its prisoners. The Sentencing Project reports that more than 60 percent of those prisoners are an ethnic minority. There is a reason that disparity exists and it starts with the centuries-long institution called slavery. The Equal Justice Initiative notes that 90 percent of African Americans lived in the south after slavery was abolished in 1865. ” Black Codes,” which limited the legal freedoms of newly freed blacks, were passed in most southern states to severely punish black people for minor offenses such as stealing a pig. Such laws, which lasted well into the 20th century, imprisoned African Americans in conditions that were very similar to slavery. […]
    3. The employment market is incredibly racist. The overall unemployment rate is 5.8 percent but a racial breakdown of that figure reveals extreme racial skewing. For starters, data released by the U.S. Department of Labor reveal that the unemployment rate is 4.9 percent for whites, and 11.1 percent for African Americans. During the 42-year period the Labor Department has broken unemployment data down by race, the rate has always been higher for African Americans than for whites—at least two-thirds higher, in fact. […]
    4. Police officers value your lives while they take ours at will. Even though an NYPD police officer was captured on video placing Eric Garner in a prohibited chokehold and a coroner ruled his death a homicide, a grand jury said that wasn’t enough to charge the cop who killed Garner with a crime. Another black life gone and no one is responsible. At least not now. […]
    5. No matter how much we discuss our pain, white people manage to make it about them. “Tonight Show” writer Jason Ross created the hashtag #CrimingWhileWhite to highlight how white people can get away with breaking the law. As well-intentioned as the gesture was, it revealed how much privilege white people have when sharing their misgivings. Few black people would feel safe opening up about their criminal pasts without fearing reprisals, professional or otherwise.

    Lots and lots of links within the text and the uncited bits. Lots.

    Lessons from Ferguson

    Any objective review of the grand jury investigation of the events in Ferguson, where the evidence considered was publicly released, can lead to no other conclusion but that the prosecutors chose the latter approach. Even ascribing to them the best intentions, it is clear that they had their own view of the events and the evidence, and their presentation was designed to sway the grand jurors to their conclusions regarding what happened. The examples are too numerous to enumerate here, but simply comparing the examination of the civilian eyewitnesses who were challenged by prosecutors about the accuracy of what they claimed to have observed with the questioning of Officer Darren Wilson, who was allowed to testify without even the most basic cross-examination, leaves little doubt that the result was preordained.

    As the state’s attorney for Baltimore City, I have had the difficult and unenviable task of investigating cases in which individuals died while in confrontations with police officers. In each of these cases, senior prosecutors in the state’s attorney’s office investigated the case and used the grand jury for the purpose of collecting evidence and subpoenaing recalcitrant witnesses to appear and testify. After a thorough and complete investigation and application of the facts to the law, we made the decision as to whether or not the facts warranted criminal prosecution.

    I believe it is my responsibility to make an independent judgment of whether there is sufficient evidence of criminal activity to bring the case to a grand jury and seek an indictment (something prosecutors do every day in thousands of cases). I would have been abdicating that responsibility by simply parking a dump truck of evidence into the grand jury and leaving to a group of lay citizens the task of sorting it out and applying complicated legal principles that include whether the use of deadly force by a law enforcement officer was justified. For those who believe that the grand jury is the appropriate decision-maker in these cases, they need look no farther than the result in Ferguson to see how this can be little more than a ham-handed way to provide political cover.

    So, what is the solution? Clearly, a different approach is worth considering because even the most well-intentioned prosecutors must deal with the tensions and potential conflicts that exist between having to work with law enforcement officers on a daily basis and also investigate them for alleged violations of the law. In the federal system, the attorney general has appointed a special counsel from the private sector to investigate cases of alleged criminal wrongdoing where there is a potential conflict of interest in the Department of Justice handling the matter. A similar approach could be used for cases in which a citizen was killed or seriously injured during an interaction with a law enforcement officer. By selecting an attorney who has prior investigative and prosecutorial experience, but is no longer connected to the prosecutor’s office or the police department, the public would be assured that an individual with sufficient experience and independence is reviewing the matter and making a decision without any real or perceived biases.

    The article is by a former DA of Baltimore, and it has very good insight into a prosecutor’s responsibilities (or what they should be) and how to deal with them, and changes that should be made to the system.

    Students Add Their Support to Nationwide Outcry

    Shortly before 2 p.m. Friday, people by the dozens began walking across campus toward the Museum of Art steps. Ashley Bomboka ’16 had previously sent out a campus-wide email asking people to dress in black and participate in a group photograph to commemorate Michael Brown and “the countless black men and women who have lost their lives in this country due to police brutality.”

    Lots of photos at the link.

  176. rq says

    Police Commissioner Bratton releases a statement to the NYPD: To All Members of the New York City Police Department

    Echoing today’s Daily News editorial, I want to once again compliment the men and women of the NYPD on your “superb performance” over the last several weeks in policing the many marches and demonstrations across the city. Despite often being confronted by some agitators in the crowd whose only interest is to provoke you, you have displayed professionalism, patience, and restraint. Your conduct has been exemplary. Even when physically assaulted, you have responded only with the force appropriate to the threat you are facing. That these demonstrations have remained largely peaceful is a testament to YOU.

    In this message I would like to reference in particular the performance of all those involved in last night’s demonstration,which was compounded by adverse weather. The clearing and opening of FDR drive was an excellent example of the crowd management and arrest-and-control procedures for which this Department is noted.

    Forty-four years ago, I was a 23-year-old Boston police officer and had just returned from active military duty during the Vietnam war. Like you, I policed many similar demonstrations. Back then the protests were about many things: the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement, the pursuit of voting rights, the quest to desegregate housing and the public schools. But then, as now, they were also about the actions of the police. It was a time when the men and women of the military and the police profession were vilified by many in our society for serving our country and our communities. Those events spanned a decade during which I rose through the ranks from police officer to Superintendent in Chief of the Boston Police Department, even while the size of the force went from 2,800 officers to 1,544.

    I reference these events to reinforce your understanding of why I so admire this Department and you who serve in it. Having been through similar circumstances, having walked in your shoes, I understand how difficult the job of a police officer is—in good times and bad.

    Thank you all for what you do for this City, this Department,and for the American police profession. You do it consistently, constitutionally, and respectfully—in the best of times and the worst of times. Always remember: “Cops Count, Police Matter.”All the time. We are the thin blue thread that delivers on the promises of our Constitution. We provide public safety so thatthe many other diverse threads that make up our democratic society can be woven together to form the fabric of our “more perfect union.”

    Thank you, and be safe.

    Okay. Here’s that Daily News article he mentions right at the beginning: Grace under pressure

    Wisely, Bratton chose to give demonstrators license to vent without traditional permits, in the expectation that with the passage of a short time their ardor for obstructing bridges and major roadways would cool. To this point, inconveniences to the public have remained within tolerable bounds.

    The commissioner will no doubt adjust tactics if disruptions persist or become more severe.

    Bratton has also set a constructive tone by expressing sympathy with some complaints, embracing new training for the NYPD, moving quickly on a cameras-on-cops pilot program and denouncing abusive policing.

    “The reason I’m so calm is the idea is there’s nothing to be upset about. There’s nothing to be overly concerned about, in terms of fearful or frightened of,” he said Friday.

    “This is what we do in New York. You demonstrate, you have concerns, it’s what we do in America. And there’s no city better equipped to deal with this than New York.”

    Yes, and in New York you also kill unthreatening black men and then refuse to bring the killing cop to justice. That happens, too. The rest:

    At the same time, Bratton has proven capable of leading through treacherous political currents. In particular, he has risen above attempts to pit rank-and-file cops against Mayor de Blasio.

    Those began in earnest after de Blasio put Bratton on equal footing with the Rev. Al Sharpton in a City Hall confrontation. They heightened after the mayor called the Garner case “profoundly personal for me,” citing his son, Dante.

    Although the circumstances of Garner’s death were unlike any Dante could ever reasonably expect to meet, de Blasio said: “Chirlane and I have had to talk to Dante for years about the dangers that he may face,” adding, “We’ve had to literally train him . . . in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.”

    Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Pat Lynch then distorted the mayor’s inapt but heartfelt sentiment by claiming that de Blasio had, in effect, urged parents to teach their children to fear cops — leaving Bratton to respond to him with the utmost civility and testify as to the mayor’s supportive police credentials.

    All in all, the commissioner has walked some fine lines and done so finely.

    Chicago Churches Lead Protest Marches Over Death Of Eric Garner

    It has been another day of protests across the Chicago area, as many churches held demonstrations expressing anger over recent deaths of several people in confrontations with police across the U.S.

    WBBM’s Mariam Sobh reports the protests were largely symbolic as a show of solidarity with those who have been out protesting for the last few days in the wake of the Eric Garner case in New York.

    Short video at the link.

  177. Pteryxx says

    More background on Howard Morgan’s case from rq’s #153:

    What was that about ‘equal before the law’ and that ‘if s/he had been white, of course things would be the same’ or ‘if s/he was a black officer, of course things would be the same’?
    Off Duty Black Officer SHot 28x’s by White Officers then Sentenced to 40 Years for Self-Defense . He begs to differ.

    Wiki article has news references:

    The Howard Morgan case revolves around an incident that took place on February 21, 2005, in Chicago. Officer Howard Morgan was shot 28 times by four Chicago police officers: John Wrigley, Eric White, Timothy Finley and Nicolas Olsen. Morgan was accused of aggravated battery, discharging a firearm, and attempted murder; no charges were filed against the police officers. Morgan was found not guilty of battery or discharging a firearm in his 2007 trial; no verdict was returned on attempted murder. Morgan was tried a second time for attempted murder and convicted in January 2012. In April 2012, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

    from The Grio in January, pending Morgan’s appeal:

    Morgan said he identified himself as a police officer to Chicago police officers John Wrigley and Timothy Finley, but that they didn’t believe him. Morgan is African-American. Finley and Wrigley are white, as are the two officers who next pulled up to the scene: Nicolas Olsen and Eric White.

    What happened next is a matter of who you believe.

    Morgan says he was dragged out of his van and forced to the ground as he tried to produce his identification, and that one of the officers noticed his service revolver, a Glock 9mm pistol, and yelled “gun!” After the gun was taken from his waistband by one of the officers, Morgan says the shooting began.

    The officers say Morgan fired multiple shots at them, forcing them to fire back.

    In the end, Morgan was hit 28 times: 21 times in the back, and 7 in the front. He was hospitalized and underwent extensive surgery. But he survived.

    Morgan was charged with four counts of attempted murder, four counts of aggravated battery of a police officer, and two counts of discharging a firearm.

    The lone eyewitness, Charice Rush, testified at Morgan’s 2007 trial that she saw the officers “snatch” Morgan from his van and “force him onto one knee,” and that she heard one officer say, “oh shit, he has a gun” before the officers open fire, while Morgan was on the ground. Rush said she never saw Morgan fire a weapon.

    According to Benjamin Crump, the attorney representing Morgan’s wife, Rosalind, Morgan’s van was riddled with bullets, and bullets were lodged in the walls and furniture of houses near the scene. But the jury never saw the van, which police ordered destroyed prior to the trial.

    “While he’s in the hospital fighting for his life, they destroyed the van that was riddled with bullets,” said Crump in a Monday evening interview with theGrio. “They ordered it demolished. Chicago police destroyed evidence.”

    The Wiki article has no mention of the status of Morgan’s appeal, not even what I cite below.

    In March, the Illinois State Appellate Court upheld Morgan’s conviction on four counts of attempted murder. Morgan then attempted to appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court. From News One:

    Howard’s shooting occurred about 12:45 a.m. on a cold and brisk day in February 2005 during a traffic stop on Chicago’s West Side. What happened next represents the heart of the case: Police say Morgan, who was on the way home, opened fire with his service weapon when officers tried to arrest him, which caused them to shoot him 28 times.

    But an independent eyewitness testified during his first trial in 2007 that Morgan never fired a weapon, according to a petition at Change.org. At the time, Howard was charged with four counts of attempted first-degree murder, three counts of aggravated battery with a firearm and one count of aggravated discharge of a firearm.

    “He had no gunshot residue on his hand, and they could not find the White officer’s bullet proof vest that they said Mr. Morgan fired the bullet in to,” Crump said. “We’re just supposed to take the word of the four White police officers? That’s really troubling and so is the fact that he did not have any gunshot residue on his hand. It’s also telling that he never fired his gun.”

    Crump said that police destroyed Morgan’s van, which had more than 100 shots in it and they didn’t collect any of the bullet casings from the police officers. “The one thing we do know is that the four officers fired over 100 shots,” he said. “Twenty eight of them hit Mr. Morgan, 21 in the back, seven in the front.

    A jury acquitted Morgan of the two counts of aggravated battery as well as the count of aggravated discharge of a firearm. The jury, however, was hung on the other five remaining counts, after which Judge Clayton Crane, the presiding judge, declared a mistrial.

    Howard was tried in 2012 on the remaining charges and convicted.

    Assistant State’s Attorney Dan Groth described Howard as a “sociopath” for trying to murder four uniformed police officers, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

    The double jeopardy law, as outlined in the 5th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, restricts government from re-litigating against the same defense, even if the jury is hung on other counts, Finkle and advocates argue. As a result, Morgan should never have been tried a second time in 2012. Never mind the fact, Rosalind Morgan argues, that there was insufficient evidence to sustain a conviction.

    “They had to concoct this story to justify their actions,” she said. “They cannot justify it. The witness said they had him down on his knees and his hands behind his back. And they were shooting him.”

    Further, the destruction of evidence, withholding of evidence, and lack of evidence gathered did not allow Morgan the due process of law afforded him under the 14th Amendment, advocates argue.

    “Why does the justice system want to kill Howard Morgan?” Crump said. “The 28 bullets weren’t enough to kill him, but the bullets fired from the courtroom just might. Why are the rules different when it’s our brothers and sisters? We want to believe that the system works fairly for everybody, but we keep seeing so many blatant examples of injustice that we have to question does the system apply to us equally?”

    I’ve not found any mention of whether the Illinois Supreme Court ruled on his appeal or even decided to hear it.

  178. Pteryxx says

    Also from The Grio article:

    Following the sentencing in April 2012, the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police posted a statement saying the officers involved in the shooting incident “were fortunate to have survived the seventeen rounds that Howard Morgan fired at them on February 21, 2005,” adding: “Officer John Wrigley was shot in the chest, but was saved by his bulletproof vest.” The post included a lengthy statement from Officer [Wrigley – Ptx], accusing Morgan of “manipulating” people into believing he did nothing wrong, and of “Hid[ing] behind the racial fears of our community and … manipulate[ing] organizations into believing that police misconduct and corruption were the cause of me and other [o]fficers being shot that night with your firearm.”

    The original statement has been taken down and I could not find a cached version. However I did find this newsletter on the Chicago FOP site: PDF link

    From the 3rd Vice President’s Report, by Daniel D. Gorman, on page 4: (transcript is mine)

    Howard Morgan Sentenced

    On April 5th, Judge Crane sentenced Howard Morgan to 40 years for the 2005 attempted murders of four officers; PO Tim Finley, PO Nick Olsen, PO Eric White and PO John Wrigley. The jury got it right this second time around. It is satisfying to know that a heavy presence of “New Black Panthers,” “Vice Lords” and former politicians supporting Howard Morgan could not steer or impact the justice that he (Morgan) deserves.

    At times, it was hard to bite our tongues given the amount of antagonists and fraudulent militants in the court building with their crude, racist, and disrespectful remarks. Every officer who I witnessed being subjected to these provocations showed great restraint and handled the situations appropriately. Lodge #7 sends thanks to Judge Crane and to ASAs Dan Groth and Phyllis Warren for their effort, fairness, time, and dedication. Job well done!

  180. rq says

    Portland (Maine);
    Lincoln Square;
    more athletes.

    Body cams? Body cams. Investigation of 5 cities finds body cameras usually help police

    One key problem: officers control the record button. They decide when to turn on and off the cameras and have little to fear when violating department policies about recording, Fusion’s analysis found. In many use of force incidents, camera footage doesn’t exist, is only partially available, or can’t be found. And when body cameras are turned on, the footage usually favors the officer’s account, according to police, law enforcement experts and public defenders we spoke with.

    “This is one of our biggest concerns – the promise of this technology as a police oversight mechanism will be undermined if individual officers can manipulate what is taped and what isn’t,” ACLU Senior Policy Analyst, Jay Stanley told Fusion.

    “There needs to be very strong policies that make very clear when police officers are expected to be recording and back that up with strict enforcement,” he said. […]

    The Albuquerque Police Department’s most recent annual report shows there have been 598 citizens complaints investigated by the department between 2011 and 2014 and in nearly 74 percent of those cases, the police determined the allegations were “unfounded,” “not sustained,” or the officers were exonerated.

    Albuquerque Police Department spokesperson Tixie Tanner told Fusion that video evidence played a role in the outcome of these cases.

    Albuquerque police department policy states officers should record “all contacts with the public that could result in complaints against the department’s personnel.” But the data obtained by Fusion found that police officers failed to follow the department’s body camera policies 60 times in 2013. So far this year, the department has recorded 28 violations of the policy. The Albuquerque police didn’t say how many of the violations involved officers not recording when required to. […]

    In New Orleans this summer, a police officer had her body camera turned off when she shot a 26-year-old man in the forehead during a traffic stop. The case is still under investigation. The department told Fusion there have been 39 internal affairs investigations involving the use of body cameras this year. So far, 17 of those officers were investigated and sanctioned while four were cleared of any wrongdoing. A report conducted by an independent monitor assigned by the U.S. Department of Justice released in August found cameras, including body cameras and the more prevalent police dashboard cameras, were not used in 60% of the use of force incidents reported between January to May 2014. […]

    In Salt Lake City, Utah there have been nine use of force incidents by police officers so far this year. But only one was recorded on a body camera, despite official department policy that states cameras should be on “at all times” when interacting with the public.

    “I can give you a body camera but if you don’t turn it on, what’s the point of having a camera,” said Salt Lake County District Attorney Sam Gil. […]

    In Oakland, CA, which has used body cameras since 2011, body cameras were not on during at least two officer involved shootings. A report from an independent monitor found that between July and September of this year some officers failed to activate cameras at critical times, while others went weeks without recording while waiting for broken cameras to be repaired. […]

    The Ft. Worth, TX Police Department didn’t provide detailed data about violations of body camera policies. According to documents provided to Fusion, the police department found all allegations made against police officers since Jan. 1 of this year – with or without body camera evidence – were either “unfounded” or “did not result in discipline.”

    “A lot of people are pinning their hopes on the cameras but the reality is we have to change the culture of policing, said Miami-Dade Public Defender Carlos Martinez. “That’s changing peoples’ hearts and that’s very difficult to do.” […]

    One small study often cited to argue for police body cameras looked at the city of Rialto, CA. It was mentioned by President Obama’s Press Secretary Josh Earnest, defending the President’s proposal to provide an additional $75 million to support local body camera purchases after the Garner decision. The report found complaints against police officers fell by 88 percent, and the use of force by officers fell nearly 60 percent after the introduction of body cameras. One of the co-authors, Barak Ariel, said the findings aren’t conclusive and more study is needed. Ariel told The Atlantic “the technology is ‘surely promising, but we don’t know it’s working.’”

    Huh. I think it’s that phrase “strict policy” that the police have issue with, rather than the body cameras themselves. Oh, and, you know, ‘serve and protect’ rather than ‘shoot and powertrip’.

    That guy killed in Hollywood? Street performer with a fake knife. … I mean, at least he was white, right???

    Connecting to history, The Civil Rights Movement Came Out of a Moment Like This One.

    The murder of 14-year-old Till and the 1963 murder of four black girls at Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church both became national stories that hit Americans square in the chest, reminding them of the Jim Crow system of justice in which black people had no rights that whites were bound to respect. With the killings of Garner, Brown, Akai Gurley, Tamir Rice and others, we are all reminded that black life is still too often devalued, and that police officers are often not subject to the rule of law. That reminder has packed a similar emotional wallop. It is all coming so quickly: these announcements that a trial isn’t even needed to determine the police officer’s guilt or innocence. These exonerations through other means. People are taking to the streets nationwide to protest: Wednesday night saw an outpouring of response in New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta and beyond.

    But one problem, as my colleague Zoë Carpenter noted yesterday, is that some who are protesting are wondering how to turn these coordinated actions into a movement. From a DC community town hall meeting, Carpenter reports:

    [Eugene] Puryear noted that the gap between protest and large-term organizing still has to be bridged. “Right now, just to be honest, we have tactics—we do not have strategy. We are doing a lot of interesting things and a lot of important things…but ultimately, where is it going? What are we doing? What are we really asking for?” he asked. “We’re ready to get arrested, and I love that. I’m ready. But are we ready to build institutions?”

    These are critical questions. […]

    The group of young organizers who have been active in Ferguson and who earlier this week met with President Obama and members his administration are starting to answer these questions. Among the demands put forth by activists from organizations including Millennial Activists United, Ohio Students Association, Dream Defenders, Make the Road New York are for:

    The federal government to use its power to prosecute police officers that kill or abuse people.
    The removal of local district attorneys from the job of holding police accountable, and instead having independent prosecutors at the local level charged with prosecuting officers.
    The defunding of local police departments that use excessive force or racially profile. Instead of having the Department of Justice (DOJ) wholesale giving more than $250 million to local police departments annually, DOJ should only fund departments that agree to adopt DOJ best practices for training and meaningful community input.

    These demands take a step toward vision and big thinking –a commitment to playing offense and addressing the problems at their roots—that we need right now. If we take history as our guide, it’s worth noting that public outcry in response to the rapid fire events of 1963 is credited with making the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act inevitable. The four little girls were killed in September of that year in a place already dubbed “Bombingham” for the level of racist backlash to the small steps toward progress the city was making. King had been jailed there in the spring of that year. Medgar Evers had been assassinated that summer in Mississippi. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom had happened not even a month before the church bombing, and had shown the world that a critical mass of people were mobilized in the service of fundamental change.

    Granted, those dead at the hands of police today are not civil rights leaders, or children killed in their place of worship. For some observers, these more recent victims are unsympathetic: they were involved in roughing up a bodega owner or selling untaxed cigarettes. But for others, we find ourselves at a similar moment fifty years after that critical turning point in civil rights movement history — with “Again?” on our lips and a familiar feeling of dread in response to the violence we witness on the video of the killing of Eric Garner, the incredible amount of force used on a man who announced over and over again, “I can’t breathe.”

    What would it take to scrap and rebuild a system that makes it nearly impossible to indict an officer when he or she kills a civilian? What is the landmark legislation that all this fury in the streets can demand and drive? Some of the organizers and strategists who are responsible for the displays of coordinated, righteous protest are putting their minds on these questions. The sense of being up against an unchangeable justice system designed to brutalize black life at the slightest perception of provocation can make one feel that the United States has proven itself to be a failed political experiment, one in which some people’s rights will never be secured. But if the history of this country’s most revered revolutionary period is any guide — and if a policy program is developed to channel all this growing energy — then we’re just getting started.

    I sure hope it’s all just getting started.

  181. rq says

    Two more photos:
    Miami;
    Little Rock;
    and a video: Ferguson Redux,

    In this sedition a special report on the rebellions that have been rocking Turtle Island in the wake of the “no indictment” of racist cop Darren Wilson for his murder of black teen Mike Brown in Ferguson Missouri.

    Can’t seem to watch it as vimeo in general does things to my browser (a lot of things do), but might be worth a look? :/

  184. rq says

    Livestreaming from Berkeley still going on, there was teargas again.

    Journalists speak out (against police beating journalists, not so much the deaths of black people): Society of Professional Journals Protest of Reported Police Beatings of Journalists. Full text:

    Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates
    Berkeley Police Chief Michael K. Meehan

    By Email

    Dear Mayor Bates and Chief Meehan:

    The Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists condemns, in the strongest terms possible, the outrageous conduct of law enforcement officers who assaulted members of the media during last night’s (Saturday, Dec. 6, 2014) demonstrations in Berkeley, California. You have an obligation to ensure that all officers, including those providing mutual aid, respect the constitutional rights of the press.

    SPJ has been in touch with a number of working journalists who say they were struck with police batons while working and clearly displaying press credentials. In one incident, a journalist who was on assignment tells SPJ that he was holding out press credentials and telling an officer he was a news photographer when struck. This same journalist also reported seeing a colleague take “serious blows” from police who “hit him with impunity,” despite the fact that the colleague was “obviously press.” Other reporters also described witnessing or experiencing similar assaults. Even more disturbing, several journalists confirm that an officer struck a news photographer in the head with a baton. As you know, this can constitute deadly force and is only justifiable under extremely limited circumstances.[1] (As the California Court of Appeal noted in an unpublished 2010 opinion, even when using a baton as deadly force, “officers should avoid striking a suspect’s head because of the potential for serious injury or death.”)[2]
    We are sure that you agree attacks on journalists are entirely unacceptable. Reporters are on scene to report the news as it happens. They are not participants in the protests. Under no circumstances should members of the press be subject to such gratuitous and potentially deadly police violence.

    Word is being spread of plans for another protest to begin in Berkeley at 5 p.m. today, Sunday Dec. 7, 2014. We implore you to ensure that all law enforcement officials working tonight’s protest, including those providing mutual aid, adhere to their constitutional obligations and respect the freedom of the press. We also call for a thorough investigation into inappropriate uses of force by officers against members of the news media.

    We look forward to your response.

    Lila LaHood
    President, SPJ Northern California Chapter

    Geoffrey W. King
    Thomas Peele

    Co-Chairs, SPJ Norcal Freedom of Information Committee

    Wells Fargo, Chase, Sprint, AT&T: These are the only places being destroyed. As “unstructured” as it may seem, specific locations being hit. (background photo of this tweeter is rather stunning).
    WOW. Cops just came in force and tried to arrest people and the crowd literally just chased them away. #Berkeley #FTP;
    https://twitter.com/awinston/status/541853203692658688.

  185. rq says

    Bill De Blasio Explains Why His Son Needs To Be Careful Around Cops

    “What parents have done for decades who have children of color, especially young men of color, is train them to be very careful when they have a connection with a police officer,” de Blasio said.

    “It’s different for a white child. That’s just the reality in this country,” de Blasio went on. “And with Dante, very early on with my son, we said, look, if a police officer stops you, do everything he tells you to do, don’t move suddenly, don’t reach for your cell phone, because we knew, sadly, there’s a greater chance it might be misinterpreted if it was a young man of color.”

    The lack of indictments in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner has led to widespread protests and sparked a national conversation on police use of force, particularly when it comes to African-American men.

    “I’m just saying what people are actually experiencing and have been for decades,” de Blasio said Sunday. “I’ve talked to a lot of families of color, well before this time, because I’ve said things like this before. And they’ve said to me over and over and over again that they appreciate someone finally acknowledging that they have that conversation with their sons. It’s a painful conversation. You can sense there’s a contradiction in that conversation.”

    This one is making me rethink some things. Dear White Allies: Stop Unfriending Other White People Over Ferguson

    Dear white allies, this is not the time to “unfriend.” This is the time to “engage.”

    This is the time to remember that the outrage you feel can in no way match my own and therefore you have way more emotional capacity than I do to talk some sense into the “other side.”

    This is the time to remember that your “solidarity” does not render you powerless; in fact, the entire point of your solidarity is to lend the power you DO have to folks who do not.

    And by the way, this is the time to remember that you do have power.

    It may not feel like much – your empathy may temporarily make you forget that you’re not like Brown, you’re not “one of us” and that in fact you are still one of “them” – but please try and remember how USEFUL you could be should you decide to be brave enough to speak up to the folks more likely to hear YOU than me.

    I’m seeing one too many white people bragging about defriending other white people. I don’t need your condolences. I don’t need rash actions that absolve you of the responsibility of facilitating hard conversations with folks I will never be able to reach.

    I need you to step up in a major way, and leverage the connections you DO have to address ignorance with conversation and interrogate white privilege with compassion. Because I will not do this. I cannot do this. […]

    You’re a socially conscious white person? You don’t share *their* views? It’s disappointing to hear your friends say racist things? You don’t wanna talk to them? I hear you. I really do. But if you don’t speak to “them” who will?

    Who will?

    (Hint: Not me.)

    So before you squander the opportunity before you in an attempt to demonstrate your solidarity, ask yourself which choice would be easier: unfriending the guy who attended your birthday party last year because he posted support of the non indictment OR responding to his post with an open ended question to begin a (likely long and strenuous) conversation?

    What would a good… actually, forget good… What would a useful, valuable, effective ally do?

    We need you to be brave, now more than ever. Stop with the Unfriending. Speak up.

    And to those of you doing this already, thank you thank you thank you.

    I’m ashamed I never thought of this point before. I suppose because unfriending is easier than keeping up those difficult conversations. And then I wonder, on the other hand, how long does one have to try to speak to these ignorant friends before it’s okay to unfriend them? And then, you know, black people don’t have that choice, so the fact that I can even think along those lines says a lot about my privilege.

    7 minutes of silence in H&M, for the 7 minutes officers didn’t call EMT.

    Photos of Berkeley earlier tonight, photo 1, photo 2, photo 3.

  186. rq says

    Minneapolis;
    Philadelphia;
    Ferguson?;
    Chicago.

    And a reminder: We still have the national guard in #Ferguson While media cameras are focusing on #NYC and #LA right now remember we’re still being occupied.
    By the way, how long IS the NG expected to stay in Ferguson / St Louis?

    Via Wonkette, Rachel Maddow on the misleading and wrong interpretations of the law handed to the jury: You Mean Grand Juries Need To Know Real Laws? (Video)

    For most of the grand jury’s term, they were operating under instructions from an assistant district attorney that their decisions should be governed by a 1979 law — the one that was found unconstitutional in 1985 — that said it was legal for police to shoot a fleeing suspect. And then, on the very last day of the grand jury, that same assistant DA handed them an updated version of the legal instructions, explaining that the first instructions were a little incorrect, but without specifying what was wrong with them, even when one juror asked a question to clarify whether Supreme Court decisions invalidated Missouri laws.

    The assistant DA response? “As far as you need to know, just don’t worry about that.” The other county prosecutor jumped in, adding, “We don’t want to get into a law class.”

    Don’t worry your pretty little grand jury heads about what the law actually says. Just hurry up and determine that Officer Wilson did nothing wrong. And clearly current constitutional law does not apply when a defenseless cop is being viciously charged by a “demon” teenager.

    Prepare to be disgusted. Had similarly inaccurate legal guidance been given to a real trial jury, this stupidity would never stand. As it is, get ready for it to be dismissed as sour grapes from the liberal media, because as we all know, Darren Wilson was proven completely innocent, by a jury and everything.

  187. rq says

    Mm, a thought on Berkeley: To understand the #Berkeley protest, you have to understand not only the history of Berkeley, but also the history of Bay Area activism. Some other tweets from this person make me think this is becoming sort of a follow-up to the Occupy movement.

    The Unprecedented Scale of the #BlackLivesMatter Protests

    The protests weren’t isolated to New York alone. Just as protesters took to major highways across America late in November following the grand jury decision in Ferguson, thousands of people once again shut down roads in Chicago, Atlanta, and Boston. The demonstrations reached smaller cities, too, including Albany, Savannah, Indianapolis, Wilmington, Asheville, and many more.

    After two nights of actions that followed a week of dedicated protests in the wake of the Ferguson grand-jury decision (and months of scattered protests since the August shooting of Michael Brown), it’s plain that the protests are the broadest in terms of scope since the Occupy protests in 2011. They could even be the largest since the Iraq War demonstrations in 2003. Ultimately, it may be impossible to measure the scale of the protests today with respect to the protests in the U.S. of the last decade.

    Protesters seemed to assemble in every part of New York, from the West Side Highway to the Brooklyn Bridge, shutting down streets and infrastructure, including the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels. […]

    Decentralized demonstrations mark a difference between protests today and protests from major moments of civic unrest in the recent past. Like the Occupy protests, the actions today are widespread across the nation. But unlike those actions, today’s are not clustered around any single focal points (such as Zuccotti Park). An estimated 10,000 protesters assembled in Foley Square last night, a larger gathering than almost any Occupy Wall Street action, and that was just one of the localized demonstrations in New York.

    Like in New York, widespread protests in Boston had no center. People gathered on the Charlestown Bridge, in Boston Common, and at an entrance to Logan Airport, among other places. The strength of these demonstrations comes not in proof of numbers but in their geographic scope. […]

    The protests today are different. While Rev. Al Sharpton plans to lead a National March Against Police Violence in D.C. on December 13, demonstrators are not waiting on official organization structures to mount significant actions. A march in D.C. won’t reflect any sort of official count for these demonstrations. They are underway, and continuing, in places like Detroit: […]

    And dozens of other towns and cities—with no immediate end in sight.

    I hadn’t realized the numbers were so huge.

  188. rq says

    I admit, I have been lax today in keeping up, but I will – as of yesterday, we’re dealing with another death in the family and it was a rather sleepless night, so I hope you will forgive if I’m more prone to napping today than posting.
    But.
    I will.
    Key points to know right now: there’s a huge fire in downtown LA; the Berkeley protest is… something different, though sparked by the movement (more on this later, but there’s a significant amount of looting of major banks and corporations occurring over there); one of the last headlines + twitter conversation in conjunction with the fact that a lot of the Berkeley protestors are white students have caused a shift in media reporting focus – as it is no longer protests for black lives that matter, but either (a) protests against police brutality (sort of true, while erasing the racial aspect of this) or (b) protests against capitalism (also sort of true, while also ignoring the impact that the current system has on black lives i.e. bank loans, etc.). So it’s been a weird kind of day, where the focus seems to have suddenly *whoops!* gone 90 degrees from what it was.
    But yes, real quick, fire in LA: https://twitter.com/epolitzerphoto/status/541894500566577154“>photo 1, photo 2, photo 3. Current guesses so far are a housing project in progress, not actually completed luxury apartments. And no word on whether it’s directly linked to protest, though it certainly seems as if it could be (twitter was silent on LA overnight).

  189. rq says

    Commentary from twitter, from earlier in the night:
    Wholefoods is getting it now. #Berkeley protesters are popping bottles, and changing “#Ferguson! #Ferguson!”;
    Why cry because the masters plantation is burning down? Why protect his property when he won’t protect your life? I’ll never get it.;
    Can’t wait for Bill O’Reilly to castigate the white looters in Berkeley for doing a disservice to their race;
    #WholeFoods has become ground zero for the #BerkeleyProtests. The police are now shooting teargas in the crowd.;
    Berkeley police just used a handheld strobe lights to keep me from photographing them beating someone up. New one on me. #berkeleyprotests.

    Meanwhile, Atlanta.

  192. Ichthyic says

    btw, this thing needs all the help it can get, even small donations do important things there.

    hence, he commented on the Gawker story, as a single request for a donation in the comments there managed to give him enough money to hire an intern:

    As far as I’m concerned, your comment helped me pay an intern to help with fact checking, helped me to pay a local homeless advocacy group to help with data entry, allowed me to send money to a retired, fixed income Facebook guy who’s keeping a comprehensive list of killings by police, send money to a single mother who takes care of her special needs brother and is doing data entry, and allowed me to buy stamps and envelopes for public records requests. You want to be somewhat sardonic about what you did, but you helped.

    sounds like a good place to spend 5 or 10 bucks about now.

  193. rq says

    The media on Berkeley, from Saturday night: Graphic Content: Police Riot in Violent Clash with Protesters in Berkeley Over Racist Police Actions – note the headline. This is interesting. When I first opened that tab this morning, it said ‘Over Police Brutality’. For serious.

    “The cops blocked our way and stopped two feet ahead of our front line,” Felarca said, describing how rows of officers in riot gear appeared to face down marchers. “The cops lunged at them. They were attacking and it was completely out of pocket. People were like, ‘What the hell are you doing? This is completely unacceptable.’” […]

    What unfolded next and into the evening was a script that is familiar to anyone who saw the militarized reponse in Ferguson, Missouri, this past August, where police drew on the same tactics—inciting and attacking protesters and using excessive force and tear gas. Across America, the culture and practice of policing too easily spins out of control.

    That initial charge by Berkeley police into the march’s frontlines sparked a cat-and-mouse chase during the next several hours, according to accounts by Felarca and 20 other protesters who assembled on Sunday to review the incident.

    “We regrouped. They regrouped. The cops were surrounded,” she said. “They chose to incite and escalate things. They shot off smoke bombs to clear people out. We regrouped on the corner of Martin Luther King and University. There were some people who chose to express their anger at what happened by attacking businesses [breaking windows].”

    The vandalism led to police declaring a riot was underway, a UC Berkeley policeman explained on background before the BAMN meeting began. That order, in turn, allowed the police to use all available force to clear the streets, he explained, which included the “kettles” or attempted roundups, Felarca and others described.

    “We escaped five police kettles,” she said. “We stayed together and found a way through people’s yards and back to the university [where the march had begun hours before]. The police attacked protesters again and again. One guy was hit so hard he had a seizure. Another was hit so hard, his kneecap was broken.”

    “Any time we came close to a residential area, plenty of those folks came out,” said a protester named David. “There were hundreds of people out there. While we were trying to find a way to get back to the university, they were saying to the cops, ‘What the hell are you doing?’”

    The marchers did find their way back to the campus, where the protest began. Along the way, the police had begun to fire tear gas as helicopters circled overhead. Students who smelled tear gas wafting into nearby campus buildings came out and joined the protesters. […]

    BAMN’s organizers presented a list of demands that they would pursue as they plan more marches. They want charges dropped against anyone who was arrested. They want the UC system to revive affirmative action and remove UC president Janet Napolitano. They want the government to abolish or reform the grand jury system, which frequently exonerates policemen who kill unarmed civilians. And they want the fall semester’s deadlines extended so students can participate in ongoing protests.

    “We do not accept the police occupying UC Berkeley and our community,” Felarca said. “We won last night. We came out stronger.”

    The Editor’s Note at the end has several links to the local papers reporting on this, for anyone who wants to follow up.
    This dovetails into what others on twitter are noticing, the media misrepresentation or absence of coverage of protests after the initial day of the GJ announcement (the Eric Garner one, though it was the same with Michael Brown, tapered off rather rapidly after things quieted down). And now I think Berkeley’s past couple of nights are going to be used as repeat footage to show how terrible those protestors are, how badly they’re behaving, etc. (like how bodycams are a great thing because one small study got positive yet unexplored results). And look at how these protestors are ruining christmas (more exciting than atheists, hm?), sitting in on stores and blocking traffic and burning shit up. I closed the tab, but there was a great photo of a woman’s sign: “How the NYPD stole christmas”. More accurate, that.
    Anyhow, couple more commentary:
    @deray the media is trying to steer the issue from racism to an American issue of police misconduct @TheBlackVoice;
    White #Berkeley kids really appropriated an entire protest. And they got the top trending hashtag in the nation doing it. Sigh.;
    I gotta say, the crowds here feel very different from #Ferguson. #berkeleyprotest.

    Quick video from Berkeley, Saturday night: Police Fire on Protesters in Berkeley, CA . Don’t wanna get shot at, don’t go to protests, yo.

  195. Ichthyic says

    The media on Berkeley, from Saturday night: Graphic Content: Police Riot in Violent Clash with Protesters in Berkeley Over Racist Police Actions – note the headline. This is interesting. When I first opened that tab this morning, it said ‘Over Police Brutality’. For serious.

    I swear, you could have looked at a news-story from Berkeley during the height of the civil rights protests and it would have looked the same, nearly word for word.

    I watched live streaming of what’s been happening in Berkeley over the last couple of days.

    nothing has changed in 50 years. not a goddamn thing.

    if it goes on for another day, expect the governor to call in the Nat Guard. that’s what Ronnie Raygun did in his day.

  196. rq says

    Ichthyic
    Nice, I was just about to put that link up, it’s waiting in line!! :D Not anymore!

    +++

    Let’s hear it from those twitter folks, many of whom have been working since Michael Brown was shot in August:
    A focus on the value of black life IS NOT the establishment of black vs white. It IS the recognition of black vs white supremacy. #Ferguson;
    See, white supremacy runs deeper than “white people.” White supremacy speaks to the rootedness of the conditions of oppression. #Ferguson;
    @deray use the phrases protestors and police instead of black and white, you sound like your saying white people are the problem tbh (yes, he got schooled!! :P actually I had to laugh a little, because white people ARE the problem – or started it, anyway!);
    Think about the roles banks play in foreclosing homes in Black communities, now tell me that banks have nothing to do with #BlackLivesMatter;
    #BlackLivesMatter, and the cops are a part of a larger systemic problem contributing to the issues facing Black folks. #BerkeleyProtests.

    Here’s a nice #BlackLivesMatter vs. #AllLivesMatter cartoon: “We should care exactly equally about all lives. ALL houses matter.” … as person speaking turns firehose of water onto non-burning house, letting the burning house burn. Apt.

  197. rq says

    Dammit, this is the sign photo I was looking for. Just a sign.

    Northwest Territories;
    Shaw (and the protesters with lit letters on their shirts were from Shaw, too, I marked it as Ferguson because I did not know any better).

    Realest tweet “@deray: People want to (re)appropriate everything black but the struggle, the pain, and the oppression. #Ferguson”;
    If the only way you can get behind an issue is if the axis centers on you, then you’re neither an ally nor activist;
    Lol folks complaining about is being Black lives instead of all lives don’t realize that they’re part of the problem;
    Photos of Berkeley a few hours ago.

    +++

    Ichthyic
    The National Guard moves in, what’s next after that?

  199. Ichthyic says

    oh I should say one thing has changed…

    cops now shoot protestors with rubber bullets instead of bothering to beat them with sticks often. though they still beat them with sticks.

    I saw not one, but two people the night before last who had been shot with rubber bullets, one in the back, and the other in the back of the head. no kidding.

    there’s a reason they have banned rubber bullets in the UK and other countries (Spain banned them just this year after two protestors lost eyes to rubber bullets fired by cops).

  201. rq says

    Ichthyic
    Saw those pictures, too. :( They may be a little less lethal, but lethal is, in the end, still lethal. :(
    And from what I understand, there was a lot of beating with sticks, too.
    But I mean wow.
    “If you want to see police brutality, go to a protest against police brutality.”
    – a lot of people throughout the ages

  203. says

    this article at The Mary Suementions a new video from Lacy Green wherein she explores the similarities between Mockingjay and Ferguson. In addition, the article links to four black men who wrote pieces on racism in the U.S. Have to go to work, so I don’t have time to check out the links, but perhaps someone else can.

    http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/11/w-kamau-bell-black-in-america?mbid=social_retweet

    http://curtiscook.tumblr.com/post/104450102317

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/07/questlove-trayvon-martin-and-i-aint-shit.html

    There’s another link in there, but n*gg*r is used in the link, and I don’t want it getting caught in the filter.

  204. rq says

    Ferguson’s Housing Market Offers A Glimpse Of The Economic Devastation Of Unrest

    Here’s what the numbers do say.

    The association provided The Canadian Press with spreadsheets of housing sales for the suburb of Ferguson compared to St. Louis County as a whole, for the six-month period ending Dec. 1, for both 2013 and 2014.

    There’s some bad news:

    —A 77-per-cent increase in the number of days it took to sell a house these last three months, compared to the previous three months. That can’t simply be ascribed to the changing seasons, as there was no such pattern last year.

    —A drop of 34 per cent in the average price of houses sold in November, compared with the previous month. According to the preliminary data for November, the 11 houses sold averaged US$36,514 compared with $55,337 for 15 houses sold the previous month.

    —A decline of up to 32 per cent in the number of home sales the last three months from the same period last year. The final figures for November are still being compiled, but so far the data show 37 sales over the three-month period this year, a notable decline from 55 sales in the same period in 2013.

    And some better news:

    —In terms of total number of sales, they’re only marginally lower this year compared with 2013. There were 97 homes sold last year in Ferguson, in the June-through-November period. This year, there were at least 88 — and there could still be more when the final figures for November are completed in a few days.

    —When dealing with small numbers like this, statistical freaks are to be expected. Last year, for example, there was one month where the average sale price was inexplicably low — at $33,874 in August 2013.

    Cartoon: Lessons learned. Right-wing ones, that is.

    An interesting one on livestreaming and reporting – Is Livestreaming the Future of Media, or the Future of Activism?

    Countless television news crews stalked the protesters through Manhattan as well, but for Woods, they were interlopers on his turf. During Thursday night’s protests, he kept streaming into the early morning, eventually ending up in midtown with the last hardcore marchers, who were dispersed by an NYPD sound cannon. He’d also filmed the protests in New York over the killing of the black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, which have now bled into protests over Eric Garner’s killing. Woods brought his viewers along as protesters blocked the Willis Avenue Bridge in Harlem, and as thousands filled Times Square shouting, “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” Each day on Twitter, viewers hit him up to find out where the protest would be that night. Over the previous ten nights, he’d racked up over a million views on his account.
    Get more great stories from NYMag.com delivered to your Facebook feed: Like Us

    Woods was inspired to start livestreaming by firsthand experience with the limits of the mainstream television news networks. He tells an origin story that begins with his disenchantment in 2011, while working as a producer in Atlanta for Nancy Grace’s HLN show. The show was filmed in CNN’s headquarters, where he could peek into the control room and watch producers stitch together broadcasts from dozens of camera feeds displayed on a bank of monitors. He watched CNN’s coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests as it was made and was appalled by what he perceived as an obvious whitewashing playing out before his eyes. “You could see in one monitor the police would be violently arresting somebody, and instead they’d go to another monitor and there would be Bob. And Bob would be three blocks away, and there’d be like ten hippies behind him, and he’d be like, ‘Nothing happening here, Steve, back to you!’” Woods soon visited the encampment of Occupy Atlanta, told them he worked in television, and asked how he could help get the word out. […]

    With things relatively quiet in Ferguson since the grand jury decision, the center of protest over police killings of black men has shifted to the Garner demonstrations in New York City. Woods and about a half dozen other New York City-based streamers have been documenting the protests, and late last week, three prominent livestreamers flew to New York from Ferguson to follow the action as well. The Ferguson crew includes the activist livestreamer John “Rebelutionary_Z” Ziegler, who has been living in Ferguson, on and off, since August 19. He has filmed many turbulent protests, but he’d never feared for his life as he did on his first night in Ferguson, more than a week after Brown’s killing, he says. The small suburb of St. Louis was already front-page news, seized by the first wave of chaotic protests that involved looting and arson and a spectacularly militarized police crackdown, when Ziegler drove down from his home in Rockford, Illinois. Just before midnight, Ziegler was walking with some protesters and media through the streets of Ferguson, broadcasting to his Ustream account from his iPhone, when an officer pointed his rifle at a protester in front of him and threatened, “I will fucking kill you! Get back!” Ziegler demanded to know the officer’s name. “Go fuck yourself,” he said. Ziegler taunted the man, repeatedly calling him “Officer Go Fuck Yourself.” The video went viral, and the officer, Ray Albers, a lieutenant with the St. Ann, Missouri, police, was forced to resign. Ferguson was clearly the place to be for anyone who believed, like Ziegler, in the power of live web video to help change the world. He soon moved to Ferguson full-time, and he quickly developed an audience. At the height of the action, Ziegler had as many as 40,000 viewers watching live, or nearly 10 percent of MSNBC’s prime-time viewership.

    But when I landed in St. Louis on November 25, the night after the announcement that Darren Wilson would not face charges for killing Michael Brown, Ziegler sent me an urgent text. “DO NOT GO TO FERGUSON! … Texts and other messages are not looking good/safe. Another media person was just carjacked … ” Ziegler told me to meet him instead in Shaw, a St. Louis neighborhood 13 miles south of Ferguson that had become a secondary hub of anti-police protest, after cops killed another black teenager there this fall. […]

    Now Maibes scrolled through her Twitter feed, grimacing and shaking her head. The reports from Ferguson were like something from a war zone, all fire and tear gas, and her viewers wanted to know why she wasn’t there to give them a front-row seat on the action. Livestreamers have an intimate, sometimes fraught, relationship with their viewers. Most rely on donations collected on crowd-funding sites like Fundrazr and Indiegogo, and their audience functions as a sort of crowd-sourced production team and assignment editor. Viewers offer tips about police and protester movement, and help moderate the chat fields embedded in the feeds. Maibes knew she needed her viewers’ support, but tonight, exhausted after two weeks of awaiting the grand jury decision and halfway through another sleepless night of streaming in Shaw, she was frustrated by their nagging.

    Eventually, she called a protester in Ferguson to see if there were any chance of streaming there. “How bad is it up there?” she said. “You can’t get it in? That’s what I thought. That’s what I was telling people! I’ve got so many people complaining that I’m not up there. But I’m not going to go around shooting riot porn. My whole thing is filming police interactions with protesters. That’s not what this is. This is people setting things on fire.” She hung up. Ziegler told her not to worry about the haters. “Those people are just jerks,” he said. […]

    “When Ferguson happened, I was up all night watching the livestreams; I was on Twitter helping spread information. After about a week, I couldn’t handle it anymore. I knew they were lacking independent coverage to show what was happening,” he says. He quit his retail job at an agricultural supply store and moved to Ferguson.

    The form is well-suited to an event like Ferguson, which practically demands you choose a side before engaging with it. A livestream is limited by what the streamer can physically access in real-time, and so the most compelling streams are often produced by sympathetic participants, rather than outside journalists. Ziegler, for instance, has won the trust of the activists on the ground in Ferguson. As an unabashed supporter, he can get shots mainstream media can’t. He specifically tries not to broadcast information that would harm protesters. For instance, he decided not to stream a secret meeting in which activists discussed their upcoming action.

    Ferguson organizers welcome his presence and see livestreamers as a useful tool — combination bullhorn and insurance policy. “They provide a way for people to watch us and protect us,” says DeRay Mckesson, a prominent protester who runs a daily Ferguson newsletter. “We get nervous when livestreamers aren’t there.” Viewers fashion themselves into far-flung cop-watchers and will clip videos for use in potential legal cases. Antagonists of Ferguson activists have also started clipping videos that they claim show protester illegality in order to forward them to authorities. One Ustream user who goes by the handle “Nothiefsallowed” simply rebroadcasts activist streams while providing his own running commentary urging police to arrest the lawbreakers. […]

    But no streamer has produced more viscerally effective, if questionably sensible, confrontations with police than Bassem Masri, a local St. Louis livestreamer and activist, and the object of a fair amount of bad press for his provocations against media and police. When things get heated, he has tended to hurl outrageous vitriol at the cops, daring them to react with force. In one well-circulated clip, he informs officers trying to control a protest that he’s praying for their death. Masri boasted the largest viewership of all the livestreamers in Ferguson, at least until his phone was stolen in the middle of a protest on the night of the grand jury decision. 90,000 viewers watched the perpetrator sprint with the phone down the street and overheard him boast to his friend of the heist before the feed went dead. (Masri was in jail the entire time I was in St. Louis. )

    The livestreamers’ other main adversary is the mainstream media. Many protesters in Ferguson can expound for hours about the problems with the media, from its obsession with “riot porn” to its credulousness of the police perspective. Interrupting CNN broadcasts with a chant of “Fuck CNN” has become a sort of nationwide meme post-Ferguson. Ziegler complains of network cameramen trampling protesters and CNN bodyguards throwing their weight around the protest zone. “The guys with big cameras couldn’t give a shit about anything except getting the shot,” he says, comparing his activism to what he sees as their mercenary bent. “They don’t care about anything but that paycheck.” […]

    “We’re out here fucking 24 hours a day shooting live video that’s unedited,” Ziegler said in reply. “We sacrifice our lives, we sacrifice our safety to make sure that the lies the police spin, and that you take and report as fact — because it’s the police and they must not be lying — we are here to counter that narrative. And you just eat it up. And when you’re not doing that, you just make it about yourself. Like, My life was in danger, so fuck these people when they get gassed tonight.” […]

    “I have a question,” said the freelance photographer. “Did any of this change how you feel?” Marshall looked her straight in the eyes. “I gave you 20 minutes, and I can say that it’s the best 20 minutes I’ve spent in Ferguson over the past 72 hours,” he said with conviction. “Fair enough? Seriously.” Ziegler thanked Marshall for the dialogue and apologized for his earlier outburst. “I’m emotional right now and I’m a little fed-up and I apologize,” he said. Marshall and the cameraman walked away as the photographer called out, “Be safe!”

    I asked the skinny protester if he believed Marshall had really been affected by the conversation. He said he did. “If he was that good of a liar he wouldn’t be working for KCTV,” the protester said. “He’d be working for CNN.”

    It has long paragraphs and it is a long article.

    L.A.: Firefighters battle huge Los Angeles blaze

    Almost 250 firefighters were attempting to tackle the blaze early on Monday morning.

    The fire could be seen from miles away and it shut portions of two major freeways.

    The cause is not yet known. It is not thought anyone was in the building at the time and there were no initial reports of any injuries.

    Pictures at link.

    St. Louis Post-Dispatch turns off comments on editorials. ‘Why? Ferguson.’

    It’s a two-month experiment, the editorial reports, and you can still comment in the news section. But “We intend to use our opinion pages to help the St. Louis region have a meaningful discussion about race. So we are going to turn off the comments in the editorial section for a while, and see what we learn from it.”

    Renee Thomas-Woods, assistant professor of communications at St. Louis Community College–Florissant Valley, stopped reading comments on the Post-Dispatch a while ago, but after Ferguson, she started peeking at them again. The Post-Dispatch has done a good job showing different perspectives on public opinion with Ferguson news, she said. But many were racist, mean and just nasty.

    “I understand that the Post might be getting a bit overloaded with a number of these kinds of comments,” she said. “I know while they want to be fair and objective and show people’s reactions and opinions, they don’t want to be a sounding board necessarily for the negative and destructive comments.”

    Not all the comments were racist, she said, some offered solutions, but the overall tone tended to silence people and keep them from reading. Now, she said, the Post-Dispatch has been forced to silence the comments themselves.

    Racist trolls are everywhere.

    Remember how McCullogh promised all Grand Jury documents? Ferguson grand jury documents withheld. With autoplay video.

    The acknowledgment came after a review by KSDK-TV found several key documents were missing from the thousands of pages released by McCulloch’s office on Nov. 24, shortly after the prosecutor announced that the grand jury had decided not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for killing the unarmed teen.

    McCulloch’s executive assistant, Ed Magee, said the office released everything it still had when the case was closed, but had “turned over and relinquished control” of some FBI’s interviews conducted in connection with the shooting.

  205. rq says

    Libby Anne on Racism Is (Not) Dead.

    But more than anything else, I feel disheartened by the responses I have seen from white people who just do not get it, and who are not interested in getting it. I have never felt like we have so far to go on this issue as I do now. One thing I do know is this: People of color should not bear the burden of educating whites who just don’t get it. I have to be a part of that change. I have to be willing to speak out about injustice and call out racism, including covert racism, wherever I see it. I have to try. I can’t change everyone, but maybe, little by little, I can bring some change.

    More than anything else, I think too many white people are getting caught up in the details of the Michael Brown case. On some level, this isn’t really about Ferguson. It’s just that Ferguson has provided a spark to ignite a larger conversation. This conversation is not new, as anyone who followed the Trayvon Martin case is well aware. But the conversation is less about the details and more about the broader themes.

    When it comes to racism, white people need to understand that people of color know what they are talking about. We may perpetuate racism, whether intentionally or not, but we are not the ones living through it day in and day out. We do not experience it the way people of color do. We need to listen and be willing to learn.

    Several good links in her article, too!!!

    Editorial: No comments. An experiment in elevating the conversation. That’s the St Louis Post-Dispatch explaining the new no-comments policy.

    Anyone with spare cash? Build Ferguson Youth Tech Program. They’ve surpassed their goal, but I’m sure anything extra will help immensely.

    Verrazano Bridge;
    and in case you were wondering, Breaking into Whole Foods & chanting “Ferguson! Ferguson!” is NOT solidarity. Fyi. #Ferguson #Berkeley.

  207. rq says

    Blockquoting the entirety of Tony’s first link, because it’s a must-read, a la ‘Shuffling Feet’ from Crommunist a while ago, but far more relevant at the moment.

    I am afraid of the cops. Absolutely petrified of the cops. Now understand, I’ve never been arrested or held for questioning. I’ve never been told that I “fit the description.” But that doesn’t change a thing. I am afraid of cops the way that spiders are afraid of boots. You’re walking along, minding your own business, and SQUISH! You are dead.

    Simply put, I am afraid of the cops because I am black. To raise the stakes even further, I am male. And to go all in on this pot of fear, I am six foot four, and weigh 250 pounds. Michael Brown, the unarmed Missouri 18-year-old shot dead by police this summer, was also six foot four. Depending on your perspective, I could be described as a “gentle giant,” the way that teachers described Brown. Or I could be described as a “demon,” the way that Officer Darren Wilson described Michael Brown in his grand-jury testimony.

    I don’t engage in any type of behavior that should place me in a cop’s crosshairs. I don’t live in “one of those neighborhoods,” or hang out with a “bad crowd,” (unless you count comedians). I am not involved in felonious activity. I’m not bragging. I’m just boring. But the fact that I’m not involved in any of that stuff doesn’t leave me any more confident I won’t be killed. That’s because I’ve been endowed with the triple crown of being killed for no good reason: big, black, and male.

    On Monday night, I went out for ice cream at 12:30 A.M. I walked a while because I live in a pretty sleepy neighborhood in Berkeley, California. I had my hoodie up, because it was cold and it made it easier to listen to the podcast in my headphones. By the time I found a late-night convenience store, I had passed a few—by my eye—unsavory characters of all races. So, as I walked in the store I had to take some precautionary action. For starters, I took the hood down. I took it down even though my afro had become a flat-fro from being squashed underneath. I didn’t touch anything that I wasn’t absolutely sure I was going to buy. (Just like my mom had taught me.) I kept my hands out of my pockets with palms clearly visible so the clerk behind the counter could easily see that I wasn’t shoving things in—or maybe more importantly about to pull something out of—my pockets. And as soon as I decided on an It’s It ice-cream sandwich, I went directly to the counter and gingerly placed my selection down, again keeping my palms visible and only making the movements I needed to get the money out of my wallet.

    All seemed to be going well. But I was so preoccupied with not seeming unsavory that when the clerk said “two twenty-five”, I thought he said, “one twenty-five.” As he wordlessly stared at the two bucks I had given him without looking me in the eye, I realized my error and simultaneously had a tiny jolt of adrenalin.

    “Uh-oh!” I thought. “He’s going to think I’m pulling some sort of scam!” I envisioned him getting loud, “WHAT ARE YOU UP TO HERE?” Then I imagined myself trying to calm him down . . .

    He misunderstands, and pulls out a gun. I run out of the store. He calls the cops. Since I live in a good neighborhood they show up quickly. They cut me off as I’m running home. They leap out of their car, guns drawn. I start to truly panic, “YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND! IT WAS A MISTAKE!” I put my arms up in the air. At this point I realize I’m holding the It’s It, which I never paid for. I wave my hands frantically and say, “I DIDN’T MEAN TO STEAL THIS!” The cops take in all my hand waving, crazy talk, and B.B.M.-ness and then, POP! POP! POP! POP! POP! POP! POP! I’m dead.

    The next day, it comes out that earlier that night I’d had a fight with my wife . . . and that I had recently written a blog about comedians and depression . . . and that in my standup act I have jokes that are critical of police. The media reports that when I was in high school I was an assistant instructor at a kung-fu school. Headline: Black Comedian, a Martial-Arts Expert Who Hated Cops, Fought with His Wife, and Was Clinically Depressed, Demonically Steals Frozen Treat From Local Merchant.

    That all went through my head—in about a second. And I was just trying to buy ice cream. I don’t live in a socio-economically deprived neighborhood. I haven’t been denied a good education by my local government. I don’t generally feel trapped by my circumstances. But I do feel every bit of my six-foot-four-inch, 250-pound body, and every bit of my black skin. And lest you think I am exaggerating in the above scenario, know that it contains elements of the deaths of Michael Brown, Oscar Grant, Kajieme Powell, Eric Garner, and others.

    The fact is that being a B.B.M. has consequences. Being a B.B.M. is why I smile quickly. It’s why I don’t usually stand to my full height. I slouch and bend. When acquaintances haven’t seen me for awhile, I often hear, “I forgot how tall you are!” I know you did. It’s because I’m trying to make you forget. This is what being black in America has done to me, to others like me, and in some sense, even to you. It’s not that I think that I will be killed by a police officer. It’s just that if I am, it won’t be a surprise.

  208. rq says

    The other two are similar and just as relevant, though one is in reaction to the not-guilty verdict of George Zimmerman. Still applicable today.
    Second article:

    I raise my voice an octave when I meet white strangers. It was a subconscious occurrence all through my childhood, but as an adult, it’s been a conscious decision – like a collared shirt and a well-rehearsed smile, quite motions and the overuse of “please” and “thank you.” Silent tricks urging you to not to be afraid of me, letting you know that I mean no harm and that there’s no need to be scared.

    I want you to know that you shouldn’t fear me. And it never matters. Someone always does.

    It would be enough to have the world afraid of me. But your fear forces me to be afraid for my life and the lives of the people in my family and bla bla bla bla bleh.

    Insert a million thoughts you’ve read before on a thousand other blogs. Assume all the eloquent phrasing that’s never enough to make a difference.

    I’m used to being sad and frightened. I grew up with men holding confederate flags and spitting at my mother’s feet. I came into adolescence watching my father get passed over for promotion after promotion while working to pay the mortgage a bank charged him more for than they ever would have a white man. I’ve sat at night as a kid and cried over the news of other black children being murdered or jailed, having the content of their character misinterpreted and dragged through the muck because of the color of their skin. But there was always that hope, that chance that change would come.

    Now I’m an adult. The change hasn’t come and the sorrow has faded. Instead, I’ve found myself hostile with the rage of the stereotyped adult Black male. I’ve found myself ready to fight at the drop of a hat. I’ve found myself wishin’ a nigga would. I’ve found myself furious, tears blinding me with rage, while still having to cautiously move through the restrictions of a society that failed to consider me in its construction; and so much more fury stems from having to take precaution in the wake of justifiable rage.

    I must measure my reactions against other people of color, for despite their occasionally ignorant comments and blissful denial of any prejudice, they know these same pains. I seek to avoid confrontation with white women, who know a similar struggle – and women of color especially, who too often face the trickled down pains of abuse bought by the economics of oppression. I must also contain all angry reactions from white men and those who view my mere presence as a threat, and that I must do strictly for fear of my own life.

    And in the wake of all those careful maneuvers, I still don’t know what to do. To concede to hate and anger is to admit defeat, and to peacefully sit with it is to pander. To react in outrage is to endanger myself, and to react within permissible guidelines is to admit that culprits may permit me my feelings. There is nothing but the unfortunate comfort of knowing that others feel this same way.

    And so now, again, there are people in the streets.

    Again.

    Still.

    Some of these protestors – regardless of race, creed, or any other means by which identity may be assigned – carry with them strong hearts and earnest, well intentioned hope for change. But even those with the best motives must march alongside over-eager white boys giddy for the chance to rush back to school and tell tall tales of that one time a cop shot tear gas around them – boastfully recounting their triumphant moments because they “care.” It’s a pity we have to be thankful they joined ranks with the protests and added white notoriety to that which is literally killing us regardless of their presence.

    I’m so tired of extending a sordid sense of thanks to things getting better, but never being good. I don’t want to be forced into gratitude for what’s only decent on paper.

    There’s a snowflake’s chance the protests will work and the riots will gain enough federal attention to enact an illusion of change, bearing some semblance of lawful reform meant to placate the wide-eyed masses with hollowed promises of progress. If we’re lucky – if we’re luckier than we’ve been in a long time – the idea of change will be presented like an inedible garnish decorating an empty dish, and if that happens, it’s a shame how thankfully we’ll smile.

    What’s more likely is that the crowds will dissolve into memory and my life will be regarded just as worthless as it was before these riots: less than a man for my complexion and heritage, yet labeled as “one of the good ones” for my silver-tongued manner and white-kissed skin shade.

    I’m tired of having to be thankful for being “one of the good ones.” I don’t want to be grateful for how a title that disgusting and separatist helps keep me alive.

    We’ll leave this battle having won just a handful more white people to the cause of equality; and like every generation before us, we will be forced – again, still – to be thankful for the far distant perception of progress. We, like our parents before us, will look into the eyes of our children with fear for their lives in our hearts, and we will tell our young how much better things are for them; and we will say that knowing that their lives are less expendable than our own, though still expendable. And to but ease the sting of our put-upon shame, we will count “less expendable” as a tremendous victory we lost lives to win.

    And when we are angry from this, they will still blame our culture as if we didn’t build a kingdom from table scraps. They will continue to blame our parents as we watch them strangle our fathers in the street. They will point to our fallen idols and encourage us to fight fire with kindness, as if bullets haven’t riddled the bodies of all the voices who spoke to fight for us.

    And we will know there is no one to fight. There’s nothing to be mad at but intangible truths of society. There is no productive means by which to bleed my growing hatred, and to even refer to it as hatred brings forth immediate arguments of how hate does not trump hate. It brings white voices reminding you – again, still – of the legacies of long since assassinated Black leaders. These people who will never know this pain and this rage are consistently the first to suggest I turn the other cheek, with no notice to how frequently that just gets you slapped twice.

    I refuse to abandon hope, but I can’t refuse to be afraid or to acknowledge that this is a phase in my life that my father already faced, and that, in all likelihood, my tears will be replaced by rage until I too am dulled to the deaths of our children.

    I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know how much longer the breadcrumbs of hope can sustain the lack of progress.

    I just know that I am grown, and I am tired, and I’m not raising my voice an octave for your comfort anymore. Because it’s not that you should fear me, it’s that you deserve to.

    And the third article:

    I’m trying not to internalize these feelings about the Trayvon Martin case and make it about me — but hey, it is what it is, and maybe I’m melodramatic. All I’m consumed with is my positioning in life.

    I often tell cute, self-deprecating celebrity run-in stories that end with my own “pie in the face” moment. But rarely do I share stories of a more serious nature, another genre of “pie in the face” moments, mostly because in the age of social media, most people are quick to dismiss my tales as #FirstWorldProblems. But I can’t tell you how many times a year I’m in a serious situation, only to hear the magic words “Oh, wait … Questlove?” Hey guys, it’s Questlove. “We’re so sorry, you can go!” Like, five to seven times a year, a night ending in the words “Thank God for that Afro or we’d never have recognized you” happens to me.

    I’m in scenarios all the time in which primitive, exotic-looking me — six-foot-two, 300 pounds, uncivilized Afro, for starters — finds himself in places where people who look like me aren’t normally found. I mean, what can I do? I have to be somewhere on Earth, correct? In the beginning — let’s say 2002, when the gates of “Hey, Ahmir, would you like to come to [swanky elitist place]?” opened — I’d say “no,” mostly because it’s been hammered in my DNA to not “rock the boat,” which means not making “certain people” feel uncomfortable.

    I mean, that is a crazy way to live. Seriously, imagine a life in which you think of other people’s safety and comfort first, before your own. You’re programmed and taught that from the gate. It’s like the opposite of entitlement.

    The problem is, I do have desires to go to certain places and do certain things and enjoy the perks and benefits of being a person who works his arse off as much as I do. So I got over my hang-ups of not wanting to be the odd guy in the room sometime around 2007. It’s been mixed results at best. Some of it is “Oh, that wasn’t that bad”; some of it is “Well, that was awkward … ” This is the prime reason I hate vacations. I don’t feel like being the “odd guy out” at vacation spots, hence the reason my 2009 hobo journey train trip was my best vacation ever. There’s no scaring people on a train ride. My friends know that I hate parking lots and elevators, not because they are places that danger could occur, but it’s a prime place in which someone of my physical size can be seen as a dangerous element. I wait and wait in cars until I feel it’s safe for me to make people feel safe. I know most of y’all are eye-rolling, but if you spent a good three months in these size fourteens, you’d understand why I take that position.

    I recently told a friend one of these stories: I live in a “nice” building. I work hard. You know I work hard. My logic is (naïve alert in 5, 4, 3, 2 … ) “Well, there can’t be any fear of any type in this building” — you’ve got to go through hell and high water just to get accepted to live here, like it’s Dartmouth or UPenn. Secondly, there are, like, five to eight guards on duty 24/7, so this spot is beyond safe. Like, Oscar winners and kids of royalty and sports guys and mafia goombahs live here. One night, I get in the elevator, and just as the door closes this beautiful woman gets on. Because of a pain in the arse card device you have to use to get to your floor, it just makes it an easier protocol for whoever is pressing floors to take everyone’s request, like when you are at the window of a drive-thru. So I press my floor number, and I ask her, “What floor, ma’am?” (Yes, I say “ma’am,” because … sigh, anyway.) She says nothing, stands in the corner. Mind you, I just discovered the Candy Crush app, so if anything, I’m the rude one because I’m more obsessed with winning this particular level than anything else. In my head I’m thinking, There’s no way I can be a threat to a woman this fine if I’m buried deep in this game — so surely she feels safe.

    The humor comes in that I thought she was on my floor because she never acknowledged my floor request. (She was also bangin’, so inside I was like, “Dayuuuuuuuuuuum, she lives on my floor? *bow chicka wowow*!” Instantly I was on some “What dessert am I welcome-committee-ing her with?”) Anywho, the door opens, and I waited to let her off first because I am a gentleman. (Old me would’ve rushed first, thus not putting me in the position to have to follow her, God forbid if she, too, makes a left and it seems like I’m following her.) So door opens and I flirt, “Ladies first.” She says, “This is not my floor.” Then I assume she is missing her building card, so I pulled my card out to try to press her floor yet again. She says, “That’s okay.”

    Then it hit me: “Oh God, she purposely held that information back.” The door closed. It was a “pie in the face” moment.

    I laughed at it. Sort of.

    Inside I cried. But if I cried at every insensitive act that goes on in the name of safety, I’d have to be committed to a psych ward. I’ve just taught myself throughout the years to just accept it and maybe even see it as funny. But it kept eating at me (Well, I guess she never watched the show … My English was super clear … I called her “ma’am” like I was Webster … Those that know you know that you’re cool, but you definitely know that you are a walking rape nightmare — right, Ahmir? Of course she was justified in not saying her floor. That was her prerogative! You are kinda scary-looking, I guess?). It’s a bajillion thoughts, all of them self-depreciating voices slowly eating my soul away.

    But my feelings don’t count. I don’t know why it’s that way. Mostly I’ve come to the conclusion that people over six feet and over weight regulation or as dark as me (or in my tax bracket) simply don’t have feelings. Or it’s assumed we don’t have feelings. I mean, it’s partially right: I literally figured the only way for me to not go insane in a career that creates junkies (or at best Kanye) is to desensitize myself from feelings. The thing is, though, I’m a halfway crook, an awesome poker player. Yeah, I hurt. But I’ll be damned if I let you know that. Call me a 75 percent robot, 25 percent human being.

    When I got off a plane Sunday morning, after the “not guilty” verdict in the George Zimmerman trial, and I was waiting in customs, I read an apology e-mail from a friend who said, “I am wrong about many things, but I want to apologize for taking that particular story you told me too lightly.” The one about the woman in the elevator. And it kinda touched me. My friend related to me, and it was a gut-punch I wasn’t expecting on an already emotional day, so I guess I started to almost … cry?

    Then the Roots’ manager Rich hits me on the phone seconds later. Boom. I know it’s sad to say, but we in the Roots circle love each other like family. But not enough to trust each other in vulnerable moments. (This is a man who waited until he was on the operating table, minutes away from surgery, to finally reveal to me he was going through a life-or-death cancer procedure, simply because he didn’t want to distract me or create excuses as to why I didn’t finish my book.) On the phone, I do my best “straighten up, stop sobbing” shtick, and he says, “What’s wrong?” In four seconds flat, I bury it, and I’m back to normal. I’m not proud of that. I’ve spent eleven of the last twenty years in therapy trying to deal with that. So I decide to abandon Operation Bury, and I say, “Well … ”

    “What’s wrong?” asks Rich.

    How do I answer that? This does NOT feel like an average day. Remember how nice everyone was post–September 11? Eerie. Almost surreal. Like everyone is acting “too nice,” and I don’t know how to process that. Then there are people that are acting like nothing happened. (“Hey, Quest, where is Dave Chappelle at!?”) It was just one of those days that didn’t feel normal to me. But Rich keeps picking at the question like a three-month-old scab: “What’s wrong?”

    And I’m like, “Need I say it!?” I can’t tell if he’s provoking me or not. I don’t know how to not internalize the overall message this whole Trayvon case has taught me:

    You ain’t shit.

    That’s the lesson I took from this case.

    You ain’t shit.

    These words are deep because these are words I’ve heard my whole life: I heard from adults in my childhood that I needed to be “about something” other than all that banging and clanging and music I play all the time. As I got older, I heard I wasn’t as good as so-and-so is at music. All the “you ain’t shit” stories I got — Jesus, it’s a wonder I made it.

    Rich asks, “Wait, you’re not surprised, are you?” I’m not surprised at all, but that doesn’t mean it stings any less.

    I should be angry, right? I remember when the Sean Bell verdict came out and I just knew, “Oh, God, New York is gonna go up in flames.” And yet no one was fuming. It was like, “[Shrug] … No surprises here. That’s life.”

    Rich asks again, “Are you surprised … that you ain’t shit?”

    It hurts to hear it, and I say, “I’m not surprised, but who wants to be reminded?” What fat person wants to hear that they aren’t pleasing to the eye? Or what addict wants to hear they are a constant F-up? Who wants to be reminded that — shrug — that’s just the way it is?

    I guess I’m struggling to get at least 1 percent of this feeling back, from all this protective numbness I’ve built around me, to keep me from feeling. Because, at the end of the day, I’m still human.

    … Right?

  209. rq says

    THEY LET HIM OUT!!! Cop Charged With Sexually Assaulting 7 Black Women Released From Jail.

    Boulder Colorado Protests Mike Brown Verdict

    brother jeff was in Boulder CO, when hundreds took to the streets in protest following the Mike Brown and Eric Garner non indictments. Protesters clearly articulated why Black Lives Matter and shut down holiday shopping, main street intersections and Highway 36 in both directions.

    Cut For Time: Morning News – Saturday Night Live

    A St. Louis news station reconsiders its morning programming in light of the Ferguson riots.

  213. Saad says

    No problem :)

    The person from CNN is black with 4 white people.

    They should have a black person FROM Ferguson (or a black person who lives in similar conditions). Only then will this make any sense. This is too much like just men talking about abortion.

  214. Saad says

    Is there a racial version of mansplainin? Because it just happened in that video.

    Rich Lowry (white dude) just told Van Jones (black man) that Garner is an isolated incident and that he had been arrested previously many times without such an incident. This is right after Jones mentioned he has a 10-year old son who he fears could be targeted by something like this.

  216. Saad says

    Do you all remember this from a few months ago?

    If you’re not able to watch a video at the moment, this is video of Joseph Houseman (a white man) defiantly holding a rifle in public in Michigan as police gather around him and talk to him for over half an hour until he puts the gun down and gives up. Apparently, he even got his gun back the next day.

    Contrast with a 12-year old black boy getting less than 2 seconds.

  217. Gregory Greenwood says

    rq @ 214;

    I believe “whitesplaining” is a term. If it isn’t, it needs to be.

    Agreed – so much of it goes on that a dedicted term is required. Plus the phrase would inevitably drive racist arsehats up the wall, which is always a noble goal to strive for…

  218. says

    Cross posted from the Lounge:

    The Jon Stewart segment reminded me that former mayor Rudy Giuliani “Fundamentally Misunderstands the Reality” as Mayor Bill de Blasio said. Link. Giuliani seems to be getting worse as he ages.

    Excerpt from what Mayor de Blasio said:

    “I think he fundamentally misunderstands the reality. We’re trying to bring police and community together. There is a problem here, there is a rift here that has to be overcome. You cannot look at the incident in Missouri, another incident in Cleveland, Ohio, and another incident in New York City, all happening in the space of weeks and act like there’s not a problem.

    It’s different for a white child. That’s just the reality in this country. And with Dante, very early on with my son, we said, ‘Look, if a police officer stops you, do everything he tells you to do, don’t move suddenly, don’t reach for your cell phone,’ because we knew, sadly, there’s a greater chance it might be misinterpreted if it was a young man of color.

    We all want to look up to figures of authority. And everyone knows the police protect us. But there’s that fear that there could be that one moment of misunderstanding with a young man of color and that young man may never come back.

  220. rq says

    I’m just amazed they’re only charging manslaughter (well, not really). I’m pretty sure that every time an officer opens fire on a ‘suspect’, especially if that ‘suspect’ is black, they are shooting to kill, because a threat isn’t eliminated until it’s dead.

  222. says

    I’d just like to highlight this bit from back at #172:

    Cops routinely called anyone of color a “thug,” whether they were the victim or just a bystander.

    It’s not going to come as a surprise to anyone here, but I think it’s interesting to have someone on the inside actually admit it. “Thug” is the replacement for the N word.

  223. rq says

    Photos from Berkeley via Latvian internet news.

    An analysis from the CBC: It won’t be easy reining in America’s ‘chokehold police’

    In the view of New York’s police union — and, no doubt, a significant percentage of street-level police officers in this country — if you can suck enough air into your lungs to gasp out that you cannot breathe, then you must be able to breathe, and therefore you’re lying, and therefore there is no reason to release the chokehold.

    Conversely, of course, if you actually cannot breathe, you wouldn’t be able to speak at all, and therefore you’d be unable to communicate that to the policeman choking you, so how is that policeman supposed to realize he should stop?

    Either way, by this piece of street-cop logic, it’s not the policeman’s fault. It’s yours. And either way, you may very well wind up dead, which is also your fault. […]

    As U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand put it, no unarmed person should die on a New York street corner because he’s suspected of some trifling offence. Garner was accosted by police for allegedly selling loose cigarettes, which he vociferously denied having done.

    But the beat cop view is that there’s a larger issue here: refusal to submit.

    Garner’s real crime was to tell police he was sick of being rousted, that it had to stop and, when officers moved in, to get their hands off him.

    Police tend to hold the view that citizens have no right to resist, no matter how unfairly they’re being treated, and no matter how abusively police might be wielding their considerable powers.

    Try to protect yourself from a police beating, and you’ll only be beaten more severely, and likely charged with assaulting your assaulter. […]

    It’s been 100 years since The Trial was written. In modern America, police are permitted to use lethal force essentially at their discretion. They also enjoy a level of legal immunity extended to no one else.

    It is, of course, their job to deal with violent people, and they must err on the side of caution, especially if they perceive a threat. As beat cops are fond of saying, it’s better to face 12 jurors than to need six pallbearers.

    You can understand that point of view. The problem is that police can’t all be trusted with the kind of power they possess, and police violence in America, especially by predominantly white officers against minorities, seems wildly out of control. […]

    The report quotes the U.S. Supreme Court: “It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape.”

    Clearly, there are officers in Cleveland and New York and elsewhere in the U.S. who disagree with those words.

    Holder made a statement that was remarkable, coming from the nation’s top law enforcement officer: there are too many Americans suffering tragic losses because of police abuse.

    But Holder’s ultimate solution is the same as President Obama’s and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s, and the great many other politicians who’ve spoken out: America, they say, needs to have “a national conversation.”

    Of course, they said the same thing about gun control after the school massacre in Connecticut two years ago. Go ahead, look it up. Then consider what was actually done.

    (The report mentioned is one on the Cleveland PD.)
    Well, there’s a national conversation occurring now, too. But it’s not the conversation that needs to be had, it’s the action that needs to be taken.

    Video (non- autoplay): NYC protester Donysha Smith calls on NYPD officers to speak out against violence

    While marching through the park, Smith confronted three officers who were escorting the crowd, calling on them to speak up on the issue violence by police against the black community.

    “You are not a murderer,” Smith said. “You are silent, and that is the problem. Your silence is killing people.”

  224. Pteryxx says

    Re Tony’s #203, here’s the link that the spam trap would’ve caught: from the-toast.net originally from August 27, The Parable of the Unjust Judge or: Fear of a N***r Nation (all asterisks mine) I excerpted big sections but it should be read in entirety.

    Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’

    “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”

    Luke 18:1-4

    In the days after Michael Brown’s death, we watched a sadly familiar story play out. The media ran pictures of him staring sullenly into the camera and making “gang” signs with his hands. They emphasized his weight and large frame, listened to his music and declared it “violent hip hop.” For their part, the police made certain to pair pertinent details about his death with seemingly irrelevant details about his life: releasing the long demanded name of the officer who shot him alongside surveillance footage of an unrelated shoplifting incident, leaking a toxicology report indicating that Brown had “marijuana in his system” at the same time they released an autopsy confirming that he’d been shot six times. Black people desperately tried to defend Michael Brown, pointing out that he was a child, that he was gentle, that he never got into any trouble, that he was going to college. If we fail to name the battleground being fought upon, this fight over what narrative to impose on the details of Brown’s life might seem oddly tangential to the argument over the circumstances of his death. So let’s be clear about the stakes of this conflict: we are trying to decide whether or not Michael Brown was a n****r. A dead human being is a tragedy that needs to be investigated and accounted for. A dead n****r doesn’t even need to be mourned, much less its death justified.

    […]

    And this, ultimately, is the logic of respectability politics. That respectability politics is the narrative of the oppressor digested and regurgitated by the oppressed is obvious. But we shouldn’t dismiss it without understanding its allure and durability: it reframes the terms of power, restoring agency into black hands. For the black upper class, it is the parable that allows them to rationalize their privilege as a sign of their own worthiness, while simultaneously giving them cover to righteously withdraw concern from the plight of the less fortunate of their race. It’s no coincidence that the black people advocating for blacks to somehow be cleansed of their blackness by bathing in the waters of post-racial healing are many of the same complaining that “we” don’t pay attention to “black on black crime”. For the black middle class, respectability becomes an aspirational fable, a promise that they, too can be free of racism if they become successful enough to transcend their race. For the black underclass, it becomes a morality tale that explains their own destruction. Respectability politics is a false narrative, but it maintains its power because, like so many powerful lies, it sits adjacent to the truth and set slightly askew: they are looking for a way to turn you into a n****r, and if necessary, they will find one. You will never leave a body pure enough to not be judged complicit in its own destruction.

    When you recognize this essential truth, it becomes uncomfortably clear that an alliance with whites newly uncomfortable with police militarization and misconduct is not an answer. I agree that we should take steps to demilitarize the police, and I agree that that we should require police officers to wear cameras and install them on their dashboards. But let’s not pretend that these measures would constitute a solution to the problem of state violence done to blacks. New regulations to restrict police usage of the paraphernalia of military occupation will not stop them from taking the attitudes of occupiers. The police did not need military weapons to kill Eric Garner. They didn’t even need a gun. […]

    And let us not fail to name, either, the fear awakened in many white people, that the police force in Ferguson could one day be at the gates of their own town, that it already is: it is the fear of being treated like n****rs. The troubling scenes we’ve seen in Ferguson – of the abrogation of basic civil rights, of the lack of respect for the community being policed, of casual brutality and harassment of the citizenry, of a police force taking the aggressive crouch of an occupying army – these scenes might be new to many white Americans, but for black America, they are as old as Reconstruction and as familiar as Sunday. Our white allies can alleviate their fears by returning the country to some imagined golden age of the friendly neighborhood constable, whistling as he strolls his beat, idly swinging his baton. Black Americans don’t have to be civil rights scholars to know that there is no idyllic utopia there for us.

    […] That the machine of state wants the grist of black bodies is not unique to the city of Ferguson, and it is not new to America. The thickly knotted vines of petty infractions that can strangle a black family into imprisonment, bankruptcy, and homelessness find their roots in the pre-Jim Crow vagrancy laws that saw blacks imprisoned and pressed into forced labor for the crime of existing. The explosively growing for-profit prison system finds its genesis in the system of prison labor and chain gangs that emerged after the Civil War. The maze of laws and regulations that define governance in America, from the federal level down to the municipal is not intended to be navigated successfully by blacks, it was designed to entrap them. With respect to Ta-Nehisi Coates and his moving, thought-provoking essay, there is no way of making reparations for a crime that is in progress.

    Jesus told the Parable of the Unjust Judge, the writer of Luke tells us, to teach us about prayer, but I think it can tell us something about justice as well. The unjust judge of the parable could be petitioned into rendering justice in a particular case if it were made inconvenient enough for him not to. This realization, of course, we have heard echoed by Malcolm and Martin alike. We should notice, though, what does not happen in the parable – the judge does not repent or reform. He does not become a righteous man. He renders justice to the widow out of pure self-interest, but this does not make him anymore inclined to be just in the next case the widow might bring, or indeed the next case that anyone else brings. There is no amount of pleading, petitioning, or protesting that will transform the judge into a just man. We live in under a state that is at best, indifferent to our problems, and at worst, actively seeking to destroy us. It is good and right that we hound the state into giving us justice, but blacks cannot delude themselves into thinking that the state will ever become justice. There are no laws that can be passed or reforms that can be pursued that will allow us to stop being vigilant. There are no victories that will bring us peace. We will never be able to pound our swords into plowshares, because we will always have to be prepared to fight. Dr. King, our beautiful prophet, was wrong. The arc of the moral universe does not lead anywhere in particular, not in this life. If it bends towards justice, it is only because it is pulled that way by our constant effort, by our unceasing straining and sweating and shouting.

  225. Pteryxx says

    Re Tony’s #203, here’s a tinyurl version of the link that the spam trap would’ve caught: from the-toast.net originally from August 27, The Parable of the Unjust Judge or: Fear of a N***r Nation (all asterisks mine). I excerpted big sections but it should be read in entirety.

    Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’

    “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”

    Luke 18:1-4

    In the days after Michael Brown’s death, we watched a sadly familiar story play out. The media ran pictures of him staring sullenly into the camera and making “gang” signs with his hands. They emphasized his weight and large frame, listened to his music and declared it “violent hip hop.” For their part, the police made certain to pair pertinent details about his death with seemingly irrelevant details about his life: releasing the long demanded name of the officer who shot him alongside surveillance footage of an unrelated shoplifting incident, leaking a toxicology report indicating that Brown had “marijuana in his system” at the same time they released an autopsy confirming that he’d been shot six times. Black people desperately tried to defend Michael Brown, pointing out that he was a child, that he was gentle, that he never got into any trouble, that he was going to college. If we fail to name the battleground being fought upon, this fight over what narrative to impose on the details of Brown’s life might seem oddly tangential to the argument over the circumstances of his death. So let’s be clear about the stakes of this conflict: we are trying to decide whether or not Michael Brown was a n****r. A dead human being is a tragedy that needs to be investigated and accounted for. A dead n****r doesn’t even need to be mourned, much less its death justified.

    […]

    And this, ultimately, is the logic of respectability politics. That respectability politics is the narrative of the oppressor digested and regurgitated by the oppressed is obvious. But we shouldn’t dismiss it without understanding its allure and durability: it reframes the terms of power, restoring agency into black hands. For the black upper class, it is the parable that allows them to rationalize their privilege as a sign of their own worthiness, while simultaneously giving them cover to righteously withdraw concern from the plight of the less fortunate of their race. It’s no coincidence that the black people advocating for blacks to somehow be cleansed of their blackness by bathing in the waters of post-racial healing are many of the same complaining that “we” don’t pay attention to “black on black crime”. For the black middle class, respectability becomes an aspirational fable, a promise that they, too can be free of racism if they become successful enough to transcend their race. For the black underclass, it becomes a morality tale that explains their own destruction. Respectability politics is a false narrative, but it maintains its power because, like so many powerful lies, it sits adjacent to the truth and set slightly askew: they are looking for a way to turn you into a n****r, and if necessary, they will find one. You will never leave a body pure enough to not be judged complicit in its own destruction.

    When you recognize this essential truth, it becomes uncomfortably clear that an alliance with whites newly uncomfortable with police militarization and misconduct is not an answer. I agree that we should take steps to demilitarize the police, and I agree that that we should require police officers to wear cameras and install them on their dashboards. But let’s not pretend that these measures would constitute a solution to the problem of state violence done to blacks. New regulations to restrict police usage of the paraphernalia of military occupation will not stop them from taking the attitudes of occupiers. The police did not need military weapons to kill Eric Garner. They didn’t even need a gun. […]

    And let us not fail to name, either, the fear awakened in many white people, that the police force in Ferguson could one day be at the gates of their own town, that it already is: it is the fear of being treated like n****rs. The troubling scenes we’ve seen in Ferguson – of the abrogation of basic civil rights, of the lack of respect for the community being policed, of casual brutality and harassment of the citizenry, of a police force taking the aggressive crouch of an occupying army – these scenes might be new to many white Americans, but for black America, they are as old as Reconstruction and as familiar as Sunday. Our white allies can alleviate their fears by returning the country to some imagined golden age of the friendly neighborhood constable, whistling as he strolls his beat, idly swinging his baton. Black Americans don’t have to be civil rights scholars to know that there is no idyllic utopia there for us.

    […] That the machine of state wants the grist of black bodies is not unique to the city of Ferguson, and it is not new to America. The thickly knotted vines of petty infractions that can strangle a black family into imprisonment, bankruptcy, and homelessness find their roots in the pre-Jim Crow vagrancy laws that saw blacks imprisoned and pressed into forced labor for the crime of existing. The explosively growing for-profit prison system finds its genesis in the system of prison labor and chain gangs that emerged after the Civil War. The maze of laws and regulations that define governance in America, from the federal level down to the municipal is not intended to be navigated successfully by blacks, it was designed to entrap them. With respect to Ta-Nehisi Coates and his moving, thought-provoking essay, there is no way of making reparations for a crime that is in progress.

    Jesus told the Parable of the Unjust Judge, the writer of Luke tells us, to teach us about prayer, but I think it can tell us something about justice as well. The unjust judge of the parable could be petitioned into rendering justice in a particular case if it were made inconvenient enough for him not to. This realization, of course, we have heard echoed by Malcolm and Martin alike. We should notice, though, what does not happen in the parable – the judge does not repent or reform. He does not become a righteous man. He renders justice to the widow out of pure self-interest, but this does not make him anymore inclined to be just in the next case the widow might bring, or indeed the next case that anyone else brings. There is no amount of pleading, petitioning, or protesting that will transform the judge into a just man. We live in under a state that is at best, indifferent to our problems, and at worst, actively seeking to destroy us. It is good and right that we hound the state into giving us justice, but blacks cannot delude themselves into thinking that the state will ever become justice. There are no laws that can be passed or reforms that can be pursued that will allow us to stop being vigilant. There are no victories that will bring us peace. We will never be able to pound our swords into plowshares, because we will always have to be prepared to fight. Dr. King, our beautiful prophet, was wrong. The arc of the moral universe does not lead anywhere in particular, not in this life. If it bends towards justice, it is only because it is pulled that way by our constant effort, by our unceasing straining and sweating and shouting.

  226. Pteryxx says

    also re Tony’s #203, here’s Laci Green’s episode of MTV Braless comparing Ferguson to the Hunger Games: (youtube link) It’s about 4 minutes, pretty straightforward, (contains spoilers!) and has no captions. She mentions the poor districts’ inhabitants being blamed for causing and inciting conflicts with armed, occupying riot police, as the mostly-peaceful protesters in Ferguson have been. Also the theme of pushing citizens to question why they should be complicit in the sacrifice of children for their peace of mind and/or amusement.

    Here’s what I think is the best part, briefly listing riots in US history, starting at 1:48: (transcript is mine)

    Lastly but not leastly, both Ferguson and Mockingjay show that change requires sacrifice of all kinds. The most controversial discussion about Ferguson has been about how to achieve social change. Obama says stay peaceful, y’know, violence won’t solve anything, but history isn’t so clear cut. We can thank the Haymarket Riot of 1886 for the eight-hour workday; the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain was a bloody and successful fight for worker protections. The Civil Rights Bill was passed under the threat of more riots. The Stonewall Riots of 1969, which Obama admired in his inauguration speech, pushed the modern fight for LGBT rights forward.

    Martin Luther King said, “riots grow out of intolerable conditions”. Violent revolts are generated by revolting conditions. They’re “the language of the unheard”.

  227. rq says

    Introduced on Twitter as a litany of horrors: Unarmed People of Color Killed by Police, 1999-2014. Please remember, this is just the past 15 years. It is an incomplete list featuring 70 (that’s seven zero) names and faces, men and women of all ages.
    Current first comment also addresses Dear Gawker Commenters Asking About White People Killed by Cops.

  228. Pteryxx says

    re rq’s #209:

    THEY LET HIM OUT!!! Cop Charged With Sexually Assaulting 7 Black Women Released From Jail.

    Yep, Daniel Holtsclaw is on house arrest, and *paid leave*, after posting $500,000 bail. From that article in September: (warning for stalking)

    The judge who initially set his bond at $5 million said he researched his target victims and tracked them down before assaulting them, according to Michigan Live. The 27-year-old former college football player’s bond was later reduced and he paid $500,000 to be released from jail and placed on home arrest. Holtzclaw was removed from duty in June after a women reported a sexual assault during a traffic stop. Many other women subsequently came forward.

    From his preliminary hearing on Nov. 18: NewsOK.com – Oklahoma City police officer faces trial on 36 counts, including rape

    An Oklahoma City police officer accused of sexually assaulting 13 women will face trial on the allegations, a judge ruled Tuesday afternoon.

    Daniel Ken Holtzclaw, 27, faces 35 felony counts and one misdemeanor. All but one of the reported crimes occurred while Holtzclaw was on duty. He had been a patrol officer for three years at the time the accusations arose.

    […]

    His bond amount was not increased after the preliminary hearing, and Holtzclaw remains on house arrest at his parents’ Enid home. He is also on paid leave with Oklahoma City police.

    Holtzclaw’s defense attorney Scott Adams declined to comment after the preliminary hearing, but has said previously that Holtzclaw denies the allegations and looks forward to his day in court.

    Holtzclaw also faces six counts of first-degree rape, which is punishable by life in prison. The other counts against him include second-degree rape by instrumentation, sexual battery, forcible oral sodomy, burglary, stalking, indecent exposure and procuring lewd exhibition.

    As a reminder, the seven original victims who came forward (out of 13 so far) are all black women; probably most or all of the others are too.

  229. Pteryxx says

    New via ThinkProgress – After Tamir Rice Was Shot, Cleveland Police Allegedly Handcuffed His 14-Year-Old Sister

    After Cleveland officer Timothy Loehmann, shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice to death and then allegedly left him there for several minutes without seeking medical help, they handcuffed his 14-year-old sister and threatened to detain her, the siblings’ mother alleged during a press conference Monday.

    Samaria Rice said Monday that she found her daughter handcuffed in the back of a police car when she got to the playground where her son was shot dead for carrying a fake gun. The daughter then told her that officers had handcuffed her when she reacted to seeing her brother bleeding on the ground, and said they would put her in the back of the car if she didn’t calm down, according to BuzzFeed.

    Cleveland Police haven’t responded to an inquiry from the Cleveland Plain Dealer asking for confirmation of the new details.

  230. Pteryxx says

    A few samples of lesser-known names from the Twitter list of unarmed people of color killed by police. (cited via Gawker in #226):

    McKenzie Cochran, 25, Southfield, Mich.—January 28, 2014

    Unarmed People of Color Killed by Police, 1999-2014

    Cochran died of “position compression asphyxia” during struggle with mall security. Cochran told them, ” I can’t breathe.” His death ruled an accident by medical examiner. Aftermath: No indictments for the security guards.

    […]

    Andy Lopez, 13, Santa Rosa, Calif.—October 22, 2013

    Unarmed People of Color Killed by Police, 1999-2014

    Lopez was carrying a pellet gun that resembled an AK-47 assault rifle. After officers reportedly told Lopez to drop the gun, he turned toward them and they shot him. Aftermath: No indictment.

    […]

    Kimani Gray, 16, New York, N.Y.—March 9, 2013

    Unarmed People of Color Killed by Police, 1999-2014

    Police said Gray pointed a revolver at them as they attempted to question him. Friends and family say Gray had never had a gun, and a witness says he never pointed one at police. The cops shot a total of 11 rounds, striking Gray several times. Aftermath: No indictments for the cops responsible for shooting Gray.

    […]

    Rekia Boyd, 22, Chicago, Ill.—March 21, 2012

    Unarmed People of Color Killed by Police, 1999-2014

    Off-duty officer Dante Servin fired an unregistered firearm into an alleyway where four people were standing after he allegedly saw a man brandish a gun. One of the bullets hit Boyd in the back of the head. She died the next day. Aftermath: The city of Chicago paid Boyd’s family $4.5 million in a wrongful death suit. The officer was charged with last November with involuntary manslaughter, reckless discharge of a firearm, and reckless conduct.

    […]

    Sgt. Manuel Loggins, Jr., 31, Orange County, Calif.—February 7, 2012

    Unarmed People of Color Killed by Police, 1999-2014

    On a religious fast and off medication for ADHD, Loggins allegedly crashed into a gate a Orange County high school with his car carrying his two daughters. After walking to and returning from the school’s athletic field with a Bible, he was approached by a police officer, who shot Loggins three times through his car window. He was unarmed. Aftermath: Orange County paid $4.4 million to Loggins’ family in a settlement last year.

    […]

    Alonzo Ashley, 29, Denver, Colo.—July 18, 2011

    Unarmed People of Color Killed by Police, 1999-2014

    Police were called by Denver Zoo security who were alarmed over Ashley’s behavior. Ashley was confronted and tasered. He started convulsing and then stopped breathing. Aftermath: Ashley’s death was ruled a homicide by the coroner, but no officers were charged. Ashley’s family sued Denver and the zoo.

    […]

    Aiyana Jones, 7, Detroit, Mich.—May 16, 2010

    Unarmed People of Color Killed by Police, 1999-2014

    Jones was shot when a Special Response Team raided the duplex she lived in. Officers threw a grenade into Jones’ apartment. Officer Joseph Weekley claimed Jones’s grandmother grabbed his gun, causing Jones to be shot. Aftermath: Weekley was charged with involuntary manslaughter. His first trial ended in a mistrial. So did his second.

    […]

    Victor Steen, 17, Pensacola, Fla.—October 3, 2009

    Unarmed People of Color Killed by Police, 1999-2014

    Sheen rode his bike as a cop chased him. Steen refused to stop, and so the cop, Jerald Ard, tasered him. Steen fell from his bike and Ard ran him over, killing him. Ard also may have planted a gun on Steen after his death. Aftermath: Ard was suspended from the force without pay for two weeks. The city of Pensacola paid Steen’s mother a $500,000 settlement.

    […]

    DeAunta Terrel Farrow, 12, West Memphis, Ark.—July 22, 2007

    Unarmed People of Color Killed by Police, 1999-2014

    Farrow was out walking with his 14-year-old cousin when gunned down by a police officer, Erik Sammis. Sammis claims that only after he shot Farrow did he realize that the gun Farrow was carrying was a toy. Aftermath: Sammis wasn’t indicted. He resigned from the force via a letter that contained the sentence, “Then there are others who are not rational and breed hate and racism in this community.” Sammis and Jimmy Evans, who was also on duty with him July 22, 2007, were found not liable in Farrow’s family’s $250 million civil suit.

  231. Saad says

    rq, #226 and Pteryxx

    Thank you! I was looking for something just like that a couple of days ago.

  232. Pteryxx says

    also from that list, oh FFS.

    Orlando Barlow, 28, Las Vegas, Nev.—February 28, 2003

    Unarmed People of Color Killed by Police, 1999-2014

    Barlow was hired to babysit seven children. After a supposed argument, his employer (the children’s mother) called the police, saying that Barlow was holding her children hostage with a sawed-off shotgun. Police responded to the call. Barlow was shot while surrendering. He was unarmed. Aftermath: A coroner’s inquest labeled the shooting “excusable.” The FBI looked into it. “The shooting was unanimously ruled justifiable, but Hartman and two other officers were fired after they printed T-shirts with the initials ‘BDRT’ — ‘Baby’s Daddy Removal Team,'”reported the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

    The source for that one references a 2011 Las Vegas Review-Journal series with database and multiple articles in each section: Deadly Force: When Las Vegas Police Shoot, and Kill

    The Series

    Part I: Always Justified
    Part II: 142 Dead, and Rising
    Part III: Quick to Shoot, Slow to Change
    Part IV: Broken System, Shattered Lives
    Part V: Better Ways

  233. toska says

    Some interesting statistics on this ‘black on black crime’ racists are always raving about:

    Black on Black Crime Facts

    Black-on-Black homicides have decreased by 67% in 20 years, a sharper rate of decrease than white on white homicide.
    According to FBI statistics 7361 Blacks were killed by fellow African-Americans in 1991. In 2011, it dropped dramatically to 2447 African-Americans.
    Among Black youth, rates of robbery and serious property offenses are the lowest in more than 40 years.
    Racial Inequality in the Criminal Justice System Facts

    African Americans were two times as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.
    In the federal system Black offenders receive sentences that are 10% longer than white offenders for the same crime.
    Five times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites.
    African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of Whites.
    African American juvenile youth are about 16% of the youth population, 37% of their cases are moved to criminal court & 58% of convicted African American youth are sent to adult prisons.
    Controlling for other factors, including severity of the offense and prior criminal history, white men aged 18-29 were 38% less likely to be sentenced to prison than their Black male peers.
    African American women are three times more likely than white women to be incarcerated.
    African American defendants are 21% more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than Whites and are 20% more like to be sentenced to prison.

    http://www.demos.org/blog/7/29/13/myth-black-black-crime-epidemic

    And even so, the black community is concerned about crime prevention. They definitely talk about it more often than white communities do.

    There are huge problems with “black-on-black crime” as a construct, mostly dealing with the banality of intra-racial crime, the foolishness of attributing violent criminality to blackness—rather than particular conditions faced by some black people—and the injustice of treating all blacks as criminally suspect because of the actions of a small minority.

    Let’s ignore those.

    Instead, let’s look directly at the question raised by Murdock, Giuliani, and Williams—“Do black people care about crime in their neighborhoods?” They treat it as a rhetorical concern—a prelude to broad statements about black American concerns. But we should treat it as an empirical question—an issue we can resolve with some time and research.

    This isn’t as easy as it sounds. While blacks are more likely to face criminal victimization than other groups, that doesn’t tell us how black Americans feel about crime and where it ranks as a problem for their communities. For that, we have to look to public opinion surveys and other research. And while it’s hard to draw a conclusive answer, all the available evidence points to one answer: Yes, black people are concerned with crime in their neighborhoods.

    First, a little context: In the last 20 years, we’ve seen a sharp drop in homicide among blacks, from a victimization rate of 39.4 homicides per 100,000 in 1991 to a rate of roughly 20 homicides per 100,000 in 2008. Likewise, the offending rate for blacks has dropped from 51.1 offenders per 100,000 in 1991 to 24.7 offenders per 100,000 in 2008. This decrease has continued through the 2010s and is part of a larger—and largely unexplained—national drop in crime.

    But while black neighborhoods are far less dangerous than they were a generation ago, black people are still concerned with victimization. Take this 2014 report from the Sentencing Project on perceptions of crime and support for punitive policies. Using data from the University of Albany’s Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, the Sentencing Project found that—as a group—racial minorities are more likely than whites to report an “area within a mile of their home where they would be afraid to walk alone at night” (41 percent to 30 percent) and more likely to say there are certain neighborhoods they avoid, which they otherwise might want to go to (54 percent to 46 percent). And among black Americans in particular—circa 2003—“43 percent said they were ‘very satisfied’ about their physical safety in contrast to 59 percent of Hispanics, and 63 percent of whites.”
    More recent data shows a similar picture. In 2012, Gallup found that, compared to the general public, blacks were more worried about “being attacked” while driving their car, more worried about being the victim of a hate crime, and—most salient for our discussion—more worried about “being murdered.” Likewise, according to a 2013 survey for NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health, 26 percent of black Americans rank crime as the most important issue facing the area they live. That’s higher than the ranking for the economy (16 percent), housing (4 percent), the environment (7 percent), social issues (4 percent), and infrastructure (7 percent). And in a recently published survey for Ebony magazine and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 13 percent rank violent crime as a top issue—which sits in the middle of the rankings—and 48 percent say that the black community is losing ground on the issue.

    Finally, Atlantic Media’s “State of the City” poll—published this past summer—shows an “urban minority” class that’s worried about crime, and skeptical toward law enforcement, but eager for a greater police presence if it means less crime. Just 22 percent of respondents say they feel “very safe” walking in their neighborhoods after dark, and only 35 percent say they have “a lot” of confidence in their local police. That said, 60 percent say hiring more police would have a “major impact” on improving safety in their neighborhoods. And while “urban minority” includes a range of different groups, there’s a good chance this is representative of black opinion in some areas of high crime and victimization, given the large black presence in many American cities.

    It’s important to note that this concern with crime doesn’t translate to support for punitive policies. Despite high victimization rates, black Americans are consistently opposed to harsh punishments and greater incarceration. Instead, they support more education and job training.

    Beyond the data, there’s the anecdotal evidence. And in short, it’s easy to find examples of marches and demonstrations against crime. In the last four years, blacks have held community protests against violence in Chicago; New York; Newark, New Jersey; Pittsburgh; Saginaw, Michigan; and Gary, Indiana. Indeed, there’s a whole catalog of movies, albums, and sermons from a generation of directors, musicians, and religious leaders, each urging peace and order. You may not have noticed black protests against crime and violence, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t happened. Black Americans—like everyone else—are concerned with what happens in their communities, and at a certain point, pundits who insist otherwise are either lying or willfully ignorant.

    To that point, it’s worth noting the extent to which “what about black-on-black crime” is an evasion, an attempt to avoid the fundamental difference between being killed by a citizen and being killed by an agent of law. And it’s not new. “When Ida B. Wells … tried to explain to a wealthy suffragist in Chicago that anti-black violence in the nation must end,” writes historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad for The Nation, “Mary Plummer replied: Blacks need to “drive the criminals out” of the community. ‘Have you forgotten that 10 percent of all the crimes that were committed in Chicago last year were by colored men [less than 3 percent of the population]?’ ”

    Regardless of cause or concern, a community doesn’t forfeit fair treatment because it has crime. That was true then when the scourge was lynching, and it’s true now that the scourge is unjust police violence. Say what you will about “black-on-black crime,” just don’t pretend it has anything to do with unfair killings at the hands of the state.

    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/12/black_community_is_concerned_with_black_on_black_crime_suggesting_otherwise.html

    In conclusion, Fuck you, Rudy Giuliani and everyone else who ignorantly yaps about ‘black on black crime’ without knowing the facts.

  234. Pteryxx says

    Wall-o-text covering the news series from my #231.

    The Las Vegas Review-Journal managed to assemble the 2011 database from police reports never released to the public, as well as news sources and court documents. They investigated for patterns and systemic issues, and have more discussion of the roles of police training and culture and review boards than I’ve seen before. (Noting, though, that the trustworthiness of police officers’ statements and evidence wasn’t brought up as an issue in this series, while it’s definitely a big big part of the current conversation.)

    Highlights:

    Analysis: Many Las Vegas police shootings could have been avoided

    In the wake of two controversial officer-involved shooting deaths in the summer of 2010, the Review-Journal set out to analyze two decades of shootings by officers from the Las Vegas Valley’s five major law enforcement agencies: the Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas police departments, the Nevada Highway Patrol and Clark County School District police.

    The newspaper obtained police reports, coroner’s inquest transcripts, civil and criminal court files and other records. It interviewed police officers, relatives of those who have died and experts in police training and administration.

    Each police shooting in the region — 378 since Jan. 1, 1990; 142 resulting in death, 114 resulting in known wounds — is reflected in a searchable online database, with original documents and, in some cases, videotaped re-enactments by police, linked in a permanent public archive.

    While information about all five police agencies was analyzed, the focus of the Review-Journal investigation was the Metropolitan Police Department, Nevada’s largest law enforcement agency with 2,700 officers policing 1.3 million people. Las Vegas police were involved in 310 shootings in the more than 20 years surveyed.

    Until now, debate has focused on individual incidents rather than systemic issues that help determine when, where, how and why shootings happen.

    What the newspaper found was an insular department that is slow to weed out problem cops and is slower still to adopt policies and procedures that protect both its own officers and the citizens they serve. It is an agency that celebrates a hard-charging police culture while often failing to learn from its mistakes.

    Nowhere is the problem more obvious than in the workings of the department’s Use of Force Review Board, a panel of officers and civilians that has cleared more than 97 percent of the more than 500 cases of shootings and other officer use of force incidents it has reviewed since 1991. Even officers such as Pease — who show patterns of poor judgment and multiple lapses in police procedure with fatal consequences — rarely face discipline when they shoot and kill.

    […]

    Most of the shootings analyzed by the Review-Journal did involve a clear, immediate threat to life. In many, officers came under fire or used weapons after someone pointed a gun at them with clear intent to use it.

    But not all were clear-cut. Some incidents grew from poor choices by the officer, while others might have been avoided if Metropolitan Police policies and procedures reflected those shown in other cities to have reduced shootings and officer injuries without reducing public safety.

    Law enforcement experts say even communities that support their local police can lose confidence in a department seen as too quick to shoot.

    That became apparent in Las Vegas last year. […]

    Some findings from the analysis: Las Vegas police rank high in shootings

    ■ In 90 percent of incidents involving Las Vegas police, the shooting subject was armed, though not always with a gun. Cars were identified as a weapon in 16 percent of incidents. In a handful of cases shooting subjects were considered to be armed if they attempted to take an officer’s weapon.

    ■ In 29 percent of Las Vegas police incidents, suspects fired guns at officers. An officer was injured in at least 10 percent of incidents.

    ■ Three officers in Clark County — North Las Vegas officer Raul Elizondo in 1995, Las Vegas police Sgt. Henry Prendes in 2006, and Las Vegas officer Trevor Nettleton in 2009 — were shot dead.

    ■ Shootings are considered rare for officers, but at least 13 percent of current Las Vegas cops have been involved in at least one shooting, a higher rate than Henderson and North Las Vegas police, each at about 8.5 percent.

    […]

    ■ Blacks, less than 10 percent of Clark County’s population, account for about 30 percent of Las Vegas police shooting subjects. Moreover, 18 percent of blacks shot at by police were unarmed.

    ■ About 25 percent of shootings followed a foot pursuit; 17 percent involved a car chase. Six percent involved both.

    ■ Twenty percent of Las Vegas police shootings were into a vehicle.

    Those circumstances come into play when analyzing how shootings by police could be avoided: Law enforcement culture, training calls for coming on strong to end situations

    So why do [police shootings] happen?

    Many are a necessary part of law enforcement.

    But the history of the Las Vegas police is replete with examples of reckless behavior by officers leading to shootings that were legally justified yet entirely avoidable.

    Take incidents where officers shoot a driver to avoid being injured or killed by a moving vehicle. Many police agencies have strict rules on how officers should act when on foot around cars. The Police Executive Research Forum, based in Washington, D.C., says it’s best to prohibit officers from reaching into a vehicle to wrestle with a driver or passenger. Better to let them go and call in backup to stop them down the road.

    Those policies help prevent the kind of incident that ended with the death of Douglas Oswalt.

    In May 1999, officer Gregory Ziel and his partner tried to arrest a man suspected of selling stolen tools in the parking lot of the Palms Business Center on Industrial Road. The man ran from them, jumped into Oswalt’s pickup and told him to drive. As Ziel wrestled with the theft suspect the truck took off, and Ziel clung to the passenger to avoid being dragged and possibly killed. Both cops shot at Oswalt. Ziel’s bullet killed the 32-year-old, who paid the ultimate price for involvement in a minor crime.

    That death was ruled justified by a coroner’s inquest jury. A year later, following twononfatal shootings under similar circumstances, the department warned officers to be more careful, but didn’t tell them not to reach into cars.

    Seven years later, Las Vegas bicycle officer Noel Lefebvre during a routine traffic stop on the Strip reached and fell into a car as it was pulling away. His partner, officer Ryan McBride, then shot and killed the driver, Tarance Deshon Hall, 31. The crime that set off the deadly events? Hall’s stereo was too loud.

    Las Vegas still has no policy on reaching into cars.

    A similar failure to adopt modern tactics for dealing with suspects who are armed with knives or other “edged weapons” has contributed to several shootings.

    The Police Assessment Resource Center, a Los Angeles-based think tank, recommends letting officers back away from suspects who aren’t an immediate threat, giving themselves plenty of space and time to de-escalate the situation. Las Vegas’ culture and training calls for the opposite: Control and contain the situation, come on strong and end it.

    […]

    Even when the department does address problems, it often stops short of fixing them.

    The Review-Journal found that nearly 25 percent of Las Vegas police shootings come after a foot chase.

    The International Association of Chiefs of Police calls foot chases “inherently dangerous police actions” because suspects can turn and ambush a lone cop in pursuit. When that happens, either the cop or the runner can be hurt or killed. A Las Vegas police officer was shot and nearly killed last year in just that situation.

    In 2003, the organization recommended that departments adopt policies that officers avoid or end a chase when they are alone, lost, lose contact with other officers, or if the suspect runs into a building unless there was an immediate threat.

    Last year Las Vegas adopted that policy almost word for word, but with an important difference: Here it’s just good advice, not mandatory.

    Why advisory policies can be a problem: (bolds mine)

    Setting policy is important, but so is enforcing it. Here, too, Las Vegas falls short.

    The department has a Use of Force Review Board that is supposed to cast a critical eye on serious incidents and recommend corrective measures, including discipline or changes in training, policy or tactics.

    Trouble is, the board seldom sees anything amiss: It has ruled in the officer’s favor more than 97 percent of the time since 1991. Even longtime members call it ineffective, or worse.

    But the board is often limited in what it can do. When policies are only advisory, as is the case for foot chases, Las Vegas police can’t discipline officers for failing to take good advice.

    Not that the board worries much about rules. Las Vegas police have had a strict policy against shooting at cars for at least 10 years, but the board routinely declares deviations from that rule to be justified. Officers have an out: if their life is in danger, they can break rules. Jett said that sensible exception is liberally applied.

    “Once violations occurred where people clearly could not articulate a deadly force threat, they were allowed to provide excuses and they weren’t held accountable,” he said.

    On the rare occasion the board finds poor judgment or violation of regulations, the offending cop has little to fear. After taking office in 2007, Gillespie dramatically reduced penalties short of dismissal to a maximum of 40 hours unpaid suspension. Officers can opt to forfeit a week’s vacation, instead.

    Last year’s death of Trevon Cole, while ruled justified by both a coroner’s inquest jury and by the Review Board, revealed Yant’s sloppy police work, major errors in search warrant affidavits and other problems before and during the fatal raid. Yant’s punishment: A 40-hour suspension — exactly the same as two Las Vegas officers who blew off work in January and drove their cruiser to Arizona on a lark.

    […]

    Jett, the former undersheriff, said administrators are reluctant to push for strong policies because they fear exposure of problems that could be used against the department in lawsuits. That caution is misplaced, he said, “because we’re already paying. … We’re losing taxpayer dollars, and at the same time we’re eroding the public’s confidence in the organization.”

    Resistance from police unions, and fear of taking on that politically powerful force in pro-labor Las Vegas, also factors into a departmental culture that favors the status quo.

    Shortly after he took office, for example, Gillespie wanted to require all officers to wear body armor — a common rule elsewhere. But the union resisted, saying protective vests are a condition of employment subject to contract talks, not something the sheriff could mandate.

    Gillespie had to compromise: Only officers hired after 2008 must wear vests.

    The sheriff ran into the same resistance last year when he backed changes aimed at making the coroner’s inquest less favorable to officers. The Police Protective Association told members to stop testifying at inquests, then backed cops who filed a lawsuit that shelved the entire process.

    “The police union has fought any effort to change anything. … I don’t think they’re serving the public well,” said former Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid, who left office in January.

    Specifically on the review board: Former members of Use of Force Review Board call it rubber stamp

    That Use of Force Review Board was considered a seminal step in allowing the public more information about and influence over department operations. Then, as now, it is seen as the linchpin of the Metropolitan Police Department’s efforts to police itself.

    But those who know the board best say it has never been more than a rubber stamp for a department that avoids facing its problems and is slow to address embarrassing errors.

    “It’s just a crock,” said Barbara Kowalczyk, who moved to Las Vegas after retiring from the Detroit Police Department and served as a review board civilian member from 2004 to 2008. “They try to make you think that they are doing something, but it’s a crock.”

    Officers have appeared before the board 510 times, as of May. Department records show the board ruled in favor of the officer 497 times — a 97 percent clearance rate.

    Not once has the board ruled against an officer in a fatal shooting.

    Former Undersheriff Rod Jett, a Las Vegas cop for more than 30 years until he retired as second-in-command last year, said the board was created with good intentions but no longer functions as it should.

    Jett said rulings adverse to the officer are so rare that either “every officer that walks to the board has done everything perfectly, or the board has lost its ability to be independent and come to independent conclusions about the use of force.”

    “In my opinion, the board lost its ability to objectively look at the facts of the case, even with civilians on the board, because civilians who would question whether or not an officer’s actions were appropriate were often challenged or told they didn’t have the expertise to even have an opinion,” Jett said. “And also during those periods when we had commissioned officers on the board who had the character and the courage to raise issues as to whether or not the actions of the officer were appropriate, those individual officers were attacked.”

    […]

    The department’s Review Board also looks at fatal shooting cases to see if the officer violated policy, but it has never disagreed with an inquest jury.

    When a shooting isn’t fatal, it’s investigated by homicide detectives and reviewed only by the Review Board.

    For every shooting aired in a public inquest, two go only to the Review Board.

    Review Board meetings are not open to the public. Rulings aren’t announced, and the response to inquiries is limited to a curt word or two usually indicating that the complaint was unfounded or use of force was justified. Any disciplinary action recommended by the board is deemed a confidential personnel matter. Former Review Board members describe a system so weighted in favor of the officers and so intent on smoothing over problems that even legitimate inquiries that might lead to more effective police procedures and improve officer safety are routinely squelched.

    Kowalczyk recounts one hearing after a man was shot because he grabbed for an officer’s holstered pistol. She said she asked if the department uses holsters that have locking mechanisms and was cut short by officer-members who didn’t want to discuss it.

    […]

    Citizen member Will Watson, who served from 1991 to 1993, said he had concerns when officers were allowed to sit next to each other and listen to each others’ testimony during hearings.

    “It seemed to be skewed in favor of police,” he said.

    Edward Ochoa, a citizen member from 1991 to 1993, said he was disturbed by arbitrary procedures. In a 1992 shooting review, board members were told that they had to reach consensus, he said. But after he voted to admonish the officer, the board was quickly dismissed without ever reaching a verdict. Official records, however, show the officer was cleared. The case was the second of three controversial killings by officer George “Gregg” Pease.

    “I left questioning the whole process,” Ochoa said.

    More recent board members say little has changed.

    Kowalczyk said that when the board reviewed the controversial 2006 killing of 17-year-old murder suspect Swuave Lopez, who was shot while handcuffed and running away, she was upset that it dwelled more on Lopez’s crimes than on his death. Not that she’s a bleeding heart. She was involved in a fatal gunbattle herself while on the job in Detroit.

    Robert Kainen, who served from 2004 to 2008, said shooting investigations weren’t thorough enough.

    “You’re not presented with any other side, other than the report from the police officers, and my feeling from reading the reports was that the questions from the detectives were made in such a way to produce a kind of response that would be the most positive for the police department,” Kainen said. “There were no lies, as far as I could tell, but the questions weren’t as probing as I thought they could be.”

    […]

    Any citizen can apply for a seat on the board, and the sheriff makes the appointments. While it started with five officers of different ranks and two citizens, over time it has shifted to its current configuration of four citizens and three cops.

    That, however, hasn’t meant a more critical eye on department actions.

    Former Deputy Chief John Sullivan, who helped set up and initially supervised the board, said he recommended giving more seats to citizens in response to complaints the board was too dominated by police. Altering the mix would quell criticism without changing the outcome, he assured the sheriff.

    “Sure enough, there was no difference,” Sullivan said.

    If anything, cops on the board are far more likely to be critical, he said.

    “They (citizen members) were very sympathetic with the officer,” Sullivan said, adding that they would often make comments like, “You couldn’t pay me enough to do that job.”

    Sullivan said that he sometimes disagreed with the citizen-heavy board’s lenient decisions, and expressed his opinion to Moran, only to be told, “I’m not going to go against them.”

    Little has changed in two decades.

    Kowalczyk, the former Detroit cop, said her fellow citizen board members often talked about family members in law enforcement and were overwhelmingly pro-police.

  235. Pteryxx says

    Also from the Las Vegas series.

    I put this one separately, for anyone who doesn’t want to read a piece hearing from, and sympathetic to, officers who have killed another person on the job. I still think it’s relevant to consider how macho warrior culture and the concept of police as heroic bad-guy-killers play into their actions, justifications, and how police lead and train each other, before and after confrontations in which someone dies.

    (warning for death and trauma)

    A cop who helped others in the aftermath of shootings

    Ed Jensen confronted death face to face early in his career as a Las Vegas police officer.

    It was 1974, and he had just shot and killed a man who tried to rob a downtown gas station. Stunned, he watched the 23-year-old gurgle his last breath.

    Then he confronted Southern Nevada’s law enforcement culture face to face.

    The first supervisor on the scene didn’t ask if the young cop was OK.

    “Where’s your (expletive) hat?” the supervisor barked. Metropolitan Police Department rules said he had to wear it, not leave it in his car.

    That night, fellow officers took the 28-year-old to a downtown hotel bar, got him drunk, and dropped him off at home. He went back to work the next day.

    In those days, the force was dominated by battle-hardened veterans of World War II and the Korean War. A police shooting was usually greeted with a congratulatory back slap.

    Jensen, four years on the job, went along. He acted tough. When his peers asked how he was, he told them he was fine.

    That was a lie.

    “It emotionally destroyed me,” he said.

    […]

    Jensen’s nightmares didn’t keep him from police work. In the eight years after his first shooting, he shot at — but missed — two other people. Yet he still carried the weight of killing a man, and he continued to be bothered by the department’s insensitivity toward officers following shootings.

    “You’d have deputy chiefs, and you’d have captains and lieutenants saying … all kinds of inappropriate things to the officer — ‘Well, you sure killed that son of a bitch,’ ” Jensen said. “And I’m thinking, ‘They just killed somebody.’ But you’re talking about some guy who sits behind a desk all day and I don’t think he’s even qualified (to carry a gun) in years, and here’s this young officer who just shot and killed somebody and is trying not to cry and just trying to suck it up, and his Adam’s apple is tight, and your throat’s tight, and you just feel like crap.”

    He wanted to change things, and he realized that changing the culture was the way to do it. One day he told a friend he wanted to create a post-incident support system. The friend told him that Lt. Jerry Keller, who would go on to become Clark County sheriff, had the same idea.

    First, Jensen and Keller had to win over Sheriff John Moran, who in many ways embodied the culture they were up against. A Marine who fought at Iwo Jima, Moran was “old-school” in every way, Jensen said.

    But Moran let them do some research, and the two traveled to other cities to see how their departments handled the issue. They also studied their own department and discovered a startling statistic: Three in five officers involved in a fatal shooting quit within a year. They just couldn’t handle it, Jensen said, and they had nowhere to turn for help.

    Their work convinced Moran, and the Police Employees Assistance Program, or PEAP, was launched in 1984. Winning over other cops — particularly the top brass — took many more years.

    “This is a waste of time,” Jensen recalled senior officers saying. “We don’t need this mamby-pamby, sitting by and holding their hand stuff.”

    The department also made counseling by a psychologist and time off with pay mandatory after a shooting. As a result, post-shooting resignations fell dramatically.

    […]

    “Guys like Ed Jensen saved a lot of careers, teaching officers how to handle these things,” said former Las Vegas police homicide Detective Dave Hatch, who experienced three nonfatal shootings of his own and became a nationally recognized expert in the investigation of police shootings.

    Creating PEAP was cathartic for Jensen, who calls it his best work in 30 years of law enforcement.

    He went on to work in hospice care and is now a pastor at a Boulder City church. He said he doubts he would have taken those turns in life had he not taken a life.

    —

    There’s very little room in the blue-wall-of-silence culture for any officer to even mention having doubts about whether firing their gun at someone was justified. There doesn’t seem to be training that addresses how to keep a cool head and de-escalate instead of letting fear, or the more manly-acceptable rage, take over and turn potential suspects into monsters. Cops not only face the wall if they call out *another* officer for screwing up, they can’t readily admit their *own* screw-ups. So, I have no idea if a social support network such as PEAP can address a culture of systemic overpolicing, racism and brutality. But theoretically, at least, it could.

  236. Pteryxx says

    Also from the Las Vegas series. (PZ – no need to take it out of the spam trap, I put an asterisk in.)

    I put this one separately, for anyone who doesn’t want to read a piece hearing from, and sympathetic to, officers who have killed another person on the job. I still think it’s relevant to consider how macho warrior culture and the concept of police as heroic bad-guy-killers play into their actions, justifications, and how police lead and train each other, before and after confrontations in which someone dies.

    (warning for death and trauma)

    A cop who helped others in the aftermath of shootings

    Ed Jensen confronted death face to face early in his career as a Las Vegas police officer.

    It was 1974, and he had just shot and killed a man who tried to rob a downtown gas station. Stunned, he watched the 23-year-old gurgle his last breath.

    Then he confronted Southern Nevada’s law enforcement culture face to face.

    The first supervisor on the scene didn’t ask if the young cop was OK.

    “Where’s your (expletive) hat?” the supervisor barked. Metropolitan Police Department rules said he had to wear it, not leave it in his car.

    That night, fellow officers took the 28-year-old to a downtown hotel bar, got him drunk, and dropped him off at home. He went back to work the next day.

    In those days, the force was dominated by battle-hardened veterans of World War II and the Korean War. A police shooting was usually greeted with a congratulatory back slap.

    Jensen, four years on the job, went along. He acted tough. When his peers asked how he was, he told them he was fine.

    That was a lie.

    “It emotionally destroyed me,” he said.

    […]

    Jensen’s nightmares didn’t keep him from police work. In the eight years after his first shooting, he shot at — but missed — two other people. Yet he still carried the weight of killing a man, and he continued to be bothered by the department’s insensitivity toward officers following shootings.

    “You’d have deputy chiefs, and you’d have captains and lieutenants saying … all kinds of inappropriate things to the officer — ‘Well, you sure killed that son of a [b*tch],’ ” Jensen said. “And I’m thinking, ‘They just killed somebody.’ But you’re talking about some guy who sits behind a desk all day and I don’t think he’s even qualified (to carry a gun) in years, and here’s this young officer who just shot and killed somebody and is trying not to cry and just trying to suck it up, and his Adam’s apple is tight, and your throat’s tight, and you just feel like crap.”

    He wanted to change things, and he realized that changing the culture was the way to do it. One day he told a friend he wanted to create a post-incident support system. The friend told him that Lt. Jerry Keller, who would go on to become Clark County sheriff, had the same idea.

    First, Jensen and Keller had to win over Sheriff John Moran, who in many ways embodied the culture they were up against. A Marine who fought at Iwo Jima, Moran was “old-school” in every way, Jensen said.

    But Moran let them do some research, and the two traveled to other cities to see how their departments handled the issue. They also studied their own department and discovered a startling statistic: Three in five officers involved in a fatal shooting quit within a year. They just couldn’t handle it, Jensen said, and they had nowhere to turn for help.

    Their work convinced Moran, and the Police Employees Assistance Program, or PEAP, was launched in 1984. Winning over other cops — particularly the top brass — took many more years.

    “This is a waste of time,” Jensen recalled senior officers saying. “We don’t need this mamby-pamby, sitting by and holding their hand stuff.”

    The department also made counseling by a psychologist and time off with pay mandatory after a shooting. As a result, post-shooting resignations fell dramatically.

    […]

    “Guys like Ed Jensen saved a lot of careers, teaching officers how to handle these things,” said former Las Vegas police homicide Detective Dave Hatch, who experienced three nonfatal shootings of his own and became a nationally recognized expert in the investigation of police shootings.

    Creating PEAP was cathartic for Jensen, who calls it his best work in 30 years of law enforcement.

    He went on to work in hospice care and is now a pastor at a Boulder City church. He said he doubts he would have taken those turns in life had he not taken a life.

    —

    There’s very little room in the blue-wall-of-silence culture for any officer to even mention having doubts about whether firing their gun at someone was justified. There doesn’t seem to be training that addresses how to keep a cool head and de-escalate instead of letting fear, or the more manly-acceptable rage, take over and turn potential suspects into monsters. Cops not only face the wall if they call out *another* officer for screwing up, they can’t readily admit their *own* screw-ups. So, I have no idea if a social support network such as PEAP can address a culture of systemic overpolicing, racism and brutality. But theoretically, at least, it could.

  237. Pteryxx says

    From WaPo over the weekend: Being a cop showed me just how racist and violent the police are. There’s only one fix.

    So in 1994, I joined the St. Louis Police Department. I quickly realized how naive I’d been. I was floored by the dysfunctional culture I encountered.

    […]

    As a cop, it shouldn’t surprise you that people will curse at you, or be disappointed by your arrival. That’s part of the job. But too many times, officers saw young black and brown men as targets. They would respond with force to even minor offenses. And because cops are rarely held accountable for their actions, they didn’t think too hard about the consequences.

    Once, I accompanied an officer on a call. At one home, a teenage boy answered the door. That officer accused him of harboring a robbery suspect, and demanded that he let her inside. When he refused, the officer yanked him onto the porch by his throat and began punching him.

    Another officer met us and told the boy to stand. He replied that he couldn’t. So the officer slammed him against the house and cuffed him. When the boy again said he couldn’t walk, the officer grabbed him by his ankles and dragged him to the car. It turned out the boy had been on crutches when he answered the door, and couldn’t walk.

    Back at the department, I complained to the sergeant. I wanted to report the misconduct. But my manager squashed the whole thing and told me to get back to work.

    I, too, have faced mortal danger. I’ve been shot at and attacked. But I know it’s almost always possible to defuse a situation.

    Once, a sergeant and I got a call about someone wielding a weapon in an apartment. When we showed up, we found someone sitting on the bed with a very large butcher knife. Rather than storming him and screaming “put the knife down” like my colleagues would have done, we kept our distance. We talked to him, tried to calm him down.

    It became clear to us that he was dealing with mental illness. So eventually, we convinced him to come to the hospital with us.

    I’m certain many other officers in the department would have escalated the situation fast. They would have screamed at him, gotten close to him, threatened him. And then, any movement from him, even an effort to drop the knife, would have been treated as an excuse to shoot until their clips were empty.

    […]

    Unfortunately, I don’t think better training alone will reduce police brutality. My fellow officers and I took plenty of classes on racial sensitivity and on limiting the use of force.

    The problem is that cops aren’t held accountable for their actions, and they know it. These officers violate rights with impunity. They know there’s a different criminal justice system for civilians and police.

    Even when officers get caught, they know they’ll be investigated by their friends, and put on paid leave. My colleagues would laughingly refer to this as a free vacation. It isn’t a punishment. And excessive force is almost always deemed acceptable in our courts and among our grand juries. Prosecutors are tight with law enforcement, and share the same values and ideas.

    We could start to change that by mandating that a special prosecutor be appointed to try excessive force cases. And we need more independent oversight, with teeth. I have little confidence in internal investigations.

    The number of people in uniform who will knowingly and maliciously violate your human rights is huge. At the Ferguson protests, people are chanting, “The whole damn system is guilty as hell.” I agree, and we have a lot of work to do.

  238. rq says

    Berkeley was quieter last night, though some impressive photos coming out of there.
    Police at #berkeleyprotests from as far away as Vacaville, CA tonight (48 miles — 1 hour away).;
    Police response to a small group of supporters forming at the arrest location in #Emeryville #Berkeleyprotests;
    Wow. This photo is incredible. #Berkeley #ShutItDown #ICantBreathe (it really is!!!);
    “They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds” – students @HarvardMed #ICantBreathe #EricGarner #TamirRice .

    Indianapolis police – real heroes. Cops mock Garner with #WeCanBreathe tweet

    In response to criticism over arrests made during protests in Indianapolis over a grand jury’s decision not to indict a New York officer for Garner’s death, Kendale Adams, a public information officer with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD), tweeted Thursday evening from the IMPD’s Twitter feed “…communication with those involved was peaceful and appropriate but some opted for arrest by #choice, #WeCanBreathe.”

    A request from Seattle, I saw two legal observers on Saturday. We had over 1,000 marchers. WE NEED LEGAL OBSERVERS. #Seattle #BlackLivesMatter.

  239. rq says

    More protests in Chicago Sunday

    On Sunday morning Father Michael Pfleger led the Saint Sabina Church faithful to the corner of Racine and 79th to lie down for 11 minutes — a minute for each time Eric Garner told NYPD officers he couldn’t breath.

    He asked those who remained standing to hold up their hands in honor of Michael Brown, who was killed by a Missouri police officer.

    An estimated 250 people were present at the church a little before noon Sunday.

    More than a half a dozen faith-based protests took place across the city, from the Far South Side to protesters once again marching downtown.

    “I will be wearing black, and invite [members] to do so as well, as a sign of mourning for those who have lost their lives to violence,” Rev. Pfleger said in a statement preceding his event.

    I will have twitterp ictures on this, but here’s an article: Hundreds protest in Berkeley, block train, highway

    A large group of people began peacefully marching earlier Monday through downtown Berkeley. The first stop for demonstrators shouting, “Who do you protect? Peaceful protest” was the Berkeley Police Department. A line of officers in riot gear blocked them from getting close to the building.

    The group then headed to a Bay Area Rapid Transit train station and sat outside, prompting authorities to briefly shut down the station. But as the night went on, the protesters divided into smaller groups that disrupted traffic and train passengers.

    Another one, in Florida: White Florida deputy shoots black man who witnesses say had hands up.

    After locating a stolen car at an apartment complex just after midnight on Monday, Sergeant Robert McCarthy fired three shots, one of which hit Cedric Bartee.

    Demings said Bartee failed to comply with McCarthy’s commands and “made extensive furtive movements,” making the deputy fear for his safety.

    Bartee underwent surgery and was in stable but critical condition late in the afternoon, the sheriff said. A second man in the car was arrested unhurt.

    The shooting also comes only a few days after a 32-year-old Latino man was shot and killed in a car by an Orlando detective investigating a burglary. Police said the detective opened fire after he saw Alejandro Noel Cordero had a gun.

    Tony, I worry for you.

    Denver;
    soem stats: 86% of those killed by the NYPD over 15yr period were Black or Latino. No jail time was served by cops. #ICantBreathe.

    Please excuse any increase in tpyos; mild finger injury.

  240. rq says

    So, images from Berkeley:
    Cops cleared us from freeway, hitting people with batons & shooting beanbag rounds. #Berkeley #BlackLivesMatter #FTP;
    We have trapped several cars in with our group so that the cops can’t teargas us. #Berkeley #BlackLivesMatter #FTP ;
    Folks laying down on the damn TRACKS! In #BerkeleyProtest. #EricGarner #Ferguson;
    We will be open until midnight to offer peer support, treatment for injuries & tea in light of #Berkeleyprotests ! Stay safe! PLEASE SHARE!;
    #ShutItDown RT @ziraffa: #BerkeleyProtests Shutting down freeways and stopping trains in their tracks:;
    We stopped the Amtrak #ShutItDown for Michael Brown and Eric Garner #BlackLivesMatter.

  241. rq says

    There was a Ferguson Commission meeting last night, too – more on that later. Meanwhile, #Anonymous Activists call out @ChiefSLMPD at tonights meeting, then are detained by @SLMPD SWAT police at @MoKaBes.

    Elsewhere – RT @NegarMortazavi: New York tonight: NBA game at Brooklyn Barclays Center with UK royal family in audience. Yes, basketball players are now ruining basketball, too. A bit more on this later, too.

    500+ on fire at #RoyalShutdown! #BlackLivesMatter #icantbreathe #EricGarner #ShutItDown!

    And I can’ta gree with this more: Why we need to stop saying #AllLivesMatter

    A hashtag campaign #BlackLivesMatter was first created in 2012 after George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin. It has again been trending in the past few months following news reports of the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, both unarmed at the time they were shot by police. It has recently been changed to #AllLivesMatter, perhaps by some well-meaning but clueless individual that doesn’t quite understand what the movement is all about.

    While it may sound lofty and righteous to say “all lives matter,” it misses the point that the original hashtag campaign attempts to convey. The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag does not mean that black lives are more important than other lives, or that black lives matter and others don’t at all. It simply says that black lives do matter in a country that seems to say they don’t. It is a way for people to voice their pain and anger and their plea to be accepted — or at the very least, left alone — in these three simple words. By changing it to “all lives matter,” whether to appease our own self-righteousness or to deliberately sabotage the message, we ignore what literally millions of people are trying to say to a nation that has not been paying attention.

    Here are a few reasons why, as a society, we collectively inform the black community that their lives don’t matter:

    • Black men between the ages of 19 and 25 are 4.5 times more likely to be killed than any other age or racial group.
    • Black teenage boys are 21 times more likely to get shot by a police officer than white teenage boys.
    • Black people make up 13% of the population, but account for 26% of police shootings.
    • After the news was released that Darren Wilson would not be indicted for killing Michael Brown, people went out of their way to rationalize his death, going so far as to falsely accuse him of armed robbery and fabricating a lengthy criminal record, both of which have made their way around both mainstream media and social media.
    • Even protesters, including those of the peaceful variety, have not been off limits. A Photoshopped image of a protester holding a sign that reads “No mother should have to fear for her son’s life every time he robs a store” went viral.

    Then, of course, there is the obvious: People circulating the #AllLivesMatter hashtag don’t really believe it. They are often the same people rationalizing the death of black men. Upon further probing, many of them believe there are plenty of lives that actually do not matter. A sampling of opinions include the lives of the homeless, those in other countries, illegal immigrants, substance abusers, people in prison, the lives of the unborn, the lives of animals — the list could go on for pages. What people who are saying #AllLivesMatter really mean is that only lives they care about matter.

    Actor Jamie Foxx opens up about Ferguson protests with video.

    “We’re going to have uncomfortable conversations. To not destroy the credibility of the good cops; but, we definitely have a situation. Because ,when you see this happen to other African-American men, you can see we have a problem. I know we can figure it out. I really enjoy the peaceful protests. But, you have to understand that when people riot, there will always be people who are looking for opportunities to get something. Lets try not to focus on that. I know it’s tough. Lets stick with the peace and understanding.” said Jamie Foxx.

    Yes, as mentioned previously, I believe, not all documents from the Ferguson grand jury have been released as promised. But, a few more have been let out: More Ferguson grand jury documents released; key witness interview still missing

    The records released Monday include audio of gunshots, more witness interviews and an autopsy conducted by a medical examiner of the Department of Defense. But even with all the new information, many are wondering about one thing still missing.

    As NewsChannel 5 first reported on Sunday, what was missing from the original release of documents was the FBI interview with a key witness, Dorian Johnson, who was with Michael Brown when the shooting happened. […]

    “Many witnesses to the shooting of Michael Brown made statements inconsistent with other statements they made,” said McCulloch.

    We know that Dorian Johnson talked to local and national reporters. What we still don’t know is– did he change his story when he talked to the FBI?

    When we asked about the missing records, McCulloch’s executive assistant, Ed Magee, told us the County Prosecutor’s Office had “turned over and relinquished control” of the FBI’s interview. He said the FBI specifically asked the county not to release records that are part of the ongoing federal civil rights probe.

    I believe Darren Wilson’s story changed several times, too – I sense a double-standard!

  242. rq says

    In Connecticut, Hundreds of Protestors Rally in Middletown

    We are preparing for finals, writing exams, grading them…. These are important things. But all around the country people are speaking out against the outrageous injustices that people of color face on a regular basis. We must acknowledge these issues. The time to speak out is now,” Wesleyan University president Michael Roth wrote in a post on the Wesleyan University’s Web site.

    Police received a tip about a secret “die-in” protest at the intersection of Main and Washington (Route 66) streets around rush hour and asked the university and the student organizer to change the rally location, police said. But the student “refused” and said that the protesters intended to “inconvenience people,” police said.

    “On Monday, December 8th, at 3 pm, students of Wesleyan University will be marching in response to the police brutality and systemic racism that led to the deaths of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and countless other people of color in recent times. The state must be held accountable for the prejudicial treatment of these individuals. Our movement must start from the ground-up. I am emailing you to ask for your support and solidarity, and invite you to march alongside us students for this cause. We will be gathering at Exley Science Center at 265 Church St,” a notice on the faculty list-serv said, according to the post from President Roth.

    Police closed down the intersection to prevent accidents and advised Board of Education and EMS personnel to avoid the area during the protest. Protestors arrived at about 3 p.m.

    “The march was peaceful and respectful. Some students thanked us for keeping them safe during the march. The most anyone did in a negative way was to shake a sign near the officers,” Middletown police said. “The students cleared the intersection after occupying it for eleven minutes. We then followed the students back to Wesleyan property to ensure their safety.”

    I follow him on twitter, and a massive number of the links that get put up here come via his retweeting and otherwise active tweeting. “I didn’t want that to be the story about Mike Brown”: Meet the man showing America the real Ferguson story

    “I didn’t know what was real or not,” he tells Salon. He had to see for himself, to be part of it. When he was tear-gassed for the first time, it only made him more committed to building a lasting movement.

    That was almost four months ago. Since then, he’s become one of the most recognizable social media presences keeping the public updated on the protests in Ferguson and elsewhere, as they’ve spread across the country. He started an email newsletter that he co-curates with Johnetta Elzie, another young activist based in St. Louis, sending out articles, action alerts, photos and tweets about the growing movement. The newsletter serves to connect people with actions and with each other, to filter an overwhelming volume of news reports, and to maintain a narrative of the movement going forward.

    To Mckesson, the newsletter is about “fighting this fight in a different way.” He remembers the night the verdict came down that George Zimmerman, the Florida man who shot Trayvon Martin, would get off. “I remember it was like at night when the verdict came out and you were alone, you didn’t know who to talk to, you couldn’t find any information then, you didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t,” he says. “I didn’t want that to be the story about Mike Brown.” […]

    “We try to make sure that there’s a broad cross-section,” Mckesson says. “There are a lot of articles that get a lot of play that actually don’t say a whole lot, whereas there are some articles that don’t get any play but they’re really powerful, and we want to make sure that they get visibility. We also want there to be a record of the movement, so when people look back they can track the movement through the news and the commentary.”

    At the beginning, he notes, people told him there would never be enough news for the newsletter to continue, and yet 64 issues later, he says, “We’re making really tough decisions every day.” For example, the morning after the news broke that a grand jury would not indict the officer who killed Eric Garner in Staten Island, they had to spend a lot of time winnowing down the many stories to those that included something different, something important, other than the news that presumably, most readers had heard. [… – that means I have missed issue 64 somewhere]

    “I think that what’s really powerful about Ferguson is that it started because regular people without an organization came together because they knew something was wrong,” Mckesson says. “What is different about social media and I think what is true about this movement is that it allows many voices to be heard at the same time and it’s not necessarily a competition for air, which is really powerful.”

    Social media has, as well, Mckesson says, served to legitimize certain voices as authoritative — not by virtue of their position in a national organization, but because we can see through their eyes, night after night of violent police crackdowns, day after day of building. Social media can capture a moment — a die-in at a convenience store, a blocked highway — and give it life beyond its brief duration. It also adds pressure for the activists who have a large following to be there at every action. They wind up functioning, themselves, as journalists, albeit ones who are not being paid and supported by a major publication — and, Mckesson notes, ones who can say what they feel without having to adhere to some ideal of objectivity, without having to ask for the cops’ side of the story. […]

    The media’s focus on rage, he points out, paints black people as monolithic, as only capable of one emotion, one type of expression. “One of the narratives of blackness in protest is ‘the angry people outside,’ as opposed to ‘disenfranchised people who’ve been oppressed and victimized as they tried to grieve,’” he says. “We’ve been tear-gassed and shot at and LRAD’d and smoke-bombed and all these things and we still protest every day because we know that not only will our silence not save us, our surrender won’t save us, a video camera won’t save us. It is not that we are willing to die, it’s that we are unwilling to live in an America where blackness equals death.”

    As the protests have spread and continued around the country, blocking highways and streets, shuttering stores, dying-in in public spaces, Mckesson notes, “Ferguson manifests differently in many different places.” It is important, he says, to remember that when you are facing down violent police, it is hard to move beyond basic survival as a goal. People understandably have a hard time talking about systemic reform with a gun in their face or when they can’t pay the bills. That’s why, as an educator and activist, he feels compelled to stay in this movement. “You have to be alive to learn,” he says. All of the improvement in schools in the world will mean nothing if kids are being killed by the people who are supposed to protect them.

    And so the struggle goes on. Mckesson spent the weekend in New York joining protests for Eric Garner, and he and Elzie plan to continue the newsletter — and their activism — as long as is necessary.

    “Ferguson didn’t show us that there’s racial injustice in America. We knew that,” he says. “What Ferguson showed us was the power of people coming together to demand change. Ferguson made protests comfortable, gave people permission to protest. It allowed people to access their voice in a different way.”

    Maybe they will make things better. The bodycams, I mean. Michael Brown’s parents start petition to fund body cameras for police

    Michael Brown’s parents want congress to approve federal funding for body cameras and training for local police departments nationwide.

    They launched a petition drive Monday on “change-dot-org” to approve the White House’s plan to provide $263 million-dollars in funding.

    More Berkeley.
    New York.
    Target in New York.

  243. rq says

    More on Obama and the bodycams: Obama’s Plan for Better Policing: The Good, the Bad, and the Body Cameras

    The Good

    The report recommends increased local community engagement around the acquisition of equipment. President Obama has asked staff to draft an order “directing relevant agencies to work together and with law enforcement and civil rights and civil liberties organizations to develop specific recommendations within 120 days,” for process improvements.

    And consistent with calls from ACLU of California, EFF, and others, the order might “require local civilian (non-police) review of and authorization for LEAs [law enforcement agencies] to request or acquire controlled equipment.” This should be the baseline for implementation of any new technology, and we’re glad to see that it’s being considered. Similarly, the order might “require after-action analysis reports for significant incidents involving federally provided or federally-funded equipment,” as well as increased training.

    But these are minor improvements. And they’re not actually in the implementation stage, so as Phil Mattingly over at Bloomberg put it, “Obama’s review will lead to … more review?”
    The Bad

    Worse, the bad significantly outweighs the good in the report and recommendations. Here’s why: the review and the President’s plan for action doesn’t do anything to end or even slow any of these equipment transfers. In fact, as Guardian columnist and former EFF activist Trevor Timm points out, the report “largely defend[s] the variety of federal programs that funnel billions of dollars of weaponry and high-tech surveillance gear to local police every year.” It spends 2 pages providing recommendations, and 17 describing the programs.

    And as with the bulk of the Congressional hearing that happened on September 9 around military equipment transfer, the President’s review broadly overlooks surveillance technology. But the same DHS money that funds armored vehicles and night vision goggles funds intelligence gathering at the local level through fusion centers and drones, and events like Urban Shield, a 4 day long event that featured “preparedness” exercises as well as a marketplace of military and surveillance technology. And automated license plate readers, iris scanners, and facial recognition technology are all candidates for federal assistance. […]

    The basic premise of body cameras, of course, is that police officers who are being recorded will behave better. And if they don’t, it will be easier to obtain evidence of their bad behavior. After all, it is videos like the one showing the horrific choking of Eric Garner that have spurred the national conversation around police brutality—making this a tempting proposition.

    And an oft-cited study backs this up: police in Rialto, California began wearing body cameras for a year in February 2012, and as the Guardian reported, “public complaints against officers plunged 88% compared with the previous 12 months. Officers’ use of force fell by 60%.”

    Those results are impressive, but have failed to convince some critics. Jacob Crawford, an activist who has long been involved in Copwatch, worked with the Canfield Watchmen, residents at the Canfield housing project in Ferguson to help them obtain their own cameras. Along with civil rights attorney Rachel Lederman, he points out that the widely publicized Rialto study has been stretched beyond belief:

    Rialto is a small city with only 66 cops, and its Police Chief, Tony Farrar, collaborated with Taser International, Inc., in the study. The Taser corporation has gained record profits by marketing body cameras to hundreds of cities, along with a cloud-based backup and search service called Evidence.com, which was used to collect the data for the Rialto study that led to many of these sales.

    And of course, there’s the problem that, unless used very carefully, body cameras incidentally capture footage of anyone in the line of a police officer’s sight. That’s why an ACLU policy paper notes that body cameras can be a good thing— when accompanied by strong policies to address the privacy concerns. It points out several issues that must be considered in developing such policies:

    Police must not be able to “edit on the fly, meaning police cannot have control over when a camera is turned off or on,” (although if cameras are always on, that poses a serious threat to privacy);
    police must provide notice that recording is happening;
    data should be retained only as long as necessary;
    recordings should be used only for misconduct hearings and where there is a reasonable suspicion that a recording has evidence of a crime;
    policies for access to footage should ensure that individual’s privacy is maintained, while also allowing transparency and oversight; and
    body camera systems must be carefully designed to ensure data is strictly controlled.

    But others question the efficacy of cameras. After all, the shocking video of police brutality in cases like Eric Garner’s have surely helped spark public protest—but didn’t discourage the actual conduct. And in reference to multiple specific incidents over the last few years where police were filmed engaging in serious misconduct, Guardian columnist and criminal defense attorney Alexa Van Brunt notes, “video didn’t deter them, and it didn’t help their victims. Instead, officers in each case thought they could get away with police brutality—and they may have been right.” […]

    Oh, and the Ugly

    Underlying all these concerns is an ugly truth: none of these suggestions can fully address the structural problems—especially racism—that allow police to brutalize and even kill unarmed civilians (predominantly people of color, in particular young black men) with impunity. And until that happens, all the technology in the world won’t help. Many communities deeply mistrust law enforcement, a mistrust based on documented police misconduct. That mistrust, and the reasons for it, have been around much longer than wearable cameras. We shouldn’t pretend that cameras will solve the problem.

    Uh-oh: Chronicle photographer hit with baton during Berkeley protest

    Sam Wolson, 25, said a Berkeley police officer struck him about 7:30 p.m. Saturday as he crouched to take pictures between a line of officers and protesters outside Berkeley police headquarters on Martin Luther King Jr. Way. The baton strike came after officers had touched Wolson twice, apparently to stop him from moving near the line, he said.

    A YouTube video of a CNN news report, posted at http://bit.ly/1w72f5F, shows the officer hitting Wolson with a baton roughly 30 seconds into the segment.

    “I was really surprised and disappointed, and a little bit angry,” Wolson, who suffered a mild concussion, said Monday. “People might disagree with how much the media represents the situation, but if you can’t have media safely holding accountable anybody in that situation, then the whole entire system breaks down.”

    Wolson said he saw other people “getting treated much worse.”

    And Tamir Rice’s mother speaks out: Tamir Rice’s mother wants justice for Tamir, officers convicted, video at the link.

    Samaria Rice said justice for her son means the conviction of the officers involved. She described her son as a good kid with a promising future. Tamir was good at every sport her played and liked to draw.

    Woman who saved Ferguson Market gets reward

    On the night of November 24th, a man poured gasoline onto boxes and set them on fire. During the chaos, a woman showed up and poured milk onto the fire until the flames were out.

    The woman’s attorney says the market’s owner gave her a reward for saving his store.

  244. rq says

    Denver council approves $6M settlement over Marvin Booker jail death

    Booker, 56, a homeless street preacher, was trying to retrieve his shoes when the struggle with deputies began. His name became a rallying cry at protests and prayer services. His case cast a shadow as others filed jail-abuse claims.

    In August, the city approved a $3.25 million settlement with Jamal Hunter, an inmate who survived a choking by one deputy and a brutal attack by other inmates that he claimed was encouraged by another deputy.

    And last week, the council approved a $337,250 settlement with three former inmates and the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado over mistaken arrests blamed in part on errors by deputies.

    The combined toll of the settlements is substantial, Hancock said, “but these are not easy issues. … We’re not hiding from them. As long as I’m sitting here, we’re going to address them.”

    Oh, the police – BREAKING: EMS requested to #BarclaysCenter after #NYPD officer accidentally sprayed himself with pepper spray while spraying protesters. In solidarity. :P

    Youtube video, Anti-police and police brutality protesters in Los Angeles read a list of demands.

    December 8, 2014 protest near LAX.

    This is how Berkeley protest started: #Berkeley: 5 blocks whole street shoulder to shoulder. – @JimiDevine #EricGarner #ICantBreathe #BlackLivesMatter.

    Las Vegas.

    Those NBA players, there were four: LeBron James leads the way in ‘I Can’t Breathe’ t-shirt as hundreds of anti-police protesters mob NBA game attended by William and Kate

    Hundreds of Eric Garner protesters descended on the Brooklyn’s Barclays Center hosting the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on Monday night in the fifth day of protests.

    Star players including LeBron James and Kyrie Irving joined the demonstration by wearing ‘I Can’t Breathe’ shirts as they warm up for a game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Brooklyn Nets.

    And pop royalty Jay Z supported the statement by posing for a picture with four Nets players wearing the customized shirts.

    The protest, dubbed #RoyalShutdown, comes almost a week after a grand jury refused to indict white police officer Daniel Pantaleo for the chokehold that killed black father-of-six Eric Garner. […]

    Kevin Garnett and Deron Williams were among four Nets wearing the shirts before the game in support of the family of Eric Garner, who died July 17 after a police officer placed him in a chokehold when he was being arrested for selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.

    Chicago star Derrick Rose wore one before a game Saturday and James said Sunday he wanted one. He got it from Nets guard Jarrett Jack, who provided them to players on both teams.

    ‘Obviously as a society we have to do better, we have to have empathy better for one another no matter what race you are, but it’s more a shout-out to the family more than anything,’ James said before warming up.

    Irving had already gone to the court in his as James spoke. James said at the time it was a ‘possibility’ he would do the same, and he was wearing the shirt when he unzipped his yellow and gray jacket in the layup line.

    Lots n lots of pictures at the link, incl. a bunch of William and Kate, in case anyone is interested.

  245. rq says

    A short history: Origins of the police

    In England and the United States, the police were invented within the space of just a few decades—roughly from 1825 to 1855.

    The new institution was not a response to an increase in crime, and it really didn’t lead to new methods for dealing with crime. The most common way for authorities to solve a crime, before and since the invention of police, has been for someone to tell them who did it.

    Besides, crime has to do with the acts of individuals, and the ruling elites who invented the police were responding to challenges posed by collective action. To put it in a nutshell: The authorities created the police in response to large, defiant crowds. That’s

    — strikes in England,
    — riots in the Northern US,
    — and the threat of slave insurrections in the South.

    So the police are a response to crowds, not to crime. […]

    In France, in the 11th and 12th centuries, these towns became known as communes. They incorporated into communes under various conditions, sometimes with the permission of a feudal lord­, but in general they were seen as self-governing entities or even city-states.

    But they didn’t have cops. They had their own courts—and small armed forces made up of the townsmen themselves. These forces generally had nothing to do with bringing people up on charges. If you got robbed or assaulted, or were cheated in a business deal, then you, the citizen, would press the charges.

    One example of this do-it-yourself justice, a method that lasted for centuries, was known as the hue and cry. If you were in a marketplace and you saw somebody stealing, you were supposed to yell and scream, saying “Stop, thief!” and chase after the thief. The rest of the deal was that anybody who saw you do this was supposed to add to the hue and cry and also run after the thief.

    The towns didn’t need cops because they had a high degree of social equality, which gave people a sense of mutual obligation. Over the years, class conflicts did intensify within the towns, but even so, the towns held together—through a common antagonism to the power of the nobles and through continued bonds of mutual obligation.

    For hundreds of years, the French carried an idealized memory of these early commune towns—as self-governing communities of equals. So it’s no surprise that in 1871, when workers took over Paris, they named it the Commune. But that’s jumping a little farther forward than we should just yet. […]

    The towns grew as peasants became refugees from the countryside, while inequality grew within the cities. The capitalist bourgeoisie became a social layer that was more distinct from workers than it used to be. The market was having a corrosive effect on solidarity of craft guilds—something I’ll take up in more detail when I talk about New York. Workshops got bigger than ever, as a single English boss would be in command of maybe dozens of workers. I’m talking about the mid-1700s here, the period right before real factory industrialization began.

    There still weren’t cops, but the richer classes began to resort to more and more violence to suppress the poor population. Sometimes the army was ordered to shoot into rebellious crowds, and sometimes the constables would arrest the leaders and hang them. So class struggle was beginning to heat up, but things really began to change when the Industrial Revolution took off in England. […]

    At the same time, the French were going through a political and social revolution of their own, beginning in 1789. The response of the British ruling class was to panic over the possibility that English workers would follow the French lead. They outlawed trade unions and meetings of more than 50 people.

    Nevertheless, English workers put together bigger and bigger demonstrations and strikes from about 1792 to 1820. The ruling class response was to send in the army. But there are really only two things the army could do, and they’re both bad. They could refuse to shoot, and the crowd would get away with whatever it came to do. Or they could shoot into the crowd and produce working-class martyrs.

    This is exactly what happened in Manchester in 1819. Soldiers were sent charging into a crowd of 80,000, injuring hundreds of people and killing 11. Instead of subduing the crowd, this action, known as the Peterloo Massacre, provoked a wave of strikes and protests.

    Even the time-honored tactic of hanging the movement’s leaders began to backfire. An execution would exert an intimidating effect on a crowd of 100, but crowds now ranged up to 50,000 supporters of the condemned man, and the executions just made them want to fight. The growth of British cities, and the growth of social polarization within them—that is, two quantitative changes—had begun to produce qualitatively new outbreaks of struggle.

    The ruling class needed new institutions to get this under control. One of them was the London police, founded in 1829, just 10 years after Peterloo. The new police force was designed specifically to inflict nonlethal violence upon crowds to break them up while deliberately trying to avoid creating martyrs. Now, any force that’s organized to deliver violence on a routine basis is going to kill some people. But for every police murder, there are hundreds or thousands of acts of police violence that are nonlethal—calculated and calibrated to produce intimidation while avoiding an angry collective response.

    When the London police were not concentrated into squads for crowd control, they were dispersed out into the city to police the daily life of the poor and working class. That sums up the distinctive dual function of modern police: There is the dispersed form of surveillance and intimidation that’s done the name of fighting crime; and then there’s the concentrated form of activity to take on strikes, riots, and major demonstrations.[…]

    I’ll begin with the more general topic of class struggle over the use of outdoor space. This is a very consequential issue for workers and the poor. The outdoors is important to workers

    — for work
    — for leisure and entertainment
    — for living space, if you don’t have a home
    … and for politics.
    [..]

    On both sides of the Atlantic, most arrests were related to victimless crimes, or crimes against the public order. Another Marxist historian Sidney Harring noted: “The criminologist’s definition of ‘public order crimes’ comes perilously close to the historian’s description of ‘working-class leisure-time activity.’”

    Outdoor life was—and is—especially important to working-class politics. Established politicians and corporate managers can meet indoors and make decisions that have big consequences because these people are in command of bureaucracies and workforces. But when working people meet and make decisions about how to change things, it usually doesn’t count for much unless they can gather some supporters out on the street, whether it’s for a strike or a demonstration. The street is the proving ground for much of working-class politics, and the ruling class is fully aware of that. That’s why they put the police on the street as a counter-force whenever the working class shows its strength.

    Now we can look at the connections between the two major forms of police activity—routine patrols and crowd control. The day-to-day life of patrolling gets police accustomed to using violence and the threat of violence. This gets them ready to pull off the large-scale acts of repression that are necessary when workers and the oppressed rise up in larger groups. It’s not just a question of getting practice with weapons and tactics. Routine patrol work is crucial to creating a mindset among police that their violence is for the greater good.

    The day-to-day work also allows commanders to discover which cops are most comfortable inflicting pain—and then to assign them to the front lines when it comes to a crackdown. At the same time, the “good cop” you may meet on the beat provides crucial public-relations cover for the brutal work that needs to be done by the “bad cops.” Routine work can also become useful in periods of political upheaval because the police have already spent time in the neighborhoods trying to identify the leaders and the radicals. […]

    The revolutionary period changed a few things about the role of crowds and the relation between classes. In the 1760s, beginning with the agitation against the Stamp Act, the elite of merchants and property-holders endorsed new forms of popular mobilization. These were new loud demonstrations and riots that borrowed from existing traditions, obviously in the use of effigies. Instead of burning the Pope, they’d burn the governor, or King George.

    I don’t have time to go into detail about what they did, but it’s important to note the class composition of these crowds. Members of the elite might be there themselves, but the body of these crowds was the skilled workers, collectively known as the mechanics. That means that a master would be out in the crowd with his journeymen and apprentices. People of higher social rank tended to view the master craftsmen as their lieutenants for mobilizing the rest of the mechanics.

    As the conflict with Britain intensified, the mechanics became more radicalized and organized themselves independently from the colonial elite. There was friction between the mechanics and the elite, but never a complete breach. […]

    From about 1750 to 1850, however, this corporative structure within the skilled trades was falling apart because the external relation—the tradesmen’s control of the market—was also beginning to break down. Trade that came from other cities or from overseas would undermine the masters’ ability to set prices, so workshops were thrown into competition with each other in a way that’s familiar today.

    Competition drove the masters to become more like entrepreneurs, seeking out labor-saving innovation and treating their workers more like disposable wage workers. Enterprises became larger and more impersonal—more like factories, with dozens of employees.

    In the first decades of the 19th century, employees were not only losing their long-term contracts, but they also were losing their place to live in the masters’ households. The apprentices found this to be a liberating experience, as young men got out from under the authority of their parents and their masters. Free to come and go as they pleased, they could meet young women and create their own social life among their peers. Working women were employed mostly in household service of various types unless they were prostitutes.

    Outdoor life became transformed as these young people mingled with the other parts of the population that comprised the developing working class. […]

    Underlying the sectarian and racial divisions were economic competition, since Irish workers were generally less skilled and drew lower wages than craft workers. At the same time, masters were trying to de-skill the jobs in the workshops. In this way, Anglo apprentices became part of a real labor market as they lost their long-term contracts. When this happened, they found themselves just a rung above Irish immigrants on the wage scale. Black workers, who performed domestic service or worked as general laborers, were a further rung or two down the wage scale from the Irish.

    At the same time, the older unskilled part of the wage-working class, centered around the docks and building construction, was expanding because trade and construction both expanded after the Revolution.

    Overall, population expanded rapidly. New York was 60,000 in 1800, but it doubled in size by 1820. In 1830, New York had more than 200,000 people—and 312,000 by 1840. […]

    Now some specifics. From 1801 to 1832, Black New Yorkers rioted four times to prevent former slaves from being sent back to their out-of-town masters. These efforts generally failed, the watch responded violently, and the participants received unusually harsh sentences. White abolitionists joined in the condemnations of these riots. So these riots illustrate popular self-activity despite elite disapproval—not to mention racial disparity in the application of the law.

    There was also white harassment of black churches and theaters, sometimes rising to the level of riots. Poor immigrants were involved, but sometimes rich whites and the constables themselves took part. One anti-Black riot raged for three days in 1826, damaging Black houses and churches—along with houses and churches of white abolitionist ministers. […]

    While workers grew more conscious of themselves as a class, they also began to engage in more and more “run-of-the-mill” riots wherever crowds gathered, in taverns or in theaters or in the street. Such riots may have had no clear economic or political objective, but they were still instances of collective self-assertion by the working class—or by ethnic and racial fractions of the class. In the opening decades of the century, there was one of these riots about four times a year, but in the period from 1825 to 1830, New Yorkers rioted at a rate of once per month.

    One of these riots in particular alarmed the elite. Known as the Christmas riot of 1828, it actually happened at New Year’s. A noisy crowd of about 4,000 young Anglo workers brought out their drums and noisemakers and headed toward Broadway where the rich lived. On the way, they busted up an African church and beat the church members. The watch arrested several of the rioters, but the crowd rescued them and sent the watch running.

    The crowd picked up some more numbers and turned toward the commercial district, where they busted up the stores. At the Battery, they broke windows in some of the city’s richest homes. Then they headed back up Broadway because they knew that the rich were having their own celebration at the City Hotel. There the crowd blocked the coaches from exiting.

    A large contingent of the watch showed up, but the leaders of the crowd called a five-minute truce. This allowed the watch to think about the fight that they were about to get into. When the five minutes were up, the watch stepped aside, and the deafening crowd marched past them up Broadway.

    This spectacle of working-class defiance took place in full view of the families that ran New York City. Newspapers immediately began calling for a major expansion of the watch, so the Christmas Riot accelerated a set of incremental reforms that finally lead to the creation the New York City Police Department in 1845. [… – I believe those are rioting whites in there them paragraphs]

    One of the first modern-type police forces came in Charleston, South Carolina, in the years before New York force became fully professional. The precursor of the Charleston’s police force was not a set of urban watchmen but slave patrols that operated in the countryside. As one historian put it, “throughout all of the [Southern] states [before the Civil War], roving armed police patrols scoured the countryside day and night, intimidating, terrorizing, and brutalizing slaves into submission and meekness.”

    These were generally volunteer forces of white citizens who provided their own weapons. Over time, the system got adapted to city life. Charleston’s population did not explode like New York’s. In 1820, there were still less than 25,000 people—but half of them were Black. […]

    At first, the masters found the jobs for their slaves and took all of the wages for themselves. But they quickly found it most convenient to let their slaves find their own jobs while collecting a flat fee from the slave for the time spent away from the master.

    This new set of arrangements fundamentally altered the relation between slaves and their masters—not to mention among the slaves themselves. For long stretches of time, the slaves got out from under the direct supervision of their masters, and slaves could make cash for themselves above and beyond the fees they paid their masters. Many African Americans could even afford to live outside their masters’ households. Slaves could marry and cohabit independently. By the first decades of the 19th century, Charleston had a Black suburb, populated mostly by slaves alongside some freedmen.

    The South’s white population, both in town and country, lived in constant fear of insurrection. In the countryside, however, Blacks were under constant surveillance, and there were few opportunities within the grueling work regime for slaves to develop wide social connections. The dramatically freer circumstances in the cities meant that the state had to step in to do the job of repression that the slavemasters had usually taken care of themselves. […]

    The Southern force was more militarized than in the North, even before professionalization. Mounted police were the exception in the North, but they were the rule in the South. And Southern police carried guns, with bayonets.

    The specific history of police forces varied in all American cities, but since they were facing similar problems in repressing urban workers and the poor, they all tended to converge on similar institutional solutions. The Southern experience also reinforces the point that was already clear in the North: Anti-Black racism was built into American police work from the very first day.

    The piece goes on, it’s all rather interesting but a lot of info, so I will leave up what I have and you’re free to read the rest at the link. One key quote from nearer the end: “There is the law, and there is what cops do.” Some short discussion of that, too.

  246. rq says

    And more on the basketball, LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Garnett, Others Wear “I Can’t Breathe” T-Shirt Prior to Nets/Cavaliers Game. Short short article.

    I also just realized I’m a lot further behind with the posts than I thought. Eep.

    The following tweets (this comment and prob. the next) are from the Ferguson Commission meeting held last night. Because let’s remember, that town is still in a State of Emergency, and the National Guard is still stationed there. And there’s a gorup of people trying for long-term change, and none of that is nearly as exciting as violent protests (at least, not in the media).
    So here goes.

    “Military and warlike behavior have become part of policing culture. There’s no place for community,” says @Blackstarjus #FergusonCommission (@Blackstartjus, by the way, is another good person to follow on twitter, for those still looking for suggestions!);
    Crowd is hooked onto everything @Blackstarjus is saying. He said to “indict the police department” and I’m with him. #Ferguson Commission;
    Dotson saying he apologized for tear gas. Audience does not believe him. “He a freak for pain!” woman behind me exclaims #FergusonCommission;
    @sarahkendzior @deray Anyone have a link to these groups at Harvard/UCLA that Dotson says are analyzing policing data? #fergusoncomission (he’s not talking about that one guy in the Gawker article Ichthyic linked to yesterday, is he?);
    Dotson is now speaking without interruption and the crowd has their back turned #Ferguson .
    Dotson really got shunned yesterday, people turned their backs, and a crowd gathered around the podium while he was speaking, starting at him from about 3 ft away. But nobody touched him. And he spoke for too long. :P

  247. rq says

    Dotson still talking. More he talks, angrier people get. He got 12 minutes. Citizen speakers got two each. #FergusonCommission;
    Police chief Dotson @ChiefSLMPD still standing at mic. So uncomfortable. Some protesters standing three feet from him, staring.

    I think this is New York again.
    Cleveland City Hall;
    Shaw.

    A call for non-black people to stop policing black resistance | #BlackLivesMatter #BerkeleyProtests via @joinRAD. It’s a long twitter document, so I shall transcribe only the bolded parts. Err, almost only – with unbolded parts for context:

    However, in recent nights we’ve noticed the rise of a disturbing trend of non-black people in the streets policing the actions and tactics of black comrades. Frat bros have tackled black people while a crowd of non-black Berkeley students ironically chanted, “Black lives matter!” White people havep ointed at other militant black folks and chanted “This is not our movement!” in response to tactical disagreements in the streets. These actions, though scattered and few, suggest that non-black people need to be reminded of how their actions reinforce the policing, enslavement, and imprisonment of black comrades attempting to fight for their liberation.

    Black rebellion is not your photo project. […] Photographing people engaged in illegal activity continues the legacy of state surveillance of black bodies and creates evidence to be used to put black people in prison. This is the work of the police.

    This is not your movement, you do not get to choose the tactics that people use to liberate themselves. […] Creating [these] divisions between tactics is the work of the police, […] interfering with the tactical choices that people make is also the work of the police. […]

    [I]t doesn’t matter if you have a badge and a gun, people who choose to do the work of the police are just as bad ast he police, and will probably be treated like the police are treated in the streets. […] If you don’t act like a pig, you won’t be treated like one.

    The in-between bits are appropriately castigating. Tpyos mine (though I tried to correct them, even the most supreme ‘liverating’).

  248. rq says

    City of St. Louis hired Dorian Johnson in a program for low-income folks reports @stltoday. That’s a good thing. May he work hard & prosper.
    Article on that: Michael Brown witness Dorian Johnson hired to do work for city of St. Louis. Good for him.

    Ugh, and here it is, the actual new documents released by McCullogh, along with the old. Sorry for the disconnect there.

    Related yet unrelated: Libby Anne on Whitesplaining Racial Disparities in STEM Fields (I guess it is a term!).

    Today I came upon an article on Chris Stedman’s Religious News Service blog, titled Instead of hating on social justice, atheists should tackle STEM segregation. The article was written by Sikivu Hutchinson, a black activist and author. [… – probably an excellent read!]

    I want to look at a few of these comments because I think they’re instructive of some general patterns. The first commenter, Stephen, wrote a book to explain that “There is no such thing as ”’social justice’.” Here is a key excerpt:

    Janusz Korwin-Mikke argues simply: “Either ‘social justice’ has the same meaning as ‘justice’ – or not. If so – why use the additional word ‘social?’ We lose time, we destroy trees to obtain paper necessary to print this word. If not, if ‘social justice’ means something different from ‘justice’ – then ‘something different from justice’ is by definition ‘injustice.’”

    Here, let me rephrase that for you: “Either ‘microbiology’ has the same meaning as ‘biology’ – or not. If so – why use the additional word ‘micro?’ We lose time, we destroy trees to obtain paper necessary to print this word. If not, if ‘microbiology’ means something different from ‘biology’ – then ‘something different from biology’ is by definition ‘not biology.’” You see how quickly that falls apart? Wikipedia defines social justice as “justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.” When we talk about social justice we are talking about applying justice to society. Words. They’re not that complicated. […]

    And of course, Stephen’s wall of text is based on libertarian assumptions:

    In fact, since the program of social justice inevitably involves claims for government provision of goods, paid for through the efforts of others, the term actually refers to an intention to use force to acquire one’s desires. Not to earn desirable goods by rational thought and action, production and voluntary exchange, but to go in there and forcibly take goods from those who can supply them!

    Stephen sees government action as inherently coercive, but there’s more than that going on here. The entire reason that we need social justice is that the system is not fair. The system is built on disadvantaging some and by doing so advantaging others. Because black people are less likely to be called in for an interview or hired, I am more likely to be called in for an interview or hired. I as a white person benefit from systemic discrimination. People like Stephen can only use arguments like these to condemn social justice because they are blind to the injustice people of color and other disadvantaged groups face every day. […]

    The final comment I want to deal with comes from someone going by “Retired EE”:

    Calling STEM jobs “segregated” while at the same time stating that “African American, Latino, and Native American youth receive only 12 percent of engineering undergraduate degrees” suggests you’re either re-defining the word “segregated” or just looking for a nonsensical argument. If you want a STEM job, you must have the appropriate educational background, or you’re not going to be productive. The jobs themselves are NOT segregated, at least not on the west coast, not in the many companies I worked for.

    Oh yes, let’s respond to an article about racial disparities in STEM fields by arguing about whether the author used the word “segregated” correctly. That sounds very productive.

    I’ve read a lot of resumes in my time, and held a number of interviews, and no doubt about it – the job goes to the best qualified candidate. Nobody gives a dang about their race or ethnicity – companies just want productive results from people who are team players. Take it or leave it, but quit calling STEM jobs – the jobs themselves – inappropriate names like “segregated”. You’re just making noise.

    […[

    Each of the individuals commenting on Sikivu’s article clearly think themselves well informed critical thinkers on the subject. I’ve seen enough of this that appeals to “reason” or “rational thought” are starting to make me twitch. Too often this is code for “you’re wrong and your lived experience is irrelevant, let me tell you how it actually is.” Look, when a person has not even considered that systemic racism might constitute a “taking” or assumes that the real solution to failing schools is to give the students some “tough love,” they are neither well informed nor a critical thinker—and their sense of compassion is underdeveloped at best.

    #EricGarner’s son says this is how he wants people to remember his father: . Video at link.

    Boulder protesters jam rush-hour traffic on U.S. 36 with march, ‘die-in’.

    The protest began at about 5:30 p.m. in the intersection of 28th Street and Colorado Avenue and included between 150 and 225 participants at its peak, according to estimates from Boulder police officers on the scene.

    Chanting slogans including “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now! If we don’t get it, shut it down!” and “Whose streets? Our Streets!,” the protesters marched down 28th and onto U.S. 36.

    Weaving back and forth across the highway dividers to ensure both Denver- and Boulder-bound traffic would be impacted, the group eventually came to a stop in the Denver-bound lanes just past Baseline Road. There they laid down in silence for 4.5 minutes, staging a “die-in” during which each minute signified an hour that the body of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old, black resident of Ferguson, Mo. who was killed by white police officer following a confrontation that did not lead to the filing of charges, lay on the sidewalk of the heavily African American St. Louis suburb in a case that has ignited protests nationwide. […]

    The Boulder protesters, who joined groups across the country that have staged similar events in the last few weeks as well as Boulder groups that have protested the part two weekends, rose from their die-in to read a list of demands. The goal of the major highway disruption, as outlined in a flyer distributed by protesters, was to hammer home that “institutional racism and police brutality are no longer acceptable.”

    “Due process is upheld and those accused are assessed by a jury of their peers,” the event’s chief organizer, Kevin Recinos, yelled into a megaphone, the rest of the group repeating the demands in unison. “We want an end to all forms of discrimination and the full recognition of human rights for people of color in Boulder.”

    The demands also included the “de-militarization” of local law enforcement nationwide, and a Congressional hearing on the “criminalization of communities of color, racial profiling, police abuses and torture by law enforcement.”

    Hmmm, that’s at least two (three if you count Ferguson, which is not to say it should be excluded, but they had their demands out a long time ago) separate groups of protestors with not just action, but a list of demands that they feel ready to discuss. I hope they have a leadership ready to work on those things.

    If Eric Garner’s killer can’t be indicted, what cop possibly could? It’s time to fix grand juries

    If you are an ordinary citizen being investigated for a crime by an American grand jury, there is a 99.993% chance you’ll be indicted. Yet if you’re a police officer, that chance falls to effectively nil.

    While the Michael Brown tragedy in Ferguson elevated the harsh reality of grand juries to the global stage, no case has driven it home more than Garner’s. A victim who was unarmed and did not resist. A forbidden chokehold according to NYPD rules. Ruled a homicide by the medical examiner who performed the autopsy. And it was all caught on crystal-clear video.

    If Eric Garner’s killer can’t be indicted, what cop possibly could? […]

    In cases where the prosecutor wants an indictment, he or she can show the jury a narrow slice of favorable evidence (sometimes evidence that wouldn’t even be allowed at trial), then pressure the jury over which charges to bring, and get an indictment within hours. “There is no question that a grand jury will do precisely what the prosecutor wants, virtually 100% of the time,” law professor James Cohen told Gothamist on Monday, echoing the comments of countless other lawyers over the past few weeks.

    But in cases where prosecutors don’t want a trial, they can bury the jury in evidence and drag on the process for weeks, then undermine the case by cross-examining their own witnesses, and confuse the jury by not recommending which charges to bring at all. The result is what we’ve seen from Ferguson to Staten Island and back again: miscarriage of justice, under the auspices of thoroughness.

    In local cases involving local cops, it’s clear that local prosecutors won’t cut it. Federal prosecutions and some states require grand juries to reach indictments, but that doesn’t mean states can’t bring in special prosecutors without connections to cases of the local police. As criminal law professor Ronald Wright told the New Republic, local ballot initiatives can quickly make this practice mandatory: […]

    The video of Garner’s death means that the world’s public knows the truth, even if a misled group of grand jurors in New York refused to face it. It also means the Justice Department has ample evidence to open a federal civil rights investigation into the incident, which Eric Holder said on Wednesday night that it will. If the killing wasn’t on film, politicians wouldn’t be feeling increased pressure from incensed protesters of all backgrounds to finally face the issue of two-tiered justice head-on.

    Right now, though, we don’t even have an accurate count of how many people police kill each year, let alone a fair system for bringing some justice to those unjustified killings – to the families of Mike Brown, Eric Garner and the many victims who are not household names. The Wall Street Journal reported just before the Garner grand jury decision was announced that literally hundreds of killings by police officers went unreported over the last several years. The road to accountability is long, but as the public gets more and more outraged, we can only hope it bends towards justice.

  249. rq says

    Ugh, mooooderaaaay-shunnn!
    Just a rather interesting article on Grand Juries, though nothing over-the-top to warrant immediate re-posting. Onwards!

    The Philly “die-in” protest you didn’t see on TV news

    A local group calling itself In Defense of Black Bodies dispatched information about the protest several days earlier as the “Philly Die In.” The group instructed protestors to gather at Philadelphia’s landmark 30th Street Station around 3:45pm and “mill around as if there for regular purposes.” Then, at 4:15pm, black activists were to drop to the floor, laying as a form of protest “in opposition to the ongoing genocide perpetuated against Black people in the United States,” the group said. Non-black allies were asked to sit in solidarity with black protestors.

    After a symbolic four and a half minutes on the ground, marking what the group called the four and a half hours Michael Brown lay dead before authorities collected his body, protestors planned to march from the Amtrak hub to City Hall. The group stated it hoped to “disrupt the flow of traffic in the station and downtown.”

    The event was dramatically more successful and powerful than most anticipated—and protestors did successfully disrupt traffic throughout Philadelphia at peak rush hour, paralyzing one of the most used throughways in the city and blocking the on-ramp to the Schuylkill Expressway.

    By midday on Wednesday, over 600 people planned, at least via RSVPs on Facebook, to attend the protest. It seems that most of them did, in fact, show up throughout the entire event, which lasted from 3:45pm until after 7:30pm.

    At 3:45pm, Philly Now noticed a heavy police presence in and around 30th Street Station. Several dozen bicycle cops were gathered along the north side of the transit hub, and multiple huddles of patrolmen stood inside the building. Camera crews from local network news stations were setting up inside and outside the station, too.

    Shortly before 4pm, mostly white protestors inexplicably lay prostrate on the ground along the east perimeter of the Amtrak notification screen, seemingly unaware of both the protest’s start time and instruction about non-black allies sitting instead of laying on the ground. Curiously, mainstream network cameramen focused on this small group of protestors for a few minutes.

    In fact, one network station used footage of this very small group of protestors almost exclusively, completely ignoring the much larger, much longer and much more effective protest that was organized in part by In Defense of Black Bodies.

    Around 4:10pm, along the west side of Amtrak’s 30th Street Station, throngs of people of color began peacefully walking into the station’s grand terminal. At least 100 suddenly milled about the main concourse, most of them youth. And, at 4:15pm, these people peacefully, silently and dramatically dropped to the floor.

    For nearly five minutes, this huge group of people lay there on the ground silently with white protestors interspersed throughout sitting. A few business travelers were stranded in the morass of bodies, unsure of what just happened and how to politely get out of the sea of bodies. As time wore on, some of the youth were whispering to each other, pointing at media cameras. Many tried not to make eye contact with media, others went out of their way to make placards visible as they lay on the ground.

    At promptly 4:20pm, a signal blew and the protestors leapt up from their stations on the tile floor. Impromptu cheers mingled alongside shouts of “Hands up, don’t shoot!” They began marching out of the building, the activists dedicated, defiant and, above all else, peaceful. As he exited the station, one man jeered nearby police as the patrolmen stood stoically.

    “Don’t shoot me, officer,” the man pleaded. The officers didn’t say a word.

    They then proceeded to block off highway traffic and disrupt the city’s tree-lighting event, but everything remained peaceful to the end: “Overall, the police response to the protest was overwhelmingly respectful. Likewise, the protestors, while disruptive to traffic and some holiday festivities, were entirely respectful of police boundaries.”

    Youtube video: Eric Garner demonstrators shut down DC streets

    Demonstrators in Washington on Monday continued protesting the non-indictment of a New York police officer in the killing of African-American father of six Eric Garner. Shutting down several streets, the “die-in” participants sought to bring attention to racial injustice in America. RT’s Manila Chan is on the scene with more details.

    London, England – last night, I believe.

    I can’t agree with the title, but this news will freak out any white supremacist: America’s Getting Less White, and That Will Save It

    America reached an important milestone in 2011. That occurred when, for the first time in the history of the country, more minority babies than white babies were born in a year.

    Soon, most children will be racial minorities: Hispanics, blacks, Asians, and other nonwhite races. And, in about three decades, whites will constitute a minority of all Americans (see chart, below).

    Never mind, that’s old news, they should be used to the idea by now. Right?

    Certainly in the past, the specter of a “minority white” nation instilled fear among some Americans, and to some extent it continues to do so today—fear of change, fear of losing privileged status, or fear of unwanted groups in their communities. These fears were especially evident during the decades following World War II, when immigration was low and phrases such as “invasion,” “blockbusting,” and “white flight” were commonly used in the context of black-white segregation.

    Such fears are evident today in the public backlashes that sometimes occur against more permissive immigration and voter registration laws.

    Yet if demography is truly destiny, then these fears of a more racially diverse nation will almost certainly dissipate. In many communities, a broad spectrum of racial groups already is accepted by all, particularly among the highly diverse youth population. […]

    The story that the data tell is not just more of the same. I am convinced that the United States is in the midst of a pivotal period ushering in extraordinary shifts in the nation’s racial demographic makeup. If planned for properly, these demographic changes will allow the country to face the future with growth and vitality as it reinvents the classic American melting pot for a new era. […]

    What will be different going forward is the sheer size of the minority population in the United States. It is arriving “just in time” as the aging white population begins to decline, bringing with it needed manpower and brain power and taking up residence in otherwise stagnating city and suburban housing markets.

    Although whites are still considered the mainstream in the United States, that perception should eventually shift as more minority members assume positions of responsibility, exert more political clout, exercise their strength as consumers, and demonstrate their value in the labor force. As they become integral to the nation’s success, their concerns will be taken seriously.

    Such an optimistic article! But more at the link, a look at stats etc., and that final ‘just wait racism out, it will go away on it’s own’ kind of grates on the nerves.


    Daily Show Invites South African Comedian To Give His First Impression Of America – It’s Not Pretty (VIDEO)     Seen already, yes? No? Eh.

    Again, Tamir Rice’s mother, Samaria: Mother of Cleveland Boy Shot by Police Says She’s ‘Looking for a Conviction’

    “I couldn’t believe they tackled her and put her in handcuffs and in the back of the same police car that was on the grass that the officer got out of and shot her brother so my daughter is sitting there looking at her brother on the ground,” Rice said this morning.

    The mother of four has already filed a wrongful death lawsuit over Tamir’s death but she said this morning that she wants “the police [to] be accountable for what they did to my son.”

    “I’m looking for a conviction for both of the officers,” she said.

    Rice is being represented by Benjamin Crump, the same attorney who helped the parents of Michael Brown, the teen fatally shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, this summer.

  250. rq says

    What the Eric Garner Case Says About Staten Island Politics

    But you don’t fully understand Staten Island until you dig into its politics. And if you do, what you find is an ugly mix of the following: a heavily white electorate; a Republican congressman who just got re-elected, even though he’s been indicted on tax-fraud charges; and the elected Republican county prosecutor who’s said to be gunning for Congress himself.

    And understanding the politics of where Garner died informs us about the circumstances surrounding his death as much as does watching the grisly video of Officer Daniel Pantaleo killing him. Greater political or demographic context brings us closer to the “Dear Watson” moment while we angrily mull the grand jury’s decision not to indict.
    […]

    It’s a place where just over 10 percent of the population is black. Hence, there should be little surprise when a grand jury with a racial makeup of 14 whites and five blacks arrives at a decision not to indict an officer who chokes an unarmed man to death in the course of an “arrest” for selling “loosie” cigarettes.

    Police also wield enormous political and professional clout on Staten Island. Watch them in action when the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association had a fit after reports surfaced that the New York City Police Department’s Staten Island commander had a headlight fixed on Garner’s mother’s car so that she could avoid a traffic ticket. [..]

    That also means they’re not above putting quiet pressure on folks like Daniel Donovan Jr., the Richmond County prosecutor who pretty much litigated from the same playbook as St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch—handing responsibility for finding probable cause to grand jurors instead of indicting on charges that he could have brought on his own.

    Donovan also has eyes on Grimm’s congressional seat, should the young-gun House member’s fraud indictment turn into a conviction. That means Donovan has to play nice with local cops if he wants their endorsement in a possible 2015 special election. And why wouldn’t they play nice together? Police work extremely closely with local district attorneys because that’s how the system works. The problem is what happens when the script is occasionally flipped and someone’s work buddy has to prosecute his pal at the courtroom watercooler.

    Two of New York City’s black congressmen, Democratic Reps. Gregory Meeks and Hakeem Jeffries, tried warning us about this scenario several months ago.

  252. rq says

    Mano Singham again – Trying desperately to overlook the obvious

    Incidentally, some are arguing that the fact that despite the clear video of the Garner killing no indictments were brought suggests that having police wear body cams will not help. I disagree. The existence of the video has created much greater consensus on the appalling nature of the killing which is why the excuses proffered on behalf of the police in this case are so absurd.

    Without the video, we would have been regaled with stories similar to those given by the police in the Ferguson shooting, of how Garner reached into his pocket and police mistook his action as reaching for a gun or that he tried to attack the police by charging them or he tried to run away. The eyewitness testimony of spectators would have been dismissed as biased or contradictory, as they often are about details.

    The more and more video that exists that show what truly happens, the harder it will be to maintain the façade that race has nothing to do with this kind of action. Having video evidence of the events cannot help but be a good thing. Change will not happen overnight. But it will come.

  253. rq says

    Rochester MN;
    Memphis (upcoming event);
    Lenox Mall (Atlanta?);
    We honored victims of state violence last night by reading their names & stories to the riot police. #KajiemePowell .

    The two members of the Ferguson Commission that nobody argues should be there:
    Prof @Blackstarjus who argued to UN that police were guilty of torture in Ferguson, addresses Ferguson Commission;
    Protest supporter @MsPackyetti serving on Ferguson Commission is 1 reason it wasn’t protested outright (@LBPhoto1) .

  254. rq says

    The Police Shooting of 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice Just Took an Even More Disturbing Turn

    Rice’s mother, Samaria, blasted the Cleveland Division of Police on Monday at a press conference for mistaking her son’s BB gun as a real weapon, saying he “didn’t even have a chance” to cooperate with police when they responded to a 911 call. While the two officers claim to have told Rice to put his “hands up” when they approached him, but his mother refutes that.

    “If they had said something he would have cooperated with them,” she told NBC News. “By them scaring him like that, he didn’t even have a chance. They didn’t even give him a chance to cooperate.”

    According to Samaria Rice, two boys knocked on her front door and said her son had been shot. When she arrived at the scene, she found her son lying on the ground bleeding, her 14-year-old daughter who was with him in the back of a police car and the police standing around, she said. Her daughter had also reportedly said police tackled and handcuffed her.

    “I noticed my son on the ground,” Samaria Rice said. “They wouldn’t let me through and then I saw my daughter in the police car. The police told me to calm down or they would put me in the back of the police car. I asked my police to let my daughter go and they wouldn’t.”

    Rice said police gave her the option of riding in the police car with her daughter or taking the ambulance with her son — she chose the latter. “They made me sit in front of ambulance like I was passenger,” Rice said. Tamir Rice died in the hospital the next day.

    “He was my baby,” his mother said. […]

    These revelations are alarming, but they’re even more disturbing for Samaria Rice, who said “Cleveland police have failed to come knock on my door and tell me what happened to my son. Nobody ever showed up, ever.” […]

    As Rice’s case moves forward, his mother said she’s looking for a conviction. The family has filed a civil suit and is appealing for Loehmann to be charged without a grand jury trial because lawyers believe the surveillance video is “enough probable cause to indict.”

    I really, really, really hope they bypass the grand jury. Really. Because there is no way they even need a grand jury process for this one. They should really, really, really just go straight to trial.
    And convict the fuckers.

    Let’s make a note that it’s note just black men at risk here. Police Killing of Unarmed Native American Continues To Receive Little Media Attention

    The tragic case of Corey Kanosh, 35, has received very little media attention, in spite of the growing outrage over police shootings of unarmed, innocent citizens. In Corey’s case, we are not dealing with an African American man shot by white cops, but an unarmed Native American man who was suspected of crimes that he was later proven innocent of, who was given only seconds before police opened fire on him.

    Corey was a member of the Paiute Tribe of Utah. In spite of the historical injustices committed by the State against Native Americans, his story has received virtually no national attention. Now, his friends and family have been pushing to move the legal process forward, but so far they have only raised a tiny amount of money.

    Sound familiar? Can we raise the signal a bit here, somehow?

    Via Giliell, Viewpoint: Why Eric Garner was blamed for dying

    “You had a 350lb (158.8kg) person who was resisting arrest. The police were trying to bring him down as quickly as possible,” New York Representative Peter King told the press. “If he had not had asthma and a heart condition and was so obese, almost definitely he would not have died.”

    This sort of logic sees Garner’s choices as the reasons for his death. Everything is about what he did. He had a petty criminal record with dozens of arrests, he (allegedly) sold untaxed cigarettes, he resisted arrest and disrespected the officers by not complying.

    According to Bob McManus, a columnist for The New York Post, both Eric Garner and Michael Brown, the teenager shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson Missouri, “had much in common, not the least of which was this: On the last day of their lives, they made bad decisions. Especially bad decisions. Each broke the law – petty offenses, to be sure, but sufficient to attract the attention of the police. And then – tragically, stupidly, fatally, inexplicably – each fought the law.” […]

    Such victim-blaming is central to white supremacy.

    Emmett Till should not have whistled at a white woman.

    Amadou Diallo should not have reached for his wallet.

    Trayvon Martin should not have been wearing a hoodie.

    Jonathan Ferrell should not have run toward the police after getting into a car accident.

    Renisha McBride should not have been drinking or knocked on a stranger’s door for help in the middle of the night.

    Jordan Davis should not have been playing loud rap music.

    Michael Brown should not have stolen cigarillos or allegedly assaulted a cop.

    The irony is these statements are made in a society where white men brazenly walk around with rifles and machine guns, citing their constitutional right to do so when confronted by the police. […]

    No matter the situation or circumstance, throughout US history the devaluing of black life can be seen in the failure to prosecute police officers, lynch mobs, freelance vigilantes, and others empowered to protect white supremacy because the deaths of their black victims were seen as self-inflicted.

    The practice of blaming blacks for their own killings is not reserved for adults.

    Last month 12-year old Tamir Rice was killed by police who opened fired seconds after arriving at the scene.

    Rice was blamed for playing with a toy gun outside a recreation centre in Cleveland, Ohio. A 911-caller said he kept taking the gun in and out of his pocket and scaring people with it.

    Not even a day after Rice was killed, his parents’ criminal records and parenting decisions were front-page news. An early news story made references to his mother’s past drug charges, another focused on Tamir Rice’s father’s history of violence against women.

    The implication was clear: Tamir grew up in a family of “criminals” and therefore it is no wonder he died. Never mind that he was the victim, never mind his parent’s grief, never mind that his killer, Timothy A Loehmann was deemed unfit for police work in 2012. […]

    This post-mortem narrative discredits the victims and feeds popular myths about black people as innately criminal, violent, and so deeply flawed that their lives are worthless.

    Pinning the blame on the victims reinforces ideas of a post-racial America and racial progress.

    It normalizes inequality and police-on-black violence.

    It limits public sympathy and outrage since “they did it to themselves.”

    It limits responsibility and complicity of not only the police but also those sitting in the halls of political power.

    It ignores larger history and a pattern of systemic violence.

    It stifles conversations about implicit bias and systemic racism.

    It undermines conversations about state violence and overzealous policing.

    Rather than account for racism, or hold the perpetrator, society, and its stained racial history accountable, this racial gag reflex places blame inside of all too many coffins. […]

    In America, black lives don’t matter because white supremacy requires black death, and it requires that its victims die without sanctuary.

    For the good news, an awesome win for Jamaica and black woman swimmers everywhere. I love her reaction, and this is thrilling news!!

    Member of a fraternity or sorority? Abide by the dress-code! AKA Chapter Instructs Members Not To Wear Their Letters During Mike Brown/Eric Garner Protests. Can’t make your fellow members look bad, eh?

    On Saturday, December 6, a Georgia chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha, Upsilon Alpha Omega, posted a message discouraging their members from wearing paraphernalia while they’re protesting for Michael Brown or Eric Garner.

    It’s a bit hard to believe but here’s what the post, pinned to the top of their Facebook page, had to say.

    IMPORTANT MESSAGE: ALPHA KAPPA ALPHA SOSORITY MEMBERS Dec. 6, 2014
    Members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. are urged to pay close attention to the following information when participating in marches, rallies and or protest activities until further notice:
    1. You may wear our sorority colors, but please refrain from wearing any Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. paraphrenalia.
    2. Do not make statements that are or can be construed as a position of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
    3. Keep in mind our International President is the only spokesperson for our Sorority unless she delegates this authority to someone else, which she has not dont with respect to the Divine 9 National Die-In-event.
    4. If you choose to engage in the aforementioned event or others similar in nature, you are solely responsible for yourself and your activities. Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. disclaims all responsibilities and liability for any injury or damage that may result in your participation.
    Please also share this important information with Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority members who may not be connected to social media platforms.

    TashaSays, a blogger who also happens to be an AKA, said she was giving this chapter a serious side eye because as she so eloquently put it:

    “We are in the middle of the biggest Civil Rights movement of this generation, and you send out a message concerning yourself with protesters wearing paraphernalia? ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?”

    Tis true.

    Apparently, the impetus behind this post was that a Delta was arrested wearing her letters and it made the front page of the Dallas Morning Newspaper.

    This is sad. Instead of looking at this as a stain on the organization’s good name, Black fraternities and sororities should be openly celebrating these type of protests and even arrests in some cases. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time someone was arrested while fighting for something morally right.

  255. rq says

    Ah, that commission meeting: More anger, action at Ferguson Commission meeting

    At its peak, attendance swelled to about 250, with protesters filling aisles, sides and the back of the gym at Mullanphy School in the city’s Shaw neighborhood — across the street from the memorial to VonDerrit Myers Jr., who was fatally shot this fall by a St. Louis police officer.

    The meeting, the commission’s second, got off to a smooth start. The governor-appointed commissioners restructured the agenda this time, starting with a half-hour meet-and-greet and then a half-hour of public testimony. Speakers were punctual and respectful.

    But after about an hour, the commission asked St. Louis police Chief Sam Dotson to the microphone. Boos rang out from the crowd almost instantly.

    Dotson tried to give a prepared speech. But the room began to fill with protesters and residents frustrated with official responses to the recent string of police shootings. And they wouldn’t let Dotson talk. […]

    Price had been worried about outbursts. “If they’re going to create a success, the commission needs to be thrown out of these buildings,” he said earlier Monday. “They need to get a travel bus, like they’re going on vacation, and ring doorbells.”

    One commissioner, area lawyer Gabriel Gore, said he watched acquaintances leave as the shouting continued.

    Still, he said, it was only a handful of speakers talking over everyone. The rest of the meeting progressed about as it should, he said. And the next one, he predicted, would be even better. […]

    Monday’s meeting was even larger, perhaps double the attendance of the week prior. More gathered in the aisles and sides. More yelled.

    Still, the commission also got more of the hard work done. After at least 50 residents and protesters left, mid-meeting, the commissioners broke the remaining 150 or so into three groups, where they hammered out common ground concerning police, use of force, racial profiling and community relations, among other topics. That was the good, hard work, commissioners said.

    “Citizens were talking to each other,” co-chairman Rich McClure said after the meeting. “They were giving great feedback.”

    “I understand what leads,” he continued. “But that was an incredible time. Don’t lose that.”

    As the meeting closed, co-chairman Starsky Wilson asked for 30 seconds of silence.

    By then, most of the protesters had left. Residents were listening.

    What’s interesting is that the article separates protestors from residents. As if the two labels are mutually exclusive. Interessant, non?
    Here’s some photos.

    Lebron James expressed his support. Receives racist backlash. Who’s surprised?

  256. rq says

    Via BET, News Special: BET News Presents: A Conversation With President Obama

    Full Episode: President Barack Obama sits down with BET Networks for an exclusive interview at the White House to discuss the current unrest in America. The president addresses community concerns and calls for justice and equality after the recent grand jury decisions. President Obama discusses his strategy not only to investigate the various incidents, but also the ways in which he believes that the country can come together during this time. BET News’ Jeff Johnson conducts the interview.

    The date confused me at the bottom, I thought it was from August at first, but then I remembered the weird way you USAnians write dates. :P

    And that Obama. Can’t catch a break. Obama’s measured approach to race is a letdown for some backers

    In the months since protests over the shooting death of an unarmed black man by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., captured national attention, Obama has walked a careful line between empathizing with those outraged by what they see as police bias and avoiding any escalation of a debate that cuts along race lines.

    The measured approach from the first African American president has disappointed some, particularly the young people who see the widespread outrage over the killing in Ferguson and the death of another black man in an apparent police chokehold in Staten Island, N.Y., as a potential turning point.

    But it has not surprised others. […]

    For many African Americans, the six years of Obama’s presidency have been an exercise in adjusting expectations for what he will say and do about matters involving race. Many who once thought Obama would lead the charge have learned to accept him as a more distant guide. Hoping he would do more — visit protesters or use his bully pulpit for passionate oratory — misunderstands his role and leads to disappointment, some noted.

    That disappointment appears to be palpable.
    lRelated Justice Department broadens ban on racial profiling

    Although African American support for Obama remains high overall, blacks’ approval of his handling of race relations dropped sharply in the last few months, according to a Pew Research Center poll released Monday.

    In August, shortly after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, 73% of black Americans approved of Obama’s handling of race relations. But in the most recent poll, taken Wednesday through Sunday, approval dropped to 57%. […]

    Obama gave his first extended interview on the subject to BET Networks and was ready to counter some of the critics of his calibrated response.

    In a handful of public statements over the last few weeks, Obama repeatedly worried that some communities “feel” that police deal with them unfairly. But in the BET interview airing Monday, he emphasized his belief that those feelings are grounded in reality.

    “I’m being pretty explicit about my concern, and being pretty explicit about the fact that this is a systemic problem, that black folks and Latinos and others are not just making this up. I describe it in very personal terms,” Obama said.

    At the same time, he acknowledged he was constrained by his office. With open federal investigations, he does not want to taint the process or put “my thumb on the scale of justice,” he said.

    “What sometimes people are frustrated by is me not simply saying, ‘This is what the outcome should have been.’ And that I cannot do, institutionally,” Obama said. “So I’m sure that there’s some folks who just want me to say, in such and such a case, this is what I think should have happened, and if I had been on a grand jury this is what I would have said, and so forth and so on.” […]

    Although the feeling that Obama could do more may be prevalent, there is little consensus on what the “more” would be. The White House has resisted calls for the president to go to Ferguson or New York, where separate grand juries declined to indict white police officers in the deaths of Brown and Eric Garner. Obama has also resisted suggestions that now is the time to make his first major address on race as president — a sort of sequel to his much-praised speech on the topic in Philadelphia in 2008, when he was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

    Advisors and some supporters express skepticism that a speech would move the needle, and wonder whether it would just spark more unrest. The president has seen such unintended consequences before, said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Obama’s election was a historic high point, but it also stirred up latent racism that is currently on display, Cleaver contended.

    “He always has spoken about these issues in ways that no other president could. He has placed himself as an illustration, he has not denied his blackness — even though each time he does it, he has been roundly criticized,” Cleaver said. “If you remember from English lit class — ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ I think that Charles Dickens could be used on any newscast in the United States right now.”

    The Baffler and The Disruption This Time

    What has made these protests stand out is not their size, though some have been quite large. But far larger numbers have gathered for major protest marches in the past, including the massive antiwar demonstrations of 2003, the Republican National Convention protest of 2004, and last September’s enormous climate march. And certainly this is not the first time protesters have used their bodies to block bridges, tunnels, intersections, and roadways around town. There have even been occasions in the past when coordinated actions blocked multiple sites around the city simultaneously. But try as I might to think of a precedent, I can’t come up with another time when protesters have engaged in as much spontaneous and simultaneous disruptive action as they have in the two weeks since Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson was not indicted for shooting Michael Brown.

    The first few nights after the Eric Garner non-indictment, it was nearly impossible to keep track of how many different groups were marching through the city: while one crowd was pouring over the Brooklyn Bridge, another was disrupting the West Side Highway, and another blocking the streets around Times Square. Marches splintered, then rejoined; they met police blockades, and defiantly swarmed around them; they stopped to block key sites, then quickly moved on. The protests have been mobile and deft, steered by tactically savvy organizers for maximal disruption and minimal arrests. Crowds blockade intersections until the police get antsy, then quickly march off to a new target; they swarm high-profile sites like Grand Central Station and Macy’s Herald Square, disrupt with loud chants, shift to a silent die-in, and then move on.

    The tone of these actions has been striking and distinctive, too. The protests I’ve seen in New York have been entirely peaceful (I was in Oakland for the marches after the Michael Brown non-indictment, which is an activist world unto itself). This isn’t a passive kind of peacefulness, though: it has been fearless and resolute. Something about the combination of grief and anger, and the seriousness of purpose with which it is being expressed on the streets, strongly reminds me of the heyday of ACT UP. Now, as then, the protests were led by people taking action with the knowledge that their lives and those of people they know and love were very concretely and immediately at stake. Signs declaring “I Could Be Next” drive the point home.

    Most significant of all is who is leading these actions. ACT UP in its heyday was majority white, as were most of the movements of the last thirty years that used disruptive direct action as a central part of their strategy. This style of organized, uncompromising protest was pioneered by the young black activists of SNCC and other cutting-edge civil rights group in the mid-1960s, but many movements of color turned away from it by the early 1970s, opting for other tactics and strategies. The stakes were always higher for black and brown street activists, whether they were taking part in a campus sit-in or marching on the streets; they were far more likely than white activists to be met with police violence, to be charged harshly for minor offenses, and to face serious consequences for interfering with business as usual.

    So from the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s up through the Seattle WTO protests of 1999, disruptive direct action protest became largely a white affair. Movements of color, when they engaged in civil disobedience actions, as they did time and time again, were much more likely to orchestrate them carefully, as a way of ensuring the safety of participants. The protests against South African apartheid organized by TransAfrica in the 1980s are one example; the waves of sit-ins at One Police Plaza after four officers were acquitted of the murder of Amadou Diallo in 1999 are another.

    These differences in styles of protest often led to tensions between activists of color and white activists, especially in the relatively rare occasions when they joined together in shared organizing, such as during the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s. White activists could be stunningly oblivious about why their counterparts of color didn’t want to engage in roving blockades or other high-risk actions. They congratulated themselves on their daring while ignoring the racial privilege that made it possible. Even now, as the issue of police violence has led huge crowds to risk facing police violence by taking over streets and highways nationwide, the risks are very different for the black and brown activists leading the actions and the white protesters joining them in solidarity.

    This resurgence of disruptive direct action in people-of-color-led movements didn’t start in Ferguson. There are powerful precedents going back to the Republican Convention protests in Philadelphia in 2000, when young people of color led actions around police brutality and mass incarceration. The massive immigrant rights marches of 2006 and the years of brave defiant action around immigrant detentions and deportations by undocumented immigrants and allies are key to this shift as well. For black activists focusing on police violence and accountability, the summer 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida was a crucial turning point. A month-long occupation of the Florida State Capitol building by the Dream Defenders set a new tone and helped galvanize young organizers of color around the country.

    But it’s the tenacious young black organizers on the frontlines in Ferguson, many of them women, who clearly deserve the most credit for the scale and character of this nationwide upsurge. Their risk-taking in the face of the tear gas, rubber bullets, and military gear of the police there—and their strategic use of social media to broadcast their message and methods—have transformed grassroots protest in the United States. In both Ferguson and New York, the protests have been decentralized, with different groups and organizers taking the lead at different points.

    All signs indicate that this movement is not letting up; daily actions are planned in New York City for the indefinite future. May the qualities that make this upsurge of activism so unique will make it uncommonly influential as well.

    Okay, fine, that’s pretty much the entire article, I just skipped a bit at the beginning. But it’s very, very good, and also makes a point about the difference in personal safety and how it is perceived re: white vs. black activists. I thought I had it on twitter, but I didn’t, but I believe this article was introduced with the thought approximating the idea that white activists go out and cause shit without thinking about the repercussions non-white activists will have to face, or why they don’t engage.

    TIME selects Top 10 pictures of 2014. Ferguson makes the cut:

    In Ferguson, Mo., Whitney Curtis captured an extraordinary exchange (#2) between a man with his hands up and law enforcement officers in tactical gear. In the wake of the August shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown by white police officer Darren Wilson, she immortalized the term “unarmed black man.” It was shared widely as the national conversation about race and the militarization of police ramped up, and remains to this day one of the most iconic pictures of the ongoing tension in the St. Louis suburb and other communities across the country.

    From the newest documents, Justice Department’s Autopsy of Michael Brown Is Released

    The findings of the Justice Department post-mortem released on Monday echoed those of two previous autopsies carried out by St. Louis County’s medical examiner and a private examiner hired by the Brown family. It found that Brown — who was shot in Ferguson, Missouri, on Aug. 9 — suffered “severe injuries of the skull, brain and right chest” and appeared to have been shot in the hand at close range. “The manner of death is homicide,” the Justice Department’s medical examiner ruled.

    I emphasize once more that, in pathology, ‘homicide’ simply means not a death from accident or natural causes, and does not hold any possible legal weight besides what any prosecution might seek to pursue, but can be things like negligence right up to murder in the first degree. (At least that was so in Canada.)

    Oh, and carlie keeps asking about how much the NG will cost, etc. Well, this doesn’t say how much, but it does say who will do the paying (soorpreez, soorpreez): Taxpayers pick up the tab for violent, abusive, murdering cops 99.8% of the time

    This Article empirically examines an issue central to judicial and scholarly debate about civil rights damages actions: whether law enforcement officials are financially responsible for settlements and judgments in police misconduct cases. The Supreme Court has long assumed that law enforcement officers must personally satisfy settlements and judgments, and has limited individual and government liability in civil rights damages actions—through qualified immunity doctrine, municipal liability standards, and limitations on punitive damages—based in part on this assumption. Scholars disagree about the prevalence of indemnification: Some believe officers almost always satisfy settlements and judgments against them, and others contend indemnification is not a certainty. In this Article, I report the findings of a national study of police indemnification. Through public records requests, interviews, and other sources, I have collected information about indemnification practices in forty-four of the largest law enforcement agencies across the country, and in thirty-seven small and mid-sized agencies. My study reveals that police officers are virtually always indemnified: During the study period, governments paid approximately 99.98% of the dollars that plaintiffs recovered in lawsuits alleging civil rights violations by law enforcement. Law enforcement officers in my study never satisfied a punitive damages award entered against them and almost never contributed anything to settlements or judgments—even when indemnification was prohibited by law or policy, and even when officers were disciplined, terminated, or prosecuted for their conduct. After describing my findings, this Article considers the implications of widespread indemnification for qualified immunity, municipal liability, and punitive damages doctrines; civil rights litigation practice; and the deterrence and compensation goals of 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

    The actual article, “Police Indemnification”, can be found in the NYU Law Review.

  257. rq says

    The community’s anger is not a disruption for those who serve them. It is a call to duty. @StlChange #FergusonCommission.

    Grand Juries Should Be Abolished

    About half of the states have both prelims and criminal grand juries. In these states, it is in the sole discretion of prosecutors whether to hold prelims or to convene grand juries. Unlike prelims, criminal grand jury proceedings are not adversarial. No judges or defense attorneys participate. The rules of evidence do not apply; there are no cross-examinations of witnesses, and there are no objections. How prosecutors explain the law to the jurors and what prosecutors say about the evidence are subject to no oversight. And the proceedings are shrouded in secrecy.

    In high-profile, controversial cases, where officers use lethal force, prosecutors face a dilemma. If they don’t file charges against officers, they risk the wrath of the community; if they do file charges, they risk the wrath of the police and their powerful unions. By opting for secret grand jury proceedings, prosecutors pass the buck, using grand jurors as pawns for political cover. The Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases are examples of how prosecutors manipulate the grand jury process.
    […]

    The version of Michael Brown’s shooting that the grand jurors heard was engineered by the prosecutors, who vigorously questioned witnesses when their testimony contradicted Wilson’s story and barely questioned witnesses whose testimony supported the officer’s version. Wilson received especially lenient treatment by the lead prosecutor. The final question he asked was whether there was anything else that Wilson wanted the jurors to know. He did:

    One of the things you guys haven’t asked that has been asked of me in other interviews is, was he a threat, was Michael Brown a threat when he was running away. People asked why would you chase him if he was running away now. I had already called for assistance. If someone arrives and sees him running, another officer and goes around the back half of the apartment complexes and tries to stop him, what would stop him from doing what he just did to me to him or worse … he still posed a threat, not only to me, to anybody else that confronted him.

    There was no defense attorney to question Wilson’s self-serving statement to the jurors.

    It’s funny, it’s almost like Darren Wilson couldn’t call in the fact that Michael was possibly dangerous, because he had no radio and because apparently his colleagues would be too incompetent to deal with him. Glad there are such heroes around! To continue:

    All that we know about the Eric Garner grand jury proceeding is that a majority of the grand jurors refused to indict the officer. We will never know why there was no indictment because what the prosecutors said, how they said it, what evidence they presented, and what they asked the witnesses will forever remain secret, unless the transcript is opened to the public by court order.

    Secrecy in grand jury proceedings was intended to protect the reputations of the unindicted, individuals accused of crimes who grand jurors determined should not stand trial. The entire world knew the names of the unindicted officers in the Garner and Brown cases. Grand jury secrecy did nothing to protect their reputations.

    By convening grand juries, the prosecutors in Missouri and New York ensured that there would be no justice for Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Sadly, these two men are gone. But if we abolish criminal grand juries, at least their deaths will not have been in vain.

    DOJ Releases Report On Cleveland Police Department Investigation And It’s Bad News All The Way Down

    The DOJ’s report opens with the de rigueur statements about how dangerous policing is and how grateful the nation is that there are men and women willing to do this difficult job. But this is mercifully brief. The token belly rub doesn’t even last a full paragraph. The generic praise that makes up the two first sentences is swiftly tempered by these curt sentences.

    The use of force by police should be guided by a respect for human life and human dignity, the need to protect public safety, and the duty to protect individuals from unreasonable seizures under the Fourth Amendment. A significant amount of the force used by CDP officers falls short of these standards.

    The next page briefly summarizes how the CPD falls short.

    The unnecessary and excessive use of deadly force, including shootings and head strikes with impact weapons;

    The unnecessary, excessive or retaliatory use of less lethal force including tasers, chemical spray and fists;

    Excessive force against persons who are mentally ill or in crisis, including in cases where the officers were called exclusively for a welfare check; and

    The employment of poor and dangerous tactics that place officers in situations where avoidable force becomes inevitable and places officers and civilians at unnecessary risk.

    That the CPD has shown a pattern of excessive force isn’t even open for debate, according to the DOJ. The agency points its fingers at several deficiencies, fortunately highlighting the fact that the department’s internal systems for reporting and investigating excessive force allegations are a large contributor to the problem. […]

    The DOJ’s report notes that it previously investigated the department in 2002. Remedies were set into motion at that point, but apparently lasted only long enough to remove the DOJ’s oversight in 2005. With the DOJ no longer looking over its shoulder, the CPD lapsed back into its bad habits.

    In the intervening years, the CPD has allowed the problem to snowball by actively ignoring its own duty to ensure its police force is indeed “Cleveland’s finest,” rather than a loose consortium of passable officers and outright thugs — both granted the veneer of respectability (and a healthy dose of power) with the donning of a uniform and badge.

    Other points of interest in the report:

    The investigation began after helicopter video caught police kicking a handcuffed suspect in the head. No reports filed mentioned this use of force.
    The Cleveland Plain Dealer performed its own investigation, uncovering the fact that officers deployed Tasers nearly 1,000 times in a 4-year period with only 5 instances being deemed “inappropriate” — a rate a use of force expert said “strained credibility.”
    In 2013, an officer fired at a hostage fleeing a hostage situation, later claiming that he thought the man pointed a weapon at him. No reports corroborated this version of the incident. Fortunately, the officer missed both shots.
    Despite being expressly forbidden to do so by multiple revisions to the Use of Force policy dating back to 2007, CPD officers have continued to fire weapons at suspects or vehicles moving away from them.
    In 2012, an officer’s weapon discharged (yes, this time the passive voice is appropriate) when he struck a suspect’s head with it. The suspect escaped while “bleeding from the face,” and reports filed by the officer left it unclear as to whether the suspect had been hit with the bullet as well.
    A 6’4″, 300-lb. officer sat on the legs of 5’8″, 150-lb. shoplifting suspect and “punched him three or four times in the face,” presumably as punishment for 13-year-old’s kicking of an officer and the cruiser door while being placed in the vehicle.
    Officers tasered a man strapped to a gurney in the back of an emergency vehicle for “threatening officers.”
    Five officers responding to a call concerning a suicidal man with a gun fired off 24 rounds during the incident. Four struck the suicidal man. Thirteen hit a nearby parked vehicles. And six bullets hit surrounding homes.

    That the DOJ has handed down such a damning report could be viewed as encouraging, but considering it tangled with the CPD nine years ago, it’s not nearly as encouraging as it should be. Bad habits are tough to break, and the CPD’s habits are some of the worst. It is now on its second DOJ investigation in twelve years, and if the fixes didn’t take last time, there’s no logical reason to believe this time will be any different.

    More damning stuff from the report at the article, plus a link to the report itself (document form).

    Because Jesus wore white: St. Louis man dedicates life to walking, talking like Jesus. He’s a bit old to be Jesus, though.

    Born in Hammond, Ind., Thompson said he’s been on the road 13 years, witnessing and preaching the gospel of Jesus. Over the past 13 years he has visited 45 states.

    He spends anywhere from one week to six months of the year walking, witnessing and preaching. Thomspson said his goal for this trip was to visit the lower half of Missouri. He left St. Louis at 8:30 a.m. on July 9 and he’s still walking.

    Thompson said he feels Missouri should be the Christian capital of the United States because St. Louis is the heart of America. Why? Because of its four rivers—Missouri, Mississippi, Meramec and the Illinois.

    “Just like our heart has four major arteries,” he said.

    He’s been showing up at protests, which is why the article is here.

  258. rq says

    Chicago police caught on video blasting ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ during protest, which is an issue because:

    Some have said that the song, from 1974, praises former Alabama Governor George Wallace, who supported segregation.

    The band says it doesn’t.

    I did not know that.

    Missouri: the killingest state in the US, Prepares for Final Execution of 2014

    If the execution goes ahead as planned, Missouri will tie Texas for the most executions this year, breaking its own record of nine set 15 years ago.

    And everyone still thinks Texas is the worst.

  260. rq says

    Ohio, what have you been doing?? Third Ohio Man Wrongly Accused of 1975 Murder Exonerated

    An Ohio man who spent 27 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit was brought to tears Tuesday when a judge dropped all charges against him. Kwame Ajamu, 56, was the last of three men exonerated in the 1975 robbery and murder of a Cleveland-area money order salesman.

    “I’m so happy today that this battle has come to an end,” said Ajamu, formerly known as Ronnie Bridgeman, as he wept and thanked his attorneys and wife before hugging the judge and the prosecutor.

    The two other accused, Ajamu’s brother, Wiley Bridgeman, 60, and Ricky Jackson, 57, were released from prison last month. The men won their freedom after a witness last year recanted his testimony from the trial, saying he was coerced by detectives at the time. Ajamu was originally sentenced to death, but it was vacated because of a paperwork error. He later earned parole in 2003.

    Ta-Nehisi Coates strikes again: The New Republic: An Appreciation

    Earlier this year, Foer edited an anthology of TNR writings titled Insurrections of the Mind, commemorating the magazine’s 100-year history. “This book hasn’t been compiled in the name of definitiveness,” Foer wrote. “It was put together in the spirit of the magazine that it anthologizes: it is an argument about what matters.” There is only one essay in Insurrections that takes race as its subject. The volume includes only one black writer and only two writers of color. This is not an oversight. Nor does it mean that Foer is a bad human. On the contrary, if one were to attempt to capture the “spirit” of TNR, it would be impossible to avoid the conclusion that black lives don’t matter much at all.

    That explains why the family rows at TNR’s virtual funeral look like the “Whites Only” section of a Jim Crow-era movie-house. For most of its modern history, TNR has been an entirely white publication, which published stories confirming white people’s worst instincts. During the culture wars of the ’80s and ’90s, TNR regarded black people with an attitude ranging from removed disregard to blatant bigotry. When people discuss TNR’s racism, Andrew Sullivan’s publication of excerpts from Charles Murray’s book The Bell Curve (and a series of dissents) gets the most attention. But this fuels the lie that one infamous issue stands apart. In fact, the Bell Curve episode is remarkable for how well it fits with the rest of TNR’s history. […]

    TNR made a habit of “reflecting briefly” on matters that were life and death to black people but were mostly abstract thought experiments to the magazine’s editors. Before, during, and after Sullivan’s tenure, the magazine seemed to believe that the kind of racism that mattered most was best evidenced in the evils of Afrocentrism, the excesses of multiculturalism, and the machinations of Jesse Jackson. It’s true that TNR’s staff roundly objected to excerpting The Bell Curve, but I was never quite sure why. Sullivan was simply exposing the dark premise that lay beneath much of the magazine’s coverage of America’s ancient dilemma. […]

    TNR might have been helped by having more—or merely any—black people on its staff. I spent the weekend calling around and talking to people who worked in the offices over the years. From what I can tell, in that period, TNR had a total of two black people on staff as writers or editors. When I asked former employees whether they ever looked around and wondered why the newsroom was so white, the answers ranged from “not really” to “not often enough.” This is understandable. Prioritizing diversity would have been asking TNR to not be TNR. One person recalled a meeting at the magazine’s offices when the idea of excerpting The Bell Curve was first pitched. Charles Murray came to this meeting to present his findings. The meeting was very contentious. I asked if there were any black people in the room this meeting. The person could not recall. […]

    TNR did not come to racism out of evil. Very few people ever do. Many of the white people working for the magazine were very young and very smart. This is always a dangerous combination. It must have been that much more dangerous given that their boss was a racist. (Though I am told he had many black friends and protégés.) Peretz was not always a regular presence in the office. This allowed TNR’s saner staff to regard him as the crazy uncle who says racist shit at Thanksgiving. But Peretz was not a crazy uncle—he was the wealthy benefactor of an influential magazine that published ideas that damaged black people. […]

    No one who works in magazines is happy to hear about writers and editors losing their jobs—even when those people have the enviable luxury of walking out on principle. And when I think of TNR’s history, when I flip through Insurrections, when I examine the magazine’s archives, I am not so much angry as I am sad. There really was so much fine writing in its pages. But all my life I have had to take lessons from people who, in some profound way, cannot see me. TNR billed itself as the magazine for iconoclasts. But its iconoclasm ended exactly where everyone else’s does—at 110th Street. Worse, TNR encouraged incuriosity about what lay beyond the barrier. It told its readers that my world was welfare cheats, affirmative-action babies, and Jesse Jackson. And that white people—or any people—would be urged to such ignorance by their Harvard-bred intellectual leadership is deeply sad. The in-flight magazine of Air Force One should have been better. Perhaps it still can be.

    Post-racial, folks, post-racial.

    The Ferguson Commission has just started work, with two people on it that most activists on the ground agree should be on it. One of them? Well. I suppose the police don’t have much of an image to preserve anymore, so the best they can do is discredit those who might think of ways to limit their power. St. Louis Police Pursue Assault Charge Against Youngest Member Of Ferguson Commission
    .

    Rasheen Aldridge, a 20-year-old community activist, has been protesting in and around the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson on a regular basis ever since then-police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown on Aug. 9. Last month, Gov. Jay Nixon (D) named him to the Ferguson Commission, a task force intended to address problems in the St. Louis region that were highlighted in the wake of Brown’s death. On Dec. 1, Aldridge was at the White House to meet with President Barack Obama to discuss the relationship between law enforcement and local communities. (He later said he left the meeting “disappointed” with Obama, whom he used to consider his “idol.”)

    It’s no surprise, then, that the misdemeanor assault charge brought by St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce against Aldridge grabbed local and even international headlines and gained traction in conservative circles. After all, a story about a prominent Ferguson protester being charged with assault fits in perfectly with the broad generalizations that many have made about those demonstrators: namely, that they’re violent “thugs” with no respect for the law.

    “From street mob activist to White House guest,” conservative blogger Jim Hoft wrote on his website, Gateway Pundit, about the charge against Aldridge. “Torch a town — Get invited to White House!” he added. But Hoft offered absolutely no proof that Aldridge had participated in any capacity in the looting, vandalism and arson that hit parts of Ferguson after a grand jury decided not to indict Wilson in Brown’s death last month. […]

    Aldridge — who is just 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 110 pounds, according to court documents — seems to be trying to open a City Hall door as a much larger city marshal stands guard. The marshal then appears to shove Aldridge, and the protester’s hand touches and perhaps pushes the official.

    Soon after the incident, police in riot gear wielding pepper spray would break up the demonstration around City Hall, claiming that the entire daytime assembly was unlawful because a few demonstrators “made contact” with law enforcement. […]

    “This has nothing to do with the protest or the speech or anything that anybody was saying,” Joyce said. “You can say anything you want, but what you can’t do is physically, you know, touch someone or push them or shove them or spit on them. And so that’s the line, and that line was crossed here.”

    Aldridge is a first-time offender, according to Ryan, and it is “highly unlikely” that he will face any jail time if he is found guilty. “He’ll probably get probation, and he’ll probably get a probation that would require some community service, and after a certain amount of time it would be erased from his record,” she said, while adding that it was not her decision to make.

    Ryan said that Aldridge’s role on the Ferguson Commission did not play any part in the decision to charge him. She referred questions about the police investigation to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, but a spokeswoman there declined an interview request because the case is now in the hands of the circuit attorney. Ryan said that her office was in a “no win” situation because of Aldridge’s higher profile.

    “If the evidence was there, and it was, and if we had decided not to charge him because of his role on the commission, we would have been criticized for having him have special treatment,” Ryan said. “If we charge him based upon the evidence, then we’re criticized for charging someone who is on the commission.”

    But the lack of any sort of swift disciplinary action against many police officers who used very aggressive force against peaceful demonstrators in the months after Brown’s death versus the speedy charges against one prominent protester for very minor physical contact with a law enforcement official raises concerns in the community.

    “The contrast that we see … between the actions of police that are caught on camera versus the actions of protesters that are caught on camera, how and whether these things are prosecuted — the disparity is remarkable,” Rev. Starsky Wilson, the co-chair of the Ferguson Commission, told The Huffington Post. […]

    Chris King, managing editor of The St. Louis American, said that he was made aware of one of the videos showing Aldridge’s interaction with the marshal before the charge was brought forward and that he believed the charge was “avoidable.”

    “In a way, if you think about it, it makes him even a better commissioner, given the role he was expected to play on the [Ferguson] Commission, which is a kid that’s been there,” King said. “How perfect that he’s appointed as the youth protester commissioner and then gets [charged].”

    Aldridge’s lawyer told The St. Louis American that he planned to fight the case. “This is a bogus charge. Looking at the video, you don’t see him intentionally act against that law enforcement officer,” said Jerryl Christmas.

    Aldridge did not respond to HuffPost’s interview request, but tweeted on Friday that “Fighting against injustices is in my DNA cant stop me even if they tried.”

    May this charge come back to police to haunt them and hound them.

    Another discussion: Federal autopsy released in Ferguson shooting.

  261. rq says

    White People Problems.

    ‘We Can’t Breathe’: The Movement Against Police Brutality Is Just Beginning

    Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

    As I write, New York City is witnessing its fifth day of demonstrations after a Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict a police officer in the Eric Garner killing. Those demonstrations followed on the protests across the country over the police shootings of Akai Gurley, a 28-year-old father of two who was slain while walking with his girlfriend in Brooklyn, Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy shot by a rookie Cleveland police officer while playing with a toy gun, and, most famously, the Ferguson, Missouri, police killing of Michael Brown. Conservatives joined liberals in denouncing the grand jury’s outrageous decision in the Garner case. Demonstrations have spread across the country as people of all races have taken up Garner’s plea: “I can’t breathe.”

    President Obama met with some of the demonstrators in the White House, where 20-year-old Rasheen Aldridge Jr., director of Young Activists United St Louis, said they made it clear “that we are in crisis.” He added, “It is a crisis when a black American can get locked up for traffic fines, but police officers are rarely prosecuted for killing unarmed children.” The president, as another attendee later reported, “cautioned us against demanding too big and stressed gradualism. He counseled us that the wheels of progress turn sluggishly.” The Justice Department has launched special investigations into the killings of Brown and Garner. The president has announced that he will push for putting cameras on police and has convened a Task Force on 21st Century Policing with instructions to report back in 90 days.

    Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!

    The deaths of Garner, Brown and others at the hands of police are not the only cause sparking mass protests. The day after the Garner demonstrations started, low-wage workers walked off their jobs in more than 190 cities, demanding a living wage and the right to organize. They, too, chanted, “I can’t breathe.” Workers from fast food-restaurants such as McDonald’s were joined by those from low-wage retail and convenience stores and airline service jobs. In Washington, federal contract workers joined the march, calling on the president to issue procurement regulations that would reward good employers that pay a living wage with benefits and allow workers to organize and bargain collectively.

    Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

    The ignorance, it bleeds: Whites are more confident than ever that their local police treat blacks fairly

    An NBC News/Marist College poll released Sunday found 52 percent of whites saying they have a “great deal” of confidence that police officers in their community treat blacks and whites equally. That is 11 points higher than in a September NBC/Wall Street Journal poll asking the same question (albeit using a different polling firm). It also clearly exceeds levels of trust seen in a series of Pew Research Center and USA Today/Gallup surveys dating to 2007, as well as another NBC/WSJ poll conducted after the O.J. Simpson verdict in 1995.

    There’s been no such boon in confidence among African Americans, though. Just 12 percent express a great deal of confidence in local police’s equal treatment of blacks and whites — a number that is squarely within the 10-to-17-point range in previous surveys. Only one-third have at least a “fair amount” of confidence in their neighborhood police, compared with 78 percent of whites. […]

    One possibility is that whites broadly believe white police officers had good intentions in recent deadly altercations and sympathize with them following protests and accusations of racism. National polls are consistent with this view, especially before the acquittal in Eric Garner’s death after an officer put him in a chokehold.

    But another possibility is that whites do see major problems in recent police shootings in Ferguson, Cleveland and Staten Island, but don’t see them reflecting negatively about their own neighborhood’s police. It’s easy to see how a “this doesn’t happen in my town” logic could bolster whites’ faith in their own police force, who might seem much more competent in comparison to departments embroiled in accusations of racism. […]

    In addition, while whites largely agreed with the grand jury decision not to charge Darren Wilson for shooting Brown in Ferguson, over half disagreed with the lack of indictment of officer Daniel Pantaleo in Garner’s death, according to a Bloomberg News poll released this weekend.

    Whites’ persistent belief that their local police treat African Americans fairly might affect how the policy debate plays out going forward. Congress does not appear motivated to enact major reforms for police forces, leaving state and local governments and their police forces as the primary hubs for policy changes. And in their own neighborhoods, whites don’t appear to feel the same urgency for reform.

    Indeed, at this point, it seems whites see racial bias in police treatment as something that happens far away from home.

    Probably like torture.

    CBC:
    1: Protesters against police violence gather during Will and Kate’s visit to NBA game;
    2: Michael Brown shooting: Federal autopsy results released.

  262. rq says

    Illinois Just Made it a Felony for Its Citizens to Record the Police and the Media is Silent

    The Amendment to Senate Bill 1342 was introduced on Tuesday, Dec. 2, as an amendment to an existing bill on a completely different subject. The amendment removed all of the bill’s previous content and replaced it with the new ban on recording. The House passed it the following day, and the Senate passed it the day after that.

    This bill passed both the Illinois House and Senate with overwhelming majority votes; 106-7 in the House on and 46-4-1 in the Senate. Democrats and Republicans alike slipped this bill by the citizens as they were debating on whether the General Assembly would raise the state’s minimum wage or make the 67% temporary income tax hike permanent, neither of which passed.

    According to IllinoisPolicy.org, the bill discourages people from recording conversations with police by making unlawfully recording a conversation with police – or an attorney general, assistant attorney general, state’s attorney, assistant state’s attorney or judge – a class 3 felony, which carries a sentence of two to four years in prison. Meanwhile, the bill makes illegal recording of a private citizen a class 4 felony, which carries a lower sentencing range of one to three years in prison.

    There’s only one apparent reason for imposing a higher penalty on people who record police in particular: to make people especially afraid to record police. That is not a legitimate purpose. And recent history suggests it’s important that people not be afraid to record police wherever they perform their duties so that officers will be more likely to respect citizens’ rights, and officers who do respect citizens’ rights will be able to prove it.

    Some analysis of the bill’s vague wording follows. ‘Vague wording’ being the kind description that the Free Thought Project applies to the bill.

  263. rq says

    Berkeley protests seem to be just getting started, and I won’t be updating during the day or tomorrow either – back tomorrow evening sometime.
    So here’s just a few:
    Now on Webster and Telegraph, helicopters circling above #berkeleyprotests #walksafe ;
    Crowd of protesters descending on City Hall now after march through streets;
    Sounds like Berkeley excluded ALL print & alternative press from their closed-door mtg. So entire purpose was getting favorable TV coverage. (unfair to alternative media? can it be?).

    Looking to decorate this christmas? #Ferguson protest Xmas Decorations.

    Some people run overp rotestors, some run over cops: Mercedes rams Denver cops during Ferguson protest

    Four bike officers were hurt, with one — Officer John Adsit — reportedly in critical, but stable condition. He had been caught underneath the car and run over, according to the station.

    Adsit had surgery for several hours on Wednesday.

    500 students began marching around 10:00 a.m. — walking through downtown Denver, with police monitoring traffic during the demonstration. They gathered around the Capitol to protest the grand jury’s failure to indict Ferguson, Mo. police officer Darren Wilson in the August fatal shooting of Brown.

    At an intersection, the driver in a black Mercedes honked and cheered on the protesters, according to witnesses. When the police passed in front of the car, the Mercedes shot forward, hitting the four officers, dragging Adsit about 100 feet with his bike, witnesses said.

    “A split second, it went from him sitting at a dead stop, the cops pulling up and it wasn’t a slow pull out, he gunned it and went straight at ’em,” witness Doug Action told the station.

    Hope the guy heals quick and I do hope the person who ran over him is caught and fairly tried.

    thisisthemovement, installment #65:

    Ferguson
    Department of Justice Autopsy Report Released On Monday, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch released the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System’s autopsy on Mike Brown Jr. The autopsy, along with transcripts of eight federal interviews of possible witnesses, police radio traffic and an alleged audio of Darren Wilson shooting Brown were also released. Documents still don’t include a transcript or recording from Dorian Johnson, who was with Brown when shot. Here is the link to the actual federal autopsy report. Absolute must read.

    Justified Anger and Listening — the 2nd Ferguson Commission Meeting The second Ferguson Commission meeting was held in the St. Louis City neighborhood of Shaw last night. St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson was there to make a presentation on policing and what changes could possibly come. This was Dotson’s first time talking in public since the shooting of VonDerrit Myers. The crowd of justifiably angry, hurt, tired, and distrustful citizens interrupted Dotson’s speech numerous times. Some even turned their backs on him in protest. Dotson smirked his way through it.

    Tamir Rice
    5 Facts about Tamir Rice’s Death Here they are: 1. Police tackled and handcuffed Tamir Rice’s 14 year old sister after she arrived at the scene. 2. Officers threatened to put Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice, in the back of a police car if she didn’t calm down after an officer killed her son. 3. Cleveland Police spokesperson declined to comment on Samaria’s accusation. 4. Officer Timothy Loehmann shot and killed Tamir Rice. 5. Samaria Rice is “looking for a conviction.” Important read.

    Rumain Brisbon
    Phoenix Officer Kills Unarmed Black Man After Mistaking Pill Bottle On December 2nd, a white male officer in Phoenix, Arizona killed an unarmed black man named Rumain Brisbon — fact. The eyewitness accounts and the officer accounts differ on the rest of the details. Absolute must read.

    Protests
    Berkeley Protesters Stop Traffic on Interstate 80 “More than 1,000 protesters marched for hours on city streets, shutting down Interstate 80 and stopping a train in the third night of demonstrations Monday over police killings in Missouri and New York.”

    NYC City Council Members Protest On Monday, several NYC City Council Members staged a die-in and marched in solidarity with the protest community. This was a powerful statement by elected leadership.

    NYC Protestors Stop Traffic on the Verrazano Bridge On Monday, protestors shut down a section of the Verrazano Bridge which links Staten Island to Brooklyn.

    Commentary/Miscellaneous
    Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo Could Have Easily Been Indicted “Unarmed men were killed. Let’s have a trial.” In this article, Seth Morris, a deputy public defender in Alameda County, California displays how he would have gotten an indictment in the cases of both Darren Wilson and Eric Garner. Must read.

    Polling Data Re: Michael Brown and Eric Garner Grand Jury Decision Interestingly, black Americans consistently disagree with both Grand Jury decisions while only about 25% of white Americans disagree with the Michael Brown Grand Jury and 52% disagree with the Eric Garner Grand Jury. Interesting and important read.

    To My White Male Facebook Friends Y’all, read this. This commentary aptly speaks to the not-so-hidden vitriol that has manifested on Facebook (and other social media platforms) in the midst of Ferguson. This is a strong long-form piece re: white privilege in the midst of protest. Absolute must read.

    They’ve got things in categories by shooting now. Whew. And it used to be just Ferguson.

  264. rq says

    Awesome photo: New York stands with #Ferguson.

    On rioting, and shaming: Hey, Step Back with the Riot Shaming

    Listen: police in this country attack poor people of color. It’s happening. Like, it’s still happening. Every day. All across the country. It’s been happening. The story of America is an uninterrupted chapter book of brutality and horrific violence. Racist violence in America is a story with no interludes.

    The narrative of “progress” steadily advances divorced from the reality on the streets. For all the online discourse about oppression, identity, and ‘shaming’, there is a disturbing lack of insight and nuance when it comes to riots, vandalism, and looting in the wake of these unsettling acts of violence against people of color. So I thought I’d put together my responses to the phenomenon of “riot shaming” – the policing of young black and brown bodies in the aftermath of police murder. […]

    1. “This distracts from the message.”

    No it doesn’t. If you think this is a distraction, take a deep breath and focus. It’s not “about one person”. It’s about fearing the loss of your family and friends at the hands of police. It could happen at any moment, and Michael Brown’s murder reminds us of this. He was quite literally supposed to start college today. It’s possible to have compassion and sympathy for the bereaved and still act out against the systematic exploitation of communities of color. If you can’t do these two things at once, it’s time to examine your commitment to a world without this terrifying syncopation of police violence and economic starvation.

    As for distracting the media, well … Attempting to appeal for mainstream media visibility in this age of instant information is a pathetic neutralization of our capacity. Let them cover the sensation if that’s what they’ll do. Our resentment should not be engineered by their attention span.
    2. “Destroying ‘your own neighborhood’ won’t help.”

    I’m not sure how people who make this argument imagine ‘owning’ a neighborhood works, but I’ll try to break it down: we don’t own neighborhoods. Black businesses exist, it’s true. But the emancipation of impoverished communities is not measured in corner-store revenue. It’s not measured in minimum-wage jobs. And no, it’s especially not measured in how many black people are allowed to become police officers. Here is a local discussing why area businesses might have been targeted.

    White flight really happened. Go look it up. And insinuating that simply because all the white people left certain neighborhoods following desegregation doesn’t mean they are suddenly ‘ours’. This kind of de facto ‘self-determination’ is so short-sighted it makes me wonder how we can even talk about gentrification and segregation usefully if we think black people somehow ‘have all these neighborhoods’. We don’t have ghettos. Ghettos have us. Prisons have us. Sports teams own us. Record labels own us. We don’t have shit.
    3. “Looters and vandals are criminals.”

    I grew up afraid to put my hands in my pockets at the store. For us “can I help you find something?” means something very specific. Young people of color are presumed guilty. Police cars slow down when they pass us on the street. They search our pockets and dump out our bags. On our way to and from school. To and from work. If we walk through a wealthy neighborhood, we might get shot. A third of us have been to jail. The law protects this kind of targeting, so yeah, we’re criminals. We are criminals because we are seen as criminals. We were criminals long before we climbed through broken windows. We were criminals long before we ‘refused to disperse’.
    4. “Black community leaders oppose violence.”

    First of all, this is kind of a baseless generalization. One of Martin Luther King Jr.’s lesser known quotes ‘riot is the language of the unheard’ keeps me grounded here. In fact, did you know that MLK and many other non-violent black activists employed armed guards in the 60s?

    Besides, all of this talk about ‘violence’ this and stereotypes that is just so unhelpful. Let’s maybe talk about the fact that in cases like this police deliberately censor footage gathered, in some cases arresting photographers for fear of sparking unrest. You know why that is? Because they understand what most riot shamers don’t: if you corner injured people, there is no where to go but against. Judging people’s commitment to ‘the cause’ based on whether they can bottle up their reasonable frustrations, and finding selective affinity with only those who can say from safe distance to ‘turn the other cheek’ is part of what sparks these riots in the first place.
    5. “Reform the justice system, don’t riot.”

    Something tells me people who make this argument haven’t really looked into the prospects of this task. Let’s be real, this ‘justice system’ people suppose is possible has been the subject of political and economic philosophy for hundreds of years. I got news for you: it’s not looking up. The ‘fair’ economic system that a reformed justice system would require is a myth.

    “So are you saying we should just give up?” That’s what people ask me when I say things like this. My response: “eh, how about just not reducing everything to patience and progress?” Don’t ask kids to wait around and dodge bullets until the system treats us fairly. Just stop putting that on them. Believe it or not, you don’t have to save the world. And you sure as hell ain’t going to do it on Twitter. Just step back with the riot shaming, and work on your perspective.

    After protests, Berkeley City Council meeting canceled – due to capacity issues, they say. Perhaps some protestors were going to show up?

    The mayor’s office released the following notice at 12:22 p.m.: “The regular Berkeley City Council meeting scheduled for 7:00 p.m. tonight, December 9, has been postponed, as well as the special Work Session scheduled for 5:30 p.m. this evening. The Council Chambers can hold about 125 people, and we understand substantially more people are interested in attending the meeting due to recent events in Berkeley. We want to ensure that the community has as much access as possible to public meetings. The Agenda for the December 9 meeting will be rescheduled for a future date and public notice will be given prior to that meeting. A notice of meeting cancellation will be issued by the City Clerk and publicly posted. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

    Another on privilege and looting: At Eric Garner Protests, Some White Activists Are Being Called Out for Their Behavior

    As some tried to push their way into the store, Michelina Ferrara and Cherrell Brown talked them down. “White people, check your privilege!” Brown shouted into a megaphone. “We don’t need you to provoke stuff right now.”

    After a moment of tension, the group lay on the ground for a die-in before moving on. As they stood outside the mall, Ferrara thanked everyone for coming — and for not giving the media and police “a reason to vilify us.” […]

    But as the demonstrations continue, some activists are noting the ironic reality of a racist culture obtaining within the protests themselves. Ferrara, a first-generation immigrant who identifies as mixed-race but concedes that “I have a lot of light-skinned privilege,” says she is seeing white protesters talking over people of color at meetings or dismissing their concerns. And on the evening of December 8, outside Atlantic Terminal — where protesters were hoping to disrupt the Brooklyn Nets game across the street at Barclays Center — she saw some white protesters confronting people of color who were trying to lead the demonstrations.

    “There were a couple of white dudes trying to take the [megaphone] from one our leaders,” says Ferrara, a member of the New York Justice League, which helped organize the protest. “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think this isn’t a place for white and light-skinned folks. I just think it’s important to constantly be examining your privilege.” […]

    “Antiracist movements become a hot-button event a lot of white people can latch onto,” says Matthew Hughey, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut who studies white antiracist activism. “It’s very easy to identify the police officer or police department to rally against. These movements allow good, well-meaning white people to say, ‘I am a good person.’ It’s like a story they can tell their kids someday.”

    Paris Alexandra, 28, says white people who try to be the loudest voices at demonstrations focusing on racial issues run the risk of polluting the very message they’re trying to spread.

    “I think it’s great people are showing solidarity,” says Alexandra, who is black. “I think people are just passionate. But as a white person, you’ve got to recognize the space you’re taking up. Just look and see who’s the loudest one talking. White supremacy takes place even in our interactions. You know what I’m saying?” […]

    “It becomes very easy for white people to grab the bullhorns and step to the front,” he says. “It can also do a lot of damage.”

    He adds that all activists should learn what kind of voices a movement needs before they get involved.

    “Educate yourself about whatever movement you want to be part of, and ask how you can help,” he advises. “Don’t just join and start leading.”

    Can white people just… shut up for a while?

    3 Questions to Ask Before Putting Cameras on Cops:

    Here are the key questions the policed public needs answers to:

    1. When are the cameras on?
    A report last October by American Civil Liberties Union policy analyst Jay Stanley laid out the contradictions involved in police body cameras. On the one hand, maximum accountability would suggest that the camera stay on for the officer’s entire shift; on the other, cops have privacy rights, too, as do the people the police interact with. […]

    2. What are the recordings used for?
    So you put these cameras into the field and now have all this video piling up. What will you do with it?

    Jeramie Scott, national-security counsel with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, allowed for one use: “only for police accountability.” In other words, only to confirm what the officer witnessed to make an arrest –– not for retroactive searching for offenses he or she missed at the time. […]

    3. How long are they kept?
    Privacy experts I consulted agreed that police departments should not act like the National Security Agency or, say, tech startups too young to hire chief privacy officers: They should throw away data at their earliest convenience.

    The MPD’s guidelines call for deleting body-cam videos after 90 days unless they’ve been flagged as relevant to an investigation, which roughly matches the ACLU’s recommendations that retention periods “be measured in weeks, not years.”

  267. rq says

    I’ll actually have a short chance to update this evening.
    Berkeley’s going nuts again after all, so here’s a few names to follow on twitter that might be worth looking into:
    @jessielau93
    @LouiseMcy
    @violentfanon
    @Federal_flashes
    @KVeklerov
    @KanhemaPhoto
    @jason_paladino
    I can’t guarantee anything on those people, I’ve just seen retweets from (by) them, and violentfanon and Federal_flashes were recommended to Ferguson protestors.

  268. rq says

    Sorry, it’s time for some nekkid links because TIME. And then I’ll update tomorrow evening.

    on comforting policeo fficers: https://twitter.com/AmberRoseSpeaks/status/542663418365624320
    16-year-old’s essay on St Louis: http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/article_1b502ccf-22f2-5a1f-871b-20763c2a5956.html It’s a list of questions.
    Richmond police chief: https://twitter.com/Bonifacia312/status/542681474739081217
    pepper-spraying the media: https://twitter.com/Bipartisanism/status/542579802981793794
    lawyers sue St Louis county municipalities over court fees http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/article_dd6025d9-fcbd-536b-8d8c-97d0acf144ef.html#.VIg-l4F4UEA.twitter
    WHITE-ON-WHITE CRIME http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/staggeringly-high-and-shockingly-under-reported-rate-white-white-murder

  269. rq says

    Eric Garner’s daugher chooses her spot https://twitter.com/es_snipes/status/542029680594141185
    police in Berkeley accidentally gas themselves https://twitter.com/SFLIVEONLINE/status/542563842429956096
    police shoot from overpass https://twitter.com/OccupyOakland/status/542556223313174528
    barriers https://twitter.com/jessielau93/status/542555642129416193
    filming the police https://twitter.com/elonjames/status/542418232422834176
    “white silence is violence” https://twitter.com/elonjames/status/542417443830784002

  273. toska says

    70 medical schools held die-ins and protests today at 3pm Eastern time. This link doesn’t mention the hashtag, but they are using #WhiteCoats4BlackLives.
    http://www.pnhp.org/news/2014/december/medical-students-to-hold-nationwide-%E2%80%98die-ins%E2%80%99-and-protests-wednesday-because-blac

    https://twitter.com/KeaLovesChachi/status/542802412160155648 – “They tried to bury us; They didn’t know we were seeds”

    https://twitter.com/hellotini/status/542797005991333889 – “UCSD. “Our white coats have been invested with a trust and power we must use responsibly.”

    Lots of other good pictures and quotes from the protests are under that hashtag, and so far, it hasn’t been mobbed by racists.

  274. timko says

    Re: rq@248
    I followed the link you posted (“new documents released by McCullogh”), and the first one there was from the DOJ Medical Examiner. Included in there are:
    Gunshot wound to the upper right arm – trajectory backwards
    Gunshot wound to the right arm [elbow area] – trajectory indeterminate
    Gunshot wound to the right forearm – trajectory forwards

    In the drawings shown to the grand jury, all these were shown as being aimed at the victim’s front, and (I think) used to invalidate some of the witness statements stating that the victim was both illegally shot at and hit from behind as he ran (causing him to spin around and surrender, and also showing that the officer shot before he “feared for his life”). But surely it depends whether his arms were up/down at the shoulder, and how his forearms were twisting as he ran/surrendered/etc.

    I was really hoping that something would come out that make it more clear. I didn’t see anything else on this, so correct me if I missed something.

  275. says

    This Just Happened – African-American Man Shot By White Cop While His Hands Were Up And Inside A Car (VIDEO)

    Thankfully the man, Cedric Bartee, is still alive. Of course he was a felon, so I’m sure that will be sufficient justification in the eyes of many for the officer drawing his gun. Nevermind the fact that he was unarmed.

    ****

    Obama announces new racial profiling guidelines:

    In the wake of Eric Garner’s and Michael Brown’s deaths at the hands of police officers, the Obama administration released new racial-profiling guidelines for U.S. law-enforcement officials on Monday.

    The new guidelines are meant to replace the last set, which were put in place by the Bush administration in 2003, closing a loophole that previously allowed profiling for national-security investigations.

    The new rules prohibit profiling based on race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, religion or sexual orientation and apply to federal officers—such as Secret Service agents and the FBI—and any local police officers who participate in taskforce assignments.

    For the first time these rules also apply to the Department of Homeland Security—including all Immigration and Customs Enforcement civil immigration enforcement, U.S. Coast Guard law-enforcement activities, Border Patrol activities not near the border, Department of Homeland Security officers protecting government buildings, and federal air marshals.

    However, they do not apply to Border Patrol and airport screeners because the “unique nature of border and transportation security as compared to traditional law enforcement” justified the exclusion of those activities.

    “As attorney general, I have repeatedly made clear that profiling by law enforcement is not only wrong, it is profoundly misguided and ineffective,” outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.

    “Particularly in light of certain recent incidents we’ve seen at the local level, and the widespread concerns about trust in the criminal-justice process, it’s imperative that we take every possible action to institute strong and sound policing practices.”

    According to the document, federal agents can use race to help identify suspects as part of a description, but cannot stereotype an entire group for possible criminal behavior.

    The document includes multiple scenarios to help guide officials.

    For example, if an officer notices that most cars on a particular road are driving above the speed limit, he or she may not use one of the banned characteristics to choose a car to pull over.

    But if the officer receives a bulletin to be on the lookout for a “man of a particular race and particular hair color in his 30s driving a blue automobile,” the officer may pull people over based on those criteria.

    Though these new rules have been in the works for five years—and don’t directly apply to local police officers—many are seeing these revisions as a step toward ending racial profiling by law-enforcement officials.

    Link to the DOJ guidelines.

    ****

    Ask the white guy: Why didn’t Darren Wilson use nonlethal force?

    Q: Even if the struggle between Darren Wilson and Mike Brown did occur, why couldn’t Officer Wilson use a stun gun or some other nonlethal weapon? Why do cops, in general, have to resort to lethal force when the perpetrators are deemed as threats, even if they are unarmed?

    A: Police don’t typically use lethal force on white people illegally, without severe repercussions. However, Google “Michael Brown thug” and see what the Koch-inspired bigot-sphere press has to say. There’s been a steady stream of commentary about Mike’s character and how somebody would’ve had to shoot him eventually anyway. All of the Black male stereotypes have come into play in this case, my favorite being that Mike Brown was a 6’4” thug. As it turns out, former Police Officer Wilson is also 6’4”, and only one of them killed anyone, but even that didn’t even sink in and interrupt the inner thoughts of the bigots who come here to post their nonsense.

    Wilson testified that he could’ve brought a stun gun with him, but it was too uncomfortable to carry.

    But this is beside the point—Wilson never should’ve put himself in a position where Mike Brown could bum-rush him. (By the way, because of the incredibly sloppy police work, I don’t believe most of the facts presented to the grand jury. Most of them would not stand up in a trial, which is why the prosecutor used the grand jury the way he did—the rules of evidence are more lax in a grand-jury situation.)

    The problem for Mike Brown, and for every other Black and Latino citizen of the United States, is that minority life is discounted, and standards regarding how Black and Latino people are treated in the justice system, the public-school system and every other aspect of American life are much lower than how wealthy, Anglo, white people are treated. It’s not entirely race or ethnicity—a lot of it is economic discrimination—but in this country race and economics are linked with a steel rod.

    So in a leafy white suburb, parents do not worry about their teenagers being shot by police officers like Wilson. The police officers in those towns know that if they shoot a teenager, it will be assumed the cop was wrong. As it should be.

    A properly trained police officer, with the right leadership, will err on the side of discretion when confronting people—as it should be.

    Unfortunately, we’ve traded our liberty for an appearance of security because of the double whammy of the bogus War on Drugs and War on Terror. We’ve meekly accepted the Department of Defense’s transferring billions of dollars in military weaponry to local police forces because we’ve been propagandized to believe we’re fighting two domestic “wars.” You never know when a suburban police force might need an armored vehicle and automatic weapons—how foolish. Let’s be realistic, automatic weapons in the hands of police would not stop planes from flying into the World Trade Center, nor a MIRV warhead “stolen” from Ukraine from detonating in Manhattan. And all of the weapons on the planet will not prevent people from getting high. However, automatic weapons are really effective on civilian protesters.

    In order to keep this charade going, there has to be a bogeyman. Black and brown people fill the bill. Mike Brown’s turn was last summer. Wilson testified that he “felt like a 5-year-old child in the arms of Hulk Hogan”—a complete load of crap (anyone who’s seen a picture of Mike Brown knows that most of his 300 pounds wasn’t from lifting weights, it was from lifting McDonald’s)—but his handlers knew language like that would play well with cowardly, bigoted white people.

    Mind you, I would not have wanted to be grabbed by an angry Mike Brown, but if I were the cop, I might have started the interaction with less confrontation than “Get the f— out of the street!” If I was concerned that I couldn’t handle it on my own, I would have waited for the backup that was already on the way. It’s not like the theft of less than $10 of cigarillos was a crime that needed to be resolved immediately, and it wasn’t like a 6’4”, 300-pound teenager wasn’t identifiable elsewhere. But as we’ve all seen, there are no repercussions for shooting down Black teenagers—and law enforcement and Ferguson was designed to unfairly prey on Black people, so Wilson had no hesitation to wade in.

  276. says

    DRIVING WHILE BLACK? APP DEVELOPERS OFFER ADVICE:

    Though the developers of the soon-to-be released “Driving While Black” smartphone application want motorists to download their product, there is a time when they definitely don’t want users searching for it.

    “Do not reach for your phone when you are talking to police,” stressed Melvin Oden-Orr, one of two Portland lawyers creating the app.

    Avoiding moves that could make police think you’re reaching for a gun is just one tip included in the app that educates drivers about how to safely deal with police during traffic stops.

    Despite its attention-grabbing name, Oden-Orr said the app due for release in late December will provide common sense advice to motorists of all races and outline what civil rights you have during a stop. With the phone hopefully in a hands-free device, the app allows drivers to send an alert to friends and family that they have been pulled over. There’s also a recording function to document the interaction with an officer.

    The app is coming to market as protesters around the country keep attention on instances of deadly encounters with police in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City. Similar apps also are aimed at helping people navigate interactions with police.

    Three Georgia teenagers created “Five-O,” an app released this summer that lets people rate their interactions with law enforcement. And last month, American Civil Liberties Union affiliates in four states unveiled “Mobile Justice,” an app that allows users to take video of police encounters and upload the video to the ACLU. It’s modeled on “Stop and Frisk Watch,” an app released for New Yorkers in 2012.

    “It’s obviously in the forefront of everybody’s mind; the police know they are being recorded and people in public know they can record,” said Sarah Rossi, director of advocacy and policy for the ACLU Missouri affiliate. “I think the benefit of this app (Mobile Justice) specifically is it goes straight to the ACLU and we can review it for any due-process violations.”

    The apps also include a “Know Your Rights” section that informs people about their rights when contacted by police.

    Portland attorney Mariann Hyland got the idea for “Driving While Black” after learning of an app for drivers suspected of drunken driving. She approached Oden-Orr in April, and the two have been working on the app since summer with software developer James Pritchett.

    The term “driving while black,” perhaps unfamiliar to some, is common among African-Americans. A Justice Department report released last year, based on a survey of those stopped by police in 2011, suggests blacks are more likely than whites to be pulled over and have their cars searched. Moreover, African-Americans are much more likely to believe a traffic stop is not legitimate.

    The issue has been on Hyland’s radar since motorist Rodney King was beaten by Los Angeles police in 1991. Another key event hit closer to home. In 2003, a 21-year-old black woman was fatally shot by Portland police after she jumped from the backseat to the driver’s seat during a traffic stop and tried to drive away.

    Oden-Orr hosted a forum after the death, and Hyland attended. Afterward, Hyland promised she would do something to educate black youth on handling traffic stops. For years, she didn’t keep that promise, and it bothered her.

    The app is her attempt at rectifying the situation. Hyland and Oden-Orr say the key to surviving a traffic stop is to remain calm, keep your hands on the wheel, be respectful and make no false moves

    Although the intent behind this app may be to help black people, I fear that it just reinforces the narrative in this country that black people can only exist so long as they know their place.

  277. says

    POLICE DEMONSTRATIONS INSPIRE NEW PROTEST SONGS

    The killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown have inspired a musical outpouring perhaps unseen in the U.S. since Pete Seeger helped make “We Shall Overcome” a civil-rights standard in the 1960s. Older songs are being redeployed for a new generation. New compositions are being widely shared, including some from major-label artists. And holiday classics are being rewritten, such as a barbed spin on “White Christmas.”

    “Facts aren’t fueling this fire. Feeling is what is fueling this fire, and until we express those feelings and those feelings are understood, we aren’t going to get too far,” said Daniel Watts, a Broadway performer who starred in a professionally choreographed Times Square flash mob in response to Eric Garner’s death on Staten Island. He’s also written two more spoken-word pieces about police brutality that others set to music.

    One of the tunes gaining a following on the streets and social media was penned six weeks ago by Luke Nephew, a 32-year-old Bronx poet who also has composed event-specific cantos for protests at immigration detention centers, foreclosure auctions and other demonstration sites. It has four lines, starting with “I still hear my brother crying, `I can’t breathe.’ Now I’m in the struggle singing. I can’t leave.”

    Hundreds of people sang those words last week as they blocked bridges and got arrested in New York on the night after a grand jury declined to indict the white officer who used a chokehold on Garner. That so many knew the hymn-like song, and the way it has caught on since then, might owe as much to savvy preparation as the power of the lyrics.

    Nephew first introduced the song at an early November meeting of activists preparing for the grand jury’s decision. The participants agreed to share it with their members so as many people as possible could join in when the time came. A recording was posted on YouTube and links made the rounds on Facebook and Twitter.

    “We said, `Make sure you are taking this back to your organizations. Make sure you are learning this,'” recalled Jose Lopez, an organizer with the social service and advocacy group Make the Road New York.

    Gospel singer and radio host Darlene McCoy, founder of a group called Mothers of Black Sons, heard the protesters in Manhattan singing as she watched the news at home in Atlanta. She was so taken with the images of people raising their voices in unison while being handcuffed that she replayed the broadcast to write down the words.

    Unaware of its origins, McCoy immediately recorded herself singing Nephew’s composition, posted the file on Instagram and challenged other singers to do the same. At least 45 people have done so, including Catrina Brooks, a former “The X-Factor” contestant from Michigan, whose rendition has been viewed nearly 750,000 times.

    “The funny thing is, you have to do it in 15 seconds,” McCoy said, referring to the site’s maximum video length. “And that’s a challenge for some artists.”

    Some protesters find fresh relevance in popular music of the past – Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” or Michael Jackson’s “They Don’t Really Care About Us.”

    Nephew is a bit baffled by how seldom contemporary music has been a part of American social movements in recent decades. He thinks it’s partly because people are no longer accustomed to singing together in public, partly because younger Americans are turned off by traditional folk and gospel tunes that do not speak to their experiences.

    “It’s amazing how much of a vacuum there is,” he said. “God bless Pete Seeger. But where is his children’s generation?”

    Questlove, drummer for the hip-hop band the Roots, urged fellow musicians via Instagram and Twitter last week “to be a voice of the times that we live in,” noting that “protest songs don’t have to be boring or non-danceable.”

    Several professionals have already released home-produced tribute songs to Brown and Garner, including Alicia Keys, Long Beach rapper Crooked I, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morelo and hip-hop producer J. Cole.

  278. says

    British police arrest 76 in London ‘die-in’ for Eric Garner

    London’s Metropolitan Police said a small group had broken away from the main protest, a “die-in for Eric Garner” on Wednesday night, and tried to break into the Westfield shopping center, one of Europe’s largest inner city malls.

    They clashed with security staff and damaged property, leading to 76 arrests for public disorder offences.

    “We will always work with those that wish to demonstrate lawfully – as the majority of protestor did yesterday,” said Chief Superintendent Mark Bird who led the policing operation.

    “However, we will not tolerate the small minority that offer violence or commit other criminal acts, such as that witnessed outside Westfield yesterday evening.”

    There have been protests across the United States since a grand jury decided not to charge a white New York City police officer over the death of Garner in July.

    I wonder what (if any) type of force was used against the protesters by the police. Were they met with military grade weaponry like police departments are using across the US?

  279. rq says

    timko
    That’s exactly the kidn of information that needs to be hashed out in a trial – where not one but several expert opinions may be heard, and where witnesses get to tell their side of the story, and the physical evidence is weighed and compared to their testimony.
    Because in the end it doesn’t matter where and how Michael Brown was shot – what matters is that he was shot, and he is dead, and that there is no justice for him or for his family.

    +++

    A few more naked link comments, will start doing better again tomorrow:
    Human Rights Day panel – https://twitter.com/CCCathedralSTL/status/543112350333534208/photo/1
    undercover cops at protest – https://twitter.com/mrdaveyd/status/543107458336452608/photo/1 (more on this later)
    mroe of those undercover cops – https://twitter.com/OpBerkeley/status/543107613500919809 (but not the real more)
    protestors – https://twitter.com/carmenperez21/status/542913048114376704/photo/1
    How Many Police Kill Black Men? – http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/how-many-police-kill-black-men-without-database-we-cant-know#.VInbaCR2JUs.twitter

  280. rq says

    Heat Up St Louis – http://heatupstlouis.org/Donations.html
    Here’s that more on the undercover cops – http://privacysos.org/node/1617
    The ferguson Commissions that weren’t – http://m.stlamerican.com/news/political_eye/article_a9c0c140-80d7-11e4-971c-c382fc2145a1.html?mode=jqm
    St Louis crime rates by category – http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-St.-Louis-Missouri.html
    Racial Divide Equals Health Disparity – http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/report-racial-divide-leads-health-disparity-st-louis#.VImsUIUQA6w.twitter
    ANOTHER ONE: man killed in police involved shooting – http://abc11.com/430625/

  281. rq says

    Patricia Bynes, calling all teens – http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2014/12/patricia_bynes_on_fergusonnext_calling_all_teens_i_need_to_hear_from_you.php
    emergency action at hearing abotu tear gas – https://twitter.com/McshaneRachel/status/543039929211580417
    changes to Ferguson Jail Support – http://www.organizemo.org/changes_to_ferguson_jail_support_december_5_2014
    Vice News on the London arrests – https://news.vice.com/article/police-arrest-76-at-eric-garner-solidarity-die-in-protest-in-london-shopping-center?utm_source=vicenewstwitter
    UTSA die-in – https://twitter.com/MrMilitantNegro/status/542835951479697408
    core message must not be co-opted – https://twitter.com/_attilio/status/542861104074866688

  282. rq says

    “It’s as if some people literally can’t imagine black WOMEN and MEN leading and organizing TOGETHER. I don’t get it.” – https://twitter.com/deray/status/542906354986258432
    no investigation in Vonderrit Myers case – https://twitter.com/Nettaaaaaaaa/status/542901249163927552
    response to protest – https://twitter.com/_jamieoliveira/status/542893912935768065
    pictures of the previous – https://twitter.com/adrienneshih/status/542890697674604544
    Lewiston student protest interrupted – http://www.pressherald.com/2014/12/10/students-try-to-raise-their-voices-but-protest-interrupted/
    all he wants for christmas is safety – https://twitter.com/spencertweedy/status/542772371523129345

  283. rq says

    text of that last tweet, typos and all:
    “I woulf like to Ask you sum but first Imma tell you about me Im a black African american I Stand 5’10 Im In 7th Grade My favorite subject is math I have 2 siblings living with me and Im the only boy on my moms side of my family But any way All I ask for is for safety I just wanna be safe.”

    +++

    killing of Zemir Begic and discussion of race – http://qz.com/308348/theres-another-community-raging-in-ferguson-over-a-senseless-killing/
    That one’s a really good read.

  284. Pteryxx says

    More on that new Illinois recording law – it does NOT forbid the public to record police officers, though it has some other, subtler concerns. From HuffPo:

    The previous law, deemed to be among the strictest in the nation, technically forbade any recording of anyone without consent from all parties involved. The new proposal draws a distinction between “private” conversations and those that “cannot be deemed private,” such as a loud argument on the street. The recording of private conversations, unless there is all-party consent or a warrant, remain prohibited under the bill.

    The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois fiercely fought the previous eavesdropping law, and worked with state lawmakers to craft its replacement. They offered a mixed review of the new proposal, saying the organization is pleased the new statute “generally protects our reasonable expectations of privacy in our conversations, phone calls, and electronic communications from unwanted recording or interception.” They also noted it protects the ability of civilians to record on-duty government officials and police officers “talking with the public as part of their jobs.”

    However, the ACLU expressed concern that the new bill “significantly expands” police eavesdropping by allowing law enforcement and informants to record or capture certain private conversations for 24 hours before a warrant is necessary, in the event of certain serious crimes and with the approval of a state attorney. Previously, such requests required the prior approval of a judge, whose role — unlike a state attorney’s — is outside law enforcement.

    State Rep. Elaine Nekritz (D), a lead cosponsor of the bill, admitted the expanded number of circumstances where police may surreptitiously record or otherwise intercept communications was a trade-off for allowing the protections of public recordings to be included, the Associated Press reported.

    […]

    Regardless if whether [Governor] Quinn signs the legislation, it remains legal in all 50 states, including Illinois, for civilians to record their interactions with police officers while officers are on duty, so long as civilians do not interfere with officers’ ability to do their job.

  285. toska says

    Tony! @276

    Although the intent behind this app may be to help black people, I fear that it just reinforces the narrative in this country that black people can only exist so long as they know their place.

    Yeah, I really like the idea of using technology for social justice and to help marginalized people, but a lot of that read exactly like advice to women to avoid rape. I’m sure the intentions are very good (much like the roofie-detecting nail polish), but it’s still part of the victim blaming narrative.

  286. Pteryxx says

    Crossposting an extended version of my post from the Someone agrees with me! thread:

    While y’all are at it, consider Libby Anne’s latest. A writer on the Gospel Coalition wrote a piece about Ferguson, racism and police brutality, and the commenters there laid into him for, among other things, writing a piece that had nothing to do with spreading Gospel. She screencapped numerous responses, a few of which I’m transcribing here.

    Evangelicals of the Gospel Coalition Respond to Ferguson

    Last month Thabiti Anyabwile wrote a blog post titled The Ferguson Grand Jury Has Given Us Our Marching Orders. In it he condemned the grand jury decision as unjust, wrote passionately about police brutality and race, and laid out a plan for bringing change. This may seem unremarkable—one more blog post amidst a multitude—but what makes it remarkable is that it was posted on The Gospel Coalition. Anyabwile is a black evangelical paster who is a member of the conservative evangelical group’s council. (It was The Gospel Coalition, if you remember, that posted Doug Wilson’s description of marital sex as the man conquering and the woman surrendering.) Given the general response of conservatives to Ferguson, I was impressed by both Anyabwile and The Gospel Coalition’s willingness to post his article.

    But then I noticed that the article’s comment section was closed. Knowing that the Gospel Coalition usually allows comments, my heart sank. I knew immediately what this meant. […]

    There were calls to sack Anyabwile:

    [SERIOUSLY….enough! Quit posting this nonsense. The grand jury weighed the evidence “pastor”. This pastor needs to be removed from TGC immediately.]

    […]

    Apparently, discussing race is divisive and irrelevant:

    [The Gospel Coalition, I’m kind of sickened that you would even post this. Our country needs solidarity and union. This article is just putting more of a divide between the people (Christians) who can carry the message (Jesus) to help heal everyone during this troubling time. Who cares what Thabiti Anyabwile thinks about the Grand Jury decision! How does his thoughts here help spread the Gospel????]

    […]

    The most common criticism was that Anyabwile’s topic had nothing to do with the gospel:

    [I am trying to figure out how this article contributes directly to the mission of TGC as stated on the left: promote gospel-centered ministry for the next generation. […] ]

    [Where did this guy get his facts? If it’s under personal opinion, then keep them to yourself and for certain, gospel coalition, don’t present them. This is not what you are here to do and has nothing to do with proclaiming Christ and the gospel. Shame on you.

    […]

    Because we all know Jesus didn’t say anything at all about the poor or oppressed. How these evangelicals can go on and on about racial injustice being unrelated to the gospel and yet claim they don’t have a race problem I have no idea.

  287. Pteryxx says

    Link to Anyabwile’s piece at The Gospel Coalition: The Ferguson Grand Jury Has Given Us Our Marching Orders

    And here we stand amidst smoldering flames, armored vehicles, television lights. Almost everyone angry–whether it’s the anger of riots in the streets or the quiet riot of the human heart. The question still remains: How shall those who believe in and love the country’s ideals respond?

    Three broad courses are possible, only one righteous.

    We may turn the television and turn our heads and continue the unusual business of business as usual. It’s an unusual business for anyone who claims to believe in American ideals, especially those who believe those national ideas at least resonate with deeper biblical ideals. Indifference is no option for the righteous.

    Or, we may declare the matter resolved and proclaim from the burning rooftops, “The system worked.” It seems to me any robust measure of “the system” must include more than the verdict reached, but must also take an accounting of fair process and even the system’s response to its verdict. Even if we think everything happened as it should, that doesn’t mean our work is done. For that system needs nurturing and strengthening. It needs explication, inculcation, and protection. Our civic ideals require we remain involved in an open, honest discussion about what worked and what didn’t so that what we cherish isn’t slowly eroded by our inattention. That inattention is no option for the righteous, either.

    The only course forward for all of us is that active engagement that applies and seeks to live up to our highest ideals. The debate about what constitutes “justice” is part of the process. The review of our systems and the amendment of laws is part of our highest ideals. The righteous must work to keep the foundations from being destroyed. They must walk by faith and they must do the good deeds that lead to life.

    He gives a list of suggestions (followed by detailed explanation in the original):

    A National Campaign to Protect Citizens and Police Officers

    Forming a National Commission for Reviewing the Use of Deadly Force by Police Authorities.

    Federal Requirement and Funding of Police Body Cameras

    Creation of a Mechanism for Appointing Prosecutors

    The Demilitarization of Local Police Departments

    and concludes:

    I am no politician or elected official. I’ve been around public policy enough to know that it’s no cure-all. I’m not misplacing my hope. I have no sense that doing these things will fix everything or usher in the kingdom of God.

    But this I do know: There is no way people of good conscience or people of Christian faith can look at the events in Ferguson and conclude there’s nothing left for us to do or nothing that can be done. No, both pure religion and good citizenship require we not settle for what’s happened in the shooting of Michael Brown and the aftermath of the grand jury’s decision. The Ferguson grand jury has given us our marching orders. They have ordered us to march for a more just system of policing and the protection of all life. We are obligated–if we love Christ or love this country–to find a way forward to justice, a way suitable to the dictates of our individual consciences and the word of God.

    Also see Anyabwile’s follow-up addressing knee-jerk responses such as ‘but black-on-black crime’: Four Common But Misleading Themes in Ferguson-like Times

    People of good faith and conscience can look at individual cases and arrive at differing conclusions. After all, none of us can peer with omniscience into the hearts and minds of other people and conclude infallibly what they were feeling or thinking. We must leave that to God—unless the persons themselves confess such a motivation.

    But does this mean we cannot suspect our systems of having systemic and systematic biases? After all, all of our systems were shaped and forged during long stretches of history where systematic bias was the stated acceptable norm and not the exception. Do we imagine that such systems change overnight or in a generation, or that they don’t bequeath to us a legacy of learned practice that still today sometimes carry unintended bias?

    We are just plain wrong if we think such systemic bias is not possible and does not happen.

    Further, to say the root problem is sin is absolutely correct. But to suggest sin does not manifest itself in systemic and systematic bias is absolutely false.

  288. says

    “We get it” cops join protest against police brutality in CA:

    Chris Magnus, chief of Richmond police, held a sign that read “#BlackLivesMatter,” a Twitter hashtag used by civil rights advocates, as other officers joined in the peaceful protest, reported the Contra Costa Times.

    “I’ve never seen anything like it, not in Richmond, not anywhere,” said resident Mary Square. “All these police, and the police chief, holding signs calling for an end to police violence.”

    Magnus has been hailed for his approach to community policing, which has helped reduce the city’s crime rate and the use of force by police.

    “I spoke with my command staff, and we agreed it would be nice to convey our commitment to peaceful protest and that black and brown lives do matter,” Magnus said. “And to help bridge the gap that we understand sometimes exists between police and community around certain issues.”

    The protest, which was organized by members of the RYSE Youth Center, was relatively calm in comparison to demonstrations in nearby Berkeley and elsewhere.

    The demonstrators were joined by Mayor Gayle McLaughlin and City Council members Jael Myrick, Jovanka Beckles and Tom Butt.

    The police department’s deputy chief said officers understand the anger fueling the protests.

  289. says

    More on Oakland protests. A pair of undercover cops (who were apparently engaging in and encouraging looting and vandalism) were outed, and one pulled a gun on the demonstrators. One protester was arrested for punching one of them.

  290. rq says

    Dalillama
    Your link seems to have borked.
    I have two articles waiting in line on those undercover cops, though.

  291. rq says

    Here’s NBC on that: Undercover Cop Draws Gun on Protesters in Oakland

    An undercover police officer, who had been marching with demonstrators, aims his gun at protesters after some in the crowd attacked him and his partner in Oakland, California on Wednesday. The man was identified as an officer with the California Highway Patrol, according to the Oakland Police Department.

    If you scroll down at the link, there’s a couple more articles worth looking at.

    This one has slightly more info: Undercover CHP officer pulls gun at Oakland protest after outing

    Avery Browne, chief of CHP’s Golden Gate Division, said the agency and other police departments have had plainclothes officers dressed in protester attire walking in these marches since the first demonstration Nov. 24, and he said they will continue to employ this tactic despite Tuesday’s incident.

    He said before the officers were outed Tuesday, they were able to collect enough information to prevent four more freeway shutdown attempts.

    “We will use all of the avenues we can to keep the public safe and gather that information so we can be responsive and be in the proper position,” he said.

    About 50 people were marching near Lake Merritt just after 11:30 p.m. Wednesday when some of the demonstrators began calling out two men who were walking with the group, said the freelance photographer, Michael Short.

    “Just as we turned up 27th Street, the crowd started yelling at these two guys, saying they were undercover cops,” Short said Thursday. “Somebody snatched a hat off the shorter guy’s head and he was fumbling around for it. A guy ran up behind him, knocked him down on the ground. That guy jumped backed up and chased after him and tackled him and the crowd began surging on them.

    “The other taller guy had a small baton out,” Short said. “But as the crowd started surging on them, he pulled out a gun.”

    Chief Browne said the officer also pulled out a badge and identified himself as law enforcement, as is department policy, though Short, other members of the media and protesters reported that they did not see a badge. […]

    Several protesters took to Twitter to say that the officers had actually instigated acts of vandalism and were banging on windows alongside others.

    Short said he did not see the officers’ actions because protesters had surrounded him and had tried to take the memory card out of his camera. Noah Berger, another freelance photographer, was similarly accosted by protesters.

    But Browne said though the agency was investigating the use of force, the officer’s arrest and events leading up to it, he said he has not received reports that the officers instigated vandalism. In fact, they only got out of the car to gather information on the vandals, he said.

    The officer that drew his weapon is still on active duty, Browne said. Both officers are assigned to the auto theft unit of the agency’s detective bureau.

  293. rq says

    Sorry, just the third undercover cop article I had: When Undercovers Attack:

    While much is still unclear, reports have been coming in that these officers were agitating the public, one drew his firearm when questioned as another jumped on a seemingly uninvolved person. […]

    At this point it can be assumed that the use of plain clothes officers at Oakland demos is transcending traditional surveillance. This month alone there has been multiple accounts of officers making their identity more overt, and even making physical contact with people.

  294. says

    Video: LAPD officer swings a baton “like a baseball bat” at protesters
    ****
    African-American churches defaced with KKK after opposing deputies call to squash blacks like cockroaches:

    New Bridge Hope Missionary Baptist Church and Pilgrim Rest P.B. Church in Crawford discovered before services on Sunday morning that the letters “KKK” had been painted on church signs. A truck parked near the Wildwood Golf Club’s property also had the same large letters painted on it, according to WCTV.

    “I rushed out to see it and then, I just prayed a quick prayer. I said ‘The Lord will be with us with this situation.’ So we are praying, and we are depending on the Lord,” lifelong New Bridge Hope Missionary Baptist Church member Olivia Howard recalled.

    The Tallahassee Democrat reported that the incident could be connected to two Wakulla County deputies who were suspended after writing inappropriate comments about protesters in Ferguson, Missouri. The deputies expressed support for Officer Darren Wilson, who was not charged after killing unarmed teen Michael Brown, and one of them referred to protesters as “cockroaches.”

    “Damn cockroaches! Squash ‘em all!!!! I say we rally for Wilson, who’s with me?” Wakulla County Deputy Richard Moon wrote.

    I really hope shit like this is a wake-up call for many of those people who think racism is not a problem in the U.S. In the wake of the protests over police brutality, we’ve seen comment after dehumanizing comment like the above.

  296. says

    ACLU and NAACP DC will participate in Saturday’s ‘Justice For All’ March

    The ACLU and D.C. branch of the NAACP will participate in Saturday’s Justice for All March, organized by Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.
    The march, originally called the National March Against Police Violence, will begin at Freedom Plaza and will be attended by the families of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Akai Gurley, Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice — five black males, between the ages of 12 and 43, who were killed in separate incidents by a police officer while unarmed.
    “Do not be silent. Do not be complacent. Do not continue to live with police misconduct and violence as somehow acceptable,” Sharpton wrote in a piece published by the Huffington Post. “We are not anti-police; we are anti-police-brutality. And today we challenge Congress to follow in the president’s footsteps and take legislative action to protect us, the citizens.”
    Locally, the D.C. Ferguson Movement — created in response to a grand jury’s decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown — will take to the streets Sunday to collect names for its petition against “jump-out” squads. The group will meet at the Justice Center at 1 p.m.
    “This Saturday’s march is just the beginning,” Erin Johnson, chair of NAACP DC’s Criminal Justice Committee, said in a release. The committee “is devoting significant effort to ensuring that the Metropolitan Police Department policies and procedures encourage police accountability and implement sound community policing standards that combat racial profiling, particularly the MPD Body-Worn Camera program.”

  297. Pteryxx says

    at BoingBoing: Eric Garner’s daughter leads march through NYC to site of her father’s killing by NYPD

    Filmmaker Aaron-Stewart Ahn (Twitter) has been documenting the protest movement in New York sparked by the killing of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, at the hands of New York police. One of the most inspiring figures at these recent protests is Erica Garner, 24, daughter of the deceased. Last night she led a march to the site where her father was killed. When she arrived, she staged a “die-in,” which has become a symbol of this movement.

    Many excellent pictures at the link.

    Image: Protesters last night marching through downtown New York, filling the street from curb to curb, bearing black coffins labeled with different regions – Manhattan, Brooklyn – and the names and dates of death of victims killed by police. A coffin marked “National” bears names including that of Ezell Ford.

  298. says

    <a href= "http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/autopsy-report-tamir-rice-died-from-single-gunshot-wound-to-the-abdomen/"Autopsy report for Tamir Rice says the 12-year old died from single gunshot wound to the abdomen.
    It’s been ruled a homicide.

    Tamir Rice, who was black, was shot on Nov. 22 by police responding to a call of a suspect waving a handgun around in a Cleveland park. The weapon turned out to be a replica that typically fires plastic pellets. He died the next day.

    The autopsy report said that Rice sustained a single wound to the left side of his abdomen that traveled from front to back and lodged in his pelvis.

    The shooting came at a time of heightened national scrutiny of police use of force and two days before a grand jury declined to indict a white police officer in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August.

    Rice was shot less than two seconds after the police car pulled up beside him in the park, police have said. They also released a security video of Rice in the park before and during the shooting.

    Rice’s mother, Samaria Rice, said on Monday the officers involved should be convicted. The family filed a lawsuit last week against the city of Cleveland and the two officers involved in Rice’s shooting. The officers are on administrative leave.

  299. rq says

    Tony
    Having the coroner declare it a homicide hasn’t helped any of the other cases. :( Because I’m going to say again, homicide from the coroner simply means not-accident and not-natural. No legal implications whatsoever, besides the fact that maybe for once someone can get fucking charged with a crime for killing an unarmed black person.

    +++

    Several links on this: 150 Congressional staff protest killings of unarmed African-Americans

    During the demonstration, African-American members of the Congress held a prayer service on the steps of the US Capitol, and raised their hands in a ‘Don’t shoot’ gesture in solidarity with protesters across the country, Reuters reported.

    The walk-out was led by Senate Chaplain Barry Black.

    He described the action as a “voice for the voiceless.”

    “Today as people throughout the nation protest for justice in our land, forgive us when we have failed to lift our voices for those who couldn’t speak or breathe for themselves,” he said.

    “May we not forget that in our national history injustice has often been maintained because good people failed to promptly act. Lord, comfort those who mourn, who know the pain of loss, the anguish of grief and the futility of despair,” he prayed.

    Some video at the link, too.

    The Guardian gets in on the story: Undercover officer pulls gun on Oakland protesters after cover blown.

    “Just as we turned up 27th Street, the crowd started yelling at these two guys, saying they were undercover cops,” the Chronicle’s freelance photographer Michael Short told the newspaper on Thursday.

    The Berkeley Daily Planet reported that the two men tried to walk away, but the couple of dozen remaining protesters “persisted, screaming at the two undercover cops”. The Planet said that an officer “pushed a protester aside”. The demonstrator allegedly pushed back and was tackled and handcuffed.

    “Somebody snatched a hat off the shorter guy’s head and he was fumbling around for it. A guy ran up behind him, knocked him down on the ground. That guy jumped backed up and chased after him and tackled him and the crowd began surging on them,” Short said.

    He told the Chronicle that the officer pulled a small baton out, then a gun, after the crowd started “surging” them. The Planet reported that more officers quickly moved in to disperse demonstrators.

    More on this eventually, too, it’s in the tabs, but a win for Ferguson protestors (second one, along with the 5-second rule revocation): Court Orders Better Warning Before Tear Gas; In Tower Grove South, Chief Hears Of Trust Lost

    A federal civil rights lawsuit seeking limits on the use of tear gas specifically sited the incident at MoKaBe’s. U.S. District Court Judge Carol Jackson ruled just before Thursday night’s meeting that the department would no longer be able to use chemical agents like tear gas without warning people and giving them a chance to leave the area.

    Jackson’s temporary restraining order says the evidence shows that “law enforcement official failed to give the plaintiffs and other protesters any warning that chemical agents would be deployed and, hence, no opportunity to avoid injury. As a result, the plaintiffs’ ability to engage in lawful speech and assembly is encumbered by a law enforcement response that would be used if a crime were being committed.”

    Defendants in the suit included leaders of the Unified Command that has handled response to protests — St. Louis Police Chief Dotson, St. Louis County Chief Jon Belmar and Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson. The suit was brought by people who had participated in or observed protest — Alexis Templeton, Maureen Costello, Brittany Ferrell, Steven Hoffman, Nile McClain and Kira Hudson Banks.

    The ruling says police can’t use tear gas, smoke, pepper gas or other chemical agents to disperse peaceful crowds unless they first:

    Issue “clear and unambiguous warnings that such chemical agents will be utilized” and without providing “sufficient opportunity to heed the warnings and exit the area.”
    Minimize impact on those “who are complying with lawful law enforcement commands.”
    Ensure “there is a means of safe egress.”

    Police can’t use tear gas on protesters “for the purpose of frightening them or punishing them for exercising their constitutional rights,” the order says.

    It’s a small thing, but a good thing because it means the courts are hearing the protestors. The cops might not be, but the courts are.

    This was a historical link to Senate support in the 19th century for racism, but it’s timing out on me.

    For the laughs, this is how Coates introduced the article on twitter: Anderson Cooper’s ancestor was beaten to death with a farm ho by a rebellious slave. and this is the article: Watch Anderson Cooper’s Surprising Reaction to Finding Out His Ancestor Was Killed by an Enslaved Black Man. Video at the link.

  300. rq says

    Police behaving badly: In Brooklyn Gun Cases, Suspicion Turns to the Police

    The tip comes from a confidential informer: Someone has a gun. Ten or more minutes later, police officers find a man matching the informer’s detailed description at the reported location. A gun is discovered; an arrest is made.

    That narrative describes how Jeffrey Herring was arrested last year by police officers in the 67th Precinct in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. It also describes the arrests of at least two other men, Eugene Moore and John Hooper, by some of the same officers.

    The suspects said the guns were planted by the police.

    There were other similarities: Each gun was found in a plastic bag or a handkerchief, with no traces of the suspect’s fingerprints. Prosecutors and the police did not mention a confidential informer until months after the arrests. None of the informers have come forward, even when defense lawyers and judges have requested they appear in court.

    Taken individually, the cases seem to be routine examples of differences between the police account of an arrest and that of the person arrested. But taken together, the cases — along with other gun arrests made in the precinct by these officers — suggest a pattern of questionable police conduct and tactics.

    Article follows up on specific details in a few cases.

    TW TW TW
    Historical cartoon entitled In Self Defense, shows white adult man in farmer’s garb holding a gun and a knife over the dead body of a black child, with the caption: “Ef I hadn’t’er killed you, you would hev growed up to rule me.”

    Is Wilson this officer’s name, @ChiefSLMPD? He seems to be wearing two name badges. Check the picture.

    Previously, during the court hearing I mentioned above, Chief Dotson spoke to protestors. How did it go? Tonight i got to watch my chief of Police @ChiefSLMPD lie almost everytime he opened is mouth! Then WALK away when a black woman wanted talk. Badly, then.

    Again on Garner’s daughter: Garner’s Daughter Takes Part in Protest on Staten Island.

    In support: .@rainbowbookcoop offering 20% discount in memory of Mike Brown, so @Nettaaaaaaaa is getting her reading material.

    About the women who went up against the PD and won, Pretty dope. “Next time you hear ‘the protesters’ think of me, these two women, and my 6 year old child. #FightBack”.

  301. rq says

    Previous in moderation, please PZ fish it out fast?

    The Unbearable Whiteness of Protesting

    RAWIYA: There are many instances of white people—leftist and radical, conservative and right-leaning—co-opting the struggles of the marginalized for their own purposes. When I went to a protest here in Toronto the day after the Darren Wilson nonindictment news came down, I stood next to a white couple who loudly chanted every single slogan except “black lives matter.” That told me everything I already knew. The next day, a major Canadian newspaper covered a similar protest in Ottawa by focusing on the organizers’ plea that white allies take up less space and amplify marginalized voices. The misdirection was both baffling and routine; even when people ask about our feelings, they’re not really hearing us.

    The presence of white and other nonblack allies at recent protests is noticeable. Support is a good thing and the broader the so-called movement can be, the better. But when that support comes at the expense of black people’s voices and, by extension, black people’s lives, it becomes both meaningless and counterproductive. Seeing white people vocalize the value of black lives and oppose racist institutions is great, but only if they are taking those same values into their day-to-day experiences. Don’t hold up a Black Lives Matter sign in Union Square if you’re going to go into work the next day and replicate the racist structures you were protesting the night before. Don’t hold up a Black Lives Matter sign in Times Square if you’re going to clutch your purse when a black man steps into the elevator. Don’t hold up a Black Lives Matter sign on the West Side Highway if black lives only matter to you when it’s convenient.

    A lot of this plays out pretty clearly online. Things like changing the Black Lives Matter tagline to All Lives Matter, and the #CrimingWhileWhite hashtag, effectively erase black people from a conversation that is ours to steer. They are often characterized as benevolent and admirable; when we do the same, we are angry and unreasonable. How has your experience been shaped by digital encounters and the social web?

    JUDNICK: The Internet for me has been surprisingly powerful. After the Ray Rice fiasco I realized that it was very important for me to edit my Twitter feed into a safe space. Somehow I was successful because after both Mike and Eric’s decisions I’ve done nothing but RT and see the best of many folks I love and even those I don’t know. I was so shocked because I opened my Twitter app with one eye. I’ve noticed that many people on Facebook have been posting similar messages about unfriending people with racist and ignorant ideas. I see people fighting in comment sections and I simply turn it off. One of my favorite tweets recently was this in response to #AllLivesMatter. […]

    JUDNICK: I feel guilt at times when I don’t want to clap for all the added support from white protesters. Even in private conversation black people feel the need to clearly state that they aren’t against the added support. But honestly, how would it even work if everybody isn’t down? The reason it feels so infuriatingly endless is because it doesn’t really work if everyone isn’t on board but it also can’t work if everyone is only working to the level of their comfort. It seems backwards to applaud what is already necessary, what has already been clear for a long time. It’s not just what makes people feel better. To protest means to question not just friends but even yourself as a white person of privilege in this society.

    I say a lot that in the story of racism in America nobody wants to be the villain. It’s something that seems so off-putting, vile even, that nobody wants to be tacked with it. Yet, the only “nobodies” that do not have to be are those that have the privilege. It’s hard to acknowledge and painful to swallow, not to mention “hard to prove,” but now I feel it’s not just us who are seeing the resistance that’s met when you ask for right of self, the right to live.

    White people of this generation are witnessing what we have always lived, survived. It’s a crazy thing to watch and I agree with you: I’m not going to beg to exist. This thing is uncomfortable because it has always been that way, not just now. We already know racism exists. You don’t need to ask black people how they feel, ask white people how they feel. Ask them if they understand what they’re seeing and how they feel about it. Speak to the friends and people you need to root out in life and let that conversation flow. Feel that confusion, pain, disgust. The conversations are happening but I can’t say I have much hope for our lifetime. At this age I guess I think more and more about how we’ll be passed on.

    It’s a conversation on protesting while black in the presence of white people. It’s quite the read, I recommend getting through it all. About the pervasive, insidious racism that sitll appears even amongst supposed allies. About forms of support or non-support and how they are manifested. Many thoughts.

    Capitol Hill’s Black Staffers Walk Out to Say ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!’

    African American Congressional staffers staged a walkout Thursday afternoon, disrupting their workday to gather on the Capitol steps in a display of unity with demonstrations against the Eric Garner and Mike Brown grand jury decisions.

    More than 150 staffers quietly ascended the House of Representatives steps to lodge a silent protest in response to the deaths of both black men at the hands of white police officers.

    Senate Chaplain Dr. Barry Black led the crowd in prayer, accompanied by dozens of Congressional staff and members of Congress, including Rep. Elijah Cummings. They were gathered there, Black said, to be a “voice for the voiceless.”

    “Forgive us when we have failed to lift our voices for those who could not speak or breathe themselves,” Black prayed, making an unmistakeable reference to the case of Garner, whose cries of, “I can’t breathe!” became an animating impetus for protesters.

    After the Thursday prayer, the crowd of Congressional staff and lawmakers posed in the iconic, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” pose. […]

    One thing that all organizers agreed on: that it would not be held during Congressional recess, when their bosses, American Senators and Congressmen, were out of town.

    The Congressional Black Associates, Senate Black Legislative Staff Caucus, the Brooke-Revels Society, the Congressional African Staff Association, and the African American Women on the Hill Network—all dedicated to representing African American staffers on Capitol Hill—are helping to organize the protest as a “show of unity and solidarity… to stand shoulder to shoulder with other peaceful demonstrations.”

    These groups will be joined by members of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Staff Association and the Congressional Hispanic Staff Association.

    The event has some precedence: in 2012, some 250 to 300 aides rallied on the Capitol steps with hoodies, in reaction to the death of Trayvon Martin.

    And Salon on the same: Black congressional staffers stage walkout to protest police killings .

    Erica Garner.

    Post-Dispatch on the court order to provide warnings to protestors: Judge orders St. Louis area police to give protesters tear gas warning and time to flee

    U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson’s order requires police to warn crowds of impending use of tear gas and provide “reasonable” time for people to disperse first. But she did not define what is reasonable, saying that would be at police discretion.

    She rejected a request for an order that tear gas be used only as a “last resort,” saying there was no way to gauge that circumstance.

    Jackson showed sympathy for some of the complaints, for example a failure to distinguish among targets of enforcement action. “There was no distinction drawn in the way peaceful protesters were treated and the way criminals were treated, even though the police do make those distinctions in other situations,” she said.

    She also said, “People involved in peaceful, nonviolent political speech can do that without being lumped in with the criminals.”

    Plaintiffs testified in detail about things police did at various times in Ferguson and St. Louis — from shortly after Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown in August, to the violent reactions after a grand jury decided in November not to indict Wilson.

    Police officers for St. Louis and St. Louis County testified in Thursday’s hearing that they did what was necessary to control sometimes unruly protests.

    Lt. Steven Dodge, the city SWAT commander, said there were instances in which shots were fired from crowds, or businesses looted, so a quick reaction was required.

    Mark Lawson, an attorney for the city, asked Dodge whether tear gas prevented property damage. The officer replied, “There’s no doubt in my mind.” Then Lawson asked if it might even have saved lives. Dodge replied, “Absolutely.”

    County police Capt. Kurt Frisz said that on the night of the grand jury announcement, SWAT officers in Ferguson did provide instructions of where protesters should go before using tear gas, although some said the recommended path was blocked by another police line.

    Jackson expressed some concern about police consistency. She noted that protesters who blocked South Grand Boulevard were met with tear gas while others the same night who blocked Interstate 44, not far away, were not.

    Police were commended for their restraint. No joke.

  302. rq says

    Here’s the actual injunction in text: Here’s the temporary injunction re: policing protestors from today’s court hearing. Read this. Important. Sorry I don’t have time to transcribe.

    Ugh, HuffPo on the congressional staffers: Congressional Staffers Walk Out In Protest Of Police Killings. All of the links have some photos, by the way. Worth a look or two.

    Sad. “@BusyBeeT: This is the response #Purdue students are being met with. ”

    Nice. Twitter responds to NYPD’s attempt to make itself look better. You Can Thank The NYPD At Next Week’s Pro-Cop Rally

    The NYPD’s been getting some bad press (and sweet overtime pay) of late, particularly after last week’s grand jury failure to indict the cop who killed unarmed Staten Island man Eric Garner. One group of cop enthusiasts feels bad for these beleaguered officers, so they’ve gone ahead and planned a pro-cop rally outside City Hall next Friday, complete with the accompanying hashtag, #ThankyouNYPD. And, since Twitter history is doomed to repeat itself, there’s been some online backlash.

    Some of those tweets are backfired gold.

    University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

    More police behaving badly: Citizen board blasts Denver police response to punching incident

    The board on Wednesday sent the letter to Police Chief Robert White to criticize his department’s official response to reports about an officer punching a drug suspect in the face to force him to spit out heroin and tripping the man’s pregnant girlfriend.

    White has said one internal affairs bureau investigation already determined the officer’s use-of-force was appropriate, but he re-opened the investigation after a video of the incident surfaced. The man who recorded the incident also accused police of trying to delete the footage from his computer tablet.

    After Fox31 aired a story about the incident, the department’s public information office released a four-page response titled “Accuracy Matters” and posted it on Twitter and Facebook. […]

    Police Cmdr. Matt Murray noted the investigation was reopened and said: “We are committed to transparency and will share the results of that investigation when it is concluded.”

    Benjamin Hartford, the attorney representing the man who filmed the video, agreed with the board’s position.

    “It’s one thing to attack his credibility, but the video doesn’t lie,” Hartford said. “They’re not disputing what’s on the video.”

    The letter also said language in the police news release already validated the officers’ actions and was inappropriate because the investigation was just beginning.

  303. rq says

    Tweets from the hearing on tear gas:
    I saw police officers sit on the stand & try to make sense of why we were tear gassed. The judge saw RIGHT THROUGH the bullshit.
    We actually took the police to federal court and won. Small victories. That’s incredible.
    It looks like we have the second legal victory of the #Ferguson protests re: police behavior. The 5 sec rule and now tear gas.

    Youtube video: Ferguson Protest/Die in at George Mason University .

    Hacked Sony Emails Illustrate White Liberal’s Racism And Challenges the Idea that Black Lives Matter

    I’m sure that producer Scott Rudin and Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal didn’t intend to be racist as they joked back and forth in emails about the kinds of movies that America’s first Black president might like.

    The leaked email exchange between Rudin and Pascal involved a discussion about a fundraiser breakfast with President Obama Pascal was to attend. They assume that Obama, because he’s Black, would prefer movies featuring blacks.

    She suggested Django. He suggested 12 Years a Slave. She came back with The Butler.

    “Ride-along. I bet he likes Kevin Hart,” Rudin replied.

    The latest batch of hacked Sony emails has brought into the spotlight once again the inherent racism that continues to exist within the Democratic Party and with white liberals, many of whom have jumped aboard the Black lives matters bandwagon.

    Over the past several weeks I’ve spoken with and watched hundreds of white people march through the streets of Los Angeles holding signs and chanting the phrase “Black lives matter.” I even had one woman recently tell me how she was using her white privilege for good by being out in the streets with those decrying police brutality and the killing of unarmed Black men.

    But the reality is that while it’s nice to see so many white people genuinely concerned with the plight of Black people, their white privilege could better serve the same Black people that they care about behind closed doors when they’re at work.

    If Black lives really matter I need for all of the white people in the position to hire someone who is Black to do just that—hire an African-American. If more Black people are working, that means that more Black lives are being provided for financially.

    And if Black lives are so important, those same white people who work at banks and approve home loans should be willing to work just a little harder to see to it that Black families trying to buy their first home aren’t denied a loan. Their counterparts who make the decisions on who to rent to and who not to rent to can help the cause by seeing to it that more Black people are approved to rent apartments even if those apartments aren’t in the ghetto.

    With video: Watch J. Cole Perform His Moving Tribute to Michael Brown on Letterman

    Killer Mike might’ve been the most vocal figure in hip-hop this year following the outrage over the shooting death of Michael Brown, but J. Cole has arguably been the most active. He visited Ferguson the week after Brown’s death and, last week, he quietly marched in a protest following the Eric Garner grand jury decision. During an appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman Wednesday night, rather than perform a song from his new album, he instead delivered a passionate rendition of the song he released for Brown over the summer, “Be Free.”

    He even added a striking new verse to the song that envisions how he’d like to see Obama’s presidency end. Given Letterman’s stunned reaction, it’s a wonder why Cole chose not to include “Be Free” on his new album.

  304. rq says

    17 Days of Riots and Revolt in the Bay Area

    In order to illustrate the magnitude of what has unfolded since a grand jury announced it would not indict Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown, we must make one point clear: we are losing track of how many highways have been blockaded, which stores have been looted, which intersections have seen the fiercest fighting with police. All of this has been unfolding on a nightly basis for over two weeks. Roughly 600 people have been arrested. Many of the main business districts across the East Bay are boarded up. It has become routine to hear police and news helicopters tracking the latest riot each night. Militarized police forces from across northern California are now regularly being deployed in our streets. Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco, and Emeryville have all experienced riots and looting. […]

    The initial wave of rioting, marches, and blockades in Oakland during the week of November 24 was just the beginning. There followed multiple blockades of the 880 and 980 freeways, numerous die-ins blocking roadways, and shutdowns of the West Oakland BART station—and then the riots began in earnest. Here is a rough timeline of the events of the past two and a half weeks, followed by our initial reflections.

    There’s a day-by-day timeline, which provides good insight into the events in the Bay Area.

    Tear gas injunction: Ferguson protesters win injunction to stop cops using tear gas, with autoplay video.

    “Ultimately she decided there was substantial evidence that police had violated the constitutional rights of the protesters, that it was a restriction on their free speech,” Roediger told msnbc shortly after the judge made her ruling.

    “The best thing the judge said and she said it a couple of times, was that ‘it’s clear to me for some reason the police are treating this group, around this movement, differently than they treat other large crowds,” Roediger said. “Hopefully it’ll put an end to the practice of protesters having no idea what the police response will be. No more of this sort of punishment in the streets where what the police are going to do is unpredictable and often violent,” he said.

    The plaintiffs, who include a diverse group of protesters, a business owner and a legal observer, said in their suit that tear gas was used as punishment against citizens simply exercising their First Amendment rights. The group also claimed they were gassed without warning and without the opportunity or means to comply with police orders to leave the area before the tear gas was sprayed.

    The suit, filed earlier this week in U.S. District Court against the heads of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, the St. Louis County Police Department and the Missouri State Highway Patrol, is the latest in a series of court filings against law enforcement to emerge in the wake of mass protests that have engulfed the region since Brown was shot and killed Aug. 9 by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson.

    And the New York Times on the same: Judge in St. Louis Orders Limits on Police Tear Gas Use.

    Equal before the law? The white truck driver that tried to run over us last night was released with no charges. NO CHARGES. I got three charges. #Ferguson2NC.

    thisisthemovement, installment #66:

    Ferguson
    Lawyers Sue 7 STL County Municipalities Over Court Fees Lawyers from SLU and ArchCity Defenders have filed lawsuits against Beverly Hills, Ferguson, Fenton, Jennings, Pine Lawn, Wellston and Velda City related to the illegal practice of charging additional fees when processing warrant recalls and other actions. Important read.

    Post-Dispatch Temporarily Ends Comments On Editorials, Columns, and Letters In Opinion Section The STL Post-Dispatch has temporarily halted all comments in the online version of the Opinion Section due to the racist vitriol that has become more present since August 9th. Interesting read.

    Eric Garner
    East Side Community High School Students Protest On Tuesday about 70 students, joined by some parents, walked out of the school at around 1:30pm in protest. The students marched all the way to the United States Attorney’s Office where two representatives presented their petition. The US Attorney’s office is reviewing whether Officer Pantaleo should be charged with violating Mr. Garner’s civil rights.

    Sheneque Proctor
    Sheneque Proctor Died in a Bessemer Jail 18 year old Sheneque Proctor was arrested on November 1, 2014, and was found dead in her jail cell November 2, 2014 with no explanation as to why. Proctor’s aunt says she was being charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, when asked by a reporter from Weld, Bessemer officers declined to give details. Sheneque’s mother says her daughter complained as to how rough three officers treated her. Sheneque Proctor was the mother of a 5 month old son. Absolute Must read.

    Protests
    Minority Students at Prestigious Law Schools Protest Students from Harvard Law School, Georgetown University Law Center and Columbia Law School have all joined the demonstrations held in their cities in protest for the grand jury decisions for Mike Brown Jr and Eric Garner. “We led rallies, held vigils and published an oped,” says the coalition that has been formed at Harvard Law School. Students have been allowed to petition to delay their finals because with protesting during the civil rights movement of their time, they have had no time to study.

    A “Die In” at Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical Students, faculty and staff participated in a 15 1/2 minute long “die in” on the school’s Boston campus Wednesday. 4 1/2 minutes to represent the hours Mike Brown’s body laid on the ground in Canfield and 11 minutes to represent the 11 times Eric Garner told the police he could not breathe before suffocating.

    Berkeley and the Spark of Protest Berkeley, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, has recently become mobilized in the midst of Ferguson and the Eric Garner Grand Jury decision. This article provides helpful and important contextual framing to the Berkeley protests.

    Commentary/Miscellaneous
    America’s Getting Less White And That Will Save It “America reached an important milestone in 2011. That occurred when, for the first time in the history of the country, more minority babies than white babies were born in a year,” the author writes. This interesting article explores the birth rates of “minority” populations relative to the white population and the data is fascinating. Must read.

    My Son is Black. With Autism. And I’m Scared Of What The Police Will Do To Him. This powerful commentary is the reflection of a black father who is raising a 2-year-old son recently diagnosed with autism in the midst of Ferguson. Powerful, necessary, important read.

    The Unbearable Whiteness of Protesting “One of the fundamentally corrosive things about white supremacy aspects of white supremacy is the entitlement it offers to white people, implicitly teaching them that their own opinions are always necessary and valuable,” notes one of the participants in the discussion that this article captures. This is an important and powerful read regarding white privilege. Powerful long-read.

    What’s Next
    Protests In Your City
    Check out fergusonresponse.tumblr.com to see (or add) a protest in your city. The movement lives.

    Events in Ferguson
    Remember to check the calendar for events happening in Ferguson.

  305. rq says

    With video, NY Congressman visits site of Eric Garner’s death

    The Congressman, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, is a product of New York City. While talking to residents of the Tompkinsville area of Staten Island, he told one man, “we’re gonna stay on it.”

    In an emotional exchange in front of Garner’s memorial, the Congressman shared his shock and disappointment with the grand jury’s decision to not indict the chokehold officer.

    “If there is ever an instance where you can get justice in an interaction where excessive force results in the death of an unarmed individual…one would think that the death of Eric Garner, which was caught on video for all the world to see, could have brought about an indictment” he said.

    And: Don’t tell me what Al Sharpton wants. Tell me what @bdoulaoblongata, @MusicOverPeople, @Nettaaaaaaaa, @deray, et al want. Future’s now. I’ve heard (read) this and that on twitter about Sharpton’s methods, how many don’t agree with him and don’t see him as a leader, esp. re: his march on DC. That it’s too early, not the right time. But nobody’s stopping him, so I hope his action is successful and yields results, along with all subsequent actions, no matter who is leading.

  307. rq says

    Even at her graduation she still fights the system @angryfemmanist @deray #BlackLivesMatter;

    Some thoughts:
    See, these massive protests are symbolically strong. But do you form actual community standing next to 15,000 people? #Ferguson;
    @deray I would think that the NBA and NFL players that showed love to the #HandsUpDontShoot and #ICantBreathe movement have been helpful.;
    I am silent when people say “after #Ferguson” and “bigger than #Ferguson” as I don’t know what they mean.;
    If anything, I think that people understand that Ferguson is their city, too. But I would never express that as “bigger than Ferguson.”.

  310. says

    Congress passed a bill requiring police departments to count how many people they shoot

    This week as all eyes were on budget deal wrangling, with little attention and fanfare, Congress actually got something done to reform the police. It passed a bill that could result in complete, national data on police shootings and other deaths in law enforcement custody.
    Right now, we have nothing close to that. Police departments are not required to report information about police to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Some do, others don’t, others submit it some years and not others or submit potentially incomplete numbers, making it near-impossible to know how many people police kill every year. Based on the figures that are reported to the federal government, ProPublica recently concluded that young black men are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than whites.
    Under the bill awaiting Obama’s signature, states receiving federal funds would be required to report every quarter on deaths in law enforcement custody. This includes not only those who are killed by police during a stop, arrest, or other interaction. It also includes those who die in jail or prison. And it requires details about these shootings including gender, race, as well as at least some circumstances surrounding the death

    It’s high time this Congress did something substantial.

  311. says

    Dave Chappelle says police choked him on his own movie set

    Chappelle said he was working on his “first movie” here in New Orleans. He was playing a mugger, he said. He was dressed for the part. The movie set was surrounded with police tape. He ducked under it. Then a police officer set upon him and immediately started choking him.

    According to the Internet Movie Database, Dave Chappelle played a mugger in the 1993 movie “Undercover Blues,” part of which was filmed in New Orleans. The movie was shot in the summer of 1992. Filming ended the same month Chappelle celebrated his 19th birthday.

    One of the women working on the set saw what was happening to the actor and yelled to the police officer that he belonged on the set. After relaxing his hold on Chappelle’s neck the police officer said, according to the comedian, “Well why didn’t he say something?”

    The weirdest thing about being a black man being choked by the police, Chappelle said, is that you don’t even wonder why it’s happening. You just think, he said, “OK, here we go.”

    ****

    Did a group of NYPD cops plant guns on innocent people to make arrests?

    According to a New York Times investigation, a group of Brooklyn NYPD officers may have planted guns and invented nonexistent informants in order to arrest as many as six innocent people.

    The Times focuses on the cases of Jeffrey Herring, Eugene Moore, and John Hooper, all of whom were arrested by some of the same officers on gun charges that involved tips from anonymous informants. The Times lays out some other similarities:

    Each gun was found in a plastic bag or a handkerchief, with no traces of the suspect’s fingerprints. Prosecutors and the police did not mention a confidential informer until months after the arrests. None of the informers have come forward, even when defense lawyers and judges have requested they appear in court.

    Taken individually, the cases seem to be routine examples of differences between the police account of an arrest and that of the person arrested. But taken together, the cases — along with other gun arrests made in the precinct by these officers — suggest a pattern of questionable police conduct and tactics.

    Moore’s charges were dismissed after he spent a year in jail—he could not afford bail—because a judge found Detective Gregory Jean-Baptiste, one of the arresting officers, to be “extremely evasive” and not a credible witness.

    Hooper was also arrested by Jean-Baptiste and Sergeant Vassilios Aidiniou, another of the arresting officers in Moore’s case, as well as Lieutenant Edward Babington. He too spent almost a year in jail before entering a guilty plea with a sentence of time served. Prosecutors did not bring the informer who supposedly tipped cops off to Moore’s gun to court, and Justice Guy J. Mangano said this of Jean-Baptiste’s testimony:

    “Supposedly this defendant doesn’t see the police coming, but elects out of nowhere to take the object out of his pants pocket and dump it in a garbage can?” Justice Guy J. Mangano said. “I find it incredible that they thought it was a gun.”

  313. rq says

    A new generation takes up race rights fight at ‘Black Lives Matter’ march

    The local activist group emerged following a grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson in Brown’s killing, in response to which they organized a rally and march around the Capitol Square last week. Like other race rights actions cropping up in the latest round of public outrage over the killing of black men by white police officers, the Madison coalition turned the failure of another grand jury this week to return an indictment in the killing of Eric Garner in New York City into an opportunity to demonstrate the depth of concern over civil rights.

    Demonstrations over the lack of an indictment in the Garner case continued Friday in cities across the country.

    The Young Gifted and Black Coalition of Madison is clearly organizing for the long haul.

    The coalition points often to the disparities in education, incarceration and other aspects of life, documented in the Race to Equity report, as proof that even absent fatal police violence against blacks, racial inequities are rife in Dane County. The group is demanding an end to plans to build a new Dane County jail, immediate release of people incarcerated for crimes of poverty and investment in community initiatives. […]

    The crowd demonstrating Friday was mixed racially and ethnically, but overwhelmingly young. Grayson said that older civil rights advocates and those whose work is enmeshed with majority establishment organizations are stepping back to let a younger generation take the lead on protests. “They can’t say the things we can say. We can take the action in the street; hopefully they will help make the policy.”

    Will Williams, a long-time activist with Vietnam Vets for Peace and other local movements, watched the march take shape from the sidelines. “Old folks need to turn the baton over,” Williams said.”We have young people with the fire who understand what going on with racism overall and with cops who are murdering black people and not being held accountable.”

    The local police there had a very sensible reaction, too. Which is nice.

    Santa Dies-In.
    Santa in Ferguson.
    Rockford IL.
    Hollywood and Highland in LA.

    Now that we have mobilized so intensely, & so beautifully, we must organize so nimbly & with such force that we cannot be ignored. #Ferguson.

  314. rq says

    I Sought Solace In My Bookshelf

    And now let’s draw lines. As two of the original organizers of the Black Lives Matter Freedom Rides, Patrisse Cullors and Darnell L. Moore write: “We could not allow Ferguson to be portrayed as an aberration in America: it must remain understood as a microcosm of the effects of anti-black racism.” And indeed, the tentacles of this deep-seated anti-blackness are woven into the DNA of the American dream. We see it in law enforcement, politics, the media, social justice movements, non-black communities of color, science, and, of course, literature. On Nov. 19, the night before police killed unarmed Akai Gurley in a Brooklyn stairwell, Daniel Handler made his racist watermelon quip toward Jacqueline Woodson as he presented her with a National Book Award. It was interpersonal anti-blackness that led him to make such a statement. Institutional anti-blackness had his back. Neither NPR nor the New York Times bothered to mention it in their coverage of the award ceremony. The Times called his performance “edgy and entertaining.” The National Book Foundation itself didn’t apologize until a few days of continued social media outcry. Prominent members of the publishing community posted blogs in sympathy with Handler, while many others simply remained silent. [..]

    Thinking of the many fucked up flavors of violence, my whole body thrumming with rage and sorrow, I sought solace in my bookshelf. It took a little while to find — so many sugarcoat and simplify; they tiptoe and coddle when we need books that break-dance and tell hard truths. Gradually, voices emerged: Baldwin and Butler and Morrison. John Murillo’s “Enter the Dragon.” And, of course, Oscar Wao.

    The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a book you devour slowly. You savor each bite because you’re not sure what the world will look like when it’s done. When I first read it in 2007, it was a revelation: a promise written in unflinching poetic vernacular that we can speak complex literary truths without translating ourselves or over-explaining or condescending to the lowest common denominator. It lit a fire under my ass, so many of our asses, that propelled us down the road to becoming writers.

    In the canefield, Oscar tells the gunmen that they were going to take a great love out of the world. “Love is a rare thing,” Oscar says as he raises his hands, “easily confused with a million other things.” Michael Brown raised his hands too, but he wasn’t given the benefit of last words.

    It is easy to misread rage as hate. This week, as chants of “Black lives matter” echoed once more through the streets of New York, Ferguson, Los Angeles and out into the world, all I could think of was love. Maybe, before he died, Michael thought of love too. And maybe that thought telegraphed brightly across this country, woke us up, rustled us out into the streets as one, loving, rage-filled outcry. As Oscar said, “on the other side…anything you can dream…you can be.”

    I had a photo above? Of that officer wearing a second, “Wilson”, nametag? St. Louis police say they’ll discipline officer who wore ‘Wilson’ name tag at City Hall protest

    In an interview Friday, Chief Sam Dotson said the “officer clearly violated our policies and will be disciplined.”

    “I couldn’t be more disappointed,” Dotson said. “We spend a lot of time working on professionalism and building a bridge in the community.”

    The department’s policy on uniforms allows only department-approved pins, insignia and awards, a spokeswoman said. Officials did not name the officer, but another name tag, on the breast of his vest, read “Coats.”

    Dotson said police officers have the same First Amendment rights as others when they are off duty, but that this “clearly violated our rules.” He said he thinks the officer will get “some days off for his actions.”

    There’s a piece from Roorda in there, but I have realized I get nauseous just reading what he says. He is one of the most evil people I know of.

    Some important updates as we move into the holiday season. There are 40 ppl STILL in jail b/c of protesting in #Ferguson. Some since August. FYI.

    Oh! Bloods gang member ‘sucker-punches cop’ during anti-police protest

    Jonathan Allen slugged Deputy Inspector Andrew Capul in the face, ambushing him from behind Thursday as the police official, dressed in uniform, talked to protesters near West 125th Street at the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building around 9:30 p.m., police said.

    The 6-foot-2, 220-pound thug — who has 13 prior arrests, including for criminally negligent homicide, a rap he he dodged after a witness couldn’t identify him — waited until Capul was distracted to allegedly throw the punch, a police source said.

    Capul was able to stay on his feet after he was struck and helped arrest Allen. The officer was treated for swelling and bruising.

    Allen, 31, was arraigned Friday in Manhattan Criminal Court on assault charges and held without bail.

    About 200 people attended Thursday’s protest, organized by the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, and some recorded the aftermath of the attack on their phones, though no one has provided video to police, sources said.

    Suckerpunching cops because they can? No, please.

    There was a review, and doctors said it was safe. Or someone did. Concerns Raised Over Shrill Device New York Police Used During Garner Protests

    But during the protests that followed a grand jury’s decision not to bring criminal charges in the death of Eric Garner after a confrontation with the police on Staten Island, the police activated the piercing beeps.

    Videos posted on YouTube and Instagram captured the sounds and their effect: Protesters in Midtown Manhattan were sent scattering, some covering their ears. Word spread among some demonstrators, and foam earplugs were handed out.

    Anika Edrei, a student at the International Center of Photography who came close to the device while documenting the protests, called the beeps “emotionally jarring.”

    “Once the adrenaline wore off, I started feeling pressure on my forehead like a migraine,” Ms. Edrei said. “Then I was disoriented and a little dizzy.”

    On Friday, three lawyers sent a letter to Police Commissioner William J. Bratton asking that the devices not be used for deterrent purposes until the police had fully tested them, adopted public guidelines for their use and trained officers in how to properly operate them.

    The lawyers, Gideon O. Oliver, Elena Cohen and Mark D. Taylor, added that Freedom of Information requests made in 2011 and 2012, under the supervision of a lawyer for the New York Civil Liberties Union, had not yielded directives, policies or manuals adopted by the police related to the devices. They say that the apparent lack of documents suggests that formal guidelines for the devices’ use may not exist.

    “They are designed to perform crowd control and other functions — to modify behavior, and force compliance, by hurting people,” the lawyers wrote.

    A spokesman for the Police Department said that officer training in the use of the devices addresses intensity of sound, duration and distance.

    “On December 4th all of these factors were controlled at levels that are not considered dangerous or harmful,” the spokesman said, adding that the device had only been used to advise people of illegal conduct.

    Four videos of protestors in New York, and their reasons for being out on the street: Voices From the Protests

    With demonstrations planned nationwide this weekend to protest the deaths of black men at the hands of the police, The New York Times spoke to some of the protesters who have raised banners and voices on the streets of New York City.

    D’you notice, though? This isn’t the only place where it happens – still too much focus on black men as opposed to black people.

    @deray we aint even set foot on I-65 for it to shut down,TN highway Patrol did it for us! #shutitdown #icantbreathe

  315. rq says

    I should learn. If I think I can squeeze one more link in, I probably can’t. :P Moderation.

    Protest at a university.
    Columbia MO.
    Portsmouth NH.

    I posted a different pic, but here he is again: Today, a STL Officer wore a “Wilson” name badge in honor of Darren Wilson. Yes, today. #Ferguson.
    Here’s another article on that: Riot cop wears “Wilson” badge at City Hall protest, chief promises disciplinary action

    One person in the group noticed the officer’s “Wilson” badge and thought it was the officer’s name. She shouted, “We have a Wilson here.” But others saw that his actual badge – which was printed across his chest – read, “Coates.”

    Amy Hunter, who works with the YWCA and is mother of three sons, asked the officer if wearing Darren Wilson support symbols while on duty was helping him build a better relationship with his community – which is nearly 50 percent African-American.

    “I know that we are supposed to be moving towards positive interactions with the police department,” Hunter told the St. Louis American. “You can probably imagine how the African-American community would feel about an officer – particularly a white officer – wearing a Wilson support anything on his person.

    “We are all working towards peace,” she said. “That is not a positive action towards that at all. It makes me feel unsafe.” […]

    Dotson said this is not the type of behavior that will help build bridges with the community. At the protest, people chanted at the officers, “Why are you in riot gear? We don’t see a riot here.”

    As far as police dressing in riot gear, Dotson said that he understands people may not like it. However, “the equipment is designed to keep people safe,” he said.

    When the protestors arrived, City Hall was gated up and the riot police were standing in front of the entrance with shields and helmets. In the past, City Hall has welcomed protestors inside, including Ferguson protests. However, for the past couple weeks, the building has been on lock down when protestors arrive. Dotson said he was unsure whether it has been the police commanders on the scene that have ordered the building closed or whether it has been the mayor’s office.

  316. rq says

    Activist athletes again being heard

    For most of the past quarter century, athletes faded from prominent roles in social causes. As salaries have skyrocketed, endorsement opportunities expanded and professional athletes have become corporate brands, their voices have largely gone quiet.

    The days of activist athletes like Bill Russell, Arthur Ashe, Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King, Tommie Smith and John Carlos seemed to be part of history.

    But maybe not. First some athletes used the “hands up, don’t shoot,” pose in recognition of the shooting of unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson. In the past week, “I Can’t Breathe” social statements — in response to a grand jury’s decision not to indict police after the death of unarmed New Yorker Eric Garner — have appeared around the NBA.

    “I’m gratified,” said Dr. Harry Edwards, who wrote “Revolt of the Black Athlete” and was instrumental in the 1968 Olympic protests by Smith and Carlos. “I thought this was inevitable and predictable. The only thing unknowable was the exact time and issue. But now I think it has momentum.”

    Derrick Rose, whose young son was his motivation, wore an “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirt during warm-ups before Saturday’s Bulls-Warriors game. Two days later, the most famous player on the planet, LeBron James, warmed up in front of an audience that included two of the globe’s other most famous (Prince William and his wife, Kate Middleton) wearing the shirt. The next night, Kobe Bryant and his Lakers teammates wore them.

    Bryant said he felt things had reached a tipping point, saying people are “questioning the process of the legal system and those who have authority and whether or not they’re abusing authority. … But that’s what our nation was founded on. We have the ability to question these things and in a peaceful fashion.”

    Former Warrior Jarrett Jack, now with the Nets, was instrumental in getting the shirts to the Cavaliers and Nets players.

    “Our motive isn’t trying to get somebody indicted or get somebody thrown in jail,” Jack said. “We’re just striving for change. Almost like a civic duty. We want people to know that we’re not oblivious to what is going on around us.” […]

    The leagues aren’t sure what to do with this. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is treading a careful line on the “I Can’t Breathe” shirts.

    “I respect Derrick Rose and all of our players for voicing their personal views on important issues,” Silver said. “But my preference would be for players to abide by our on-court attire rules.”

    The St. Louis Police Officers Association denounced the actions of five Rams players who came out of the tunnel in a “hand’s up” stance after a grand jury did not indict the officer who shot Brown. The officers’ association asked for the players to be punished, but the NFL declined, saying, “We respect and understand the concerns of all individuals who have expressed views on this tragic situation.”

    Professional athletes aren’t the only ones making a statement. Many college athletes have, too, including basketball player Ariyana Smith, who staged a “hands up” protest during the national anthem before her school, Knox College, played a game in St. Louis County. She was originally suspended but the decision was reversed.

    “Every generation.” Edwards said, “finds its voice.”

  317. says

    That ‘gangbanger sucker punch’ may be none of those things. The NY Post is a rag that wishes it could reach to the dizzying heights of Fox News’ journalistic ethics, aspires to getting caught up with the Toronto Sun in fair and balanced reporting.

    Basically, any news source using the word ‘thug’ as an epithet should be avoided unless one is actually in a salt mine at the time. It’s a racist dogwhistle that’s taken over for ‘n*gg*r’ as the go-to slur for the modern racist arsehole’s use in not being censured for being a racist – as we all now know, the worst thing that could ever be done to a (ahem) ‘proper’ person.

  318. rq says

    Cait
    It was the focus on past arrests that didn’t sit right, and I should do a better job of identifying not-quite-accurate sources, since I want to post them among the good stuff anyway, sort of a compare-and-contrast; maybe I shouldn’t, but I like to see what kinds of things I need to look out for in order to know responses from the other point of view (yes, that sounds a lot like fair-and-balanced, because the other point of view is rather predictable, so I may reconsider this line of information-posting. Either way, I was less-than-observant and less-than-clear with that specific post. :P Sorry about that and thanks for pointing it out nice and loud!

  320. rq says

    Nekkid links (well, mostly nekkid) because it’s late and it’s mostly photos anyway and I have to catch up on bobsleigh results. Yes, I’m that selfish.

    So here we go (and it will be a LOT of photos, and some commentary from people at the march(es) going on today – Sharpton’s Justice For All march, and then there’s the Millions March in several locations, you’ll see).

    University of Missouri;
    TW Foudn hanging on the UCBerkeley campus TW;
    Lots of police (Baltimore?);
    Notre Dame women’s basketball team;
    Die-in at Ferguson PD;
    Protesters take legal action against law enforcement in Ferguson (with autoplay video)

    MSNBC.com national reporter Trymaine Lee speaks with some of the key players in a federal lawsuit filed against the Unified Command, the group in charge of law enforcement in Ferguson, Missouri during the initial breakout of protests against the Michael Brown grand jury decision.

  321. rq says

    Commentary on the DC rally organized by Sharpton:
    The organizers will not let @Nettaaaaaaaa speak. Now people are chanting “all voices matter.” Y’all. #Ferguson;
    Okay, the main speaker just said we are here to continue the message from around the country: “ALL LIVES MATTER.” Uh, wow. DC. #Ferguson;
    Y’all, one of the NAN organizers just told us we need a VIP badge to stand in this section. Oh. We didn’t know. DC. #Ferguson;
    It’s so disappointing to hear so many speakers say that this isn’t about black lives. DC. #Ferguson;
    “How is it possible to stand next to a few thousand people and feel nothing? This is crazy.” – protestor DC #Ferguson.

    Sick and tired of being sick and tired, with autoplay video.

    Protests surrounding the Grand Jury’s decision in the Eric Garner case, expanded overseas to London, continuing the conversation about race and social justice. Michael Eric Dyson, Tee Poe, Phillip Agnew and Peniel Joseph discuss.

  322. rq says

    McCullogh rears his head again: Ferguson prosecutor withheld key records

    In spite of St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s promises to make all witness testimony in the Michael Brown shooting case public to show the process was fair and impartial, McCulloch’s office now acknowledges that it kept some records secret at the behest of federal authorities who are still investigating the incident. […]

    A team of investigative reporters from around the country reviewed the transcripts released by McCulloch’s office, which included law enforcement interviews with 24 witnesses. Most conspicuous in its absence was the joint federal-county interview with the witness who had been closest to the deadly confrontation, Michael Brown’s friend Dorian Johnson.

    Transcripts of the grand jury proceedings indicate that interview was conducted on Aug. 13, four days after the shooting, and lasted more than two hours. Transcripts of that interview were provided to grand jurors, who then listened to a recording of it in its entirety, the records show.

    While McCulloch’s office provided the public with recordings of six different television interviews Johnson conducted with local and national media, there is no record of what Johnson told law enforcement prior to his grand jury testimony. Neither the audio recording, nor the transcript of Johnson’s FBI interview were included in the materials released.

    McCulloch repeatedly said that following witness testimony over time, to see if they changed their stories, was a critical part of measuring a witness’ veracity. During a Nov. 24 press conference, he listed several specific times when witnesses whose stories suggested Wilson had not been justified in using deadly force, altered their testimony after being challenged or after learning the results of autopsies. […]

    McCulloch’s office labeled the witness interview transcripts it released by witness number, up to Witness #64. But only 24 different witnesses’ interviews with law enforcement were included in the information released.

    After being asked about the missing interviews, Magee said the federal government specifically asked the county not to release records that are part of the FBI’s ongoing Civil Rights probe.

    “Those are not our records,” Magee said.

    And yet, KSDK’s investigative team found that more than half of the witness interviews that were made public were conducted by FBI agents or federal prosecutors. Three were joint county-federal interviews, just as Johnson’s was, and 10 of the 24 witnesses were interviewed exclusively by federal agents, with no county officials present.

    McCulloch said last month that all of the evidence and testimony gathered by county detectives was shared with federal authorities and vice-versa, but Magee said, “Whatever we released is not what the FBI had.”

    The Department of Justice declined to comment about what it instructed the county prosecutor to withhold from public release and why.

    Four mothers share pain of losing sons

    The mothers of these four unarmed black men and boys felled by bullets or excessive police force have no doubt their sons would still be alive if they were white. No question, they say. […]

    In their first interview together, Fulton was joined by Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden; Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice; and Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr. They spoke of reliving the horrific final moments of their son’s lives with each controversial death, of gaining strength from protesters and other supporters, of the importance of coming together to effect change.

    With non-autoplay video.

    One Police Plaza barricaded. Helmeted police on gaurd. There are 150-170 police immediately adjcent in front of 1PP;
    #Chicago cops have cut off every corner of Michigan & Pearson. No one demonstrating against police violence may move. #millionsmarchchi;
    Berkeley march on the move towards Oakland #berkeleyprotests #Justice4All #BlackLivesMatter | Pic @sheeewoof |.

  323. rq says

    I am hearing estimates over 50,000+ people at the #MillionsMarchNYC. This is not confirmed, but the march is over 30 blocks long…;
    Protesters holding up signs of Eric Gardner’s eyes is haunting. #MillionsMarchNYC #BlackLivesMatter ;
    (another view of the previous) Eric Garner’s eyes—brilliant, powerful imagery by organizers. Shots from #MillionsMarchNYC are instantly iconic.;
    It looks like the entire Boston police force has been deployed to this peaceful protest on church steps. #dontshoot ;
    Chinatown. DC. Shutdown. #Ferguson
    ;
    Large die-in happening as black youth read names. #MillionsMarchMpls #MillionsMarch .

  324. rq says

    Amazing: #MillionsMarchDC The view of Pennsylvania Ave. Wash DC | Photos: Saul Loeb | #Justice4All #BlackLivesMatter “;
    NewsRevo : #Chicago Protestors try to take to streets. At least 3 arrests #MillionsMarch;
    The #Justice4AllMarch was a short, slow walk sandwiched by speeches. Just totally different from other protests since the non-indictments.;
    Shut it down, shut it down. #Seattle #DayOfResistance;
    It is ESSENTIAL to note that #MillionsMarchNYC led and organized by black women @TheSynead and @UmaaraIynaas #MillionsMarch;
    Crowd in Washington Sq Pk 4 #MillionsMarchNYC #ICantBreathe #WeCantBreathe #BlackLivesMatter.

  325. rq says

    Houston Galleria Mall NO Protestors Welcome @deray @ShaunKing @Nettaaaaaaaa @akacharleswade @sarahkendzior Please RT;
    COPS ATTACK PROTESTERS MT @daneyvilla #ftp #MillionsMarchChi #MillionsMarch #BlackLivesMatter #ICantBreathe;
    #ICantBreathe #MillionsMarchNYC;
    Protesters at st. Louis medium security prison. Prisoners chanting back from their cells. #Ferguson;
    Live now in Washington, DC. No justice no peace, thousands joined. #ICantBreathe #MarchForJustice #BlackLivesMatter;
    So proud of NYC for coming out and marching for justice!!! #MillionsMarchNYC #JusticeLeagueNYC .

  326. rq says

    And I’ve said it many times, I think there might be a time for a culminating March. That wasn’t today. #DCFerguson;
    So, as we walk away, I am profoundly disappointed in Sharpton’s leadership. Today was not about the work. That is clear. #Ferguson;
    And I remain shocked at the incredible number of people who would not say that black lives matter. DC. #Ferguson;
    Protest. DC. #Ferguson;
    Today, there was so much possibility and so much promise. But today was a missed opportunity. And I’m sad. DC. #Ferguson;
    With that said, the DC organizers who are leading the organic protests are amazing. They give me hope. #Ferguson.

  327. rq says

    And to all the people telling me that we need to focus on “unity,” I hope you’re telling Sharpton the same thing. Chill. DC. #Ferguson;
    Don’t tell me that you value young people and you don’t work to build capacity. Speeches aren’t skill-building. DC. #Ferguskn;
    Today, there was so much possibility and so much promise. But today was a missed opportunity. And I’m sad. DC. #Ferguson;
    The front of #MillionsMarchNYC is at 14th & Broadway, and we’re filling the streets for BLOCKS! #ShutItDown;
    Powerful images coming in from #MillionsMarchNYC #BlackLivesMatter;
    We came out for Lennon Lacy in NC! RT #blacklivesmatter #Bladenboro @Dreamdefenders @MillionHoodies @deray .

  329. rq says

    18 #MillionsMarchNYC Photos That Prove Anger Over Police Brutality Isn’t Going Away

    #MillionsMarchNYC, a protest organized in mourning for people of color killed by the misuse of police force, has been strengthened by thousands of protesters who have joined the “Day of Anger” to demand justice for Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Akai Gurley and other victims. The action began in Washington Square Park at 2 p.m. and moved through Manhattan toward the New York Police Department headquarters, yielding breathtaking images along the way.

    Go look at the photos.

    What looks like thousands on the ground. “I’m minding my business, officer.” #MillionsMarchSF.

    Thousands march in New York to protest police brutality

    On Dec. 13, a large protest dubbed “Millions March NYC” attracted thousands of people calling for justice in deaths of Eric Garner and other unarmed black men. Demonstrators, walking behind large posters of Garner’s eyes, started at New York’s Washington Square Park and continued downtown to NYPD headquarters.

    More photos n shit at the link.

    Thousands Of Protesters Are Marching Nationwide Demanding “Justice For All”. There it is, “Justice for all” – moving focus from justice for black people. Hmph.

    The names and faces of the victims were everywhere. On signs, in chants, on clothing and pins. As the marchers filed out, away from the Capitol, back up Pennsylvania Avenue, they passed vendors selling shirts, hoodies, framed posters, 2015 calendars, gloves, lanyards, hand-warmers, key-chains—nearly all bearing “Hands up, don’t shoot” or “I can’t breathe” or “Black lives matter.”

    Pictures and links to more local summaries of the event at the link.

    Decolonizing Media, has that striking photo up.

  331. rq says

    Via Lynna, the LA Times link on the protests: Thousands march in Washington and New York to protest police violence.

    It was served up as a reminder on Twitter, so I serve it up as a reminder now: Women find their voice in Ferguson protest movement.

    If anything, the “generational divide” is characterized by a sense of paternalism and condescension masked as “advice.” #Ferguson;
    But I don’t generally subscribe to the “generational divide” narrative. I have seen all ages be incredibly powerful TOGETHER. #Ferguson.

    Thousands at the #Oakland Courthouse for #MillionsMarchOakland. Black and brown folks on the steps. #BlackLivesMatter.
    Protested with young women of the public health program from Columbia University #BlackLivesMatter .

  332. rq says

    The police shut down the highway for the protestors. Interesting. #DCFerguson;
    About 20 more police cars come. Highway shutdown. #dcferguson;
    In DC, the police give the protestors the ENTIRE street. It makes it a completely different experience. #DCFerguson;
    The police just made an “unlawful assembly” warning but without using those words. It was actually quite nice. #DCFerguson;
    The DC protestors said the police normally give them 3 warnings. Wow. #DCFerguson.

  334. rq says

    So Al Sharpton organized the DC event. Then he left quickly.
    Also, there was an issue during the speaking part, where Ferguson protestors were invited on-stage but weren’t allowed to speak – and were shepherded off by Sharpton’s daughter, who says: @JustTori__ @Nettaaaaaaaa IT WASNT YOUR TURN! You all were actually slated to speak way later, we should respect protocol and each other!

    So yeah, there’s a bunch of people not too thrilled with the Sharpton’s right now.

  335. rq says

    Samuel L. Jackson challenges fellow celebrities, and here’s the video itself: Samuel L Jackson Just Challenged Celebrities to Call Out the “Violence of the Racist Police” , which links to this article: Samuel L. Jackson Just Challenged Celebrities to Call Out the “Violence of the Racist Police”

    In a bold move, heavyweight actor Samuel L. Jackson has issued a call to action, similar to that of the ice bucket challenge, but for police.

    Saturday, on his facebook page, Jackson offers to “all [the] celebrities that poured ice water on [their] head, a chance to do something else.”

    Jackson challenges celebrities to sing the “We ain’t gonna stop, till people are free” song.

    The song starts off with a reference to Eric Garner’s last words.

    I can hear my neighbor cryin’ ‘I can’t breathe’

    Now I’m in the struggle and I can’t leave.

    Callin’ out the violence of the racist police.

    We ain’t gonna stop, till people are free.

    We ain’t gonna stop, till people are free.

    Jackson then ends the 47 second challenge asking celebrities to “come on, sing it out.”

    Today showed me that some people like “young people leading” as long as it mimics patterns from the past. That’s not support. #Ferguson;
    Today made it clear that if we had needed “permission” from our elders, this movement never would’ve started. #Ferguson;
    @deray it’s always been that way. Elders didn’t want the kids protesting in Selma and MLK wasn’t with the freedom rides.

  338. says

    The Two Races in America

    There are two races in America. The race I’m running is the 100m. It’s tiring (I didn’t bother training properly), it’s intense but if I keep hauling my bones along eventually I’ll get to the end. Even if I don’t, someone can probably help or carry me over the line. I’ll need to make a big effort, at the end I’ll be short of breath and exhausted, but I will have run the race.

    But next to me there’s another race going on. From high above the stadium, in the TV blimp or police helicopter, both races look pretty much the same in a bird’s eye view. But come down closer until you can see the faces of the runners and feel the texture of the track: These two races are different.

    The race next to me is the 110m hurdles. It is slightly longer. It is harder fought. It involves more skill and nerve to negotiate. If you hit the first hurdle and stumble, it hurts but you may stay on your feet. But hitting the second, third, fourth hurdle, at some point you may well be taken down and not be able to get up at all. By then you will be hurting and winded. You can’t breathe. By then the race is lost anyway. A few adept runners may be able to excel and get safely over all the hurdles, may be able to run that extra 10m to get to the finish line. But helping or carrying someone to the end of this race, hauling them over the hurdles, is a whole different proposition.

    In one race the starter pistol starts the race. In the other it takes aim.

    Back at the end of my race, the 100m, the runners (who all finished) are standing around. Most are silent as a few loudly run their mouths:
    “Why is everyone talking about how hard the 110m hurdles is?”
    “Our race was tough too!”
    “We had to run hard!”
    “We had to put effort in! Nobody did us any favors!”
    “If they’re complaining so much why don’t they just come run this race? They’re just being lazy”
    “If it will stop their complaining, let’s just reduce the number of hurdles from 10 to, say, 5!”

    Or maybe everyone should be allowed to run the same race with the same rules and the same challenges.

    #EricGarner #TamirRice #JohnCrawford #MichaelBrown #Ferguson #FergusonDecision #alivewhileblack #BlackLivesMatter #CrimingWhileWhite #ICantBreathe #NotOneMore #gunsense #p2 #uniteblue

  339. says

    An open letter of love to black students.

    We are Black professors.

    We are daughters, sons, brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews, godchildren, grandfathers, grandmothers, fathers, and mothers.

    We’re writing to tell you we see you and hear you.

    We know the stories of dolls hanging by nooses, nigger written on dry erase boards and walls, stories of nigger said casually at parties by White students too drunk to know their own names but who know their place well enough to know nothing will happen if they call you out your name, stories of nigger said stone sober, stories of them calling you nigger using every other word except what they really mean to call you, stories of you having to explain your experience in classrooms—your language, your dress, your hair, your music, your skin—yourself, of you having to fight for all of us in classrooms where you are often the only one or one of a few, stories of you choosing silence as a matter of survival.

    Sometimes we’re in those classrooms with you.

    We know there is always more that people don’t see or hear or want to know, but we see you. We hear you.

    In our mostly White classrooms we work with some of you, you who tell us other professors don’t see, don’t hear you. You, who come to our offices with stories of erasure that make you break down. They don’t see me, you say. They don’t hear me. We know and don’t know how to hold your tears.

    How do we hold your tears, and your anger?

    You are our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, our mothers, our fathers, our godchildren. You, with your stories of erasure break our hearts because you are family, because your stories of erasure ultimately are stories of violence, because your stories mirror our experiences, past and present.

    Right now. This is all happening now. Every day. We know this.

    We want you to hear.

    You tell us your stories and sometimes we tell you our own stories of cops who stop us on the way to work, of grandparents born in Jim Crow, of parents born during segregation into an economic reality that made them encourage us to get solid jobs, of parents born outside the United States who came face-to-face with the harsh reality of U.S. anti-Blackness, how we chose institutions where we often feel alone. We tell you stories of almost dropping out of school, stories of working harder than anyone else even when it felt like it was killing us, even when it is killing us. We tell you we know historically and predominantly White universities might let you/us in, but they don’t care much about retaining us no matter how many times they misuse pretty words like diversity, or insult us with the hard slap of minority.

    We tell you about the underground network of folks who helped us, the people who wrote us letters, the offices we cried in, the times we were silent, the times we spoke up, the times we thought we wouldn’t make it, the people who told us to hold on. We tell you over and over about the railroad of Black professors and other professors of color who we call when we know one of us is in need. We remind you skinfolk isn’t always kinfolk. We tell you to be careful. We tell you to take risks. We tell you, guard your heart. We tell you, keep your heart open. We tell you to hold on. Hold on, we say, to you, to us, because holding on to each other is everything, often the only thing.

    Hold on.

    We want a future for you, for us right now.

    We write this is in solidarity with the families of Tamir Rice, Mike Brown, Renisha McBride, Trayvon Martin, Rekia Boyd, Aiyana Stanley Jones, and so many others who they are killing, so many others who should have had the chance to be in our classrooms, who should have had the chance to simply be.

    We write this in solidarity with Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and too many others stolen and gone, too many others who fought for us to be in this privileged place where we still have to fight for justice.

    We write this in solidarity with The Combahee River Collective and #BlackLivesMatter who knew and know we have to fight for and love all of us if any one of us is going to survive.

    We write this in solidarity with you, Black students, here and elsewhere, and with those on the ground for over 100 days, four and a half hours, two seconds.

    The living and the dead. We hear you. We see you.

    In our classes we’ll continue to do what we’ve always done: teach about race, anti-Blackness, and White Supremacy. This has and will continue to put us in positions we have to defend. This has and will continue to compromise our jobs, our health, our relationships with other people who profess to be our colleagues. This has and will compromise relationships with partners who tell us with love we need to set better boundaries.

    We’re trying.

    We study ourselves. We study, we live Black lives. We organize. We strategize. We march. We teach to nurture and resist. We don’t always talk about the letters we write to administrators, the angry emails we send, the committees and task forces we serve on, the department meetings where we question and push for more, the colleagues who question our research, our presence, our skin, our manner of being. We don’t always talk about the weight of pushing for more, more being basic equity, more being the right to exist without explanation or apology, more being the right to love and be loved.

    What we do is not enough. It’s never enough, but we’ll keep on. We’ll keep finding ways to do more. For all of us.

    We’re supposed to say views expressed herein are ours alone, but we believe that truth to be self-evident.

    Some people who share our views will not sign this but they’re still with us. The living and the dead.

    We’ve never been alone.

    You already know your life matters. Know we’re fighting with you and for you. With all of us. For all of us.

    We got you.

    We see you. We hear you. We love you.

    The letter was signed by 1,046 Black professors.

  341. says

    rq @333:
    Here’s that NYT article:

    I was born in 1970, on the heels of the civil rights movement. I didn’t witness my parents’ struggles and their parents’ struggles before them. What I knew of darker days I learned in school, read in books or saw on television. Therefore, as a matter of circumstance, there existed a space between that reality and me. It was more pedagogical than experiential.

    As a young man, I could connect my current circumstances and present societal conditions intellectually to previous ones and form a long-arching narrative of undeniable progress from slavery to Reconstruction to Jim Crow to mass incarceration to me. But that narrative was developed in the mind. Not, more innately, written by personal tribulation or authored by the shock and horror of real events happening in real time — my time — so that the mind and spirit could unite in moral outrage and the voice lift in anguished outcry.

    That changed when I reached a series of racial-justice maturation moments, two of which are particularly relevant to our current cultural discussion in this country.

    One came in 1991, when I was 20 years old. Rodney King was savagely beaten — on video — by Los Angeles police officers. The video showed “officers taking turns swinging their nightsticks like baseball bats at the man and kicking him in the head as he lay on the ground early Sunday,” as The New York Times put it at the time.

    Earlier in the day, before the beating, one of the officers who participated had typed a message on a computer terminal in a squad car, referring to a domestic dispute among blacks this way: “Sounds almost as exciting as our last call. It was right out of ‘Gorillas in the Mist.’ ”

    One of the officers reportedly said of King and the beating during an internal affair interview: “It’s like he’s looking at me, doesn’t see me, he’s just looking right through me,” reasoning that King was under the influence of PCP. (Testing of King showed no PCP.)

    This is reminiscent of the dehumanizing language used by Darren Wilson, who shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson,Mo. Wilson testified about Brown: “He looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked.”

    The four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted of assault.

    Six years after those acquittals, a black man named James Byrd Jr. was attacked by three white men, beaten, urinated on, tied by the ankle to the back of their truck, dragged on the asphalt and decapitated by a culvert.

    After that, I was acutely aware of what W. E. B. Du Bois, in “The Souls of Black Folk,” called the “double consciousness”:

    “One ever feels his two-ness, — an American, a Negro; two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

    After that, all innocence inculcated and nurtured by the distance of history and the dreamy visions of perpetual progress melted. A new, harsher sensibility and an endless searching for social justice formed in its place.

    I knew then that whatever progress might have been made in previous generations would not continue as a matter of perpetual momentum, but rather as a matter of constant pushing.

    So I deeply understand and appreciate the feelings of the protestors — particularly the young ones — who have taken to the streets with outrage and outcry in cities across this great country over the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases.

    I even understand the sentiments, recorded by recent polls, that a majority in this country believe race relations are getting worse and that more than a third think police-minority relations are getting worse.

    Obviously, in the long sweep of history, no one could make such a claim. Race relations are certainly not worse than they were 50 or 100 or 400 years ago, but there is nagging frustration that things haven’t progressed as fast as many had hoped. And change, rightly or wrongly, is often measure relative to the recent past rather than to the distant one.

    Furthermore, for young people in their late teens or early 20s, like my children, whose first real memory of presidential politics was the election of the first African-American president, any seeming racial retrenchment is jarring, and for them, over the course of their lifetimes, things can feel like they are getting worse.

    This is their experiential moment, that moment when the weight becomes too much, when the abstract becomes real, when expectations of continual, inexorable progress slam into the back of a slow-moving reality, plagued by fits and starts and sometimes prone to occasional regressions.

    It is that moment when consciousness is raised and unwavering optimism falters, when the jagged slope of truth replaces the soft slope of fantasy, when the natural recalcitrance of youth gathers onto itself the force of purpose and righteousness, when we realize that fighting is the only way forward, that equality must be won — by every generation — because it will never be freely granted.

    This is a moment of civic awakening and moral maturing for a generation, and they are stepping boldly into their moment. Yes, they are struggling to divine the most effective way forward, but they will not accept being dragged backward. It is a profound moment to which we should gladly bear witness.

  342. Al Dente says

    rq and Tony,

    I’ve never posted on this thread but I read it every day. Thank you for keeping it up and posting important news on it.

  344. rq says

    A Shooter, His Victim and Race

    Manuel fired the bullet when he was barely 13, and he fit all too neatly into racial stereotypes, especially that of the black predator who had to be locked away forever. One of the greatest racial disparities in America is in the justice system, and fear of young black criminals like Manuel helped lead to mass incarceration policies that resulted in a sixfold increase in the number of Americans in prison after 1970. Yet, as his one-time victim points out (speaking with a reconstructed jaw), it’s complicated. […]

    Although he had just turned 13, prosecutors charged him as an adult, and the judge sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole. Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, the lawyer now representing him, says that every single child 13 or 14 years old sentenced to life without parole for a nonhomicide has been a person of color.

    Manuel found himself the youngest, tiniest person in a men’s prison — by his account, abused and fearful. One day as his second Christmas behind bars approached, he placed a collect phone call to Baigrie.

    Baigrie debated whether to accept the charges. She said her dentist had wept when he had seen her jaw, for the bullet had torn out five teeth and much of her gum. She faced 10 years of repeated, excruciating surgeries, requiring tissue from her palate to rebuild her gum.

    Still, she was curious, so she accepted the charges. Manuel said he wanted to apologize for the shooting. Awkwardly, he wished her and her family a Merry Christmas.

    “Ian,” she asked bluntly, “why did you shoot me?”

    “It was a mistake,” he answered timidly.

    Later he sent her a card showing a hand reaching through prison bars to offer a red rose. Baigrie didn’t know whether to be moved or revolted. “I was in such pain,” Baigrie remembers. “I couldn’t eat. I was angry. But I’d go back and forth. He was just a kid.”

    Thus began a correspondence that has lasted through the decades. “You are about one in a million who would write to a person that’s tried to take their life,” he wrote in one letter.

    “I wish I was free,” he wrote in another. “To protect you from that evil world out there.” […]

    Baigrie was also troubled by the racial dimensions of the case. “If he was a cute white boy at 13, with little dimples and blue eyes, there’s no way this would have happened,” she says. […]

    Yet she persevered and advocated for his early release. When the Supreme Court threw out life-without-parole sentences for juveniles who had not committed murder, she testified at his resentencing and urged mercy. It didn’t work: Manuel was sentenced to 65 years. He is now scheduled to be released in 2031.

    Manuel, now 37, did not adjust well to prison, and his prison disciplinary record covers four pages of single-spaced entries. He was placed in solitary confinement at age 15 and remained there almost continually until he was 33. For a time, he cut himself to relieve the numbness. He repeatedly attempted suicide.

    Returned to the general prison population, Manuel did better. He earned his G.E.D. with exceptional marks, including many perfect scores. He drafts poems and wrote an autobiographical essay, which Baigrie posted on her Facebook page. His mother, father and brother are now all dead; the only “family” he has left is Baigrie, who sometimes regards him as a wayward foster son.

    Race in America is a dispiriting topic, a prism to confirm our own biases. Some will emphasize the unarguable brutality of Manuel’s crime, while others, myself included, will focus on the harshness of a sentence that probably would not have been given to a white 13-year-old. In other columns, I’ve focused on racism that holds back perfectly innocent people because of their skin color; those are the easiest cases, while Ian is a reminder that racial injustice also affects those who made horrific mistakes or committed brutal crimes. It’s still injustice. […]

    Overcoming the racial gulf in this country will be a long and painful task, but maybe we can learn something from Baigrie’s empathy.

    “Walk a mile in his shoes,” she says. And if Debbie Baigrie and Ian Manuel can unite and make common cause, linked by a bond of humanity that transcends the faint scar on her cheek, then maybe there’s hope for us all.

    Unequal Treatment of 2 Protesters in Eric Garner Case, One White and One Black

    At least on Staten Island, it appears neglect of a dog is taken more seriously under some circumstances than neglect of a human. And the perception that a black human does not rate the same deference as an animal, much less a white person, has brought thousands of people to the street across the country.

    Two of those were Shawn Torres, 23, and Benjamin Perry, 24, both graduate students at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan. They took part in rolling demonstrations Friday night, as a cold, soaking rain swept across the city. At the end of the evening, they briefly blockaded the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive near Delancey Street and both were arrested, as they expected to be.

    But Mr. Perry, a white man, and Mr. Torres, a black man, say what happened to them showed disparate treatment in subtle and stark ways. The president of the seminary has written to Mayor Bill de Blasio to suggest that the experiences of the students were “an object lesson” for retraining officers; the Police Department said it would have to review the details of the matter.

    Standing on the road with arms linked just after 11 p.m., they heard a police sergeant’s final warning but had already decided they would disobey.

    “We were peacefully offering ourselves up,” Mr. Perry said.

    “Two officers grabbed me,” Mr. Torres said, and cuffed him with the plastic ties. “In the process, one of them ended up pushing Ben away. This is when the difference comes in.”

    “I put my hands behind my head, waiting,” Mr. Perry said. “Another officer grabbed me and threw me face first on the ground. He put his head next to my ears and whispered, ‘Just get out of here.’ ”

    Mr. Torres, meanwhile, had been deposited in the back of a police van. “I was the first one,” he said.

    Mr. Perry climbed to his feet. “I was bewildered, but I wasn’t going to leave Shawn,” he said. “I just stood there and waited. In 15 to 20 seconds, another officer saw me looking around. He cuffed me, but he didn’t want to process me. He took me around to other cops, saying, ‘Do you want to take this guy? I don’t want to be out that late.’ He was shopping me around.” Eventually he found an officer to escort Mr. Perry.

    They were driven to Police Headquarters, where their belts and shoelaces were confiscated. Several buttons with pins were removed from Mr. Torres’s clothing — “the officer told me they were weapons,” he said — but identical ones were left on his white schoolmate. Mr. Perry insisted on making a phone call, but the phone was dead. He was able to prevail on his arresting officer to contact a hotline at the seminary for the protests.

    Not so for Mr. Torres. “I asked my arresting officer three times to make a call for me, but he would not,” Mr. Torres said. […]

    Was it possible that the differences in their treatment stemmed not from their races but from the disposition of the officers who arrested them? “No,” Mr. Torres said firmly. “Black and white bodies are not treated equally.”

    The contrast is so stark.

    People act like Black women only protest bc we’re the mothers/sisters/wives of Black men.Like we’re not being killed by the police ourselves.

    Nashville;
    Boston;
    The NACCP shut me & my crew down as we did the “shut it down” chants I learned in #ferguson as we marched for #LennonLacy. So disappointed.

  345. rq says

    Black Lives Matter.

    The comment that “Ferguson didn’t start the movement” is perhaps the most fascinating statement of exploitation/erasure I’ve yet heard.;
    Injustice existed well before August. But in August, #Ferguson began a movement rooted in protest that was new for my generation.;
    So yes, I now have a problem with Sharpton. To attempt to erase Ferguson while simultaneously exploiting it epitomizes spiritual corruption.

    Hannity’s favorite witness for Darren Wilson is a self-admitted racist with severe memory loss [NOTE: People on twitter have called out discussion of Witness #40 as being rather offensively ablist, so putting this up as a warning for that. There are other reasons why Witness #40 could be discredited that don’t rely on a diagnosis of mental illness.]

    Sean Hannity, with a popular drive-time radio show and highly rated prime-time television broadcast, is one of the two or three most important voices in conservative America. Love him or hate him, what he says matters to millions of Americans. What he says over and over again, particularly to an audience that often sees him as a primary source of news, actually matters a great deal. While he may not shape culture for you, he shapes and informs culture for millions of Americans.

    This is why, among many reasons, it is so troubling that he regularly quotes and leans on one particular “witness” in the August 9 shooting death of Ferguson teenager Mike Brown by Officer Darren Wilson. This so-called witness, a middle-aged white woman, known only to us as “Witness #40,” openly stated to FBI investigators a litany of bizarre and disturbing facts about herself, including that she regularly calls African Americans “niggers and apes,” helped start a support group for Darren Wilson encouraging kids to make him Christmas cards, and that she only happened to be on Canfield Drive—which is not even in the town she lives in—the exact moment Darren Wilson killed Mike Brown, on a whim “to understand the black race better so I can stop calling Blacks niggers and start calling them people.” […]

    Witness #40 was interviewed for the first time by FBI for an hour and 38 minutes on October 22—over two months after Mike Brown was killed. In spite of how absolutely ridiculous the testimony is from start to finish, the grand jury listened to audio of the entire interview. The transcript of the interview begins on Page 86 here. Feel free to study it for yourself and see just how hard it is to locate even one true statement in the entire testimony.

    Mind you, this is the witness most often quoted and relied on by Sean Hannity.

    What follows is a page-by-page analysis of Witness #40’s testimony.

    Why does Sean Hannity quote this witness so frequently?

    Was Hannity aware of her racist statements and her complete lack of credibility? If not, has he studied her testimony even a little bit? Her racism is obvious. Did her racist statements make her more credible in his eyes? Whatever the case, Hannity has chosen to bank his narrative view of what happened on August 9 between Mike Brown and Darren Wilson greatly on her completely unreliable testimony.

    —
    UPDATE @ 11:19PST on 12/12/14

    Although the witness in this story declared before the grand jury “I’m bipolar” and was questioned about possibly having some type of manic delusion which caused her to believe she was at the scene when the evidence suggests she wasn’t, many found my inclusion of her bipolar disorder diagnosis in the original title as distasteful and irrelevant. I appreciated the sensitivity and learned a lot in the process.

    Ultimately, while I believe the mental health of this witness, including her claim to have had a traumatic brain injury and chronic memory loss, is actually very relevant, I’d never want to belittle people facing mental illness in general.

    Thanks for the response.

    So… There you have it?

    Here’s a link to the Chris Hayes video: MSNBC Chris Hayes on Ferguson Witness #40.

  346. rq says

    Black Lives Matter.

    The comment that “Ferguson didn’t start the movement” is perhaps the most fascinating statement of exploitation/erasure I’ve yet heard.;
    Injustice existed well before August. But in August, #Ferguson began a movement rooted in protest that was new for my generation.;
    So yes, I now have a problem with Sharpton. To attempt to erase Ferguson while simultaneously exploiting it epitomizes spiritual corruption.

    Hannity’s favorite witness for Darren Wilson is a self-admitted racist with severe memory loss [NOTE: People on twitter have called out discussion of Witness #40 as being rather offensively ablist, so putting this up as a warning for that. There are other reasons why Witness #40 could be discredited that don’t rely on a diagnosis of mental illness.]

    Sean Hannity, with a popular drive-time radio show and highly rated prime-time television broadcast, is one of the two or three most important voices in conservative America. Love him or hate him, what he says matters to millions of Americans. What he says over and over again, particularly to an audience that often sees him as a primary source of news, actually matters a great deal. While he may not shape culture for you, he shapes and informs culture for millions of Americans.

    This is why, among many reasons, it is so troubling that he regularly quotes and leans on one particular “witness” in the August 9 shooting death of Ferguson teenager Mike Brown by Officer Darren Wilson. This so-called witness, a middle-aged white woman, known only to us as “Witness #40,” openly stated to FBI investigators a litany of bizarre and disturbing facts about herself, including that she regularly calls African Americans “n*gg*rs and apes,” helped start a support group for Darren Wilson encouraging kids to make him Christmas cards, and that she only happened to be on Canfield Drive—which is not even in the town she lives in—the exact moment Darren Wilson killed Mike Brown, on a whim “to understand the black race better so I can stop calling Blacks n*gg*rs and start calling them people.” […]

    Witness #40 was interviewed for the first time by FBI for an hour and 38 minutes on October 22—over two months after Mike Brown was killed. In spite of how absolutely ridiculous the testimony is from start to finish, the grand jury listened to audio of the entire interview. The transcript of the interview begins on Page 86 here. Feel free to study it for yourself and see just how hard it is to locate even one true statement in the entire testimony.

    Mind you, this is the witness most often quoted and relied on by Sean Hannity.

    What follows is a page-by-page analysis of Witness #40’s testimony.

    Why does Sean Hannity quote this witness so frequently?

    Was Hannity aware of her racist statements and her complete lack of credibility? If not, has he studied her testimony even a little bit? Her racism is obvious. Did her racist statements make her more credible in his eyes? Whatever the case, Hannity has chosen to bank his narrative view of what happened on August 9 between Mike Brown and Darren Wilson greatly on her completely unreliable testimony.

    —
    UPDATE @ 11:19PST on 12/12/14

    Although the witness in this story declared before the grand jury “I’m bipolar” and was questioned about possibly having some type of manic delusion which caused her to believe she was at the scene when the evidence suggests she wasn’t, many found my inclusion of her bipolar disorder diagnosis in the original title as distasteful and irrelevant. I appreciated the sensitivity and learned a lot in the process.

    Ultimately, while I believe the mental health of this witness, including her claim to have had a traumatic brain injury and chronic memory loss, is actually very relevant, I’d never want to belittle people facing mental illness in general.

    Thanks for the response.

    So… There you have it?

    Here’s a link to the Chris Hayes video: MSNBC Chris Hayes on Ferguson Witness #40.

  347. rq says

    McCullogh, McCullogh. Missouri Prosecutor Releases More Ferguson Grand Jury Evidence

    Prosecutor Bob McCulloch — who had promised to unseal all evidence submitted to the grand jury when he announced on Nov. 24 their decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson, the police offer who killed Brown, setting off a wave of protests across the U.S. — apologized for “inadvertently” omitting to release the documents.

    “Clearly, I inadvertently omitted some material,” McCulloch said in a statement. “I apologize for any confusion this may have caused.”

    Among the 23 newly-released documents is a transcript of a police interview with Dorian Johnson, a friend of Brown’s, who was with the unarmed teenager when he was shot and killed. […]

    In another of a the newly released documents, a Ferguson told detectives that Officer Wilson was nicknamed “Ears” in the neighborhood, “cause his ears big”. Wilson was said to have a reputation in the community for “messing people around” and “pulling people over.”

    25,000 March in New York to Protest Police Violence

    More than 25,000 people marched through Manhattan on Saturday, police officials said, in the largest protest in New York City since a grand jury declined this month to indict an officer in the death of an unarmed black man on Staten Island.

    Just before 2 p.m. they began spilling out of Washington Square Park, and after an hour and a half, the park still had not emptied. Walking north toward 34th Street, the protesters filled the cold air by chanting “I can’t breathe,” the last words of Eric Garner, the Staten Island man, who died from a chokehold after an officer dragged him to the ground on a hot day in July.

    The protest, which at times stretched for over a mile, highlighted growing anger nationwide over recent police deaths, including that of Mr. Garner, 43, who officers accused of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.

    Though the march was largely peaceful, after it had run its scheduled course, some demonstrators continued on over the Brooklyn Bridge, where two officers were assaulted, the police said. They were recovering in the hospital. The police also said they found a bag of hammers on the bridge. […]

    The march was led by the families of a number of unarmed black men who died at the hands of police officers, including Ramarley Graham and Sean Bell, who were both killed in the city. But protesters insisted that the movement was as much about those deaths as it was about the daily indignity of being confronted by the police for, they said, little to no reason.

    Denise Mayer, 64, of Montclair, N.J., said she had marched in protests over the Vietnam War, but that this movement was different. “This is more of an everyday frustration that the violence seems to be escalating,” she said, holding a poster of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

    They moved through the streets, pushing children in strollers, waving black liberation flags and carrying signs. They also chanted “hands up, don’t shoot,” the rallying cry in Ferguson, Mo., over the police shooting death in August of another unarmed black man, Michael Brown, 18. […]

    The march stopped in front of Police Headquarters, with protesters screaming at the assembled officers and beating on drums. Several relatives of those who had been killed by officers spoke. Among them was Constance Malcolm, the mother of Ramarley Graham, who was unarmed when he was killed in the bathroom of his Bronx apartment in 2012. “We must get justice for our loved ones,” she said.

    Some protesters who broke away from the crowd sought to stop traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, but they were countered by hundreds of police officers, who tried to divert them.

    In a call-and-response with the demonstrators, an organizer shouted, “Are we done yet? No! Shut this city down.”

    Later, they brought bridge traffic from Manhattan to a stop, and unfurled a banner reading, “When we breathe, we breathe together.” They locked arms and formed a chain across the lanes.

    The protesters then continued slowly into Brooklyn, chanting “You serve us” in front of the 75th Precinct station house before arriving around midnight at the Louis H. Pink Houses, where Akai Gurley, 28, an unarmed black man, was killed by an officer on Nov. 20.

    Invoking his memory, they observed a moment of silence.

    Here’s a photo of that: Moment of silence for #AkaiGurley in front of 75th Precinct, where cop who killed him works. #MillionsMarchNYC .

    Reminder: Currently in #Ferguson, I understand that there are FORTY protesters STILL LOCKED UP from protests because they can’t afford bail. Going to post the bail fund link again next time it comes up, because .@prisonculture @mollycrabapple jail support is actively working on these cases. Jail support needs more volunteers AND more money.

    Little Rock.

  348. rq says

    Charlotte Hornets wear “I can’t breathe” t-shirts. All of them.

    Couple more photos with thoughts on yesterday:
    Why are there VIPs when we are fighting for equality & freedom? @Nettaaaaaaaa One of the VIP badges from earlier;
    orange is the new black cast participating in #MillionMarchNYC (for all you OitNB fans out there).

    FBI to Investigate Hanging Death of North Carolina Black Teen That Was Ruled a Suicide

    The FBI has finally agreed to investigate the death of a black North Carolina teenager who was found hanging from a swing set in a trailer park. The move comes after months in which Lennon Lacy’s mom, Claudia Lacy, has raised questions about why authorities seemed so eager to quickly declare the August death a suicide even though certain factors just don’t seem to make sense. For one thing, the dog leash and belt that Lacy allegedly used to hang himself did not belong to him. The FBI agreed to get involved after the NAACP raised questions. But they’re hardly alone. The local coroner has also publicly wondered whether the death was really a suicide even though he signed a death certificate stating just that.

    “When I saw him, I just knew automatically he didn’t do that to himself,” Claudia Lacy told the Associated Press. “If he was going to harm himself, his demeanor would have changed. His whole routine, everything, his attitude, everything would have changed.”

    Maybe she wouldn’th ave known, but I’m certain the case has to be investigated, because some things jsut don’t add up.

    Thousands march to protest against police brutality in major US cities (again, note: police brutality, no specifics on black lives – interesting erasure of the whole point of the exercise).

    In New York, thousands marched from Washington Square Park uptown, via 6th Avenue, before turning downtown to progress along Broadway and to NYPD headquarters at One Police Plaza. Later, after darkness had fallen, protesters attempted to stop traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.

    In Washington, throngs of protesters – black, white, young and old – wound their way down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol on a chilly December day. Among them were around 400 protesters who came by bus from Ferguson, the site of Brown’s death in August and sizeable protests since.

    Near the Capitol, the veteran civil rights campaigner Reverend Al Sharpton was joined onstage by relatives of men killed by law enforcement officers.

    Those represented by family members included Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old shot who was dead by a white police officer in Ferguson in August; Garner, 43, who was killed in July after a police officer on Staten Island placed him in a banned chokehold; Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old shot dead by police in Cleveland in November; Akai Gurley, a 28-year-old shot dead in Brooklyn last month; Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old shot dead by a neighborhood watch leader in 2012 in Florida; and Amadou Diallo, who was shot 41 times by New York police officers in 1999. […]

    In Oakland, the mother of Oscar Grant, a young black man whose fatal encounter with an transit police officer in 2009 inspired the recent film Fruitvale Station, spoke to a crowd gathered outside the Alameda county court house.

    “We want officers to be held accountable for their actions… [to] feel that pain just as we have to feel it,” Wanda Johnson said.

    The Oakland march was estimated to be 3,500-strong.

    In Washington, Sharpton electrified a larger audience, as he has done many times this year at funerals and protests.

    “We don’t come to Washington as shooters and chokers,” he shouted. “We come as the shot and the choked, asking you to help deal with the American citizens who can’t breathe in their own communities. […]

    Protesters leading the way carried signs that combined to display Eric Garner’s eyes. Estimates of the size of the crowd varied widely, between 10,000 and 50,000. Before the protest reached the Brooklyn Bridge police, who did not offer a crowd figure, said no arrests had been made.

    Four young boys carrying signs that said “Stop the racist killer cops!” told the Guardian they decided to join the protest after hearing that fellow students in Brooklyn had been arrested during a earlier protest in Times Square.

    “We’re hear marching for justice,” Gilead, 13, told the Guardian. Eli, 13, added: “What’s happening is not right.”

    Huh. I had an interview with a white rapper and I was told not to ask about Ferguson. We need their voices and opinions. This is Hip Hop.;
    And no, I’m not angry and I do not hate Sharpton or his daughters. I hate revisionist history, erasure, and exploitation. #Ferguson.

  349. rq says

    Previous in moderation, mostly stuff on yesterday, so no biggie.

    Comment on the DC cop method of clearing the highway in advance of protest:
    When out of town organizers come to DC they’re amazed by the latitude MPD gives protests–when you live here, the judo utility gets clear.;
    They give us the road, the time, and the warnings prior to arrest that police in most cities don’t give–DC protesters WON those concessions;
    But these concessions have turned DC protests into mobile “free-speech zones.” Walled gardens of dissent.
    So yes, it removes protest from the eyes of those meant to be disrupted – who are disrupted nevertheless, of course, but without the visual, personal, impact of being THERE when it happens. Interesting, that.

    One more on Sharpton (this is all out of order, sorry): And now one of Sharpton’s daughters, who was actually really nice in person, is now saying that the movement didn’t start in #Ferguson.
    “This flag represents the slavery and oppression of black people!” and Oakland;
    Denver.

  350. rq says

    Okay, that’s two in moderation. Ick. 6, not 7. :P The previous has an interesting view on the DC protest march, where cops closed the highway for protestors to march on, and the impact (or lack thereof) that has on the whole reason for protesting.
    Then some more pictures.

    The parents of Black girls &women killed by police..where are fundraisers for them? Are they seeing & feeling our love for their children?

    Outside of NYU #MillionsMarchNYC #BlackLivesMatter

    The 5 Worst States for Black Americans: Pennsylvania, Illinois, Rhode Island, Minnesota (PZ take heed!), Wisconsin. Looks at home ownership, incarceration, unemployment vs. black unemployment, etc. With commentary, though it seems immune to copypasta.

  352. rq says

    Wow. “@PrairieDawn1: Asked by HPD to leave Galleria bc my shirt was inappropriate ”;
    Oh, one last point about the #JusticeForAll march itself: Even the ’63 MOW included a “Tribute To Negro Women Fighters for Freedom.”
    Asking white people to fall back and play a supporting role at a march about black lives is not prejudice or divisive or racist.;
    Be mad if you want about what happened yesterday. I’m mad about Mike, Kajieme, Vonderrit, Eric, Tamir, Sheneque,;
    We hold each other accountable. And that’s why we will hold the older leaders accountable as well.;
    Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson can not co-opt STL and that’s why they spend NO TIME there. None.

  353. rq says

    You think I have a problem saying Al Sharpton ain’t saving us?!? Ha! OR ANYBODY ELSE IN STL?!;
    Al Sharpton is a lot of folks hero. And sorry, not sorry. If we would’ve waited for Al? This movement would’ve been over on August 11th.
    (These last four should actually be read in reverse order.)

    A leaderless movement now, is colliding with the civil rights movement of the 60’s where everyone wanted to be in the front.;
    If the arc of the universe is long, but bends toward justice, then we don’t get distracted by an offshoot here or there. We stay on the arc.;
    “In streets I’m getting to know by heart,” by Danielle Spradley, after Roque Dalton at @madartstl (awesome painting at this link);
    Things I’m seeing: “Don’t say black lives matter — ALL lives matter! Don’t worry about #Ferguson — it’s national!” #SMH.

  354. rq says

    What is obsession with #Ferguson “youth”? 20s and 30s not that young. Old enough to have life experience informing political consciousness.;
    Interesting that #Ferguson protesters in 20s/30s called “youth” while Michael Brown, who was actually a youth, portrayed as menacing adult.

    Going to TW this one for discussion of rape: Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, and the Problem of Racism in Rape Culture

    No matter how much Annie Hall comforted me during moments of grief, no matter how much it taught me about writing, about storytelling: it doesn’t matter. I believe Dylan Farrow, and that means that any respect I once had for Woody Allen or his oeuvre is gone.

    Just now, as I type these words, new allegations are being published regarding another beloved titan of comedy. Bill Cosby stands accused by several women, all alleging that he groped, drugged, sexually assaulted, or raped them. In the wake of this storm, NBC and Netflix have canceled plans for new projects with Cosby, and TV Land has pulled the legendary Cosby Show from its line-up.

    The message to Cosby’s alleged victims has been loud, and clear: we believe you, and your safety means more than his legacy.

    Well, great. Am I supposed to laud NBC for fighting rape culture when, less than a year ago, they aired a Golden Globes ceremony which featured Woody Allen receiving a lifetime achievement award? Does Netflix get feminist kudos for cancelling Cosby’s special when Annie Hall and Manhattan and half the Allen catalogue is still available for instant streaming?

    Dylan Farrow published her allegations in the New York Times nine months ago. Since then, Woody Allen has been nominated for six Tony Awards, raked in $26 million worth of box office receipts for his latest directorial effort, and enjoyed the defence (and silence) of more Hollywood luminaries than I can list. “It’s not like this is someone who has been prosecuted and found guilty,” scoffed Scarlett Johansson. “It’s all guesswork.”

    Bill Cosby is, perhaps, the only man in Hollywood whose career trajectory even remotely resembles Allen’s. Both are pushing eighty, with countless prestigious industry awards under their belts. Both are credited with laying a creative foundation for generations of comedians, actors, and directors. More than merely entertainers, Cosby and Allen are icons.

    They both stand accused of the same crime.

    Only one is being punished.

    It’s an ugly reality to confront, isn’t it? […]

    “White jurors judging rape cases might rationalize their harsh treatment toward black celebrities as being due to the rape,” wrote the authors of the study, “and not because of the defendant’s race or social status. Given this rationalization, harsh legal treatment of black celebrities can be justified (in one’s mind) as appropriate and fair, rather than racist.” […]

    In the white liberal imaginary, it’s acceptable to keep buying tickets to American Hustle. To keep filing into cinemas to watch Michael Fassbender in skintight black-and-yellow. To keep giving lifetime achievement awards to Woody Allen. People will do all of these things and, in the same breath, call for an end to Cosby Show reruns, ostensibly in the name of dismantling rape culture.

    If you support women, if you support victims of sexual assault and domestic violence, and if your commitment to the end of misogyny goes any deeper than aversive racism, you will extend to Russell and Fassbender and Allen the same treatment you reserve for Cosby.

    FBI interview with Dorian Johnson, Michael Brown’s friend, with him just prior to his shooting death.

    Editorial: Forget the optics, Ferguson Commission is off to strong start

    The filibuster, as found in the U.S. Senate or a state Senate, is revered or reviled, depending on who is using the disruptive political tool and for what purpose. The late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, at the time a Democrat, shut down the Senate for 24 hours in 1957 in his ill-fated attempt to block a civil rights bill. Various senators in Missouri’s Legislature have employed the filibuster in a session’s closing days to block legislation not to their liking.

    It is in that context that some of the goings-on at the first two Ferguson Commission meetings should be viewed.

    Each of the several-hour-long meetings included some disruption from either local African-American citizens frustrated that they don’t believe their pleas for help are being heard, or by protesters shouting down at least one speaker, St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson. To read or view much of the media coverage, or to hear some community leaders used to more order at public meetings, the commission is off to a rough start, unable to control unruly crowds.

    That’s not at all how the Rev. Starsky Wilson, one of the Ferguson Commission’s co-chairmen, sees things.

    “Frankly, I’ve not been surprised at the anger or frustration at commission meetings at all,” he said last week. “We’ve been fortunate to have people present who have been directly impacted by the issues and events we’re called to study. In some cases, this is their first real opportunity to be heard.” […]

    That change is coming. Political leaders are asking the right questions about police culture in terms of racial profiling. Lawmakers in Missouri are filing bills that could curb abuses in municipal courts. The Justice Department is investigating police departments in the region for use of excessive force. Lawsuits are being filed to limit unconstitutional violations of civil rights.

    The road to change is a long one, however. The movement to make sure there is not another Michael Brown or Tamir Rice or Eric Garner has yet to see advances formally enacted.

    So people are still angry. And they’re taking some of that anger out on the Ferguson Commission, which has been tasked by Gov. Jay Nixon with the herculean responsibility of healing our region’s gaping racial wounds.

    So, yes, the commission’s ride will be a bit rocky at times.

    So what? […]

    Indeed, building trust with people on the ground so they will ultimately have respect for the commission’s recommendations involves letting them vent. In two meetings, the commission has engaged more than 550 citizens in some capacity, Rev. Wilson said. “Others can argue the optics; this is the work.”

    History tells us that one man’s anger is another’s cause.

    Exactly five years before Michael Brown was killed, the Post-Dispatch published a front-page story about the surging tea party movement focused on a town hall meeting held just a couple of days earlier. The meeting completely dissolved in a cacophony of screaming and shouting. Most of the participants were white. There were six arrests.

    The headline on that story? “Tea Party gathers steam.”

    There have been two Ferguson Commission meetings. Both accomplished much over several hours, despite bouts of screaming, disruption and shouting. There were no arrests.

    The headlines? “Angry residents interrupt Ferguson Commission meeting.” […]

    The Ferguson Commission’s challenge is massive, but it is made more difficult by a community that forgets its own history and overreacts to the expression of frustration at a public meeting meant to deal with the root causes of that frustration.

    That frustration, or anger, or passion or righteousness is going to be on display for awhile. It’s going to rear itself at public meetings, at city halls, in high school walk-outs and college die-ins, in the Missouri Capitol and the U.S. Capitol. It is a display of political power rooted in the country’s history of protest, going back at least 241 years, to Dec. 16, 1773, and the original Boston Tea Party. Government protesters threw chests of tea into Boston Harbor.

    The Ferguson protesters share this political DNA.

    It is a harbinger of success, not failure, that the leaders of the Ferguson Commission understand this.

    Another good exercise in compare-and-contrast of the racial aspect of, basically, everything.

    The Fierce Urgency of Now: Why Young Protesters Bum-Rushed the Mic (besides the fact that, yesterday, they didn’t, as they had stage passes, but okay)

    The primary concern among critics is what appears to be the purposeful distancing of Saturday’s march from the revolutionary movement that began in August after the state-sanctioned shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, while simultaneously benefitting from its momentum.

    Though there were moments of great emotion during Saturday’s Justice For All March—particularly when the families of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley, Jonathan Crawford, III, Amadou Diallo, Brown and Garner, voiced their gratitude for Sharpton and the sea of supporters who have kept their loved ones names alive—the criticism that has followed the event largely proved to be true and young protesters all the way from Ferguson, Mo., made sure to let the world know it.

    Johnetta Elzie, 25, an activist on the ground in Ferguson and St. Louis who has emerged as a leading voice in the movement, stormed the stage with other young organizers after NAN officials reportedly denied them access.
    […]

    “When we first got there, two people from NAN told us that we needed a VIP pass or a press pass to sit on the ledge,” said Elzie in disbelief, the frustration still resonating in her voice. “If it is a protest, why do you need to have a VIP pass?”

    Elzie’s friend and fellow protester, Erika Totten got then both a pass to be on the program.

    “They gave us badges but didn’t write our names down. They never intended to let us speak. So when Erika said to follow her on stage, we did,” she said.
    […]

    Business as usual is the refusal to acknowledge that the primary function of peaceful protests is to allow some white people to feel safe in the face of black rage.

    Business as usual, is to hold a march on the nation’s capital against police brutality and not mention the name of one, black woman who has been killed by police.

    What the Ferguson organizers proved today is that from the streets to the nation’s capital, they will shut it down; that business as usual will not go unchallenged. And, for that, I salute them. I think we all should.

    Congress decides to get serious about tracking police shootings

    “You can’t begin to improve the situation unless you know what the situation is,” Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), one of the bill’s sponsors, said in an interview with the Washington Post. “We will now have the data.”

    The Death in Custody Reporting Act was originally passed in 2000, but expired in 2006. Scott has attempted to reauthorize the bill unsuccessfully four times since then. […]

    The lack of reliable information about how many people are killed by police annually has come into focus following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. In place of government-provided data, crowd-sourced efforts like Fatal Encounters and one by the Gawker Media-owned sports Web site Deadspin have been created that rely on local media reports and volunteers who input information.

    Fatal Encounters, founded in 2012 by Reno News & Review editor and publisher Brian Burghart, has recorded 3,010 deaths, with another 9,000 in its “development queue” where various leads from places like Wikipedia and FBI data are available for users to research. The site sees an increase in traffic whenever a death captures the public attention, and since Sunday, Burghart said, there’s been about 600 new records submitted.

    But despite the reauthorization of the Death in Custody Reporting Act, Burghart said he’ll continue collecting data and keep the site up.

    “I don’t know that anything changed,” he said of the first time the law was passed. But if its second iteration produces meaningful data this time around, he said, then he might consider shuttering the project. “I hope [the law] really means something,” he said. […]

    The law requires the head of every federal law enforcement agency to report to the attorney general certain information about individuals who die while detained, under arrest or incarcerated. Among the information that must be reported are the deceased individual’s name, age, gender, race, and ethnicity, the date, time, and location of their death, and a brief description of the circumstances involving their death.

    Under the bill, the Justice Department has the authority to withhold federal funds from states that don’t comply in sending the information to federal agencies. The funds total $500 million a year and are divvied up among states based on a formula that includes factors such as population and violent crime.

    The attorney general would then have two years to determine if the data could be used to reduce deaths and submit a report to Congress.

    Scott “wasn’t satisfied” with how the information was used when the law was first passed, but is hopeful things will be different now. “I think providing the data should not be a hardship,” he said.

    “You really can’t have an intelligent discussion without good information.”

  355. rq says

    *sigh*
    Honestly, I don’t know whati t is today. That’s the third comment in moderation, and I was careful. :( HELP!

    Busan, South Korea.

    Black folk screaming #blacklivesmattter while truly believing that LGBT folk are going to hell…nah.;
    Marching under the auspices of #BlackLivesMatter w/o thought for the undocumented or the disabled (who may not be able to march or chant)…;
    Black men holding #BlackLivesMatter signs who still think women are the background noise in liberation movements….nah.
    The procession of speakers at this March has so far been men. Where are the women? Queer folk? Trans folk? Young folk? #TheRootMOW;
    What white conservatives dont remember about MLK was 1.) they reviled him growing up 2.) Behind the curtains there was Bayard Rustin.

  356. rq says

    #Every28 hours a Black person is killed by police. So every 28 hours a #NJShutItDown campus will hold an action.

    Youtube video (warning, it’s part of a playlist): Keepin’ It Real at the #Justice4All Rev Al Sharpton Rally DC 12.13.14

    Published on Dec 13, 2014

    WTF Has Rev Al Accomplished That These #Ferguson Activists Haven’t

    After decades of marching in NYC and he makes regular guest appearances on Fox News (such as on The O’Reilly Factor), CNN, and having his own show on MSNBC unarmed black kids are being gunned down by law enforcement with no accountability.
    Stop and Frisk still thrives in NYC allowing the NYPD to legally racial profile young blacks, every day of the week.

    Compare this to the Ferguson group that have caused an uproar on all forms of media. The social media and on the ground movement nationwide to end police violence and demanding accountability continues to flourish after 127 consecutive days of protests in Ferguson.

    Yes!!! The Youth of Ferguson deserved a moment at the microphone in Washington DC to share their inspirational message that has resulted in empowerment against police brutality around the globe.

    Not once has Rev Al Sharpton questioned a Police Association/Union representative about the money they use to corrupt Attorney General elections in the United States of America.

    When these Ferguson activists stand up, they mean business and have shown no signs of giving up or capitulating with their demands for equal rights, human rights, or justice under a corrupt system that always fails the families with dead child by the hands of overzealous police response.

    Protest movement grows across all spectrums in Baltimore area

    “People of all races, all different types of people and all different kinds of organizations — not just civil rights organizations — are taking part,” Baltimore NAACP chapter president Tessa Hill-Aston said. “Everyone is seeing that there’s something wrong.”

    Police brutality has come into focus in a big way, here and across the country. Acts of civil disobedience across Maryland have included a wide spectrum of people and also elicited a surprising reaction — universities, workplaces, Congress and even law enforcement, which in the past might have opposed such demonstrations, now offer tacit support or, in the case of police, have shown restraint and acceptance.

    Baltimore police have deployed hundreds of officers to monitor protests since August, when fatal police shooting of teenager Michael Brown in ferguson, Mo., sparked nationwide demonstrations. They have spent $450,000 in officer overtime to help keep the peace in Baltimore but have arrested no one — a testament to both demonstrators and police, who have avoided aggressive tactics and shows of force that many say prompted violent clashes in Ferguson.

  357. rq says

    !!! John Crawford’s girlfriend aggressively questioned after police shot him dead

    Tasha Thomas was reduced to swearing on the lives of her relatives that John Crawford III had not been carrying a firearm when they entered the Walmart in Beavercreek, near Dayton, to buy crackers, marshmallows and chocolate bars on the evening of 5 August.

    “You lie to me and you might be on your way to jail,” detective Rodney Curd told Thomas, as she wept and repeatedly offered to take a lie-detector test. After more than an hour and a half of questioning and statement-taking, Curd finally told Thomas that Crawford, 22, had died.

    “As a result of his actions, he is gone,” said the detective, as she slumped in her chair and cried.

    THEY DIDN’T EVEN HAVE THE DECENCY TO TELL HER HE WAS DEAD FOR 90 MINUTES. THA FACK. And then victim-blame like mad on top of that. “As a result of his actions”. I saw the video, he did FUCK ALL.

    A 94-minute police video recording, released to the Guardian by the office of Mike DeWine, the Ohio attorney general, in response to a public records request, shows Thomas, 26, being interviewed by Curd after she was driven from Walmart to the Beavercreek police department. Curd later told investigators he had not yet been told Crawford only had a BB gun that had been on sale at the store.

    Curd promptly asked Thomas whether she and Crawford had criminal records. Already tearful and breathless, Thomas explained that she may have had some traffic offences and had been arrested for petty theft as a juvenile.

    The detective then became increasingly aggressive and banged on the table between them with his hand. “Tell me where he got the gun from,” Curd repeated. Thomas insisted Crawford had been carrying only a white plastic grocery bag when they arrived at Walmart to buy the ingredients to make s’mores at a family cook-out.

    Asked one of several times whether Crawford owned a gun, Thomas said: “Not that I know.”

    Curd told her: “Don’t tell me ‘not that you know’, because that’s the first thing I realise somebody’s not telling me the truth”. […]

    “Did he ever mention ‘I’m going to shoot that bitch’ or something like that?” the detective asked Thomas, who insisted that Crawford had not. Johnson, whom Thomas had never met, was miles away and listened over the phone while Crawford died.

    At several points during the interview Thomas swore to God, and on the lives of her three children, the grave of her late brother and “on everything I have” that she was telling the truth, but Curd remained dismissive.

    Curd also pushed Thomas on whether she was intoxicated, asking her: “Have you been drinking? Drugs? Your eyes are kind of messed-up looking”. After she told him that Crawford had smelled of marijuana, Curd took down notes. He went on to ask whether Crawford had been suicidal. […]

    After the case was handed to a special prosecutor, a grand jury decided in September that Williams and another officer involved should not face criminal charges. Williams was in 2010 responsible for the only other fatal police shooting in Beavercreek’s recent history. [emphasis mine]

    You can watch the video at the link, but it’s another case of the system supporting and enabling a bad cop. A really bad cop.

  358. rq says

    !!! John Crawford’s girlfriend aggressively questioned after police shot him dead

    Tasha Thomas was reduced to swearing on the lives of her relatives that John Crawford III had not been carrying a firearm when they entered the Walmart in Beavercreek, near Dayton, to buy crackers, marshmallows and chocolate bars on the evening of 5 August.

    “You lie to me and you might be on your way to jail,” detective Rodney Curd told Thomas, as she wept and repeatedly offered to take a lie-detector test. After more than an hour and a half of questioning and statement-taking, Curd finally told Thomas that Crawford, 22, had died.

    “As a result of his actions, he is gone,” said the detective, as she slumped in her chair and cried.

    THEY DIDN’T EVEN HAVE THE DECENCY TO TELL HER HE WAS DEAD FOR 90 MINUTES. THA FACK. And then victim-blame like mad on top of that. “As a result of his actions”. I saw the video, he did FUCK ALL.

    A 94-minute police video recording, released to the Guardian by the office of Mike DeWine, the Ohio attorney general, in response to a public records request, shows Thomas, 26, being interviewed by Curd after she was driven from Walmart to the Beavercreek police department. Curd later told investigators he had not yet been told Crawford only had a BB gun that had been on sale at the store.

    Curd promptly asked Thomas whether she and Crawford had criminal records. Already tearful and breathless, Thomas explained that she may have had some traffic offences and had been arrested for petty theft as a juvenile.

    The detective then became increasingly aggressive and banged on the table between them with his hand. “Tell me where he got the gun from,” Curd repeated. Thomas insisted Crawford had been carrying only a white plastic grocery bag when they arrived at Walmart to buy the ingredients to make s’mores at a family cook-out.

    Asked one of several times whether Crawford owned a gun, Thomas said: “Not that I know.”

    Curd told her: “Don’t tell me ‘not that you know’, because that’s the first thing I realise somebody’s not telling me the truth”. […]

    “Did he ever mention ‘I’m going to shoot that b*tch’ or something like that?” the detective asked Thomas, who insisted that Crawford had not. Johnson, whom Thomas had never met, was miles away and listened over the phone while Crawford died.

    At several points during the interview Thomas swore to God, and on the lives of her three children, the grave of her late brother and “on everything I have” that she was telling the truth, but Curd remained dismissive.

    Curd also pushed Thomas on whether she was intoxicated, asking her: “Have you been drinking? Drugs? Your eyes are kind of messed-up looking”. After she told him that Crawford had smelled of marijuana, Curd took down notes. He went on to ask whether Crawford had been suicidal. […]

    After the case was handed to a special prosecutor, a grand jury decided in September that Williams and another officer involved should not face criminal charges. Williams was in 2010 responsible for the only other fatal police shooting in Beavercreek’s recent history. [emphasis mine]

    You can watch the video at the link, but it’s another case of the system supporting and enabling a bad cop. A really bad cop.

  359. rq says

    Put in a word for atheists in a twitter conversation on forming new (spiritual) communities in the movement.
    Was accepted without question, even a thank you for mentioning it. :)

  361. rq says

    Penn Student Questioned at Her Dorm by Philly PD Homeland Security over #FergusonPHL Posts

    Laura Krasovitzky, a University of Pennsylvania student organizer, tells The Declaration that she was visited on the morning of December 8th by a Philadelphia Police Department detective, who she soon learned was in the Homeland Security Bureau, asking about posts in a Facebook group.

    “The detective told me he was there because of specific language I used in the notes I posted on the ‘Ferguson to Philly’ Facebook group after the town hall meeting of Dec. 2. He had the notes printed out,” Krasovitzky says. […]

    He wanted to know about language in the notes which Krasovitzky had posted to the page, notes the student organizer had collected from various participants in a related working group from the Calvary meeting, she says, which described “targeting” the Christmas Village at Love Park, “targeting” disgraced and rehired Philly cop Jonathan Josey, and “targeting” Commissioner Charles Ramsey in an upcoming protest action. The Dignitary Protection Division detective told Krasovitzky that this was considered threatening, and questioned her regarding any plans for violence against the Commissioner or other persons.

    Before eventually asking if she was being detained and upon being answered in the negative stating that she had nothing further to say, she completed a form which the detective had brought with him, containing Krasovitzky’s personal information, including her address and date-of-birth. On the form, in which she responded to concerns over “notes posted…in regards to targeting abusive cops (e.g., Jonathan Josey), Charles Ramsey…and the Christmas Village,” the Penn senior and prolific activist was quoted by the detective:

    “We are peaceful. We would not harm the Police Commissioner, visitors of the Christmas Village, or abusive cops. I have nothing further to say.”

    She refused to sign the form but says the detective told her she could take a photograph of the document, which she shared with The Declaration. You can view a copy redacted for her privacy by clicking the thumbnail below. [..]

    Krasovitzky said she was rattled by the visit from law enforcement, and reluctant to speak about it until friends encouraged her to go public.

    “This is clearly full intimidation, it’s what they do,” she said in an interview last night.

    She is seeking answers from the university regarding what policies allowed the detective to be given access to the private facility to reach her dorm room.

    A senior police department official has not yet responded to our inquiry regarding this matter.

    NYC Cops Are Blithely Firing A Potentially Deafening Sound Cannon At Peaceful Protesters

    Video taken on the night of December 4th during one of the marches protesting the failure to indict the police officer who killed Eric Garner clearly shows police officers deploying one of its Long Range Acoustic Devices, or LRADs, against protesters near Columbus Circle. Today, lawyers representing some of those protesters have written to NYPD Commissioner Bratton, raising concerns with the NYPD’s use of the device.

    “This is not a precision tool,” said Gideon Oliver, one of the lawyers who authored the letter. “This is an area-of-effect weapon. When the police use it, it’s not as if they’re just targeting one person. It’s indiscriminate like teargas.”

    Oliver’s letter asks for any written policies the department has for the use of the LRAD, but he said it also serves to put the department on notice. “It’s about making sure the commissioner knows about the incident that happened to our clients,” he said. “Also, there are ongoing protests—there’s a big protest Saturday. We wanted to make sure the commissioner knows we’re watching how they’re using this device.”

    Asked whether his clients are considering a lawsuit, Oliver answered, “We’re certainly looking at it.”

    “When We Breathe, We Breathe Together,” A People’s Street Closure. #MillionsMarchNYC at Barclays Center last night.
    Several hundred people protesting police brutality in Seattle ahead of Seahawks game via @Ansel #BlackLivesMatter.

  362. rq says

    DC ACTION RIGHT NOW!! Walmart on H st. @Nettaaaaaaaa @deray @WyzeChef #DCFerguson #Ferguson #ThinkMOOR ;
    Shutting down Walmart in DC with @deray & @Nettaaaaaaaa right now. #DCFerguson #Ferguson.

    Interesting fact: Baltimore’s Batts is former police chief of Oakland & Long Beach. Known for domestic violence on multiple women. @deray @BmoreBloc.

    Here’s that link to the bail fundI promised: Donate to the Legal Support Fund for Justice for Mike Brown. They need the help.

    Chicago gave hundreds of high-risk kids a summer job. Violent crime arrests plummeted.

    A couple of years ago, the city of Chicago started a summer jobs program for teenagers attending high schools in some of the city’s high-crime, low-income neighborhoods. The program was meant, of course, to connect students to work. But officials also hoped that it might curb the kinds of problems — like higher crime — that arise when there’s no work to be found.

    Research on the program conducted by the University of Chicago Crime Lab and just published in the journal Science suggests that these summer jobs have actually had such an effect: Students who were randomly assigned to participate in the program had 43 percent fewer violent-crime arrests over 16 months, compared to students in a control group.

    That number is striking for a couple of reasons: It implies that a relatively short (and inexpensive) intervention like an eight-week summer jobs program can have a lasting effect on teenage behavior. And it lends empirical support to a popular refrain by advocates: “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.” […]

    That long-term benefit suggests that students who had access to jobs may have then found crime a less attractive alternative to work. Or perhaps their time on the job taught them how the labor market values education. Or maybe the work experience may have given them skills that enabled them to be more successful — and less prone to getting in trouble — back in school.

    This one study can’t identify exactly why a summer jobs program might change the trajectory of teens at risk of becoming violent. It also raises the possibility that teenagers with summer jobs might have more money to spend on drugs (drug arrests for the treatment group were slightly higher than for the control). These results do suggest that cities could get a lot of payoff for the minimal cost of a summer-jobs program — particularly if it targets teens before they drop out of school.

  363. rq says

    rq comments, athletics edition.
    More athletes make their stance known:
    Browns players wear shirts protesting police killings of Tamir Rice, John Crawford. I wodner if Michael Brown isn’t up there with them due to some subconscious perception that paints him as a potential criminal?

    Andrew Hawkins and at least one other Cleveland Browns player came out for pre-game introductions wearing T-shirts that read, “Justice for Tamir Rice and John Crawford.” […]

    ames has been increasingly outspoken on social issues. Earlier this week, he wore an “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirt in honor of Eric Garner, who died after being put in a chokehold by a New York police officer.

    More pictures of athletes at the link, too.
    More pictures on twitter: Some better pictures of @hawk representing for the families of Tamir Rice & John Crawford., Ugly. The Cleveland Police Union is demanding an apology for this shirt already. Apologize for what? My God.
    Oh wait, what was that? Being asked to apologize? CLE Police Union demands apology from @Browns for Andrew Hawkins shirt supporting #TamirRice. Yes. Article here: CLE Police Union demands apology from Browns for Andrew Hawkins shirt supporting Tamir Rice (sounds like they’re taking a page from Roorda)

    In response, Jeff Follmer Police Patrolman Union President sent newsnet5 the following statement:

    It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law. They should stick to what they know best on the field. The Cleveland Police protect and serve the Browns stadium and the Browns organization owes us an apology.

    [YOU’RE PRETTY PATHETIC, JEFF FOLLMER! WEAK! WEAK!]

    Browns cornerback Johnson Bademosi wore a shirt that read, “I Can’t Breathe” last Sunday while warming up before playing the Indianapolis Colts in protest of a grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer involved in the death of Eric Garner.

    Bademosi was joined by other famous athletes wearing the shirt during warm-ups including LeBron James, Kyrie Irving , Reggie Bush and Derrick Rose.

    During Ferguson protests, St. Louis Rams players exited the tunnel at the Edward Jones Dome with their hands up , a symbolic sign for “hands up, don’t shoot.”

    The union head of the St. Louis Police also demanded an apology, one that it did not receive from the Rams organization.

    None of the players protesting have received punishment from the NFL or NBA.

    As for the players? One of them (Johnson Bademosi) speaks out: Why I Wore the Shirt

    I woke up at 6 a.m. Sunday before our game against the Colts, far earlier than I usually would for an afternoon game. I felt anxious, upset and angry all at once.

    The previous week, at the Cleveland Browns facility, a huddle of teammates expressed the rage, frustration and alienation we felt after the recent non-indictments of police officers following the murders of unarmed black men. A week earlier several Rams players put their hands up during player introductions, and the entire country took notice. We knew about Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner, but we didn’t know what to do. We all had our influences—different socioeconomic backgrounds, cultural upbringings, levels of education and degrees of passion. Each of us had a decision to make. Mine was the easiest.

    We walk a tightrope as NFL athletes. We all have lives and opinions outside of sports, yet the NFL today is designed to suppress and confine our public lives to its standards. Team culture tells you shut up, follow the crowd and do your job. Anyone who steps away from that standard runs the risk of upsetting someone who may control your means for providing for your family. The NFL drives this standard. They tell us to wear pink for these games and camouflage for these games. While I embrace those causes, there are other things that are just as important to me as an individual. Yet, in the past, whenever players have tried to distinguish themselves, they’ve faced fines for doing so.

    In its quest to deliver one uniform message of social consciousness, the league betrays its goal. True social consciousness and dialogue in America is never singular, never uniform. It is myriad and collaborative by definition.

    It was with all of this in mind that I drove to First Energy Stadium on Sunday morning. The night before, Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls wore a T-shirt reading “I Can’t Breathe” during pregame warm-ups. Those were Eric Garner’s last words before a New York City police officer put him in a chokehold and Garner died in the confrontation with multiple officers. The dispute began over Garner’s selling loose cigarettes. In an effort to express my anger, fear and feelings of solidarity with those who took to the streets, I wrote those same words—“I Can’t Breathe”—on the back of my own warm-up T-shirt.

    As I wore it in the locker room before taking the field in pregame, some guys automatically knew what it meant and supported me. Others didn’t understand the message and asked about it, and I was happy to explain. After all, awareness was the original goal. I received a couple of side eyes, too, from men who didn’t agree with what the words stood for. I had teammates in the locker room telling me, “Man, you’ve got to be careful with all that.” And with most issues, I am. But exceptional circumstances require exceptions to be made. I considered this to be exceptional.

    Two months ago the NFLPA agreed with the NFL on a revamped drug-testing program, which put into action several policies ratified with the collective bargaining agreement of three years ago. It was a culmination of months of posturing and weeks of negotiations. As the player rep for the Browns, I had a small part in the process and not a few opinions on what went right and how the procedure could have been improved. I was approached by editors at The MMQB about a column, but ultimately decided I couldn’t express the kind of strong opinions they were looking for. As a rep, I felt the need to represent my Browns teammates, and I was reticent to step out with my own takes. But this issue as I see it—police killings as a symptom of the systematic and historical devaluing of black lives—seemed too big to ignore. Had I stayed silent, I would have betrayed everything my parents taught me about standing up for people who can’t stand up for themselves, and everything I learned in school about hegemony, political systems and social change.

    I understand that I am dressed in my own layers of privilege (education, socioeconomic status, etc.) that make me different from Eric Garner, but I still share many of his experiences as a black man in this country. Find me a black NFL player who can say they’ve never been stopped by police and offered a nonsense reason such as, “Oh, we thought your windows were too heavily tinted.”

    Regardless of background, many of us saw in Garner and Rice and Brown a mirror into the lives we might’ve had if we hadn’t become NFL players.

    When athletes step into the social sphere and express opinions on issues outside of sports, we’re often met with one of two reactions. The majority of people thank us for peeling back the curtain on identities shrouded by uniforms. A small minority of people respond with what amounts to, “Shut up and play.” These are the same people who buy jerseys and tickets to games, or watch religiously on television. They help pay our salaries, and because of that they think they have a right to tell us what we can and can’t say, essentially, what kind of men we ought to be. A lot of fans wear the jersey, and they consider it costume, not representative of a human being. Some support us as players but not as men. That the league is predominantly African-American helps explain why. I’m happy to say I don’t want you as a fan if that’s how you think.

    My T-shirt was a tribute to the life of Eric Garner and to the countless black men victimized by our country’s never-ending hegemony, and an expression of the feelings that my teammates and I felt while we were discussing these issues. Others had their own ways of supporting the cause, keeping it in their thoughts, prayers, etc. and I fully support that as well. Ultimately, every individual has to do what is best for himself and his family. I’m not losing any sleep over my decision.

    I posted the entire post. Because it just shows that it never goes away – race in the lives of black people. No matter what they do.

  364. rq says

    45 Arrested After Protests In Oakland

    Oakland police said 2,500 to 3,000 people held a largely peaceful march in the downtown area there to protest police killings of unarmed black men.

    Police spokeswoman Johnna Watson said that hours later a crowd of about 500 remained and officers began making arrests.

    She said at least 45 people were arrested for crimes such as vandalism, failure to disperse and resisting arrest.

    By midnight Saturday there were no reports of any protest activity in Oakland.

    Goti t from a tweet, as dispatchers in Oakland were apparently referencing officer FFO training (that’s FFO for Field Force Operations). Just interesting to read about the training.

    Ah, more on Al Sharpton and his apparently non-unifying tactics: Youth protesters push back against Al Sharpton’s role in police brutality marches

    The moment came during the “Justice For All” march in Washington, D.C., which was organized by Sharpton’s National Action Network. The group had a set list of speakers, but Johnetta Elzie, who said she had been tear-gassed while protesting in Ferguson, Missouri — where the movement originated after the killing of a black teenager by a white police officer — wanted the microphone.

    Young people had led the protest marches from the beginning, Elzie later argued, so they should be given a voice. But when Elzie — known as @nettaaaaaaaa on Twitter — finally began talking, march organizers cut the mic. […]

    After that, the dam broke, and young members of the movement railed against Sharpton’s “corporate” approach to activism, and the lack of passion in the crowd at the Justice For All March, especially when compared to other protests that have flared up across the country. […]

    It’s not that many of the younger protesters didn’t believe the older generation should have a say. They were often quick to clarify that the participation of all generations is significant. But they didn’t understand nor appreciate being told to pass the baton to Sharpton and a pre-ordained leadership who could “take it from here,” so to speak.

    The demonstrations in Ferguson and cities across the country have been grassroots protests. They are led by multiple people in each location. Parts of the media have been fixated on the movement’s leadership since its origin, but, as The Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery points out, that fixation probably has roots in how the media sees past movements, such as the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. […]

    And proof that the movement doesn’t need a Sharpton-like leader was evident on the ground on Saturday. As the National Action Network’s march in the nation’s capital wound down, Millions March New York City was just beginning. The march in Washington, D.C. drew around 10,000 people, but the protest in NYC reportedly drew something in the range of tens of thousands.

    Numbers speak.

    Pictures and tweets at the link.

    Kids: “@bdoulaoblongata: #HandsUpDontShoot My daughter and her friend and the Magic House ” Protesting. Fun for all ages.

    Best new chant: “I don’t see a riot here // Why are you in riot gear?” #Ferguson.

    Goddamn shameful. Via @ShaunKing. #TamirRice. Don’t know how easy it is to read the tweet picture documents, but it’s on the treatment of Tamir and his family after he was shot.

  365. rq says

    Ever wonder what, as a person with white privilege, you can do to stand in solidarity with black liberation struggle?

    – Show up
    – Stay off the megaphone
    – Direct media to Black leadership
    – Follow direction of Black leadership
    – Protest from our position (We are not Mike Brown, carry signs challenging white supremacy)
    – Call-in / Collect white folks who are causing harm and/or breaking guidelines set by Black leadership

    (Photo of a poster with these guidelines.)

    The holocaust was legal, slavery was legal, segregation was legal. If you use the state as a metric for ethics you’ll end up disappointed.

  366. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    After police killed John Crawford at a Walmart, they threatened his girlfriend with jail:

    Tasha Thomas was reduced to swearing on the lives of her relatives that John Crawford III had not been carrying a firearm when they entered the Walmart in Beavercreek, near Dayton, to buy crackers, marshmallows and chocolate bars on the evening of 5 August.

    “You lie to me and you might be on your way to jail,” detective Rodney Curd told Thomas, as she wept and repeatedly offered to take a lie-detector test. After more than an hour and a half of questioning and statement-taking, Curd finally told Thomas that Crawford, 22, had died.

    …

    Curd promptly asked Thomas whether she and Crawford had criminal records. Already tearful and breathless, Thomas explained that she may have had some traffic offences and had been arrested for petty theft as a juvenile.

    The detective then became increasingly aggressive and banged on the table between them with his hand. “Tell me where he got the gun from,” Curd repeated. Thomas insisted Crawford had been carrying only a white plastic grocery bag when they arrived at Walmart to buy the ingredients to make s’mores at a family cook-out

  367. rq says

    Tony
    Did you watch the video of the interrogation? I posted it above, and it is painful. I have not been able to watch it all. Bastards couldn’t even tell her he was dead but went straight on the attack. As if he’d done something wrong.

  369. rq says

    Send St. Paul PD a message: we stand w/black students & educators who stand up for them #BlackLivesMatterMPLS

    If you live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, we need everyone to come out tomorrow at 5.30pm at the St. School Board meeting. It’s imperative!

    Today at the AALF Health & Wellness Work Group meeting we learned that Saint Paul Public Schools Superintendent Valeria Silva is under fire, from the Saint Paul Police Union and others, for her statement of support for African-American children in the aftermath of the death of Michael Brown, etc. The topic will be discussed tomorrow, Tuesday, December 16th, at 5:30 at 360 Colborn – the address of the Saint Paul School Board. You are urged to attend and ask others to join in supporting Supt. Silva as she has shown her support for our community.

    The address is 360 Colborn in St. Paul at 5:30pm Tuesday January 16, 2014!!!!!! Come on out!

    If you recall, Silva was the superintendent who expressed sympathy to black students on the non-indictment of Darren Wilson, and was castigated by the local police union, because ‘how would the children of cops feel’.

    Before the Walmart shutdown we laid down the rules. Store MUST shut down. Once the registers are closed & the announcement is made, leave.
    Atlanta, and more Atlanta.

    Washington DC.

    Usher (wearing ‘I Can’t Breathe’ t-shirt).

    Pics from: #FergusonCommission Meeting #3: word is lots of good work was accomplished this time.

  370. rq says

    *siiiiiiigh*

    Intersecting: Why #BlackLivesMatter Should Transform the Climate Debate

    The historic event was the decision of the climate-justice movement to symbolically join the increasingly global #BlackLivesMatter uprising, staging a “die-in” outside the convention center much like the ones that have brought shopping malls and busy intersections to a standstill, from the US to the UK.

    “For us it is either death or climate justice,” said Gerry Arances, national coordinator for the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice.

    What does #BlackLivesMatter, and the unshakable moral principle that it represents, have to do with climate change? Everything. Because we can be quite sure that if wealthy white Americans had been the ones left without food and water for days in a giant sports stadium after Hurricane Katrina, even George W. Bush would have gotten serious about climate change. Similarly, if Australia were at risk of disappearing, and not large parts of Bangladesh, Prime Minister Tony Abbott would be a lot less likely to publicly celebrate the burning of coal as “good for humanity,” as he did on the occasion of the opening of a vast new coal mine. And if my own city of Toronto were being battered, year after year, by historic typhoons demanding mass evacuations, and not Tacloban in the Philippines, we can also be sure that Canada would not have made building tar sands pipelines the centerpiece of its foreign policy.

    The reality of an economic order built on white supremacy is the whispered subtext of our entire response to the climate crisis, and it badly needs to be dragged into the light. I recently had occasion to meet a leading Belgian meteorologist who makes a point of speaking about climate change in her weather reports. But, she told me, her viewers remain unmoved. “People here think that with global warming, the weather in Brussels will be more like Bordeaux—and they are happy about that.” On one level, that’s understandable, particularly as temperatures drop in northern countries. But global warming won’t just make Brussels more like Bordeaux, it will make Haiti more like Hades. And it’s not possible to be cheerful about the former without, at the very least, being actively indifferent to the latter.

    Apparnetly you can read the rest at The Nation.

    Athletes offer their thoughts: Browns Player Offers Thoughtful Rebuke After Police Union Slams T-Shirt Protest

    “I understood there was going to be backlash, and that scared me, honestly. But deep down I felt like it was the right thing to do,” Hawkins said. “If I was to run away from what I felt in my soul was the right thing to do, that would make me a coward, and I can’t live with that.”

    Below is his statement in full:

    “I was taught that justice is a right that every American should have. Also justice should be the goal of every American. I think that’s what makes this country. To me, justice means the innocent should be found innocent. It means that those who do wrong should get their due punishment. Ultimately, it means fair treatment. So a call for justice shouldn’t offend or disrespect anybody. A call for justice shouldn’t warrant an apology.

    “To clarify, I utterly respect and appreciate every police officer that protects and serves all of us with honesty, integrity and the right way. And I don’t think those kind of officers should be offended by what I did. My mom taught me my entire life to respect law enforcement. I have family, close friends that are incredible police officers and I tell them all the time how they are much braver than me for it. So my wearing a T-shirt wasn’t a stance against every police officer or every police department. My wearing the T-shirt was a stance against wrong individuals doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons to innocent people.

    “Unfortunately, my mom also taught me just as there are good police officers, there are some not-so-good police officers that would assume the worst of me without knowing anything about me for reasons I can’t control. She taught me to be careful and be on the lookout for those not-so-good police officers because they could potentially do me harm and most times without consequences. Those are the police officers that should be offended.

    “Being a police officer takes bravery. And I understand that they’re put in difficult positions and have to make those snap decisions. As a football player, I know a little bit about snap decisions, obviously on an extremely lesser and non-comparative scale, because when a police officer makes a snap decision, it’s literally a matter of life and death. That’s hard a situation to be in. But if the wrong decision is made, based on pre-conceived notions or the wrong motives, I believe there should be consequence. Because without consequence, naturally the magnitude of the snap decisions is lessened, whether consciously or unconsciously.

    “I’m not an activist, in any way, shape or form. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred I keep my opinions to myself on most matters. I worked extremely hard to build and keep my reputation especially here in Ohio, and by most accounts I’ve done a solid job of decently building a good name. Before I made the decision to wear the T-shirt, I understood I was putting that reputation in jeopardy to some of those people who wouldn’t necessarily agree with my perspective. I understood there was going to be backlash, and that scared me, honestly. But deep down I felt like it was the right thing to do. If I was to run away from what I felt in my soul was the right thing to do, that would make me a coward, and I can’t live with that. God wouldn’t be able to put me where I am today, as far as I’ve come in life, if I was a coward.

    “As you well know, and it’s well documented, I have a 2-year-old little boy. The same 2-year-old little boy that everyone said was cute when I jokingly threw him out of the house earlier this year. That little boy is my entire world. And the No. 1 reason for me wearing the T-shirt was the thought of what happened to Tamir Rice happening to my little Austin scares the living hell out of me. And my heart was broken for the parents of Tamir and John Crawford knowing they had to live that nightmare of a reality.

    “So, like I said, I made the conscious decision to wear the T-shirt. I felt like my heart was in the right place. I’m at peace with it and those that disagree with me, this is America, everyone has the right to their first amendment rights. Those who support me, I appreciate your support. But at the same time, support the causes and the people and the injustices that you feel strongly about. Stand up for them. Speak up for them. No matter what it is because that’s what America’s about and that’s what this country was founded on.”

    Here’s more from him, in video: Cleveland Browns receiver Andrew Hawkins delivers emotional response to Cleveland police union’s reaction to ‘Justice for Tamir Rice’ shirt (it also said ‘John Crawford’ on it, but I guess kids are worth more to the public). There’s a bit of the police response in there:

    Follmer said on Monday that he took issue with Hawkins’ statements, especially ones that characterized some officers as “not-so-good.”

    “What he doesn’t talk about is that our officers were in a situation because of another male’s actions, who tragically turned out to be 12,” Follmer said. “He doesn’t talk about the fact that (Rice) didn’t respond to our officer’s commands and tried to pull the gun from his waistband.”

    The Browns responded by saying they respected both the police and their players’ rights to take on causes they feel are important.

    Our officers were in a situation because of another male’s actions, who tragically turned out to be twelve. Have you seen that video? There is no way that kid had any chance to respond to anything before the cop shot him. Someone on twitter called it a state-sanctioned drive-by, which is exactly what it looks like on video. Fucking cops.

    Hawkins said he believes calls for justice means fair treatment for everyone involved. He said he has friends and family who are good police officers and called them “brave.”

    “A call for justice shouldn’t warrant an apology,” Hawkins said.

    No, it shouldn’t , and I hope you never apologize, Mr Hawkins.

    ‘Sorry For The Inconvenience, We Are Trying To Change The World’: Inside The Police Protests That Swept The Nation, short interviews and the views of those participating in protests in New York and Washington on Saturday, an easy read.

    Video: Denver’s Millions March Anti-Police Brutality Demonstration 12/13/14

    On Saturday night December 13th protesters once again took to the
    streets to denounce an epidemic of the murders at the hands of the
    police, police violence, and police unaccountably on a local as well as
    national level that disproportionately plagues communities of color and
    has finally come to the forefront of public awareness. As usual the
    largest terrorist gang in Denver also know as the Denver Police
    Department used “snatch & grab” techniques to violate protester’s
    rights, and spread fear through the protest. In the video you will
    notice that the pigs basically choose someone at random, then arrest
    them hopping other protesters will leave, become scared to defend
    themselves, and create disarray among the protest. Often the pigs will
    trump up charges hoping to further intimidate protesters and create fear
    among the social justice, activist, and radical communities. In the case
    of the arrest shown in the video, the protester who was arrested for
    doing nothing was giving a Felony Assault charge that was thrown out
    two days later.

  371. rq says

    Historical diversion: Shotguns, sundaes and segregation: Stunning photos of families in 1950s Alabama offer poignant look at life during civil-rights era

    A stunning set of photographs taken by famed African-American photographer Gordon Parks during segregation in the 1950s are set to go on display later this month.

    The collection, called The Restraints: Open and Hidden, follows the lives of three families living in and around downtown Mobile, Alabama in 1956, and show how they went about their daily routine in a town separated by race with children at their side.

    Rediscovered in 2012, six years after he died of cancer at the age of 93, these photos will be shown at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia beginning this Saturday.

    Video and sample photos at the link!!!

    Protest-December 15, 2014 PAB Building, 455 7th Street

    On December 15, 2014 just after 7:30 AM, at the main Oakland Police Department building, located at 455 7th Street, multiple groups of protesters blocked the main entrances of the building by chaining shut four of the building’s doors and then chaining themselves to the doors. Three of these doors are our main ingress and egress for the public and OPD personnel. As a result, the public could not access important police services, such as reporting crimes, obtaining public records, accessing necessary paperwork for vehicle impound releases and property releases.

    The crowd was estimated at approximately 150-200. One protester climbed a flagpole and several hours later climbed back down. Approximately a dozen protestors connected to each other blocked the intersection of Broadway and 7th Street and were eventually arrested.

    All building doors have been cleared of chains and protesters. Protestors have left the area.

    At this time, 25 arrests have been made for various violations, most for the following California Penal Code section violations: 602 (1) (b) PC Obstructing/Blocking Public Building and 148 PC Obstructing/Delaying a Police Officer.

    The OPD Tactical Team was in communication with identified group leaders and worked towards a peaceful resolution.

    Just a thing. I guess.

    Lines of riot cops about 50 feet away closing in on #SilenceIsViolence folks holding broadway #shutdownOPD .

    A summary of the marches, again, with pictureS: #MillionsMarch Ends in Arrests From Coast to Coast. Protestors are called anti-police and anti-brutality, which I doubt is true as such for most of them – at least calling them anti-police-brutality was more accurate, even though the whole movement is FOR black lives. Media. Anyway, good photos at the link.

    This oughtta be good: Sharpton Responds to Criticism That His Movement Excludes Younger Activists

    “This is more about ideology than it is about generational differences,” Sharpton told The Root. He pointed to dozens of his protégés—all in their 20s and 30s—who have committed themselves to the principles of an interracial and nonviolent movement.

    “I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to make sure that we can continue this movement and National Action Network for the next 30 to 40 years when I am gone,” he said. “Leadership cannot be willed. I can’t pass the torch. I can only keep the flame lit.”
    […]

    Sharpton said that contrary to some reports, a diverse group of young people were invited to speak at the Dec. 13 Justice for All rally in Washington, D.C. The event drew more than 10,000 people to the nation’s capital to train a spotlight on the killing of unarmed black men in the wake of several high-profile shootings, as well as to urge Congress to take up legislation that would require closer monitoring of police departments across the country.

    “This was not a revolutionary march, and I don’t apologize for that,” said Sharpton, who added that he had not yet arrived at the rally when a group of protesters, whom he did not know, stormed the stage and demanded to speak. He said that when he arrived on the scene later, he granted the activists speaking time after they assured him that they were not going to call for violence or promote inflammatory rhetoric against nonblacks.

    “This was not promoted as a town hall meeting,” he said.
    […]

    Robinson dismissed the march as “an event and not a representation of the movement” and chided national civil rights leaders for refusing to acknowledge the activists who have largely been responsible for the near-daily protests taking place across the country in the wake of nonindictments by grand juries after the killings, by police, of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York City.

    It’s a charge that’s rejected by Sharpton, who noted that his organization has a vibrant Ferguson chapter, headed by a young minister, the Rev. Carlton Lee, who he said has been on the front lines of many of these protests.

    Sharpton said he was unsure why activists who disagreed with his political tactics and strategy would want to attend the gathering in the first place. “I don’t go to marches spearheaded by people who I disagree with,” said Sharpton. “I just do what I’m doing.”

    He’s not getting particularly good reviews for this response.

    From Ferguson to New York, women are leading protests because all #BlackLivesMatter

    Saturday afternoon in New York, a diverse crowd of over 50,000 people marched through the city expressing frustration with a system that continues to let black die people without justice. The Millions March NYC, characterized as much by deep affirmation of black life as collective outrage over that injustice, brought together people of all backgrounds to protest ongoing state violence.

    But the latest successful moment of the post-Ferguson movement wasn’t the work of an established civil rights organization or well-funded non-profit: like the protests and organizing in Missouri and beyond, it was driven chiefly by the efforts of young black women and brought to fruition by a coalition of young multi-racial activists. Umaara Elliott and Synead Nichols, the lead organizers of Saturday’s march noted that they are part of a new generation of activists “willing to take up the torch” and “demand that action be taken at every level of government to ensure that these racist killings by the police cease.” […]

    The most recent dynamic leadership of black women on the front lines in Ferguson and cities across the US reflects what black women understand intuitively by virtue of our own experiences: the radical power of black women-led activism lies not in token representation for the sake of optics, but in deep, meaningful attention to intersecting oppressions and the solutions that emerge from understanding them. It maintains that we are all affected differently by injustice and must address its multiple iterations simultaneously– that “nobody’s free until everybody’s free”.

    A commitment to understanding the overlapping vulnerabilities that different black people face – that is what’s behind our common quest to defend all black lives. When humanity is defined not solely by proximity to whiteness or manhood, all black people are closer to freedom and justice. […]

    The names and stories of black women and girls who lost their lives at the hands of law enforcement often fall out of the public narrative, underscoring the need for black women’s leadership in movements dedicated to ending state violence against black bodies. Uplifting and supporting activism from the margins is what enables us to keep saying these women’s names as we protest the injustice in the names of our Erics, our Michaels, our Tamirs. It is what honors Rekia, Aiyana, Deshawnda, Nizah, Tanisha, Gabriella, and countless other black women killed by the police. […]

    As we all grapple with racist state violence in the context of a deeply patriarchal society, black women organizers continue to put their bodies on the line to bring forth justice where it has yet to take root. They are supported by the men who stand in solidarity and community, like Moore, Deray McKesson of Ferguson and countless others who are amplifying their work. We are in this thing together, and our resistance will flourish as we envision a world where both our collaborative work and unique contributions are celebrated.

    Via Wonkette, Ohio Cops Who Killed Guy In Walmart Pretty Sure His Girlfriend Made Them Do It

    Just to make sure Thomas was good and terrified, Curd also suggested that she was high or drunk: “Have you been drinking? Drugs? Your eyes are kind of messed-up looking.” Imagine that: A woman who’s being accused of covering up her boyfriend’s nonexistent murder plot has been crying, and her eyes look funny. That there is some impressive police work. Thomas repeatedly protested that she was telling the truth, but Curd had seen enough guilty people to know that she was obviously lying. The first rule of policing, after all, is that everyone’s guilty of something.

    At the end of the interview, after threatening Thomas repeatedly with jail for her failure to cooperate, Curd finally let Thomas know that Crawford had died:

    “As a result of his actions, he is gone,” said the detective, as she slumped in her chair and cried.

    Curd later said he had no idea that Crawford had picked up the replica weapon off a shelf in the store, and two days after the incident told Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation agents that he “believed the deceased had brought a weapon into the Walmart and geared the interview with that assumption.” We’re not experts on criminal investigations, but since the fact that Crawford had found the BB gun in the store was known fairly quickly, isn’t that something an investigating detective ought to be informed of? Still, police can’t be too careful, and based on what we know of Ohio police procedure, Tasha Thomas should be thankful that she got out of the interview room without being homicided.

    Oakland.

    Another look at What Happened When Undercover Cop Pulled Gun On Protesters.

    Suddenly, behind me, someone started to yell. A protester had discovered the undercover cops and shouted an alarm. Others began to join in, calling them pigs and telling them to go home. The two men passed me in silence, at a hurried pace. Suddenly, a scuffle erupted as one protester attempted to pull off one of the officer’s hoods. The officer tackled someone involved, and was quickly surrounded by a small crowd and kicked from several directions while on the ground. (That officer, who was African American, is who you see in the ground in the photo above.) The other officer stepped in front of his partner and brandished a baton. When the crowd did not back up he drew his gun, pointing at protesters and photographers. Moments later, police flooded the area, scattering marchers and blocking others, as the undercover officers arrested the man who had been tackled in the skirmish.

    DeBolt reports the undercover officers were later identified as members of California Highway Patrol, assigned to follow the march on foot. They had been following in a vehicle providing information to stop protesters from blocking highways. Officials said in a press conference that the agency is investigating the incident, but believes the officers did what was necessary to protect themselves. They said that undercover cops had been deployed in prior protests and would be again, and that Twitter accounts had also been used to gather information.

    The incident and photo have sparked anger and questions about police tactics in crowd control. Protesters are expected to resume marching over the weekend throughout the Bay Area and I will send out updates on Twitter as events unfold.

    Read this: The Worst Is The “Kindness”. She has a fairly strict content-use policy, so I’m going to refrain from citing any large blocks of the text, just in case. A very revealing piece, especially for those white folks like myself who would love to be good allies. Yes, kindness (or ‘kindness’) can be extremely dangerous.

  372. rq says

    Oh wow, I think I put something like 10 links in that previous comment. I honestly thought I pressed ‘Post’ in the middle of it all, and didn’t bother to check. I will merely say that there are a couple of must-read articles in there, esp. the last one called ‘The Worst Is The Kindness”, which you are free to google in the meantime.

    Ferguson Commission Meets Tonight about Municipal Court System. Just a public announcement.

    “When the public wants such decentralization, and you’re going to have a decentralized court system, there’s going to be unintended consequences. And then who is in the position to be able to remedy the situation?”

    #AriyanaSmith was the first athlete to publicly protest against the deaths of #EricGarner and #MikeBrown..

    Actors: ‘Selma’ Cast, Director Wear ‘I Can’t Breathe’ Shirts at N.Y. Premiere.

    Parties and protests don’t typically overlap, but the “Selma” cast made an exception and a statement on Sunday night following the film’s Manhattan premiere. At one point during the otherwise splashy festivities, director Ava DuVernay took to the steps of the New York Public Library with actors David Oyelowo, E. Roger Mitchell, Wendell Pierce, Omar Dorsey, John Lavelle, Stephan James, Kent Faulcon, Lorraine Toussaint, Andre Holland, Tessa Thompson and Colman Domingo, donning “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts over their partywear and raising their arms in the “don’t shoot” pose.

    It was not just an unusually sobering photo op, but also a direct acknowledgment of the eerie timing of Paramount’s civil rights drama, with its scenes of organized protest and its urgent plea for justice and reform. The premiere was held the same weekend that more than 25,000 men and women marched through Manhattan, in the largest protest the city has seen since a grand jury decided not to indict a police officer in the death of Eric Garner.

    Cops behaving badly: Cop Caught on Video Bragging About How He Just Killed A Man

    Lovette, according to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement summary released this past August, said on a Taser recording “I dropped like a f**king bomb on his [Eimers’] head.”

    Lovette is expected to receive a five-day suspension without pay for actions including inappropriate remarks he made to employees of a Key West cupcake store that “gave the impression he had done something purposely wrong to cause Mr. Eimers’ death.”[…]

    The original incident happened on Thanksgiving of 2013 when Elmers allegedly sped off from a traffic stop, leading police on a chase. From there, the “official account” of what happened begins to fall apart.

    Police first reported that after Eimers sped off he eventually stopped his car at the beach. Police said that Eimers then got out and collapsed into the sand, having never regained consciousness.

    However, video evidence of the incident was released which contradicted these claims. In the video we clearly see Eimers exit his vehicle with his hands up and get on the ground, as police, with weapons drawn, ordered Eimers to do. […]

    Treavor says he had confidently assumed that an autopsy would be performed; it was also required by Florida law. However, with no logical explanation being offered, the police hurriedly shipped his body off to a funeral home and asked for it to be cremated, CBS reported.

    This hurried response was not only against police protocol but also against the law and all of this was done without the consent of the family. Luckily, the funeral home did not get to the cremation in a timely fashion so Eimers’ body sat there for 7 days, eventually allowing for an autopsy.

    After the evidence was nearly destroyed, an autopsy was finally performed, yielding highly suspect results. Mr. Eimers was found to have ten broken ribs, as well as wounds around both wrists. While no official explanations were offered on the cause of death, Monroe County Medical Examiner Dr. E. Scheuerman ruled out heart attack as a cause.

    Warning for graphic photos at the link.
    It ends a bit too ‘justice for ALL’, but it’s just another datapoint on the graph of horrific police misconduct, and should at least be mentioned.

    CHP defends plainclothes cop who drew gun at protest . What a surprise.

  373. Pteryxx says

    Illegal secret cremation to destroy the evidence of a beaten man’s body… holy fuckballs.

    By the way, rq, the Cleveland Browns players probably wore shirts naming specifically Tamir Rice and John Crawford because they both died at the hands of Ohio police, and the Browns play from Cleveland, Ohio.

    There are enough victims to choose local ones.

  374. rq says

    Pteryxx
    True enough re: the Browns players. That makes more sense.
    (Just seems like Michael Brown himself has sort of receded into the background, what with Tamir and Eric and John… But then, there’s just so. damn. many of them.)

  375. Pteryxx says

    Also by the way, from the incident of that cop bragging that he just killed a man: (bolds mine)

    Apparently enough people were duped into believing these contradictory and dishonest series of events, as put forward by the FDLE and the KWPD because a Grand Jury found that there was no probable cause for indictment. Sadly much of this evidence that you’ve just seen in this report, was never presented to them.

    Same shit sundae, different day.

  376. Ichthyic says

    *checks in*

    anything change yet? has the horror story of authoritarianism run amok finally hit home and legislators are doing something about it?

    *looks*

    nope.

    I’ll check back next month.

    anyone know what the DoJ is up to?

  377. Ichthyic says

    huh, maybe I spoke too soon… I notice upthread:

    That change is coming. Political leaders are asking the right questions about police culture in terms of racial profiling. Lawmakers in Missouri are filing bills that could curb abuses in municipal courts. The Justice Department is investigating police departments in the region for use of excessive force. Lawsuits are being filed to limit unconstitutional violations of civil rights.

    we’ll see.

    my experience is the talk is much louder than the walk.

  378. rq says

    Ichthyic
    The DoJ? Why, investigating, of course.
    Something or other. They don’t have a set deadline, but I hope they come up with something soon.

  381. rq says

    Ichthyic
    More or less irrelevant, though I believe they’re working on the idea that it’s a civil rights case, so there may be a lot of history to look through, and a decision doesn’t have to be so immediate. Or something, I don’t know, but it would be interesting to hear an update.

  383. Pteryxx says

    via Shakesville at US Prison Culture: Bail funds for protesters snatched by Chicago police

    I was at a visioning and strategy session about how to end police violence yesterday when I heard that Lookman was arrested.

    He was protesting police terror along of hundreds of other Chicagoans. As soon as I heard that he was snatched by CPD, my heart dropped. I knew that he was close, so damn close, to getting off probation for a nonviolent offense. I knew that nothing good would come of this. Nothing.

    Sure enough, when I arrived at the police station last night, I heard that he was being charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, a felony. Witnesses who saw the entire episode unfold say that he did no such thing. These are trumped up charges. We will fight them starting today in bond court.

    […]

    [Updated on the 14th]

    On a related note, two other young people of color were arrested at yesterday’s protests. One was badly beaten by the cops and taken to the hospital before being returned to jail. They too were represented by Joey and Molly Armour of the National Lawyers Guild today. Unfortunately, they are still charged with felonies. They have a $150,000 bond between them so they will need $15,000 to be bailed out. Some of their supporters are currently working on an online fundraiser for this. I will share the link once I have it.

    Update #2: Lookman is out of jail. However, two other young men remain locked up on felony aggravated battery charges on a police officer, a felony. One of those young men was badly beaten by the police and had to be taken to the hospital. They are without resources for bail. Here is their bail fund. Please help them get out of jail as soon as possible. Any amount helps and please share the link with others. Thanks.

    I don’t know much about how bail works, but apparently it’s paid for the court to hold instead of physically holding the person in jail before a hearing. The cash, or part of it, is forfeit if the person fails to show up in court. So, I assume, if the court behaves like that in Ferguson – locking the doors early, refusing family members who could help watch children – then trumped-up charges and bail could be another way to squeeze the citizens. Not to mention the difficulty of coming up with tens of thousands of dollars as the price of protesting while black.

  384. Pteryxx says

    On Friday (four days ago) Anderson Cooper of CNN interviewed the mothers of four victims. The full transcript is here and it is painful to read.

    LESLEY MCSPADDEN, MOTHER OF MICHAEL BROWN: I really didn’t know, to be honest for you. Because I was so for sure they would indict the officer that shot my son without a videotape because you had so many witnesses, which is real as the videotape, so —

    COOPER: You don’t have a lot of confidence in the system, as it is?

    MCSPADDEN: Not at all. Not at all. Not at all.

    CRUMP: And I know people are saying, make a difference in the Garner case but we’ve got to remember, the video wasn’t broken. It’s the system that’s broken. The video showed us what happened. And can you imagine, Anderson, can you imagine what the narrative would have been if what happened to her son, if there was no video of a tall, big, black man resisted arrest, and we never would have known and they would have swept his death right up under the rug.

    COOPER: Gwen, you believe that too?

    CARR: I believe that.

    COOPER: That if there hadn’t been a video, the story —

    CARR: Oh, yes. They already had a story put together before they’ve seen the video. They didn’t know there was a video, so the police officers, all the ones that were involved, there was a statement and I saw it. That what they said happened to my son, the video came out the next morning and I guess the police were so surprised that “The Daily News” had it frame by frame in the paper.

    Summary via Jezebel: (bolds mine)

    Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, Lesley McSpadden, mother of Mike Brown, Tamir Rice’s mother Samaria Rice, and Eric Garner’s mother Gwen Carr came together and spoke about their losses as well as the role of race.

    […]

    Carr stated that if her son Eric Garner was a white man caught selling cigrrettes, “they would have given him a summons and he wouldn’t have lost his life that day.” McSpadden stated she was certain that Darren Wilson was going to be indicted without a video tape: “You had so many witnesses.” Rice, whose son’s death has been ruled a homicide, revealed she allowed the footage of her son’s death to be released so “the world knows” what happened to her son.

    All of these women have suffered immense pain, and it’s maddening that they have to justify their pain and the injustice they feel as mothers of unarmed black victims. When Cooper asked if they thought things would have turned out differently if their sons were white, he framed it as a “hard question to ask.” But for these four mothers, it was the easiest one to answer.

    “It’s not happening to them, so they don’t quite get it,” [Fulton] said. “They don’t quite understand. They think that it’s a small group of African-Americans that’s complaining. …The people say that all the time: ‘What are they complaining about now? What are they protesting about now?'”

    “Until it happens to them and in their family then they’ll understand the walk. They don’t understand what we’re going through. They don’t understand the life and they don’t understand what we’re fighting against. I don’t even think the government quite gets it.”

    When Cooper (for some reason) asked them how to change the perception of black people in the country, Fulton gave the most honest answer: “divine intervention.”

  385. rq says

    OH MY GOSH ONE FOR THE GOOD NEWS PEEEEEEEOPLLLLLE!!!
    Two of the (dare I say original?) Ferguson protestors are getting married… here they are. Brittany and Alexis – yes, it’s a same-sex wedding. Here’s the livestream. D’Awwwww and many congratulations to the happy couple!!!!

  386. rq says

    Y’all, we are here in City Hall for @MusicOverPeople and @bdoulaoblongata’s wedding. The revolution is love. #Ferguson;
    We really are here to celebrate love. A protestor didn’t know and said “So, what are we shutting down?!” Always. Ready. #Ferguson :D ;
    And @DreadHampton is the best man. Revolutionary love. #Ferguson;
    The protestor family is real. We’re here for love. #Ferguson.

    :D Yes, I know, enough of the lovey-dovey good news, I’ll be updating the depressing stuff in a moment. But let’s just take a minute and be happy. :D

  390. rq says

    They just said YES. @MusicOverPeople and @bdoulaoblongata. Love and protest. #Ferguson ;
    Beautiful. @MusicOverPeople and @bdoulaoblongata. Love. #Ferguson.

    +++

    Bay Area Cop Threatens To Shoot Everybody Who Thinks Their Lives Matter

    There’s a certain brutal poetry in White’s threat, which derisively references the last words of Eric Garner and the slogan “Black Lives Matter,” both of which have been purposed as hashtags and rallying cries by protesters against police killings. The tweet sloughs off the mannered excuses for police killings, leaving a naked quick. For Officer White, it’s not about doing his job, protecting innocents, or even saving his own life. It’s about violent power fantasies and blind hatred. This threat was the culmination of a variety of tweets expressing anger and disgust at protests against the killings of unarmed black men, hitting all the notes befitting a cop named White. […]

    The irony of a police officer expressing dismay about Cal student athletes asserting their own humanity on the grounds that they go to a public school is almost decadently rich, but it belies a sobering truth about our modern police state. Although they like to drape themselves in the holy garb of the public service, police officers often don’t see themselves as actually beholden and accountable to the people they police, but instead as overseers or guards in a very large, open air prison. White’s utter disdain for the people who pay him to protect them is not an aberration, but endemic, as is his disgust for those attempting to hold police accountable for their actions. White has been placed on administrative leave (with pay, of course) by the San Jose Police Department pending a disciplinary inquiry.

    The horrifying coda to this story? Philip White is a police officer most people would have described as “one of the good ones,” a community-oriented cop who was handpicked by the SJPD to lead a much-praised anti-gang school outreach and education program. He was also a long-time basketball coach who was, according to the Internet Wayback Machine, listed as an assistant coach for the 2014-15 Menlo College men’s basketball team, although they seem to have quickly moved to scrub his name from their webpage. The limits of “community policing” and reliance on “good, well-trained cops” are rarely made so clear.

    Read that last bit and let it sink in. I suppose there’s good and then there’s good.

    Protesters chain themselves to Oakland police HQ; 25 arrested (repeat story).
    More on the same: Demanding End to War on Black People, Oakland Protesters Blockade Police Department.

    Los Angeles attorneys die-in.

  391. rq says

    Sarah Kendzior has compiled a Best of 2014 list of posts by her own good self, with a separate category on Ferguson and St Louis. I may or may not have posted this list once before, but here it is again, worth a read for those who haven’t had opportunity yet.

    Mmkay, going to be a bunch on Witness #40.
    How Sandy McElroy and Prosecutor Bob McCulloch colluded to destroy the case against Darren Wilson

    Sandy McElroy was never near Canfield Drive on August 9. She completely fabricated her entire story weeks after Darren Wilson killed Mike Brown. During their interrogation of her, Sandy McElroy was completely shredded by the FBI as a racist, a liar, unstable, and more. They proved in their own interview, with evidence, that McElroy lied about ever being there, about how she left the scene, about key details of the case that she claimed she witnessed, and more.

    Furthermore, Sandy McElroy, beyond being a convicted felon, had a record in St. Louis of interfering with investigations and making preposterous claims about connections she had to cold cases. All of this was known to St. Louis officials. Her extreme racism was not private, but public, and was discussed at great length with the FBI before she was ever allowed to testify before the grand jury.

    You must understand, then, that Sandy McElroy, whose testimony matches that of Darren Wilson’s better than any witness who testified, was only called to the grand jury, not once, but twice, and allowed to present concocted physical evidence at that, because she was a neutron bomb for this case. Not ONE PIECE OF EVIDENCE proving that she was there could be found and scores of evidence that she made the entire thing up was presented weeks before she was ever allowed to testify before the grand jury, but it was all deliberately ignored.

    Not only was it negligent to allow Sandy McElroy to testify, it was a deliberate attempt at poisoning the grand jury, who stated to her on record many times that they did not believe she was lying. Furthermore, her testimony has been used to champion the credibility of Darren Wilson time after time by conservative media who seem to not care at all about her character or credibility.

    All by itself, I believe the inclusion of Sandy McElroy as a witness before the grand jury is grounds for a new grand jury. Her testimony did irreparable damage to the case—which was clearly her intent from the start.

    He (Shaun King) references this article from the Smoking Gun: “Witness 40”: Exposing A Fraud In Ferguson

    Referred to only as “Witness 40” in grand jury material, the woman concocted a story that is now baked into the narrative of the Ferguson grand jury, a panel before which she had no business appearing.

    While the “hands-up” account of Dorian Johnson is often cited by those who demanded Wilson’s indictment, “Witness 40”’s testimony about seeing Brown batter Wilson and then rush the cop like a defensive end has repeatedly been pointed to by Wilson supporters as directly corroborative of the officer’s version of the August 9 confrontation. The “Witness 40” testimony, as Fox News sees it, is proof that the 18-year-old Brown’s killing was justified, and that the Ferguson grand jury got it right.

    They go through the process of discovering who she was – and I can’t help but be a little bit uncomfortable at their outing of this woman, wrong and troubled though she may be.

    Cleveland: Feds Find Shocking, Systemic Brutality, Incompetence In Cleveland Police Department

    The Justice Department began investigating the use of force in Cleveland’s police division in March 2013. A few months prior, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson had requested that the agency look into the issue. Jackson’s request came after a high-profile police chase in November 2012 that resulted in Cleveland police dispatching at least 62 vehicles, firing 137 bullets and killing two unarmed black suspects, who each sustained more than 20 gunshot wounds.

    There have been numerous other occasions when Cleveland police are alleged to have used excessive force. Most recently, on Nov. 22, a Cleveland police officer fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was playing with a toy gun in a park. Footage of the incident shows the officer firing his gun within two seconds of pulling up to the boy in his car. The Guardian reported on Thursday that Timothy Loehmann, the officer who shot Tamir, was judged unfit for police work in 2012 by his then-employer, the police department of Independence, Ohio. An Independence official described Loehmann’s “dismal” handgun performance in an internal memo.

    According to the DOJ report, Cleveland police officers “carelessly fire their weapons, placing themselves, subjects, and bystanders at unwarranted risk of serious injury or death.” For example, the agency pointed to an incident in 2011 where officers “fired 24 rounds in a residential neighborhoods,” with six rounds striking houses and 14 hitting parked cars. In another case, “an officer’s decision to draw his gun while trying to apprehend an unarmed hit-and-run suspect resulted in him accidentally shooting the man in the neck.”

    The Justice Department also claimed to have identified “several cases” where “officers shot or shot at people who did not pose an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury to officers or others.” For example, in 2013, the report noted that police shot at a kidnapping victim after he fled from his assailants wearing only his boxers. The sergeant said he believed the victim had a weapon because he raised his hand.

    More very troubling information at the link.

    That state of emergency is still in effect, but not for too much longeR: Nixon hasn’t decided whether to extend Ferguson-related state of emergency

    The state of emergency, enacted with an executive order, was to last 30 days unless extended with another executive order.

    That 30 days runs out Wednesday. Though Nixon hasn’t made a decision, he noted that the state’s emergency response is “winding down” and that its “footprint is very very small.”

    That’s one step forward. L.A. mayor to announce on-body cameras for cops citywide

    Advocates say the cameras will be a valuable tool for the department. The ability to record audio and video of police encounters with the public, they say, could help guard against officer misconduct and clear cops falsely accused of wrongdoing.

    Steve Soboroff, president of the Police Commission, has spent months raising private money to outfit officers with on-body cameras. He said the mayor’s plan would supplement the contract the LAPD was already negotiating with the camera vendor, eventually bringing more cameras to officers on the streets.

    More than $1 million raised through private donations will help pay for the cameras, thus avoiding City Hall budget constraints and bureaucracy-hampered efforts to install cameras in LAPD patrol cars.

    Soboroff called the mayor’s plan a “very big deal,” saying the LAPD’s use of the cameras could set a precedent for law enforcement agencies nationwide.

    A #BlackLivesMatter flag hangs in front of #Oakland Police Headquarters. #oaktown4mikebrown. Nice look.

  392. rq says

    I have trouble with counting. :P

    Mmkay, this comes via Portia, but apparently cops don’t need to know the law. Says the Supreme Court. the decision (pdf document), and the write-up: Supreme Court allows ignorance as excuse for cops

    The court split hairs, explaining Monday that police ignorance is excusable only when the crime for which the defendant was convicted is different from the nonexistent crime for which he was stopped and searched. If that sounds iffy, it is. Here’s why.

    The case, Heien v. North Carolina, had its origins in a weird fact pattern that I described when the case was argued back in October. In brief, the police stopped the defendant’s car because it had a rear brake light out. A subsequent search revealed drugs in the car. But a North Carolina court later determined that state law doesn’t prohibit driving with a failed brake light, so long as at least one is working.

    That meant Heien’s case before the Supreme Court was about just one question: whether the evidence was admissible even though the police officer who stopped the car had not observed anything that was actually illegal. The Supreme Court’s answer was yes. It reasoned that a police officer’s “reasonable” mistake of law is akin to an officer’s “reasonable mistake of fact.” And it thought it was reasonable for the officer not to know that state law technically only prohibited driving with no brake lights at all. […]

    The court’s logic, however, is faulty, because it confuses ignorance with nonexistence. Of course the government can’t punish me for a nonexistent crime — that’s the basic principle of legality. But the crucial question at stake in the ignorance principle is what knowledge I as a citizen am responsible to have. The notion that ignorance of the law is no excuse amounts to a responsibility on every citizen to know the law. The police should have a reciprocal obligation to know the law — which can be measured only by a situation in which the consequences of my arrest are different from conviction of the nonexistent offense.

    Looked at another way, I am held responsible for the collateral consequences of my ignorance — so the police should be held responsible for the collateral consequences of theirs. Imagine that I’m jaywalking in Los Angeles, reasonably unaware as a Bostonian that there exists such a thing as a law against jaywalking.

    But in the situation where the police reasonably think I have violated some nonexistent law, they’re not held responsible for the consequences, which include the search — I am. The burden of the police’s ignorance falls on me, not the state. Or least that’s what the Supreme Court has ruled. “True symmetry”? I think not.

    Only one judge dissented: “In her view, the holding had the effect of “further eroding the Fourth Amendment’s protection of civil liberties in a context where that protection has already been worn down.” And she asked rhetorically “how a citizen seeking to be law-abiding and to structure his or her behavior to avoid these invasive, frightening, and humiliating encounters could do so.” Sotomayor also pointed out that there was no reason to think the criminal justice system would somehow crumble if police mistakes of law were disallowed.”
    There goes probable cause and all that other loverly stuff.

    If #Ferguson taught us anything it’s that you don’t need credentials or permission to do good, to help others, to stand up for what’s right.

    Not just the US: G4S guards found not guilty of manslaughter of Jimmy Mubenga

    The court had heard how fellow passengers said they heard Mubenga cry out: “I can’t breathe” as he was pinned down in his seat, despite already being handcuffed from behind with his seatbelt on.

    The guards said in court that they had not heard him say he could not breathe and had not pushed his head down and forward towards his knees in a position known to risk asphyxia. They said they had been restraining him to stop him hurting himself or other passengers on the plane.

    The guards, who were tearful as they left the dock, said they were delighted with the jury’s decision.

    In a statement issued on their behalf, Alex Preston of Olliers Solicitors said: “Terrence Hughes, Colin Kaler and Stuart Tribelnig are delighted to have been found not guilty so quickly. They bitterly regret the death of Mr Mubenga but have always said they were trying to do a very difficult job in difficult circumstances to the best of their ability. They are grateful to the judge and jury for the care they have taken resolving these sad events.”

    More on Witness #40: Witness who testified before grand jury that she saw Michael Brown charge Officer Darren Wilson is revealed to be ‘lying racist bipolar felon’. Why be so ablist when it’s sufficient to prove that she was lying?
    And can they declare a mis-grand-jurying?

  393. rq says

    Ferguson Action Movement has a letter:

    On the week of August 9th, Black youth in Ferguson took to the streets and kicked off a wave of resistance against police violence that has spread across the country. In the last four months, we have stood united in a call for change in our system of policing and a new vision for Black lives, lived fully and with dignity.

    Millions have answered that call with simple acts of civil disobedience. We are marching, shutting down streets, taking highways, stopping trains and yes, even tweeting. We have done all of this together. We’ve met in our homes, offices and schools— and walked out of them, with our hands up. Many of you have organized small actions that when woven together, have tremendous impact.

    And this weekend, over 50,000 people took to the streets of New York City in the largest march yet, seeking justice for Eric Garner and all victims of police violence.

    This movement belongs to all of us. It is broad and people-powered, made up of many places and parts. No one organization, group or leader can claim this ongoing momentum, which was undeniably sparked by a group of young Black people in Ferguson who said: “Enough.” These marches, sit-ins, and occupations continue a long tradition of civil disobedience in the pursuit of justice that has inspired the world to act. That is real leadership.

    Together, we have made #BlackLivesMatter a dinner table conversation, and in doing so, opened a long-overdue national dialogue on what it takes for Black people to fully attain freedom. Because when we are out in the streets, we know that this movement is bigger than body cameras or civilian review boards. We are all asking important questions.

    What is justice when police officers can kill and beat us with impunity, on and off camera?

    What is justice when the policing system we aim to change feeds our nation’s addiction to prisons, where many of our family members serve unjust sentences that do nothing to repair the fabric of our communities? Meanwhile, law enforcement officers and the departments that employ them are never held accountable for the damage they inflict in our neighborhoods.

    What is justice when the promise of a living wage is beyond the reach of many in our communities? When our schools are broken and underfunded? When we are pushed out of our neighborhoods to make room for wealthier, whiter residents?

    The truth is that justice eludes us: at our schools, in our streets, at our borders, in prison yards, on protest lines and even in our homes. It is that full freedom that we fight for when we say that #BlackLivesMatter.

    This is a movement of and for ALL Black lives— women, men, transgender and queer. We are made up of both youth AND elders aligned through the possibilities that new tactics and fresh strategies offer our movement. Some of us are new to this work, but many of us have been organizing for years. We came together in Mike Brown’s name, but our roots are also in the flooded streets of New Orleans and the bloodied BART stations of Oakland.

    We are connected online and in the streets. We are decentralized, but coordinated. Most importantly, we are organized. Yet, we are likely not respectable negroes. We stand beside each other, not in front of one another. We do not cast any one of ours to the side in order to gain proximity to perceived power.

    Because, this is the only way we will win. We can’t breathe. And we won’t stop until Freedom.

    Oakland cops disciplined 24 times for failing to turn on body-worn cameras. So there’s that, especially since the disciplining doesn’t seem to be particularly effective.

    You have to watch the video to believe it. Police union chief calls killing of 12-year-old justified. The kid was 12. The cops shot him more or less on sight. Justified? Fuck that shit.

    Because this man’s criminal past matters? Hero Ex-Con Bryant Collins Was Wayward Baby’s Saving Grace. He’s black. Just count how many times they reference his criminal past, as if this is at odds with saving a baby.

    Boston middle schoolers

    C’mon, Stop Blaming Obama For Failing To Cure America Of Racism, especially since no other president before him even attempted.

    In the wake of Ferguson, Eric Garner, and growing national protests, people keep bemoaning the failure of President Obama to move us to a post-racial society. We still hold him to the vision he articulated in his 2004 convention speech of what unites us in America, and the possibility of triumph over racial and other divisions. “Post-racial” gained hopeful momentum in the press during his presidential campaign, as Obama seemed comfortable in all worlds, thanks to his multicultural upbringing and mixed racial identity.

    For the president’s part, our becoming post-racial was never something he claimed he could deliver for us, and certainly not in a term or two. His own optimistic rhetoric expressed the endurance of America’s long struggle against prejudice, but when asked about the notion of his election moving us into a post-racial age, he said in Rolling Stone, “I never bought into the notion that by electing me, somehow we were entering into a post-racial period.” He added, “What happens in the workplace, in schools, on sports fields, and through music and culture shapes racial attitudes as much as any legislation that’s passed. I do believe that we’re making slow and steady progress.”

    That some now hold him responsible for a lack of a racial utopia is actually another indication of how long such an advance will take. No other president has been expected the bear the weight of changing us so radically. As many have pointed out, electing a black president does not make us post-racial—in fact, it has served to bring to the surface long-simmering elements of the American soul.

    How else can we explain the furious reactions, like Judge Jeanine’s, to any attempt by Obama to talk about racially charged incidents? And how else to explain the disdain and dismay of liberals who want Obama to heal us solely by his words?

    To accuse the president of failing to move us past racism is like blaming our doctor when we don’t lose weight—though you made no effort to change our unhealthy habits.

    Yes, it is our own responsibility, as the article goes on to explain. Not Obama’s. But he could do this and that to help out, I’m sure.

  394. rq says

    LA Sheriff Agrees To Oversight Of Jails To Settle Abuse Lawsuit.

    Editorial: Of court reform, corruption, Pine Lawn and Chesterfield.

    Report: Darren Wilson’s Key Witness Lied About Everything.

    In San Jose: San Jose police officer on leave for controversial protest tweets. That’s the same guy discussed a bit above.

    Police most trusted institution after a couple others such as the military. Looks solid to me.

    K, here’s a link again because it may have switched to the next video last time: Police union chief calls killing of 12-year-old justified

    The president of Cleveland’s police union talks exclusively to “All In” about demanding an apology from the Browns’ Andrew Hawkins, who protested the police shootings of Tamir Rice and John Crawford.

    (Yes, I’m rushing these last, want to clear the slate and call in early tonight!)

  395. rq says

    Eight Ways to Support Protests Against the Criminal Punishment System, if You Can’t Get Out on the Street . THESE ARE GOOD.

    1) There is, of course, a need for people to volunteer for the not-exciting task of answering calls for legal help, especially during mass protests. I can’t tell you how many times the number for the National Lawyers Guild, and a reminder to write it on an arm, came through my Twitter feed as people took to the streets to protest the non-indictments of Darren Wilson in Ferguson and Daniel Pantaleo in New York City. But someone has to answer the phone and keep track of who has been arrested, and when and where they are in the system.

    2) If you can’t volunteer to spend an evening working the phones, be a person who calls the precinct and the local powers-that-be to demand that protesters be released without charges. Be persistent even if the police lie, are rude or hang up on you. It’s something you can do to help pressure the city into letting people go without putting them through the legal wringer.

    3) As anyone who has ever been arrested and held by the police can tell you, it’s always good to see friendly faces in the courtroom once you’re finally dragged to arraignment. Court support entails finding out when arraignment day is and showing up. Most courtrooms have metal detectors and x-ray machines, so leave anything that you don’t want a courtroom guard or police officer to find at home. If you can bring food for those getting out, do it! Just remember that it may take hours for the person you’re waiting for to finally appear before the judge, so don’t bring anything that needs to stay either frozen or hot.

    4) Raising bail money is a hugely important and under-appreciated task. People who are arrested in New York City face being sent to Rikers Island, a sprawling jail complex that occupies an entire island, if they or their loved ones cannot come up with bail money. People have been arrested in other cities as well and are facing time in jail while they await their day in court — a day that could take months to arrive. Coordinating bail money — whether through donations or loans from friends — is a vastly important task and can mean the difference between the person getting out quickly or having to spend weeks or months behind bars.

    While we protest or support others protesting the needless deaths and the lack of accountability for those responsible, let’s also not forget about those who the criminal punishment system has consigned to living deaths: people currently in prison. If you can’t get out onto the streets, can’t make it to court and can’t run around collecting fives, tens and twenties from your community, there are other ways to help support people directly impacted.

    5) Since it’s December, let’s start with a couple of season-specific ways. Just Detention International, formerly called Stop Prisoner Rape, is an organization that works to end sexual assault and abuse in jails, prisons and immigrant detention centers. To break the isolation felt by many people in prison, especially during the holiday season, its Words of Hope campaign asks people to send a compassionate message to survivors behind bars. Don’t worry if you don’t have a card on hand — the campaign has a site in which you can type in your message and Just Detention International, or JDI, sends it on your behalf. Juvencia, who was sexually abused by prison staff in Colorado, received one of these messages last year and wrote back, saying, “Just knowing that there are so many people who care about how inmates are being treated makes all the difference.” Another survivor, now out of prison, wrote, “When I was in prison, JDI’s Words of Hope gave me strength. Now that I’m out, I’m writing my own cards to other survivors. I want to encourage them to be strong, too.”

    6) Over two-thirds of people in women’s prisons are parents. Children of incarcerated mothers are five times more likely to end up in the foster care system than children of incarcerated fathers. In addition to not being able to spend the holidays together, the majority of mothers in prison are unable to afford presents for their children. But this year, Moms United and Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Moms have launched a drive to enable mothers in Illinois prisons to send gifts to their children. Supporters on the outside can buy and donate gifts from this list. Mothers behind bars then choose which of these gifts is the most appropriate for their child(ren) and send them. As of the first Sunday in December, people on the outside have ensured that parents in Illinois’ two women’s prisons, Chicago’s Cook County Jail, and several transitional centers can send gifts to their kids.

    7) People behind bars need support all year round, not just during the winter holidays. Black and Pink connects people on the outside with LGBTQ people locked behind bars. Their pen pal program helps break through the isolation of incarceration and, for some, the isolation they may have had from their families and communities even before their arrest and imprisonment.

    8) And, whether you choose to do all, some or none of the above, keep talking about the issues of race, policing and the criminal punishment system. If you are a white or a white-passing person, talk to other white people! It’s not the responsibility of people of color to educate others about race. Take time to educate yourself. The Internet holds many resources. Look at the #FergusonSyllabus hashtag if you need a starting point and then go from there. Then go out and talk with other parents on the playground, co-workers, people in line at the supermarket or in waiting rooms, and family members. Challenge them to reexamine their ideas about race, policing, punishment and justice. And keep doing so.

    (That Ferguson Syllabus mentioned, by the way, is a very good base for the facts of the case.)

    A brief history of the Modern Police , youtube video. Heavy on the graphics. :P

  397. rq says

    Brilliant. This can’t go wrong. @CNN: panel of cops. What would you like to ask them? Send your Q’s with #AskACop ”, with some examples:
    1: #Askacop I have a math question: if 1 Black man has zero guns, zero knives and 2 hands, how many bullets does it take to disarm him?
    2: #AskACop why become a cop in a Black neighborhood if you’re afraid of Black people? I’m afraid of ghosts, so you see me being a Ghostbuster?
    3: Why do Black people love reaching for your guns? Are your firearms some kind of Negro catnip? @cnn #AskACop
    4: So a black guy, an asian guy & a white guy walk into a bar. How many times do u shoot the black guy? #AskACop @CNN
    5: Do you ever think of turning in or testifying against criminal colleagues? #AskACop

  399. rq says

    Secretary of Education was in Ferguson: US Sec of Ed @arneduncan discusses edu experiences/needs w/@MsPackyetti @deray @Nettaaaaaaaa & others #Ferguson ;
    Y’all, @Nettaaaaaaaa stays with the faces. This is from today’s meeting with Secretary Duncan. #Ferguson;
    And here is Starksy (@ReverendStarsky), Brittany (@MsPackyetti) and Rich McClure at the Duncan meeting. #Ferguson.

    More on #AskACop:
    1: “@joshuadwain: Which object works better in an unlit stairwell? Gun or Flashlight? #AskACop” #AkaiGurley
    2: When are you going to do something about all this white on white crime? #AskACop
    3: Why is it so difficult to correctly identify inanimate objects like sandwiches, cellphones and wallets when they’re in black hands? #AskACop.

  400. rq says

    Apparently nothing cops do is wrong: NYPD Police Officer Convicted For Plotting To Rape, Kidnap, And Eat Women Is Free

    Manhattan Judge Paul Gardephe acquitted Valle, saying that there was insufficient evidence to show that he planned to bring his disturbing plot to fruition.

    The judge set bail at $100,000 and ordered home detention for Valle, according to reports. Prosecutors said they plan to appeal.

    Valle, who was convicted in March 2013, was facing life in prison for his alleged plan to kill and cook his wife and other women. His lawyers had argued that the alleged plots were fantasy online role-play.

    So he’s free to go.

    Indiana Cop Sells ‘Breathe Easy Don’t Break The Law’ T-Shirts (sample shirts at the link):

    Mishawaka, Indiana police officer Jason Barthel designed the T-shirt which reads “Breathe Easy: Don’t Break the Law” and is selling it at his business, South Bend Uniform Co.. Barthel told South Bend, Indiana CBS affiliate WSBT TV the shirt isn’t intended to antagonize people critical of police in the deaths of Garner, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri or Tamir Rice and John Crawford in Cleveland. Scores of people across the country have taken to wearing “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts at demonstrations, and athletes including NBA players LeBron James and Derrick Rose have donned the T-shirts during recent pre-game shootarounds.

    Barthel said his T-shirt design is intended to unite rather than divide.

    We’re here to protect the public and we want you to breathe easy knowing that the police are here to be with you and for you and protect you.

    Amid Justice Department Investigations, Protesters Call Out Cleveland Police Murders

    The DOJ and the City of Cleveland have agreed to begin negotiations for a consent decree – a set of reforms designed to prevent future abuses by law enforcement – and install an independent monitor to oversee reform efforts before the end of the year. But as journalist Ray Jablonski notes, the process can take weeks, months or years, possibly lasting well into the 2020s. If city officials and DOJ officials are unable to come to an agreement, however, the DOJ will file a civil lawsuit against Cleveland.

    Ohio Gov. John Kasich said to address concerns of racism in law enforcement, he’s agreed to “create a task force to look across the state at what we can do to be able to respond to people who are increasingly frustrated and feel shut out.” Don Bryant, president of the Greater Cleveland Immigrant Support Network, has been heavily involved in the organizing efforts surrounding the reform, but does not put much weight on the governor’s lip service. “We’ve seen a lot of task forces, but not a lot of action,” he said.

    On December 8, the Cleveland City Council announced it would commence a “listening tour” to hear the concerns of residents in the aftermath of the DOJ report. Additionally, the council held a special meeting to review the DOJ report, and the mayor’s staff outlined the city’s plans to comply with the findings of the federal investigation.

    But will this be enough? […]

    Preceding the last City Council meeting of the year, the Cleveland Ministers and Residents for Change publicly issued seven demands:

    1. Police accountability – The immediate abolishment of the current police review board, to be replaced with a “Citizen’s Complaint and Review Commission” (CCRC) elected by the citizens of Cleveland and composed entirely of civilian volunteers. The CCRC will have subpoena power and authority to recommend sanctions for officer misconduct.

    2. Transparency – In the event of a police shooting, an electronic message should be immediately forwarded to the elected CCRC. Details about the officer involved and the citizen injured should be included. Additionally, should police be dispatched to a situation with a high potential for casualties, EMS should be notified and dispatched if necessary, as a first response in lieu of “police backup.” (It was reported that nearly four minutes had passed after Tamir Rice was shot before first aid was administered. A spokesman for Mayor Frank Jackson said he was unsure of the policy regarding how and when officers are required to provide medical assistance).

    3. An early warning system – A tracking system where police administration will track, investigate and discipline officers that have a history of lodged complaints from citizens, which would also be subject to review from the CCRC.

    4. Mental health services and crisis prevention/intervention training – This includes the hiring of an onsite mental health assessment/training officer or agency to develop and implement mandatory training for police and dispatchers.

    5. Improved community relations and recruitment – This includes the implementation of a diversity campaign called the “My Community, My Choice” program, as a way to address the disproportionate exclusion of people of color in the Cleveland police force.

    6. Dispatcher communication and sensitivity training – An immediate intensified training and monitoring of all dispatch workers. Dispatchers should be held accountable if they do not repeat what is communicated to them verbatim.

    7. Body cameras – On November 25, the city approved a one-year contract to outfit the Cleveland police force with body cameras. The cameras will make their debut on officers in January 2015, with all officers to be equipped with cameras by the end of June. In accordance, officers should be required to “wear a camera equipped with audio and visual capabilities on their person for the full duration of their shift without exception.”

    […]
    At the root of the issue, however, is race. While the DOJ review acknowledged that African-Americans in Cleveland felt discriminated against by police, the fact is one that many have to deal with every day. “I’ve had three cousins killed by gun violence, nephews in prison and juvie. My energy is toward changing the structure of society,” said Joe Worthy of the New Abolitionists Association. He is involved in young advocate leadership training and teaching youth of color nonviolent organizing techniques. “We have kids in our program coming face-to-face with the realization that they could die; they don’t even really get a chance to be kids. Every time you get pulled over, you wonder if this is the time that your life will be in danger.” But he doesn’t want this to be a discouraging story. “Real changes can come out of this. Power drives policy; policy creates culture,” he said. “Nonviolence, focus, planning and strategy . . . Cleveland could be a great example of people power.”

    The article examines several death-by-police shootings in Cleveland and their aftermath, all of this in light of the DOJ finding the Cleveland PD to be, basically, racially incompetent.
    Also an example of citizens working within the system to bring change, instead of just protesting – though that change is far slower and far quieter than any of us can hear, but it is happening. People out there are fighting for these things.

    See, this space includes MANY organizers/activists who are actively developing infrastructure for movement’s second wave. #Ferguson;
    There are people whose tweets you’ve never seen, whose names you don’t know, who are keeping the fire lit in the movement. #Ferguson.

  401. rq says

    Music.

    LIVE now at Barclay’s Center for an action for Hanukkah and justice #BlackLivesMatter.

    Dooley calls McCullogh a liar. FBI Probe into County Police Crime Lab Contracts Finds No Criminal Wrongdoing

    St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley says allegations of fraud became public knowledge and ruined his chances for re-election.

    “So, for me to say this did not cause me to lose this election, I wouldn’t be telling the truth. That is the main reason why I lost the election – because I was painted as an African American that was corrupt,” Dooley says.

    The investigation began in summer 2013, centering on a multimillion-dollar police crime lab project, and questions of self-dealing when a company co-owned by the then-chairman of the police board – Greg Sansone – received a subcontract to work on the project.

    “From a public relations standpoint, it probably wasn’t a good idea,” says U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan. “But the police board had nothing to do with the awarding of any of these contracts.”

    Not in the article, but the implication is that it’s McCullogh’s doing. I had another on this, I think.

    Re-read Johnetta Elsie [FERGUSON FORWARD]
    ‘When I close my eyes at night, I see people running from tear gas’    . Yesterday (rather this morning) she had a series of tweets about still living with PTSD, jumping at small noises and being afraid in her own home because of what happened in the summer.

    And because. Revolutionary love: Ferguson protest leaders get engaged at City Hall, and via Buzzfeed, Two Women Who Met As Ferguson Protesters Get Married.

    (from the St Louis article)
    Ferguson protest leader Brittany Ferrell remembers the first time she saw Alexis Templeton step out of the car at the Ferguson Police Department in mid-August.

    “She had on an UMSL shirt,” said Ferrell, 25. “I was like, ‘Oh, hey.’ I embraced her just because she was there. You hug people and you welcome them, especially in a time like that.”

    From that moment, Templeton, 20, said it was if they had no choice but to be connected.

    Both are Ferguson residents and University of Missouri – St. Louis students who chose to put school on hold after Michael Brown Jr.’s death and devote themselves to organizing against police brutality. They founded Millennial Activists United with Ashley Yates – all black women in their 20s – and have since become some of the most prominent faces and voices of the Ferguson movement.

    Templeton said she found herself gravitating towards certain people in the movement, namely Ferrell, “making sure they are safe. Making sure they are okay more than everyone else is okay. And when they get arrested, you try to get arrested with them.”

    In the midst the movement’s intensity, they fell in love.

    On Tuesday, December 16 at about 2 p.m., Ferrell and Templeton arrived at St. Louis City Hall to get married – something that only became possible a month before in Missouri. On November 5, a state judge overturned Missouri’s constitutional ban on gay marriage. The Slay administration has been a strong advocate for marriage equality.

    Surrounded by supporters on the marbles steps of City Hall’s rotunda, Templeton told the story. “Last night, we were sitting in the kitchen and she asked me, ‘Would you marry me?’ I said, ‘Absolutely. As a matter of fact, I’ll do it tomorrow.’”

    Templeton added, “Since she’s made me happy for 130 days, I want to make her happy for the rest of my life.”

    Lots of photos at the buzzfeed link.

  402. rq says

    In Minneapolis, addressing the disparity between white and black students just got a little bit harder: Bernadeia Johnson out as Minneapolis schools superintendent.

    Leigh Anne Tuohy, Racism, and the White Saviour Complex

    Leigh Anne Tuohy profiled two Black kids, invaded their privacy and interrogated them, but somehow people are behaving as if this is some kind of wonderful social justice moment. No. Not even a little. This is some fucked up racial profiling combined with white saviourism, and it is racist as hell. Assuming that those kids were doing something bad was racist. Assuming that she could take up space at their table was racist. Insisting that they talk to her was disrespectful and racist. Wanting evidence that they weren’t up to no good was racist. Treating those boys as props to make her look good and then posting this picture publicly (and honestly, I wonder if the boys consented to that) is incredibly racist.

    Also, can we talk about how problematic using the phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover” is when it comes to talking about race? First of all, it begins with the assumption that the “cover” (or in this case, skin) tells you something unappealing about the contents of the book or person. It also infers that there is something unattractive or bad about the “cover” (or, again, skin). I can’t believe that I have to say this, but: there is nothing wrong or bad about Black skin. Black skin is not unpleasant or ugly, and to imply that dark skin might devalue someone is really, really fucked up.

    Black people aren’t things. They don’t exist just so that white people can make a point about themselves. These are two real kids who not only had to endure this woman’s microaggressions but have now had their image splashed all over social media – the Facebook picture alone has 150,000 likes and over 12,000 shares. Step away for a hot second from this white woman’s narrative, and think about how those teenagers must feel – having their privacy invaded, having assumptions made about them based on their race, and now having a white woman use their images to get praise for herself.

    Now tell me again about how Leigh Anne Tuohy did a good thing.

    A summary of the incident at the link. But it is, honestly, disturbing at how easily she assumed wrong and how she really, honestly, believes that she did something amazing.

    #AskACop:
    #AskACop Ever think of setting up a union for cops that turn in other cops for illegal behavior? #WhiteKnights;
    Ah, and it wasn’t mentioned, but the #AskACop hashtag was created due to CNN produces show called #copsunderfire. All white police panel. Shows cops being shot at. Doesnt address unarmed murders. A+ journalism. I believe also that none of the cops on the panel had ever shot unarmed people.

    TV alert: “Fault Lines” “Ferguson: Race & Justice in the U.S.” will air again on Al Jazeera America on Sat Dec 20th at 7pm ET/4pm PT & 10pm ET/7pm PT.

    Jews across America are standing against police violence this Hanukkah & affirming #BlackLivesMatter

    Organized by Rabbis, social activists and concerned citizens, these Hanukkah actions taking place across the country have grown quickly, and promise to spread even farther as Hanukkah continues over the next eight days. So far, protests and actions have had a singular focus: to honor those black Americans killed by police and to ensure those injustices perpetrated do not slink into the shadows.

    Here are the words of national organizers, describing their intention:

    Across the country, people have expressed grief and outrage in response to the grand
    jury decisions not to indict Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo, the two white police officers who murdered Michael Brown and Eric Garner, both of whom were unarmed
    black men. Though police killings of people of color — particularly Black people — have
    impacted communities of color for generations, these recent events have sparked a
    national outcry and movement.

    This Chanukah, we rededicate ourselves to the fight to end police violence and racial
    profiling. As we light the Chanukah candles, we remember those who have lost their lives to racist police violence. We remember the lives they lived and the loved ones they left behind, and we dedicate the Chanukah flame to their memory.

    a In New York City, Jews and Arabs (left) active in Middle East politics marched together in solidarity to declare that Black Lives Matter.

    It was a remarkable and intentional display of unity, particularly considering the profiling and oppression Arab-Americans suffer themselves at the hands of law enforcement in America as well as the continued oppression of Palestinians by Israel.

    Elsewhere, activists read the names of black Americans who have been murdered by police, lit candles in the memory of those who have been lost, and said Kaddish together to remember those who have died without receiving any justice.

    It’s funny, it’s like those who are also sometimes (or often) oppressed understand that #BlackLivesMatter, while those insisting on their own privilege seem to insist that #AllLivesMatter. I wonder how this works, because it seems that other oppressed groups seem to understand that achieving jsutice for one particular group (and focussing on it in order to achieve it) will be a step forward for justice for all.
    Egh. Rather incoherent thought there.

  403. rq says

    For anyone worried, “Black Lives Matter” protest could snarl Saturday shopping at Mall of America.

    Right, Arne Duncan went to Ferguson – U.S. education chief visits to talk with local students about Ferguson. I knew I had a link for that.

    They heard stories of open wounds. Racism. Deep divisions. And solutions.

    “This level of wanting to confront racism and bias directly and move forward is the unmistakable lesson and unmistakable message we heard today,” Weingarten said.

    The school visits were closed to media to ensure the conversations were fully open and candid, Duncan’s staff said. Brittany Packnett, a member of the Ferguson Commission and the executive director of Teach For America-St. Louis, invited Duncan to visit the St. Louis area and learn from its children.

    “We don’t learn by sitting behind a desk in Washington,” Duncan said.

    The unrest in Ferguson has had an impact on many students throughout the region. Districts in north St. Louis County in particular have increased the number of counselors in their buildings to help children and staff cope with anxiety and trauma.

    Duncan said he’ll return to Washington with a better understanding of the needs in and around Ferguson. He said the Education Department has experience dealing with crises, and made reference to its outreach to areas affected by hurricanes and school shootings. There are short-term grants that can help districts and schools most affected by the unrest here, Duncan said. But, “we’re in this for the long haul.”

    Thoughts on this? BOMBSHELL INTERVIEW: Eric Garner’s Death a Retaliatory Move by NYPD

    The brief clip, obtained exclusively by the Free Thought Project, is part of a much larger collection of video which is going to be part of a documentary on police misconduct, which is why the videographer who gave it to us, has placed a watermark over it.

    In the interview, Carr tells us that police didn’t show up that day because Garner broke up a fight or sold loosey cigarettes; they were there because police had a history of harassing Garner.

    Carr explains that police had actually stolen money from Garner, who subsequently planned to file a complaint against the NYPD for this theft. Police were there that day, Carr says, not to shake Garner down for selling smokes, but to retaliate against him for trying to expose their theft.

    When the interviewer asks Carr if he thinks that the police singled out Garner because he was black, this is what he said,

    “I wouldn’t really say [he was killed] because Eric was a black man. It’s due to the fact that they stole money from him and refused to give him his money, and he filed charges against them. This is why they had a vendetta against him. “

    Well, in a way, it doesn’t sound too far-fetched at all.

    And to keep in mind it is not just black lives: Police Say Tasering 8-Year-Old Native American Girl Was Justified

    Attorney Dana Hanna recounts the incident, saying that the “four trained police officers surrounding a 70-pound, 8-year-old Indian girl,” should have used tactics that were less violent and not so risky to the young girl’s health and possibly life.

    “One distracts her, another grabs the girl’s arm. That’s what they should have done,” Hanna continued.

    “She had a kitchen paring knife, but hadn’t cut. She was a kid throwing a tantrum. They should have made an attempt to grab the kid, not use a weapon to throw her into a wall. A Taser’s not meant to kill, but it does kill. Many people have died after being hit by a Taser by cops. It never should be used on a little child. She certainly wasn’t presenting a danger to officers.”

    The girl’s father, Bobby Jones added, “I don’t fault for the police being there because they were called. They were there. But what happened while they were there is why I’m upset,” in an early interview he did with local KSFY.

    Hanna says that the girl, “L.M.J.”, is currently receiving mental and emotional counseling from a child counselor, as a result of the trauma she experienced at the hands of police. We’ll keep you updated on how the lawsuit proceeds.

  404. rq says

    Die in at city hall in Saint Louis. Stop harassing activists. #Ferguson #Michaelbrown.
    Lawyers Die-In for #EricGarner at BK Criminal Court on 5 Month Anniversary of his murder. #ThisStopsToday @NLGNews .
    St. Louis intersection blocked near city hall. Traffic backing up along tucker.
    #BlackLivesMatter, no matter what the racist courts think. #NYC2Palestine solidarity banner #5. #IndictTheSystem.
    Powerful historical photos: Black Americans even had to fight for the right to use the ocean. #Ferguson #ICantBreathe (the pictures are just mindblowing – this used to be a thing?).
    Now: High School students hold die-in for #MikeBrown #EricGarner and all victims of police brutality at White House.

  405. rq says

    Here’s the DoJ, as requested. Eric Holder’s parting shot: Police abuse scandals mean the nation has “failed”

    Attorney General Eric Holder got himself virtually muzzled early in President Obama’s first term, when he called the U.S. “a nation of cowards” for our inability to deal frankly with issues of race. On his way out the door, he’s not worried about his critics. He told MSNBC’s Joy Reid that ongoing troubles in limiting police violence mean “we, as a nation have failed. It’s as simple as that. We have failed.”

    It’s a grim verdict, but it’s hard to quarrel. Holder was a deputy U.S. attorney back in 2001, when the Justice Department announced it would not prosecute the New York police officers who famously fired 41 shots at unarmed immigrant Amadou Diallo, hitting him 19 times. Though Justice concluded it couldn’t make a civil rights case against the officers, Holder warned at the time: ”We must learn from this deeply troubling incident. Mr. Diallo, an unarmed individual who committed no crime and no act of aggression, unnecessarily lost his life.”

    Now, 13 years later, similar “deeply troubling” incidents still occur regularly, and they’ve touched off a new movement for reform. While Holder speaks in measured ways, throughout the interview, about the mutual distrust between police and “communities of color,” and the work the Justice Department is doing to bridge those gaps, he places himself within the national reform movement. For a while he uses “they” when talking about protestors, but then he shifts significantly to “we.”

    “That’s all we’re asking for — just make the nation better,” he tells Reid. And the interview wraps. […]

    He says he trusts his chosen successor, deputy U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch, to continue his pursuit of voting rights violations – though at least one Republican, Sen. David Vitter, has vowed to block Lynch because of the president’s moves on immigration.

    While Holder uses his elbows when it comes to issues, he’s diplomatic on the topic of whether race has been a factor in his tough relationship with the House GOP.

    Hard to say. I mean, the attorney general seems to be, lately, the person, whether you are white, black, Republican, Democrat, who catches a lot of grief. So there’s that — that’s just a part of the position.

    I can’t look into the hearts and minds of people who have been, perhaps, my harshest critics. I think a large part of the criticism is political in nature. Whether there is a racial component or not, I don’t know.

    But when Reid asks if he still thinks we’re a nation of cowards when it comes to race, he doesn’t back down. “Yeah, we’ve not done all that we can. I’m hopeful that, at this time, with this president, that we can make progress in ways that we have not in the past.”

    Sad to see him go, but here’s to Loretta Lynch.

    This. was. incredibly. striking. A tribute to mediocrity, inaction-as-attempted-action, and the non-magical-ness of intent. “But what good are your good intentions if they kill us?” I Don’t Know What to Do With Good White People

    In the wake of the Darren Wilson non-indictment, I’ve only deleted one racist Facebook friend. This friend, as barely a friend as a high school classmate can be, re-posted a rant calling rioters niggers. (She was not a good white person.) Most of my white friends have responded to recent events with empathy or outrage. Some have joined protests. Others have posted Criming While White stories, a hashtag that has been criticized for detracting from Black voices. Look at me, the hashtag screams, I know that I am privileged. I am a good white person. Join me and remind others that you are a good white person too.

    Over the past two weeks, I’ve seen good white people congratulate themselves for deleting racist friends or debating family members or performing small acts of kindness to Black people. Sometimes I think I’d prefer racist trolling to this grade of self-aggrandizement. A racist troll is easy to dismiss. He does not think decency is enough. Sometimes I think good white people expect to be rewarded for their decency. We are not like those other white people. See how enlightened and aware we are? See how we are good?

    Over the past two weeks, I have fluctuated between anger and grief. I feel surrounded by Black death. What a privilege, to concern yourself with seeming good while the rest of us want to seem worthy of life. [emphasis mine]
    […]

    In the wake of this non-indictment, a surprising coalition of detractors has emerged. Not just black and brown students hitting the streets in protest but conservative stalwarts, like Bill O’Reilly or John Boehner, criticizing the lack of justice. Even George W. Bush weighed in, calling the grand jury’s decision “sad.” But even though many find Garner’s death wrong, others refuse to believe that race played a role. His death was the result of overzealous policing, a series of bad individual choices. It would have happened to a white guy. The same way in Cleveland, a 12-year-old Black boy named Tamir Rice was killed by officers for playing with a toy gun. An unfortunate tragedy, but not racial. Any white kid playing with a realistic-looking toy gun would have been killed too.

    Darren Wilson has been unrepentant about taking Mike Brown’s life. He insists he could not have done anything differently. Daniel Pantaleo has offered condolences to the Garner family, admitting that he “feels very bad” about Garner’s death.

    “It is never my intention to harm anyone,” he said.

    I don’t know which is worse, the unrepentant killer or the man who insists to the end that he meant well. […]

    I often hear good white people ask why people of color must make everything about race, as if we enjoy considering racism as a motivation. I wish I never had to cycle through these small interactions and wonder: Am I overthinking? Am I just being paranoid? It’s exhausting.

    “It was a lot simpler in the rural South,” my mother tells me. “White people let you know right away where you stood.” […]

    We all want to believe in progress, in history that marches forward in a neat line, in transcended differences and growing acceptance, in how good the good white people have become. So we expect racism to appear, cartoonishly evil like a Disney villain. As if a racist cop is one who wakes in the morning, twirling his mustache and rubbing his hands together as he plots how to destroy black lives.

    I don’t think Darren Wilson or Daniel Pantaleo set out to kill Black men. I’m sure the cops who arrested my father meant well. But what good are your good intentions if they kill us? […]

    I think about this during a car ride last weekend with my dad, where he tells me what happened once the cops finally realized they had arrested the wrong man. They picked him up from the curb, brushed him off.

    “Sorry, buddy,” an officer said, unlocking his handcuffs.

    They’d made an honest mistake. He’d fit the description. Well, of course he did. The description is always the same. The police escorted my father onto the road. My father, not yet my father, drove all the way home without remembering to turn his headlights on.

    I’ll post up these two alone for emphasis.

  406. rq says

    Here’s the DoJ, as requested. Eric Holder’s parting shot: Police abuse scandals mean the nation has “failed”

    Attorney General Eric Holder got himself virtually muzzled early in President Obama’s first term, when he called the U.S. “a nation of cowards” for our inability to deal frankly with issues of race. On his way out the door, he’s not worried about his critics. He told MSNBC’s Joy Reid that ongoing troubles in limiting police violence mean “we, as a nation have failed. It’s as simple as that. We have failed.”

    It’s a grim verdict, but it’s hard to quarrel. Holder was a deputy U.S. attorney back in 2001, when the Justice Department announced it would not prosecute the New York police officers who famously fired 41 shots at unarmed immigrant Amadou Diallo, hitting him 19 times. Though Justice concluded it couldn’t make a civil rights case against the officers, Holder warned at the time: ”We must learn from this deeply troubling incident. Mr. Diallo, an unarmed individual who committed no crime and no act of aggression, unnecessarily lost his life.”

    Now, 13 years later, similar “deeply troubling” incidents still occur regularly, and they’ve touched off a new movement for reform. While Holder speaks in measured ways, throughout the interview, about the mutual distrust between police and “communities of color,” and the work the Justice Department is doing to bridge those gaps, he places himself within the national reform movement. For a while he uses “they” when talking about protestors, but then he shifts significantly to “we.”

    “That’s all we’re asking for — just make the nation better,” he tells Reid. And the interview wraps. […]

    He says he trusts his chosen successor, deputy U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch, to continue his pursuit of voting rights violations – though at least one Republican, Sen. David Vitter, has vowed to block Lynch because of the president’s moves on immigration.

    While Holder uses his elbows when it comes to issues, he’s diplomatic on the topic of whether race has been a factor in his tough relationship with the House GOP.

    Hard to say. I mean, the attorney general seems to be, lately, the person, whether you are white, black, Republican, Democrat, who catches a lot of grief. So there’s that — that’s just a part of the position.

    I can’t look into the hearts and minds of people who have been, perhaps, my harshest critics. I think a large part of the criticism is political in nature. Whether there is a racial component or not, I don’t know.

    But when Reid asks if he still thinks we’re a nation of cowards when it comes to race, he doesn’t back down. “Yeah, we’ve not done all that we can. I’m hopeful that, at this time, with this president, that we can make progress in ways that we have not in the past.”

    Sad to see him go, but here’s to Loretta Lynch.

    This. was. incredibly. striking. A tribute to mediocrity, inaction-as-attempted-action, and the non-magical-ness of intent. “But what good are your good intentions if they kill us?” I Don’t Know What to Do With Good White People

    In the wake of the Darren Wilson non-indictment, I’ve only deleted one racist Facebook friend. This friend, as barely a friend as a high school classmate can be, re-posted a rant calling rioters n*gg*rs. (She was not a good white person.) Most of my white friends have responded to recent events with empathy or outrage. Some have joined protests. Others have posted Criming While White stories, a hashtag that has been criticized for detracting from Black voices. Look at me, the hashtag screams, I know that I am privileged. I am a good white person. Join me and remind others that you are a good white person too.

    Over the past two weeks, I’ve seen good white people congratulate themselves for deleting racist friends or debating family members or performing small acts of kindness to Black people. Sometimes I think I’d prefer racist trolling to this grade of self-aggrandizement. A racist troll is easy to dismiss. He does not think decency is enough. Sometimes I think good white people expect to be rewarded for their decency. We are not like those other white people. See how enlightened and aware we are? See how we are good?

    Over the past two weeks, I have fluctuated between anger and grief. I feel surrounded by Black death. What a privilege, to concern yourself with seeming good while the rest of us want to seem worthy of life. [emphasis mine]
    […]

    In the wake of this non-indictment, a surprising coalition of detractors has emerged. Not just black and brown students hitting the streets in protest but conservative stalwarts, like Bill O’Reilly or John Boehner, criticizing the lack of justice. Even George W. Bush weighed in, calling the grand jury’s decision “sad.” But even though many find Garner’s death wrong, others refuse to believe that race played a role. His death was the result of overzealous policing, a series of bad individual choices. It would have happened to a white guy. The same way in Cleveland, a 12-year-old Black boy named Tamir Rice was killed by officers for playing with a toy gun. An unfortunate tragedy, but not racial. Any white kid playing with a realistic-looking toy gun would have been killed too.

    Darren Wilson has been unrepentant about taking Mike Brown’s life. He insists he could not have done anything differently. Daniel Pantaleo has offered condolences to the Garner family, admitting that he “feels very bad” about Garner’s death.

    “It is never my intention to harm anyone,” he said.

    I don’t know which is worse, the unrepentant killer or the man who insists to the end that he meant well. […]

    I often hear good white people ask why people of color must make everything about race, as if we enjoy considering racism as a motivation. I wish I never had to cycle through these small interactions and wonder: Am I overthinking? Am I just being paranoid? It’s exhausting.

    “It was a lot simpler in the rural South,” my mother tells me. “White people let you know right away where you stood.” […]

    We all want to believe in progress, in history that marches forward in a neat line, in transcended differences and growing acceptance, in how good the good white people have become. So we expect racism to appear, cartoonishly evil like a Disney villain. As if a racist cop is one who wakes in the morning, twirling his mustache and rubbing his hands together as he plots how to destroy black lives.

    I don’t think Darren Wilson or Daniel Pantaleo set out to kill Black men. I’m sure the cops who arrested my father meant well. But what good are your good intentions if they kill us? […]

    I think about this during a car ride last weekend with my dad, where he tells me what happened once the cops finally realized they had arrested the wrong man. They picked him up from the curb, brushed him off.

    “Sorry, buddy,” an officer said, unlocking his handcuffs.

    They’d made an honest mistake. He’d fit the description. Well, of course he did. The description is always the same. The police escorted my father onto the road. My father, not yet my father, drove all the way home without remembering to turn his headlights on.

    I’ll post up these two alone for emphasis.

  407. rq says

    MOVEMENT.
    Public Defenders walking out of Central court building in Brooklyn #blacklivesmatter.

    Another one, this time in Philadelphia: Man fatally shot by police in Mayfair is identified. His name is Brandon Tate-Brown. Possibly armed. And yet still shot too soon.
    Philly police shoot/kill #BrandonTateBrown last night in back of head – 26th police shooting, 4th fatal in Philly this year: #Every28Hours.

    Congress Is Finally Going to Make Local Law Enforcement Report How Many People They Kill

    This, however, could be changing. Last week, Congress passed the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013. Currently awaiting Obama’s signature, it mandates that states receiving federal criminal justice assistance grants report, by gender and race, all deaths that occur in law enforcement custody, including any while a person is being detained or arrested. This would include events like the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, says Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a sponsor of the bill, in an interview with Mother Jones.

    The bill also mandates that federal law enforcement agencies annually gather and report these deaths to the US attorney general, who in turn has two years to analyze the data, determine if and how it can be used to reduce the number of such deaths, and file a report to Congress.

    The bill is backed by groups like the NAACP, which argue that it will increase accountability and transparency. The process it envisions would collect more data than the FBI’s existing Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which only tallies what are considered “justifiable” homicides by police, a designation that can criminalize victims of police killings. As DIY databases have cropped up—the Killed by Police Facebook page, for instance, gets its stats by aggregating news stories—the bill could establish a more accurate and official repository.

    But if past measures to collect similar data are any indication, it’s going to be a long time before Washington reliably keeps a comprehensive database of all citizens who die at the hands of the police. Congress has tried to enact similar laws before: In 1994, a statute passed under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act mandated that the Department of Justice annually gather, report, and publish a summary of public data counting uses of “excessive” force, but nothing much came of the plan. At some point the task of collecting data fell to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, a professional organization. They maintained a database until 2001, but have not updated it since. Twenty years later, we have no clear understanding of how many people have been killed by police.

    I think I’vep osted that information via other sources already, but hey. Have it again.

    In Ferguson, U.S. Secretary of Education In St. Louis: ‘The inequities are huge’

    “The division between young people and the police is huge,” Duncan said. “The division along race in this community is huge. The division along educational opportunity being based on where you live, your zip code, is huge. The inequities are huge.”

    Duncan said his visit came at the request of some members of the Ferguson Commission and included stops at the Clyde C. Miller Career Academy High School, a magnet school in St. Louis, and Riverview Gardens High School, which includes areas near the epicenter of protests in Ferguson. He also met with students and teachers at the Ferguson Library and talked with community organizers and activists during a meeting at Greater St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church on Tuesday evening. The meetings were closed to the media.

    Duncan praised the students and educators he met with, who he said were committed to making a difference. Some north St. Louis County schools brought in extra mental health professionals and called off school because of unrest in August. Schools were once again closed after a grand jury did not indict Ferguson Police Officer, Darren Wilson, who fatally shot Brown on Aug. 9.

    Even though Duncan said there are several issues surrounding education and racial equality in the St. Louis region, building meaningful relationships between young people and the police is at the top of the list. To that end, Duncan said many students told him that they want more interactions with police, not less, and that schools are the ideal setting for constructive dialog.

    “I just can’t overstate how large the appetite is among young people to be part of the solution, to build bridges to the police,” Duncan said. “To have the police see them for who they are, and for the police to see them for who they are. And look beyond skin color, look beyond uniforms, look beyond badges, look beyond stereotypes and get to know each other as humans.”

  408. rq says

    Two from the History section (I mean, they’re not actually history, but they have their beginnings in history):
    Why Is the FBI Still Chasing Black Panther Assata Shakur? Who, by the way, has had huge impact on current Ferguson protestors, and whose words are still retweeted daily by at least two of them in some form or capacity.

    To understand how this petite woman from Queens, New York, came to threaten the US government as much as men reportedly linked to Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, you have to backtrack. You’ve got to connect the dots between rappers like Common and Chuck D name-checking her in song, the wider context of the black power movement, and the tension between black revolutionaries and the state. Only then could you make up your mind about Shakur: Is she friend or foe? Fugitive and felon, or heroine to the children of the black power and civil rights struggles?

    “You don’t get Assata Shakur lessons during Black History Month in elementary school, with the images of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King,” says writer and blogger Mychal Denzel Smith with a laugh, over the phone from New York. “It just wasn’t stuff I was exposed to. But in my teens, I started listening to hip-hop and artists who weren’t necessarily getting all the radio play. I started hearing Assata’s name mentioned in those folks’ rhymes.” Born in 1986, Smith wasn’t of the East Coast generation that would’ve been somewhat familiar with Shakur’s face from the Wanted posters the New York Daily News plastered around the city when she was charged with a spate of crimes in the late 60s and early 70s. […]

    “If you want to understand Tupac, read the autobiography of Assata Shakur,” he told Noisey’s Drew Millard earlier this summer. “That’s his aunt, and read what’s happening with her right now, via the state of New Jersey. She’s listed as the number-two Most Wanted terrorist in America today… for something that went down in 1976, based on COINTELPRO.”

    Yeah, about that. From 1956 until 1971 the FBI collected information for its anti-terrorism counterintelligence program, dubbed COINTELPRO. The program grouped the Black Liberation Movement, Black Panthers, and other black nationalist organizations with the Communist Party of the US, Socialist Workers party, and the Ku Klux Klan—terrorists, in the Bureau’s view. It wasn’t the most constitutional program at times. Or, in the FBI’s own words, “although limited in scope… COINTELPRO was later rightfully criticized by Congress and the American people for abridging First Amendment rights and for other reasons.” […]

    To rapper Akala, raised in a pan-African tradition in London, it was Assata Shakur’s status as a black, female radical that pretty much encapsulates her place on the Most Wanted list. “She is a threat,” he tells me, on a sticky July afternoon. “But she’s not a threat in the way the FBI and the American government want us to believe she’s a threat. She’s a threat in that she represents the one that got away. Pretty much every other black revolutionary of her era was killed, imprisoned, silenced, put in exile.” Akala lists a flurry of names, ranging from Huey Newton and Malcolm X to Geronimo Pratt and, of course, Martin Luther King Jr. Speaking with the sort of weary impatience that sounds as though he’s made (or labored) this point before, Akala continues, “When the American government says Assata Shakur is a threat, they mean what she represents—a black woman who refused to compromise in any way, shape, or form with white supremacy and escaped to the 21st century ‘maroon’ camp of Cuba (as she calls it)—is a threat.” […]

    Shakur represents a challenge to that perfectly formed narrative. For the FBI, that level of dissent just isn’t acceptable. Her survival over decades that saw other radicals imprisoned, murdered, and snuffed out goes against the Bureau’s plan to “neutralize” and “frustrate” the activities of black nationalists. As such, perhaps it only makes sense that they’re still on her tail and that she’s still lying low.

    And this one: George Stinney, 14-year-old convicted of ’44 murder, exonerated

    Seventy years after he was convicted of murder and executed by the state of South Carolina, a 14-year-old Alcolu boy was exonerated by a circuit court judge on Wednesday.

    Judge Carmen Mullins vacated the decision against George Stinney, who was convicted of beating Mary Emma Thames and Betty June Binnicker to death in 1944.

    Judge Mullins’ ruling effectively clears Stinney’s name.

    “Given the particularized circumstances of Stinney’s case, I find by a preponderance of the evidence standard, that a violation of the Defendant’s procedural due process rights tainted his prosecution,” Mullins said in the ruling.

    Stinney’s family and judicial advocates have spent the past several years doggedly trying to get the case re-opened because they believe Stinney was forced into a confession by police.

    Stinney’s trial lasted about 3 hours. According to reports, the defense presented no witnesses, no physical evidence, and did not file an appeal. It took a jury of 12 white men 10 minutes to decide Stinney’s fate.

    And they’d already fucking killed him.

    Ah, the shooting in Philadelphia: Cops: Man killed in Mayfair traffic stop tried to ‘retrieve gun’

    Just before 3 a.m., two officers on patrol spotted Brandon Tate-Brown, 26, driving a white Dodge Charger with Florida plates in Mayfair, police said.

    The Frankford resident didn’t have the headlights on, police said, so the officers flagged him down from their patrol car, pulling him over on Frankford Avenue near Rowland.

    When the officers approached the Charger, they spotted a Taurus .22-caliber handgun in its center console, police said. They asked Tate-Brown to exit, and a fight broke out.

    During the scuffle, Tate-Brown forced his way back into the Charger and “attempted to retrieve the gun,” police said.

    One of the officers fired a single shot, striking Tate-Brown in the head, police said. Medics pronounced him dead at the scene minutes later.

    Being a black man asked to step out of his car by police in the middle of the night, after being pulled over for a routine traffic stop?

    In Cleveland. Yes, In Cleveland, road to recovery on policing is filled with challenges, entrenchment, perhaps less deaths.

    The relatively new, energetic police chief, Calvin Williams, is trying to engage the community and has said his department has mostly good officers.

    Few expect that anyone will be fired over Tamir’s shooting or the police problems.

    The perspective of the mayor and police chief, who are both African American, puts them sharply at odds with the city, where 53 percent of residents are black. The overwhelming majority of its police force is white.

    Still, against big odds, some say, many activists believe this time the city has its best chance to get relations right. They say, however, that it’s going to be a long road to recovery.

    “The problems here are really, really complex,” said James Hardiman, a former president of the Cleveland NAACP. “The relationship is deeply strained, at best, and I don’t believe that enough has been done to create an environment in which the African American community trusts the police.”

    He added: “Race is a factor, and . . . unless or until you address it on the front end, we’re destined to continue ignoring the realities of life in the city of Cleveland.” […]

    The killings of Russell and Williams are known locally as “137 shots,” and community leaders say it is such cases that have stripped away what little trust remained between the community and the police.

    “A lot of times, the officers begin to believe that the citizens of color are the enemy, and at this point many of them aren’t getting out of their cars to get to know them,” said James Copeland, a retired police commander who spent 27 years working in East Cleveland, a majority-black community that borders the city. “The departments aren’t representative of the community, so they don’t understand the community.”

    The Justice Department concluded in its report that authorities have, in some parts of the city, abandoned the idea of community policing.

    “During our tours, we additionally observed that neither command staff nor line officers were able to accurately or uniformly describe what community policing is,” the report declared in a section that several local elected officials suggested was the most damning of its conclusions. […]

    Several current and former law enforcement officials insist that it hasn’t always been this way — pointing to the 1990s, when Clinton administration grants for community policing increased the number of officers on foot and bike patrols in the neighborhoods. But that money dried up, and the local police departments were hit with layoffs and budget cuts as the economy tanked in the mid-2000s.

    “You cannot protect and serve that which you do not know,” said Kyle Earley, an assistant pastor at Mount Sinai Baptist Church in Cleveland. “We have to have officers from our community. Policing is a community thing.”

    Compounding the perception of Cleveland police as an occupying force was the decision in 2009 by the Ohio Supreme Court to uphold legislation passed at the state level to overturn Cleveland’s “home rule” policy. Passed by voters in 1982, the policy had required police officers and firefighters, as well as other city employees, to reside within the city limits. For years, the police and firefighters unions griped and, once the provision was overturned by state Supreme Court, some officers left for the suburbs.

    On the day of the announcement, the Plain Dealer newspaper reported, officers walked the halls of City Hall giving each other high-fives. [..]

    Protesters have demanded the indictment of the officers involved in Tamir’s shooting, the creation of a new civilian review board and the firing of several top public safety officials. Some council members say they are now in support, too. Other city leaders have vowed to give the protest groups a seat at the table when department reforms are discussed.

    Earlier in the day, Jackson, the mayor, gathered reporters at City Hall to discuss ongoing negotiations of a consent decree, the result of the Justice Department report. He reiterated his position about inaccuracies in the report but offered no examples, even when pressed.

    Some hope a federal monitor will ensure policy changes. Also, Gov. John Kasich (R) and Attorney General Mike DeWine (R) have convened a task force to examine policing practices, and legislators have introduced a bill to change the packaging and appearance of toy guns.

    “America is at a crossroads as it relates to police-community relations. . . . The whole country and the world is watching,” said state Rep. Alicia Reece (D), who introduced the toy-gun bill.

    Reece was a City Council member and vice mayor in Cincinnati and was involved in negotiating with federal officials after that city received its own damning Justice Department policing probe in the early 2000s.

    Change, she said, “entails a commitment to action.”

    Yep, and constant effort and surveillance to avoid backsliding.

    And the LAPD bodycams: LAPD’s plan for 7,000 body cameras comes with challenges, one of which is police in control of the record button. But I think this is a repost (sorry, feeling tired and lazy right now).

  409. Ichthyic says

    rq,

    I’m thinking your series of links and commentary here would make a good Facebook page or blog. more people would find it a useful reference.

    just a thought.

  411. rq says

    Ichthyic
    There’s a group already doing something similar on FB, from where I do get some of this stuff. It’s a very moderated group, so it doesn’t really get trolls. Maybe one day I’ll just drop links to Good Morning and this thread, with proper intros, of course.
    But no, I am not capable of doing this in two places at once. :P

  412. says

    rq:
    Don’t know if you’ve been to The Conversation (I like what they have to say on their About page) , but I came across it and found this article about the history of policing from the 19th century through today.
    (excerpt)

    Recent social unrest across the country protesting the police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson and the police chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York has reopened wounds and revealed deeply rooted tensions between citizens and police, especially in ethnic minority communities.

    These incidents of real or perceived police misconduct followed by social unrest and riots are not new. In the 1960s there were the Watts Riots. In the early 1990s there were five days of rioting in reaction to the videotaped Rodney King beating.

    An examination of the history of policing shows that this cyclical pattern can be explained by fundamental changes in policing over the past century.

    The first century: the political era of policing

    In fact, the relationship between police and citizens in the US was not always contentious: it was quite the opposite.

    Prior to the mid 19th century in cities like New York and Boston, a rag tag group of loosely formed community members, known as “night watchmen,” patrolled the streets. These men were very different from the police officers we see today. They were men who had other occupations and volunteered their services – often at night.

    With no training or weapons, these watchmen’s primary role was to keep the peace. This mandate was perfectly fine with early Americans, who were wary of a standing army. Moreover, since the watchmen were from the community and relied on community members for backup, they ended up simply enforcing community norms regardless of them being legal or illegal.

    By the early 20th century, the night watchman model had been replaced by an independent 24-hour organization that looked to prevent crime – not just react to incidents. But the subsequent intertwining of police and politics, such as the (established in 1845) New York Police Department’s association with Tammany Hall, was being criticized for corruption. This ushered in an era of professionalism by police.

    Professionalization and a change in attitude towards civilians

    A handful of police reformers, who included Berkeley Police Chief August Vollmer, the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover, and an early President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Richard Sylvester, spearheaded the changes designed to establish standards similar to those in prestigious and respected professions like medicine.

    According to these police reformers, the new officer was to be highly trained, uniformed, armed, and most importantly, incorruptible. By design, the new officer was guided by bureaucratic policy and procedures. Instead of relying on community members for backup during the night watchman model, the professional officer, aided by the implementation of patrol vehicles, call boxes, and eventually two-way radios, were to rely on each other during emergencies. Their performance was to be based on crime-control measures, such as the arrest rates found in the FBI’s ubiquitous Uniform Crime Reports that date from the 1930s.

    These structural changes had an immediate impact on how police viewed citizens. To the reactive crime fighter who responded to calls for service from patrol cars, citizens were no longer generally considered friends and neighbors but potential liars and criminals who are often out to get the police in trouble. This perspective was documented in particularly vivid fashion by MIT professor John Van Maanen’s 1978 article about the meaning of the “asshole” among police officers:

    “I guess what our job really boils down to is not letting the assholes take over the city. Now I’m not talking about your regular crooks. They’re bound to end up in the joint anyway…What I’m talking about are those shitheads out to prove they can push everybody around…They’re the ones that make it tough on the decent people out there. You take the majority of what we do and it’s nothing more than asshole control.” A veteran patrolman

    An “us versus them” mentality began to develop, where police saw themselves as the moral order that is under constant attack by politicians, criminals, and ungrateful citizens.

    Given the ever present potential for danger in their work, police officers drew closer to each other and developed an informal code of conduct that includes the so-called “blue wall of silence,” whereby police misconduct is tacitly accepted. It is never acceptable to snitch. For example, when a female Florida State Trooper pulled over and arrested a Miami Police Officer (fully uniformed in a police car) for driving approximately 120 mph (193 kmh), she was harassed and threatened by over 100 other officers around the country.

  414. rq says

    St.Louis County prosecutor should be investigated for conspiracy to suborn perjury

    Missouri Governor Jay Nixon should appoint a special prosecutor to to investigate St.Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch and his two assistant prosecutors for engaging in a conspiracy to suborn perjury in the Michael Brown shooting case and Darren Wilson should be charged with murder for killing Michael Brown.

    Witness 40, whom we now know to be Sandra McElroy, was the only grand jury witness who corroborated Darren Wilson’s claim that Michael Brown grunted, lowered his head and bull-rushed him leaving him no alternative except to shoot him to death. Her testimony was contradicted by 16 eyewitnesses who testified that Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown as he raised his hands in the universal gesture of surrender.

    Thanks to Michael Bastone, Andrew Goldberg and Joseph Jesselli at the Smoking Gun, we now know that she committed perjury before the grand jury. She was not present at the scene and made everything up after following media reports about the shooting. […]

    What is deeply troubling is how easy they were able to determine who Witness 40 was and prove that she made up everything. They figured that out in two days. The FBI figured it out when they interviewed her on October 22nd, before she testified before the grand jury. Questions we must all ask are:

    1) why didn’t the police and the prosecutor figure this out?

    2) if they did figure it out, when did they do so?

    3) did they know that she made the whole story up before they put her on the stand for the first time at the grand jury?

    4) if not, did they know that she was a liar before they put her on the stand for the second time at the grand jury?

    They were incompetent, if they did not know she was a liar. If they did know she was a liar, they suborned perjury by having her testify before the grand jury — not once, but twice. Subornation of perjury is a felony.

    St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch has some ‘splainin’ to do, but he probably should exercise his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent as should his assistant prosecutors, especially the one who gave the wrong legal definition regarding the lawful use of force.

    Seriously folks, you can’t make this stuff up.

    No, you can’t.

    Heritage High School at Lake Clifton gets voted for closure, prompting a protest in the middle of the meeting.;
    Protesters wouldn’t stop, so Thornton and other board members walked out…went upstairs to decide what to do next.;
    Bizarre turn: Protesters now sitting in commissioners’ seats, hearing community concerns of vote to close Heritage.;
    Sen. Joan Carter Conway to protesters: “I was here to protest, but there’s a form and a fashion and a way to do it.”
    I have no idea what happened with the school vote in the end, though there are a few follow-up tweets in the string following that last photo.

    “Fire Bill Bratton” chanted Lawyers who Died-In for #EricGarner at Brooklyn Detention Center. #ICantBreathe.

  415. rq says

    Ah, there was a protest planned at the Mall of America for Saturday. Mall of America seeks to deter ‘Black Lives Matter’ demonstration

    The planned event is part of wave of demonstrations nationwide following grand jury decisions not to indict police officers who killed unarmed black men they confronted in New York and Missouri.

    McDowell, a leader of the group Black Lives Matter Minneapolis, said he hopes Bloomington police can work with the demonstrators.

    “This is not about violence; this is not about bashing cops, or ‘F the police,’ as people tend to yell,” he said. “It’s about systemic change and figuring out about how we can bring about some policy that’s going to filter out the cops that are not abiding by the law.”

    McDowell was coy about his plans, but said they involve singing “Christmas carols with a twist.” […]

    Mall of America officials have sent letters to McDowell and other organizers to inform them that protests are not allowed on private property.

    The mall has suggested an outdoor lot next to the mall as an alternate site.

    “We respect the right to free speech, but Mall of America is private property and not a forum for protests, demonstrations or public debates,” mall officials said in a statement.

    Mall officials said they have consistently prohibited all groups from protesting or demonstrating on the property, regardless of cause or message. They cited a 1999 state Supreme Court decision that the mall is private property and cannot be used for demonstrations without permission.

    Threats of arrest, blah blah blah – here’s the letter by Mall of America: letter is kra from MOA @BlackLivesMpls #BlackLivesMatter Dontt bk down! Solidarity! #Icantbreathe #4myson #Justice, full text:

    Dear Mr. McDowell, Ms. Grimm, and Mr. Espinosa:

    It has come to our attention that Black Lives Matter (“BLM”) is organizing a political demonstration at Mall of America (“MOA”) in response to the recent grand jury decisions not to indict officers in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Copies of the Facebook pages describing the event are attached. We’ve also included a recent Star Tribune article addressing Mr. McDowell and Ms. Grimm’s roles as organizers for BLM.

    Mall of America is a private commercial retail center, and we prohibit all forms ofp rotest, demonstration, and public debate on our property, including political activity aimed at organizing political or social groups. This policy has been consistently enforced over the years and ensures the safety and experience of our customers, tenants and employees as well as Mall of Ameria property. Any attempt by your group to conduct a protest i s a violation of our policies and department. This issue was litigated in city of Bloomington vs. Freeman Wicklund, et al.

    MOA has contacted the City of Bloomington and determined there is public property available for your demonstration. The City has stated that the former Alpha Business Center lot, which is public property immediately adjacent to Mall of America and located at the southeast corner of 24th Avenue and Lindau Lane, is available for your group. The property is visible from Mall of America and accessible from the Transit Station, and a layout of the location is attached for your reference. Sandra Johnson, City attorney for Bloomington, has agreed to facilitate your use of the Alpha Lot. Ms. Johnson’s contact information is as follows: [Sandra Johnson’s contact info]

    Please contact Ms. Johnson directly and she will expedite the process for your use of the Alpha Lot – it will require a permit for groups over 50 people for a nominal $20.00 permit fee. We also request that you immediately communicate on the Facebook event pages that any protest event planned for Mall of America property has been cancelled. This information should also be disseminated to all known participants, so they are aware of the potential consequences of any attempted political gathering on Mall of America property.

    We appreciate your anticipated cooperation.

    Sincerely,
    MOA Management team

    Heh. Sure, the protestors can meet on the lot, and then go to Mall of America together. :P And ‘visible from the Mall’? Right. Visible, but not disruptive.
    I have a protestor response: Our #BlackLivesMatter #Minneapolis organizers’ response to @mallofamerica’s intimidation/minimization tactics, full text –

    Black Lives Matter Minneapolis’ Response to Mall of America Intimidation

    We are writing to bring to your attention our concerns regarding the lengths to which Mall of America’s management has gone to locate, contact, and intimidate the organizers of this event. Initially, letters were sent by courier to our homes last Friday that threatened arrests if the event continued on as planned. Then, yesterday, they sent two City of Bloomington police officers to question family members and roommates about the organizers’ whereabouts and if they planned on attending the event.

    We want to be as transparent as possible. These are clear tactics of intimidation.

    We are saddened that these institutions have chosen to use their resources to intimidate and threaten us, instead of supporting the nationwide movement declaring that #BlackLivesMatter, repeating a common pattern of corporations valuing profits over people.

    We have included the initial letter that Mall of America’s management sent to those they consider the organizers of the event. The letter also included photos of an unpaved parking lot near Mall of America. This is the space to which the City of Bloomington Police and Mall of America’s management wish to move our gathering, a space where we will not be seen or heard.

    The attempt to relegate us to an unpaved parking lot is not an act of or gesture of support. It is an act of minimization. Mall of America’s management has shown us they are not interested in listening to Black voices.

    We want to make it clear to the public that we will not be intimidated and we will not be silenced. We ask you to join us to expose the crises our communities face every day.

    We expect people of all ages, sexes, genders, religions, colors, and creeds to show up in solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter at the Mall of America at 2pm Saturday, December 20. Currently, over 1,800 people have confirmed their attendanceo n Facebook.

    This is about peace in our community and ensuring and end to police violence in the United States. Showing up at the Mall of America Saturday, December 20th means that you stand in solidarity with Black lives even as large corporations and institutions do not.

    We expect them to search everyone entering the mall to confiscate any signs so we ask that supporters bring the one thing they can’t take away from us: our voice.

    ###
    #BlackLivesMatter Minneapolis is a group of Black and allied organizers in Minneapolis, MN working in solidarity with the national Black Lives Matter movement.
    “Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.” – Alicia Garza, Black Lives Matter founder

    – Black Lives Matter Minneapolis, December 17, 2014

    Whew. All tpyos my personal responsibility.

  416. rq says

    John Crawford’s Family Files Suit Against Wal-Mart, the City and the Police

    John Crawford’s family filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday “charging negligence and violations of Crawford’s civil rights” in the fatal shooting of the 22-year-old inside a Beavercreek, Ohio, Wal-Mart, the Associated Press is reporting.

    The suit is levied against “the city of Beavercreek, the two Beavercreek officers involved, the police chief and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.”

    A grand jury decided not to indict the police officers who shot Crawford, who was carrying a BB gun at the time of his death in August. Video shows Crawford entering the store and picking up the unboxed gun from a Wal-Mart shelf. Crawford can be seen carrying the gun throughout the store while he shops and talks on his cellphone. Police arrive shortly after and fatally shoot Crawford.

    “All we want is justice for John Crawford,” Michael Wright, the family’s attorney, said at a news conference Tuesday.

    Wright is hoping the civil-justice system will right the wrongs of the criminal-justice system.

    “Wright said the criminal-justice system has so far refused to hold the officers accountable and that it is necessary for the civil-justice system to do so.” the AP report read.

    The lawsuit currently seeks at least $75,000 in damages, AP reports.

    Seems a rather low sum. Two videos at the link.

    In Minneapolis, there’s a protestor role of “police liaison.” That’s interesting. #Ferguson.
    Dope to see young black men I met on W. Florissant in Aug participating in action council in Dec. As @deray would say, the movement lives.

    There was a discussion on twitter on revolution vs. reform and the usefulness of either method in bringing change to society. This quote kind of caught my eye:
    .@HamptonWynter @deray A revolution isn’t a lot of reforms bundled together. I don’t think you can overthrow a system by editing it a lot.

    And to end on a happy note, STLAM Video: Ferguson protest leaders get engaged & apply for marriage license at STL City Hall .

  417. rq says

    Police militarization and one cop’s humble opinion

    The vast majority of claims regarding the “militarization” of American police can be traced to the works of two men: Peter Kraska and Radley Balko.

    Their writings, and subsequent conclusions about “militarization” of police, are based on cherry-picking of data, a demonstrated willingness to use incomplete source material (such as preliminary or anecdotal reports of police misconduct vs. final court decisions regarding the same incidents), and extensive use of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning.

    Their work is rife with confirmation bias and has been used by numerous critics as a foundation upon which to build a large but flimsy body of writings on “militarization” that does not stand up to serious scrutiny. Unfortunately, Kraska and Balko’s work is regularly cited by radicals from both the right and left to support extreme agendas.

    The best salesmen of the “militarization” theme write in a way that feeds the grievances and bitterness of readers throughout the political landscape. They provide seemingly solid references to support positions that appear reasonable and logical on the surface. A deeper look at their work usually reveals that they have skillfully combined true stories of legitimately awful incidents with half-truths, innuendo, and generalities to inspire the belief that botched paramilitary raids are business as usual throughout our profession.

    The most vitriolic commentary regarding “militarization” is based on deeply flawed thinking by emotional people who tend to believe everything they read. These are the hardcore believers who cannot be bothered to verify the facts reported by their favorite authors. People who read only those sources they agree with (and the sources those sources agree with) can be easily led down a false intellectual path. That’s how otherwise normal people end up believing with all their heart that their local police officer is an agent of the New World Order, the U.N., or President Obama’s shadowy “National Defense Force.” […]

    All too often, accusations of “militarization” are based more on perception than facts (how police “look” instead of what they actually do). Many critics never consider that the use of military-inspired technology and equipment has pervaded almost every aspect of American life. If law enforcement has become militarized, then the same is true for trauma medicine, aviation, video games, deer hunting, satellite television, GPS navigation, and those giant SUVs the soccer moms drive.

    The last time I checked, my actions as a police officer — including those undertaken while using a helmet, body armor, rifle, and armored vehicle — were still governed by state law, case law, and department policy, all of which were enacted by lawfully elected representatives who were put in place by the citizens of a constitutional republic.

    Those who believe that American law enforcement has become “militarized” should educate themselves about court rulings and laws passed during the past 10 years regarding citizens’ rights to carry firearms in public, use force to protect themselves and their property, and be free from police searches of their homes, vehicles, and persons.

    With very few exceptions, those rights have been and continue to be re-affirmed, reinforced, and expanded by legislation and court decisions. Legal requirements for police departments to be transparent to the public (open records requests and FOIA requests) are more powerful than they have ever been.

    There are more restrictions and mandates controlling the actions of police authorities now than at any time in American history. The sky is not falling.

    Somehow, I get the feeling that he lives in a completely different world. And not a word about the deeply-running corruption found in so many police departments.

    On Being Asked to Change ‘Black Lives Matter’ to ‘All Lives Matter’

    As a Unitarian Universalist minister, it is sometimes my role to answer correspondence that comes to our congregation from members of the community. Last night, I received this brief note in my inbox:

    Good Evening:

    I am very upset at the signage that is outside of your church stating that “Black Lives Matter.” Since when has God chosen to see us by the color of our skin. The sign should be taken down and replaced with ALL LIVES MATTER. How will this nation of ours ever join together if we are constantly looking at everyone by their race. Unless you were actually there in Ferguson or in New York or Cleveland, you do not have all the facts.

    A Bucks County Resident

    It’s a sentiment I’d heard before, and I gave a great deal of thought before sending the following response:

    “Dear [name],

    Thank you for writing with your concern. Of course all lives matter. Central to Unitarian Universalism is the affirmation of the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Sadly, our society has a long history of treating some people as less valuable than others. Study after study has confirmed that in equivalent situations, African Americans and Latinos are treated with deadly force far more often than White people, and authorities held less accountable. Unfortunately, racial bias continues to exist even when it is no longer conscious — this too is confirmed by multiple studies. A lack of accountability in the use of force combined with unconscious bias is too often a deadly combination — and one that could place police officers, as well as the public, in great danger.

    To say that Black lives matter is not to say that other lives do not; indeed, it is quite the reverse — it is to recognize that all lives do matter, and to acknowledge that African Americans are often targeted unfairly (witness the number of African Americans accosted daily for no reason other than walking through a White neighborhood — including some, like young Trayvon Martin, who lost their lives) and that our society is not yet so advanced as to have become truly color blind. This means that many people of goodwill face the hard task of recognizing that these societal ills continue to exist, and that White privilege continues to exist, even though we wish it didn’t and would not have asked for it. I certainly agree that no loving God would judge anyone by skin color.

    As a White man, I have never been followed by security in a department store, or been stopped by police for driving through a neighborhood in which I didn’t live. My African American friends have, almost to a person, had these experiences. Some have been through incidents that were far worse. I owe it to the ideal that we share, the ideal that all lives matter, to take their experiences seriously and listen to what they are saying. To deny the truth of these experiences because they make me uncomfortable would be to place my comfort above the safety of others, and I cannot do that.

    I very much appreciate you writing to me, and am glad that we share the goal of coming to a day when people will not be judged, consciously or unconsciously, on the basis of their race. I believe that day is possible, too, but that it will take a great deal of work to get there. That work begins by listening to one another, and listening especially to the voices of those who have the least power in society. If nothing else is clear from the past few weeks, it is painfully evident that a great many people do not believe that they are treated fairly. Healing begins by listening to those voices and stories.

    Thank you again for writing me.

    In faith,
    Rev. Dan Schatz, Minister
    BuxMont Unitarian Universalist Fellowship”

  421. rq says

    How a Conservative Backlash Silenced #Ferguson Reporters for All the Wrong Reasons

    On November 24, after a grand jury opted not to indict Wilson, the New York Times ran a story by Julie Bosman and Campbell Robertson about how the police officer had “quietly” gotten married while avoiding the press. Wilson and his wife owned a home “on Manda Lane in Crestwood.” The detail was included near the end of a story that briefly included an image of the couple’s marriage license. (It included the address of a law firm, but not Wilson’s address.)

    What had been innocuous information became the kindling for a media bonfire. They attracted the attention Charles C. Johnson, the conservative journalist whose previous social media interactions include: tweeting call-in details that allowed activists to crash a Thad Cochran presser; tweeting the name of the Dallas “Ebola nurse” before big news outlets decided to reveal it; and reporting that ABC News paid “mid-to-high six figures” for an interview with Darren Wilson. When both ABC News and Wilson himself denied the claim, Johnson stuck by his “NBC source with knowledge” and suggested that ABC might have made a “backroom deal” as it did to interview Casey Anthony. […]

    [long interlude about outing Darren Wilson’s marriage, as well as the personal information of the woman who talked down to the First Daughters]

    The conservative backlash to the “Manda Lane” story isn’t really about Johnson. It’s about the press. And on the right, it’s becoming conventional wisdom that the reporters who flooded Ferguson are responsible for the anger that burned down businesses, interrupted Christmas Tree lightings, and inspired the New Black Panther Party (an impotent but media-savvy hate group) to threaten Darren Wilson and anyone who defended him. […]

    “Aided and abetted by a compliant national media, the Ferguson protestors spun a dishonest or misinformed version of what happened,” wrote National Review editor Rich Lowry in a November 25 column. On November 28, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez published a lifelike drawing of Brown with the caption “the person responsible for the death of Michael Brown.” Wilson is being portrayed as a decent man who did what he had to, court of public opinion be damned. And there’s precedent for that.

    The irony, lost or ignored, is that Wilson’s street was not published as an incitement to anything. It was a detail known to media on the ground. Wilson wasn’t even in the house. That was the point.

    “The story on Wilson has basically been ‘no one knows anything about him, he completely disappeared…’ since the first week, and that’s a story that you can only write so many different ways,” wrote Lowery in an email. “I’ve never gotten much blowback for the information we have posted about Wilson.”

    This seems to be a wrong link or just a non-existent page, but the headline seems interesting enough.

    Here’s a piece on Al Sharpton, pretty harsh one, too. Al Sharpton, civil rights fraud

    Young black activists from Ferguson had trekked to Washington for Sharpton’s “National Justice for All” march last Saturday, only to find themselves relegated to the backdrop of what looked more like an MSNBC stage production than any genuine showing of grass-roots resistance.

    “This whole thing is basically for media,” observed Leon Kemp, a St. Louis activist who tweets under the handle @WyzeChef. After “Black Twitter,” as it’s called, erupted into several days of heated talk about Sharpton’s co-optation, @WyzeChef added: “I didn’t have issue with Al Sharpton as a person. That has changed.”

    The levee seemed to break once and for all Saturday evening when Sharpton’s daughter, Dominique, declared the event “Al Sharpton’s March” on Twitter. Though she quickly deleted the offending tweet, activists were already apoplectic. […]

    But for the young black activists of Ferguson and New York, who have put their bodies on the line to foster a nationwide movement against police violence, Sharpton’s pernicious influence is much more acute, and damaging.

    He puts on a status-quo-challenging performance for TV cameras while serving the Democratic Party establishment, which has no use for black street anger, and wishes to contain it lest our elected leaders, too, be implicated for enabling police malfeasance .

    Sharpton’s Washington rally, which drew U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan as the Obama administration’s representative, even featured a VIP section for the reverend and his cronies.

    When the high-profile Ferguson activist Johnetta Elzie attempted to speak, she was thwarted by National Action Network security personnel dispatched by Dominique.

    Is that what grass-roots resistance looks like? The Ferguson cadre no longer thinks so. “This is a professional event. Not a protest. Rev. Al Sharpton, YOU TRIED IT,” tweeted @Nettaaaaaaaa. […]

    Of course, this process always pays handsomely for Sharpton, who — despite well-publicized snafus with the IRS — finally seems positioned to put his money problems behind him, given the bevy of corporate sponsorships his recent stardom has attracted. These riches were on full display in October at his decadent 60th birthday party at the Four Seasons Hotel, funded by the likes of AT&T and Walmart and attended by nearly every political power player in New York.

    Outside of the ballrooms, though, there’s an emerging consensus on the left and the right, among blacks and whites: Sharpton is a fraud.

    How a man died in police custody. MAJOR TW FOR BRUTALITY AND DISTURBING IMAGES AND TEXT. Christopher Lopez: $3M in Death of Man Whose Jailers Joked and Laughed as He Slowly Died.
    It’s as bad as it sounds.

    At one point during the course of events, a nurse can be seen entering — but Lane said her mission wasn’t to render emergency aid. “She says, ‘It’s time for your psych meds.’ He doesn’t respond to that, because he’s near death. So they say, ‘Fine,’ and give him a forcible injection into his butt of his psych meds.”

    Lopez doesn’t respond, Lane pointed out — “and over the course of the next hour,” he says, “you can literally see Christopher Lopez take his last breath on earth.”

    After that, Lane said, more time passed. “Twenty minutes later, some of the guards realize, ‘Hey, I wonder if this guy’s breathing. Was he breathing before?’ And my response to that is, he was breathing for almost his entire life, but he’s not breathing now, because he’s dead. And they start doing CPR on a dead man. Then, finally, the EMTs arrive, and their first order is to turn off the video. But it doesn’t matter. He’s long since dead.” […]

    One key sequence takes place around the 40:45 minute mark, when Lopez is lying shackled and semi-conscious on concrete flooring near a toilet.

    In the sequence, a female supervisor can be heard arriving and greeting correctional officers on duty.

    “What’s he doing now?” she asks

    “Smells like he peed all over the place,” a man replies.

    A few seconds later, the supervisor introduces herself to Lopez and asks, “What are you doing? What are you doing? Why are you doing this? I can see you breathing. What’s wrong? Open your eyes.”

    Lopez manages to perform this last task, but barely — and that seems to satisfy those watching him. The conversation continues like so:

    “Is he still on the floor?”

    “Yeah.”

    “He likes it on the floor.”

    “I like him on the floor.”

    “Yeah, he likes it alright when he’s on the floor.”

    This line prompts a laugh, after which the supervisor remarks, “Isn’t that terrible?”

    That’s one way of putting it.

    To My People By Assata Shakur

    Black brothers, Black sisters, i want you to know that i love you and i hope that somewhere in your hearts you have love for me. My name is Assata Shakur (slave name joanne chesimard), and i am a revolutionary. A Black revolutionary. By that i mean that i have declared war on all forces that have raped our women, castrated our men, and kept our babies empty-bellied.

    I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heart-less robots who protect them and their property.

    I am a Black revolutionary, and, as such, i am a victim of all the wrath, hatred, and slander that amerika is capable of. Like all other Black revolutionaries, amerika is trying to lynch me.

    I am a Black revolutionary woman, and because of this i have been charged with and accused of every alleged crime in which a woman was believed to have participated. The alleged crimes in which only men were supposedly involved, i have been accused of planning. They have plastered pictures alleged to be me in post offices, airports, hotels, police cars, subways, banks, television, and newspapers. They have offered over fifty thousand dollars in rewards for my capture and they have issued orders to shoot on sight and shoot to kill.

    I am a Black revolutionary, and, by definition, that makes me a part of the Black Liberation Army. The pigs have used their newspapers and TVs to paint the Black Liberation Army as vicious, brutal, mad-dog criminals. They have called us gangsters and gun molls and have compared us to such characters as john dillinger and ma barker. It should be clear, it must be clear to anyone who can think, see, or hear, that we are the victims. The victims and not the criminals.

    It should also be clear to us by now who the real criminals are. Nixon and his crime partners have murdered hundreds of Third World brothers and sisters in Vietnam, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, and South Africa. As was proved by Watergate, the top law enforcement officials in this country are a lying bunch of criminals. The president, two attorney generals, the head of the fbi, the head of the cia, and half the white house staff have been implicated in the Watergate crimes.

    They call us murderers, but we did not murder over two hundred fifty unarmed Black men, women, and children, or wound thousands of others in the riots they provoked during the sixties. The rulers of this country have always considered their property more important than our lives. They call us murderers, but we were not responsible for the twenty-eight brother inmates and nine hostages murdered at attica. They call us murderers, but we did not murder and wound over thirty unarmed Black students at Jackson State—or Southern State, either.

    They call us murderers, but we did not murder Martin Luther King, Jr., Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, George Jackson, Nat Turner, James Chaney, and countless others. We did not murder, by shooting in the back, sixteen-year-old Rita Lloyd, eleven-year-old Rickie Bodden, or ten-year-old Clifford Glover. They call us murderers, but we do not control or enforce a system of racism and oppression that systematically murders Black and Third World people. Although Black people supposedly comprise about fifteen percent of the total amerikkkan population, at least sixty percent of murder victims are Black. For every pig that is killed in the so-called line of duty, there are at least fifty Black people murdered by the police.

    Black life expectancy is much lower than white and they do their best to kill us before we are even born. We are burned alive in fire-trap tenements. Our brothers and sisters OD daily from heroin and methadone. Our babies die from lead poisoning. Millions of Black people have died as a result of indecent medical care. This is murder. But they have got the gall to call us murderers.

    They call us kidnappers, yet Brother Clark Squires (who is accused, along with me, of murdering a new jersey state trooper) was kidnapped on April z, 1969, from our Black community and held on one million dollars’ ransom in the New York Panther 21 conspiracy case. He was acquitted on May 13, 1971, along with all the others, of 156 counts of conspiracy by a jury that took less than two hours to deliberate. Brother Squires was innocent. Yet he was kidnapped from his community and family. Over two years of his life was stolen, but they call us kidnappers. We did not kidnap the thousands of Brothers and Sisters held captive in amerika’s concentration camps. Ninety percent of the prison population in this country are Black and Third World people who can afford neither bail nor lawyers.

    They call us thieves and bandits. They say we steal. But it was not we who stole millions of Black people from the continent of Africa. We were robbed of our language, of our Gods, of our culture, of our human dignity, of our labor, and of our lives. They call us thieves, yet it is not

    we who rip off billions of dollars every year through tax evasions, illegal price fixing, embezzlement, consumer fraud, bribes, kickbacks, and swindles. They call us bandits, yet every time most Black people pick up our paychecks we are being robbed. Every time we walk into a store in our neighborhood we are being held up. And every time we pay our rent the landlord sticks a gun into our ribs.

    They call us thieves, but we did not rob and murder millions of Indians by ripping off their homeland, then call ourselves pioneers. They call us bandits, but it is not we who are robbing Africa, Asia, and Latin America of their natural resources and freedom while the people who live there are sick and starving. The rulers of this country and their flunkies have committed some of the most brutal, vicious crimes in history. They are the bandits. They are the murderers. And they should be treated as such. These maniacs are not fit to judge me, Clark, or any other Black person on trial in amerika. Black people should and, inevitably, must determine our destinies.

    Every revolution in history has been accomplished by actions, al-though words are necessary. We must create shields that protect us and spears that penetrate our enemies. Black people must learn how to struggle by struggling. We must learn by our mistakes.

    I want to apologize to you, my Black brothers and sisters, for being on the new jersey turnpike. I should have known better. The turnpike is a checkpoint where Black people are stopped, searched, harassed, and assaulted. Revolutionaries must never be in too much of a hurry or make careless decisions. He who runs when the sun is sleeping will stumble many times.

    Every time a Black Freedom Fighter is murdered or captured, the pigs try to create the impression that they have quashed the movement, destroyed our forces, and put down the Black Revolution. The pigs also try to give the impression that five or ten guerrillas are responsible for every revolutionary action carried out in amerika. That is nonsense. That is absurd. Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our oppression. We are being manufactured in droves in the ghetto streets, places like attica, san quentin, bedford hills, leavenworth, and sing sing. They are turning out thousands of us. Many jobless Black veterans and welfare mothers are joining our ranks. Brothers and sisters from all walks of life, who are tired of suffering passively, make up the BLA.

    There is, and always will be, until every Black man, woman, and child is free, a Black Liberation Army. The main function of the Black

    Liberation Army at this time is to create good examples, to struggle for Black freedom, and to prepare for the future. We must defend ourselves and let no one disrespect us. We must gain our liberation by any means necessary.

    It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
    It is our duty to win.
    We must love each other and support each other.
    We have nothing to lose but our chains.

    A die in. #EricGarner #mikebrown #ferguson #nyc @ Union Seminary.
    There is a rhythm and cadence to the modern day lynching of black America. It begins with an officer and ends with a press conf. #Ferguson.

  422. rq says

    Okay, that’s nine links, moderation out please? :P

    “Young people, are leading. Idk who is leading which might be good. You can’t neutralize the movement by taking out the leader” – MLK III;
    There will be many efforts by officials to appear like they “did something” after #Ferguson. Some of these may actually make things worse.;
    Martin Luther King III speaks about his father and the TEAM of people involved in making the Civil Rights movement… Move. #Ferguson;
    National Guard quietly leaves Ferguson, MO. #KMOV .

  423. rq says

    Big Lots announces closure of Ferguson store, says unrest not a factor

    Big Lots is the second national chain store that has closed since the death of Mike Brown. Neither Big Lots, nor KMART, who previously announced the closure of its Ferguson store, are linking the shut down to the area unrest but some small businesses are feeling the pinch.

    “Once my lease is open I think I will have to move,” said Binh Ho.

    Ho owns a nail shop near the Big Lots and said her business has been down 50 percent.

    Her neighbor, Salon Selective, also shut down.

    “I worked at Salon Selective and I lost my job. She closed up after the riots her clients did not want to come over here anymore because of all the things going on,” said Carolyn Tidwell.

    Word of advice: Tef Poe: How to Spot Violent Agitators at a Peaceful Protest

    In this year’s protests, people in the streets have, for the most part, caused disruption without damaging property. But the narrative about buildings burning and young black people wearing gas masks is more entertaining. This also feeds the media images of the state flexing its military muscle and winning. All of these components are important because somewhere beneath it all the real story can come out.

    The truth is, black people are not liberated in America. We have never been liberated in America, and for the first time ever the sole objective of this resistance is liberation.

    The original thirteen colonies formed an army to counterattack their oppressors. The Revolutionary War was fought in the name of freedom for those colonies. When white brothers and sisters were murdered in the streets of New England, white forefathers grabbed their pistols and fought back. When our brothers and sisters are shot down by state-sanctioned violence, we gather through mass mobilizations. There is a drastic difference between these two forms of demonstration for freedom. One is indeed violent, and the other is often aggressive — but does not physically strike back at its oppressor.

    Since the days of slavery we have taken a very submissive stance toward our master. Even when the slave knew he was physically stronger than the person cracking the whip, that slave would subdue his ego and allow himself to be struck. If he did not subdue his ego, the slave master would feel offended and see a need to kill him. The slaves are supposed to accept their deaths and not rise up to strike the master for this brutality. […]

    The black community has never declared “war” upon America. I urge you to think about the fact that you have never truly witnessed us organizing on a mass level with the intention of violently responding to state-sanctioned violence. We will no longer tuck our tails and hide from demonizing claims that we are “hyper-violent.” Instead we will tell the rest of the world what is really taking place: White supremacy is violent by nature, and it maintains its choke-hold on planet Earth through that usage of violence. You have yet to truly see us “fight” back.

    So how do you spot the violent agitators at an otherwise peaceful protest? Look for the people who are holding the weapons. Sometimes it really is that simple.

    Via The Economist, Don’t shoot

    If it is to work well, the relationship between police and policed requires mutual trust. “Public safety without public approval is not public safety,” says Bill Bratton, New York’s police commissioner. After Mr Garner’s death, which was captured on camera, complete with his last words (“I can’t breathe”, gasped ten times or so), and the shooting by a policeman of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August, public approval is in short supply.

    Both cases involved white officers killing unarmed black men, and neither of the officers has been indicted for wrongdoing. The two cases are not the same, however. Mr Garner was selling loose, untaxed cigarettes in the street and posing no threat to anyone. Mr Brown’s case is murkier, since there is no video footage. A friend of Mr Brown’s, with him when he robbed a convenience store shortly beforehand, says that the policeman shot him in cold blood. The policeman says he acted in self-defence, after the 292lb Mr Brown attacked him and tried to grab his gun. The forensic evidence tends to support the officer. [I would like to make a note that the forensic evidence could go either way.]

    The FBI counts over 400 “justifiable homicides” by American police officers every year. This number includes only those shot while committing a crime. Reporting such shootings is voluntary, so the true number is surely higher. Even undercounting, America easily outguns other rich countries: in the year to March 2013 police in England and Wales fired weapons three times and killed no one.

    Such comparisons should be read in context. America’s police operate in a country with 300m guns and a murder rate six times Germany’s. In recent years the New York Police Department (NYPD) was called to an annual average of almost 200,000 incidents involving weapons, shot 28 people and saw six of its officers shot (mostly non-fatally). Despite the headlines, it is one of America’s more restrained forces.

    The more trigger-happy police departments tend to be found in smaller cities where fewer journalists live. Peter Moskos of John Jay College has come up with a measure to identify them, which checks the number of police shootings against the number of murders in a city. The places that stand out as having a lot of police shootings relative to the number of murders are Riverside, San Diego and Sacramento in California; and Tucson and Phoenix in Arizona. […]

    Using violence to enforce footling laws is also a common theme. Mr Garner died while being arrested for selling single cigarettes on which he had not paid the full New York duty, which is so high that 76% of the cigarettes smoked in the city are bootlegged. Letitia James, New York’s public advocate, partly blames the “broken windows” theory of policing for Mr Garner’s death. This theory holds that police should use statistical models to identify areas where crime is likely to happen and then flood them with officers who crack down even on minor offences in the hope of preventing more serious ones. It is widely considered a colossal success.

    A more obvious culprit is the way policework is measured. Police managers fret about lazy officers. To keep them away from the doughnuts, most forces judge officers by how many arrests they make. Preventing a rape does not count; busting someone for jaywalking does.

    There is a paradox in all this. American cities have become much safer in the past two decades. Too many urban forces do not seem to have noticed. In Cleveland, the DoJ found a sign in a police parking lot that read “Forward Operating Base”, as if it were an outpost in Afghanistan.

    This is an unhelpful mindset. In 2012 a car containing Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams drove past the city’s police headquarters. Officers thought they heard a shot from the car and gave chase, though in fact neither the driver nor the passenger was armed. At least 60 police vehicles and over 100 officers joined in. The chase ended in a school car park, where 13 cops fired 137 shots at the car, killing its occupants. “The officers…reported believing that they were being fired at by the suspects,” said the DoJ. “It now appears that those shots were being fired by fellow officers.” […]

    Sacking the bullies

    Yet there are examples of police forces that have reformed. The Los Angeles police department made its police less like an occupying army after the riots that followed the beating of Rodney King in 1991, which like Mr Garner’s choking was filmed by a bystander. New York’s department did something similar, banning officers from firing shots as warnings, from shooting at vehicles or from firing unless they thought a life was in danger. The number of shots fired by police in New York has fallen by more than two-thirds since 1995.

    In both cities the police are now blacker than the populations they serve—the opposite of Ferguson, Missouri. New York has begun a pilot programme under which officers will wear body cameras. The recordings will be used to deter bad behaviour both by police and by the public; to provide evidence after violent encounters; and to protect officers against baseless complaints.

    Even with these changes, “There is at least one crazy cop in every precinct,” says a retired NYPD officer. Everyone else knows who they are, but they are impossible to sack until they do something really stupid. The officer who choked Mr Garner had been sued for wrongful arrest, and was accused of ordering two black men to strip naked in the street for a search. (He denied it, and one case was settled.) Reformers think the procedure for sacking bullies in uniform should be much swifter. Those who enforce the law should also obey it.

    “Those who enforce the law should also obey it.” Except the Supreme Court says they don’t have to know the law, so it’ll be tough for them to do so. :P

    From the ACLU, on its lawsuit against the Ferguson-Florissant School District. Full text,

    The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a federal lawsuit against Missouri’s Ferguson-Florissant School District, charging the district’s electoral system is locking African-Americans out of the political process.

    The case, brought on behalf of the Missouri NAACP and African-American residents, is challenging the district’s at-large system used to elect school board members. The at-large system violates the federal Voting rights Act by diluting African-American voting strength, the complaint charges.

    African-Americans constitute a minority of the district’s voting age population, and under the at-large system they are systematically unable to elect candidates of their choice. The suit seeks to allow voters to cast a ballot for an individual school board member who resides in their district and better represents the community.

    “The current system locks out African-American voters. It dilutes the voting power o the African-American community and severely undermines their voice in the political process,” said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project.

    The Ferguson-Florissant School District has a history fraught with discrimination against African-American citizens. The fdistrict, which spans several municipalities, was created by a 1975 desegregation order intended to remedy the effects of discimination against African-American students. Yet, 40 years later, there is just one African-American member on the seven-member board in a district where African-Americans constitute 79 percent of the student body.

    This systemic lack of representation is why plaintiff Redditt Hudson got involved in this case. He is a former St. Louis police officer who lives in Florissant with his wife and two daughters, both of whom are students in the Ferguson-Florissant School District.

    “We’ve seen African-Americans excluded from making decisions that affect our children,” said Hudson, who works for the NAACP. “We need to be able to advocate for an education that will put out kids first and not political agendas.”

    Tpyos muine.

  425. rq says

    Gulfport officer cleared in deadly shooting

    A Gulfport police officer has been cleared of any wrong doing in connection with a deadly shooting in June. A Harrison County Grand Jury reports “no criminal conduct was involved in this matter.”

    According to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, Frank James Rhodes, 61, was standing outside on the driveway of his stepsister’s house on Holliman Circle when officers responded to a call of shots fired in the area on June 13th. MBI officials say Rhodes fired shots at the officers and that’s when one of the officers returned fire.

    Harrison County Coroner Gary Hargrove said Rhodes was shot four times, and died on the scene from a gun shot to the head.

    Oakland police: We had no idea CHP officers dressed as protesters. Umm, didn’t they say there were plainclothes officers in the crowd, eaerlier…?

    Avery Browne, chief of CHP’s Golden Gate Division, defended the officers’ actions and said the agency has had plainclothes officers at these demonstrations since they began Nov. 24, to gather information that would prevent protesters from entering and blocking freeways, a core tactic of the movement against racial injustice and police brutality.

    The march that night, as on many other nights, moved between Berkeley and Oakland. Browne said the Oakland Police Department was aware of the CHP’s plainclothes operations, and that CHP had an officer in Berkeley’s emergency operations center.

    But Oakland police Sgt. Holly Joshi said Wednesday that in the past week, officials have been “looking and checking” into the situation, and “we haven’t been able to find any evidence or any person who knew.”

    “We knew CHP was there,” she said. “We were unable to locate anyone who knew about the undercover portion.”

    Browne refuses to identify the officers as undercover and instead refers to them as “plainclothes.”

    Faulty communication about undercover operations between agencies in such operations can be dangerous, if not fatal.

    Judge sees police as protestors do

    A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order that requires police to give adequate warning before deploying tear gas at lawful protests and to ensure protestors have safe exit routes. That in itself is a major legal victory – unprotected lawful protestors asked a federal judge to restrain the actions of the Unified Command policing their movement, and the judge responded favorably by restraining the police – but an even more important precedent is established in this order issued by U.S. District Judge Carol E. Jackson on December 11.

    Very importantly, in the evidence portion of the order – what the federal judge is entering into the record as uncontested fact – she describes reality according to the protestors, not the police. She writes that the evidence “establishes that law enforcement officials in St. Louis City and St. Louis County were authorized to use smoke canisters and tear gas to disperse crowds of protestors, including plaintiffs, who were not engaged in violent or criminal activity.” Anyone close to the protestors’ side of the story understands this to be a fact, true many times over. But this statement of fact is remarkably free of any of the smokescreens police officials use to cloud the facts, and which typically cloud the facts in mainstream news reports.

    Judge Jackson continues: “The evidence also establishes that the law enforcement officials failed to give the plaintiffs and other protestors any warning that chemical agents would be deployed and, hence, no opportunity to avoid injury. As a result, the plaintiffs’ ability to engage in lawful speech and assembly is encumbered by a law enforcement response that would be used if a crime were being committed.” […]

    Judge Jackson is perceived as a fair-minded jurist who, if anything, favors law and order in her rulings. She is writing very mindful of the police perspective on the protests and how police justify their decisions and actions. That’s why it’s important to drill down on how she reads a point of case law. She bases her order on a 1981 ruling that lists “the public interest” among the four factors to be considered when ruling on a temporary restraining order. The public interest is precisely the justification used by police commanders to excuse their, at times, indiscriminate use of tear gas. Police commanders have justified the use of tear gas on a crowd that had some “bad actors” in it among the peaceful protestors, claiming this prevented escalation to worse violence. Judge Jackson dismissed that argument and ordered that police must do a better job at distinguishing criminals from people peacefully exercising their freedoms of speech and assembly.

    That is how Judge Jackson reads “the public interest” – not public safety, as protected by the police using any means necessary, but public rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. “Additionally,” Judge Jackson writes, concluding the evidence portion of her order, “the public has a strong interest in protecting the right of individuals to peacefully protest.”

    More judges like that, please.

    On boots, bootstraps and on not having the former in order to pull oneself up by the latter. They Stole Our Boots

    It is perhaps one of the most condescending things that can be said to members of the Black community in America. Every time someone says that the Black community needs to improve its condition by “Pulling itself up by its bootstraps,” it shows that they have no awareness of the extreme steps America has taken to steal our boots.
    It would be easy to simply reference the legacy of slavery that this nation was built on and end my argument there. The truth is, there is a long list of policies and laws all enacted with the singular purpose of subjugating the Black community as a whole.

    These are just 3 of the ways that America has stolen our boots and made it extremely challenging for us to achieve any sort of progress.

    It lists the Constitution, Racially Restrictive Covenants, and Redlining (also Reverse Redlining, which sounds a lot more legit than reverse racism).

    From the very formation of the union, the document that spelled out almost every aspect of the organization and administration of the nation reserved the full privileges of citizenship only for its white population. In fact, the sub-human nature of the Black individual was codified into the Three Fifths Compromise.

    An agreement reached that based the allocation of seats in the House of Representatives, the Three Fifths Compromise would count slaves as 3/5ths of a free person for representative and taxation purposes. By including slaves in the census counting a manner that still excluded them from being entitled to the full rights of American citizenship, the Southern states ensured that they would have greater representation and political power on par with that of the more free white populated northern states.[…]

    While all Jim Crow laws were designed to ensure that Blacks “stayed in their place”, the most economically debilitating of these laws were the Restrictive Covenants.

    Enacted in the early 1900s, racially restrictive covenants were provisions written into deeds that prohibited the sale or lease of a property to Black buyers/renters/. The widespread adoption of racially restrictive covenants had the ultimate effect of confining Blacks to inner city neighborhoods as suburban growth allowed whites to escape to the racially homogenous outskirts of most major cities.

    Until they were ruled unenforceable by the Supreme Court in 1948, racially restrictive covenants were adopted by community builders, real estate firms, banks and even upheld by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The FHA went as far as to recommend in its underwriting manuals that field should not insure mortgages on homes that were not in racially homogenous white neighborhoods covered by a restrictive covenants. […]

    When American families began to expand to the suburbs in the middle of the 20th century, Black families were left behind in the cities due to the aforementioned restrictive covenants which prohibited them from owning in the newly developed subdivisions. Redlining further restricted Black homeownership by severely limiting the financial resources available to purchase in certain urban areas.

    This strategic, coordinated disinvestment of America’s inner cities led to racially segregated, increasingly neglected urban neighborhoods.

    Unlike restrictive covenants, which were private business restrictions levied against Black homebuyers, the practice of redlining originated with the FHA, and then its standards were rapidly adopted by banks and insurance companies.

    The flight of white families to the “safety” of the suburbs, coupled with the lack of mortgage resources to purchase, develop or renovate inner city neighborhoods contributed significantly to the wealth gap between whites and Blacks that is still seen today.[..]

    In a practice known as “steering”, mortgage brokers would target Black borrowers with these higher-cost sub-prime loans, even though many qualified for less profitable conventional loans. In its study, Justice Foreclosed, the ACLU found that Black borrowers were three times more likely than white borrowers to receive sub-prime mortgages.

    Among high income borrowers, the disparity was even greater, with 44.1% of Blacks who earned over $100,000 annually receiving high cost loans compared to only 11% of white borrowers with similar profiles.

    While there was a target market that these products were tailored for, increasingly they were marketed to Black prospective homeowners, who after being excluded from homeownership for so many decades, jumped at the chance the finally achieve the “American Dream.”

    Unfortunately, that “dream” quickly turned into a nightmare for many Black borrowers. When the housing bubble burst, the effects brought the entire world economy to a crawl, and its effects on Black homeowners was especially crippling. It is estimated that the sub-prime lending fiasco and the subsequent crash would result in the greatest loss of wealth for Blacks in modern times, to the tune of between $164 to $213 Billion.

    According to a study by United for a Fairer Economy, because Blacks had a larger percentage of their net wealth tied up in the equity of their homes (60%), the collapse of the real estate market resulted in Blacks losing over 25% of their wealth. Additionally, Black homeowners were 76% more likely than white homeowners to have lost their homes to foreclosure following the crash of the housing market.

    Combined, these practices have had the combined effect of protecting the attainment and growth of white wealth, while handicapping Black families attempting to achieve the same economic gains. So, while the wage gap between the races has been narrowing over the years, the Great Recession actually INCREASED the WEALTH gap between white and Black households. White families now have a median net worth of $113,149 compared to only $5,677 for Black families.

    And this loss of wealth has significant adverse effects on the ability of Black families to transfer wealth inter-generationally. The massive loss of home equity experienced by Black families not only affects the current generation, but also hinders the ability to pass along wealth that the next generation can use to get ahead.

    In the words of the honorable Dr. Martin Luther King, “Its all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say that to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”

    Especially, if you are the one who stole that poor man’s boots.

  427. rq says

    Voices from #ShutDownOPD

    For interviews with main organizers from BlackBrunch, BlackOut Collective and Black Lives Matter, contact: [email protected]

    For interviews with arrestees and members of the #Asians4BlackLives group, contact: Marie Choi, 510-239-7891

    On Monday, Dec 15th 2014, members of newly organized all-Black groups, including The Blackout Collective, #BlackBrunch and #BlackLivesMatter, joined with Asian allies in #Asians4BlackLives group and white allies in the Bay Area Solidarity Action Team to lead an occupation of the Oakland Police Department and demand an end to the war on Black people in Oakland and everywhere. Approximately 150 people participated in the action and were joined by a crowd of around 100+ supporters.

    Protestors blocked entrances into the police department and the busy downtown intersection outside for 4 hours and 28 minutes. The 4 hours honor the memory of Michael Brown, whose body lay in the streets of Ferguson for more than 4 hours after he was killed by a police officer. The 28 minutes represent the startling fact that every 28 hours a Black person is killed by police, security or vigilantes in this country. Simultaneous to the blockades, a protestor climbed the flag pole directly in front of the police headquarters to fly a banner with the faces of Black people who have been killed by police: Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Oscar Grant, Alan Blueford, and Renisha McBride.

    The newly released video captures the protestors during the four and a half hour action and features short interview clips with representatives from #BlackBrunch, #Asians4BlackLives, Alan Blueford Center for Justice, and the Bay Area Solidarity Action Team.

    There were approximately 40 arrests, with some misdemeanor charges. The action attracted national media attention, resulting in 30 media hits, including major outlets such as AP and LA Times. The hashtag for the action, #ShutDownOPD, rated the second most popular hashtag during the day.

    The Black, Asian and white groups joined in solidarity to call for an end to racist police violence and the immediate implementation of the Ferguson Action demands: http://fergusonaction.com/demands/.

    (Youtube video.)

    Weird, I don’t hear any of those people mad that the new Annie has a different race complaining about how the same thing happened to Jesus.

    #solidarity action for #BlackLivesMatter on nowfrom 5-7:30 at @RYSEyouthcenter @riconfidential @blackoutcollect.

  428. rq says

    And then there was Dontre Hamilton.
    Walker: National Guard will be ready if necessary for Dontre Hamilton decision

    If needed, Governor Scott Walker says the National Guard will be ready when the Dontre Hamilton decision is announced.

    Who is Dontre Hamilton? Milwaukee County Supervisors Stand in Solidarity with Dontre Hamilton

    The men spoke in support of Dontre Hamilton, and the other black men many believe have been unjustly killed by police. Hamilton, an unarmed mentally ill man, was shot 14 times by former Milwaukee Police Officer Christopher Manney back in April. […]

    Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm’s decision on whether Manney should face criminal charges is expected to be released soon.

    Gov. Walker said Wednesday that the National Guard would be ready, in the event that unrest occurs as a result of the decision.

    Soundbites at the link. Just another black man killed by a cop, justice unlikely. *sigh* And here I thought this would be a short-term project.

    And tangentially related: CIA report warned assassination programme might backfire, okay, but check out the headline: “Perceived benefits of assassinating insurgent leaders”. On twitter, this was introduced with the text Secret CIA report says Nelson Mandela’s success shows that it’s better to assassinate leaders than to imprison them .

    Capturing HVTs instead is not necessarily a desirable option from the CIA’s perspective. Drawing on the CIA-assisted capture of Nelson Mandela and the ANC leader’s 27-year sentence, which he served in an Apartheid prison, the report concludes that: “Capturing leaders may have a limited psychological impact on a group if members believe that captured leaders will eventually return to the group […] or if those leaders are able to maintain their influence while in government custody, as Nelson Mandela did while incarcerated in South Africa. (S//NF)”

  429. says

    If you thought ‘Stop & Frisk’ was bad, you should know about ‘Jump-outs’
    (excerpt)

    Iman Hadieh was standing outside a bar smoking with some new friends on the evening of October 6 when the police cars came. It was about eight young black men, and her, a woman of Palestinian origin who describes herself as white.
    “I can’t tell you how many vehicles descended upon us because it all happened so fast,” she said. The cars were unmarked. But she knew it was the cops when they jumped out in black vests and hats, some with their guns drawn, she said. Some she didn’t see jump from their cars, but they appeared instead to come out of nowhere. She estimates there were 10 or 12 officers in all. Two witnesses who live on the block confirmed seeing a group of about 8 people lined up against a wall and frisked. They did not see the initial jump-out and could not confirm whether officers had their guns drawn.
    Before Hadieh could take in what had happened, the officers were in their faces, touching and prodding the young men she was standing with near the corner of 14th Street NW and Parkwood Place in Washington, D.C. The men fell into line, signaling that it wasn’t their first time the police had jumped out at them. But as a light-skinned woman, it was hers.
    “I knew they were ‘police’ per se, but they weren’t moving, talking or behaving in any way like police usually do,” Hadieh said. “It was highly tactical and organized, very militarized.”
    The police never asked if they could search any of them, but “one by one they were searched and their pockets emptied,” Hadieh said. One of them, a 15-year-old, was in handcuffs before she even knew what had happened.
    She said she asked repeatedly why the police were there and was told only that it was a “drug call.” The details of that night are fuzzy for Hadieh, who says she has had trouble sleeping since. But one question stuck in her mind, when the female officer said to her: “Do you realize that you are guilty by association right now?”
    What Hadieh described is what many Washington, D.C. residents call a jump-out, so named because of the element of shock and surprise when multiple officers unexpectedly jump out of an unmarked car toward pedestrians. The tactic has gotten very little public attention, but it is for many black residents the mark of policing problems in the nation’s capital: militaristic, seemingly arbitrary, and reeking of racial disparity.
    As protests erupt around the country, the “jump-out” has been the focal point of local advocacy for the group known as DC Ferguson. The group held a rally to protest the tactic on the week of the Ferguson grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson, circulating a petition calling on the D.C. Council to immediately take a stand against the tactic.
    Just what is a jump-out? It depends who you ask. It is typically described as multiple officers patrolling in an unmarked car, who at some point see something suspicious, and jump out of the car at once on unsuspecting pedestrians, with the intent of catching them off guard. Overwhelmingly, the jump-outs that have been reported involve at least one black male. DC Ferguson describes it as a “paramilitary tactic in which unmarked police vehicles carry 3 or more officers not wearing the standard police uniform. Their objective is to stop and intimidate ordinary citizens into submitting to interrogation or an unwarranted search.”
    In some of the most egregious descriptions, cops are alleged to have drawn their weapons to do so. In others, they will allegedly manhandle, shove, or slam the suspects, frisk the suspects, or aggressively question the suspects in a manner that makes it seem as if they have no choice but to answer.
    “We realized that it’s pretty much our stop and frisk,” said Kenny Nero, a co-founder of DC Ferguson.
    The D.C. Police Department hardly acknowledges the term at all. When asked about jump-outs by ThinkProgress, Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said, “Oh god, the fantasy jump-out squads,” explaining that “jump-outs” are a now-defunct police tactic used in the 1980s and 1990s to conduct undercover drug stings. But during a police oversight hearing following the interview, Lanier qualified her comments, acknowledging that officers do occasionally jump out of unmarked cars in drug cases, although qualifying that it’s very rare, and that she wouldn’t call it a “jump-out.”
    With regard to Hadieh’s jump-out, the police department says it is investigating after Hadieh revealed many of the details during a public hearing. But police officials declined to provide any other details to ThinkProgress, and directed ThinkProgress to complete a Freedom of Information Act request when asked for documentation. That request is still pending.

    ‘They check the boys. They don’t check the girls.’
    Get off the metro at the 7th Street exit of the Shaw/Howard University station, and you’ll see a community in rapid transition. In the 1960s, the neighborhood at the center of what was once the blackest city in America dubbed “Chocolate City” went up in flames during massive riots over the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. Since then, Shaw has remained mostly residential, with white flight relegating many to the suburbs in Maryland and Virginia, and few store-fronts aimed at the young Hill staffers of Washington. In 2011, the city for the first time lost its black majority, and over the course of a few years, posh bars with oyster-themed menus and ironic hipster names like Southern Efficiency and Eat the Rich have popped up one after the next in between gleaming new luxury apartments, overflowing with new visitors to the neighborhood who came looking for the next best thing.
    Ask these newcomers to define the term “jump-out,” and they’re likely to have never heard the term.
    Walk a block south and a block west from Eat the Rich, near the other exit to that same metro stop, and you’ll find African American residents who say jump-outs are just as much a part of life as running to catch the bus.

    Outside a row of nondescript brick buildings that stopped offering subsidized housing to new residents last year, several different groups of black high-school teens congregate on a warm November Tuesday evening, each around a different parked car. “Is this your car?” they ask worriedly as a ThinkProgress reporter approaches. Other than leaning against somebody else’s car, though, they aren’t doing anything wrong. They’re standing, laughing, talking.
    Have they seen jump-outs? Multiple times a week, they say. A group of about eight kids nod in agreement.
    “They just mess with people just to mess with them,” says one girl, braiding her long brown hair between her fingers as she explains. She qualifies that “they check the boys. They don’t check the girls.” She says she’s 16.
    Do they jump out of the car? “Yeah with their guns out,” says another boy in the group, adding that they’ll grab you by the shoulder, or “hop out on you and take you off your moped.” They say the unmarked cars regularly sit in a parking lot on the corner and wait.
    “I was like 11 when they first jumped out on me,” says one 17-year-old.
    They used to hang out at a community center, they say, but it closed. The only other spot to hang out at the library across the street. But some of their friends are not quiet enough, and they always get kicked out.
    “We used to be in there reading to the little kids. All that, man. They pushing us on the street.”
    This block of 8th Street between R and S is known for jump-outs. Especially on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And the reports of these kids are the norm, not the anomaly.
    Alec Karakatsanis of Equal Justice Under Law has interviewed hundreds of residents in “heavily policed areas.” “I always ask them how many times have you been stopped and frisked by MPD,” Karakatsanis said. “Young people often don’t know how to answer that question. They often say, do you mean this week?”
    Karakatsanis said when he asks the question in certain public high schools, nearly every student raises their hands. He asks if they understand that being stopped and frisked without suspicion that they committed a crime is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. In one classroom, a kid raised his hand and corrected him, Karakatsanis recalled. “No you don’t understand,” the kid said. “These are jump-outs. They are allowed to do that.”
    Karakatsanis testified during a recent oversight hearing of the Metropolitan Police Department that this is happening “every day without justification.”
    ‘Any casually dressed black man in the vicinity’
    While Chief Lanier doesn’t acknowledge the term “jump-out” as defining any current practice of the MPD, she explained at a recent D.C. Council hearing what she believes people are often referring to when they use the term: the “Vice Unit” and the “Crime Suppression Unit.” The Vice Unit, she concedes, is a drug squad and oftentimes operates in unmarked cars or outfits its officers in plainclothes. She says they may wait on a block and “jump out of a car” in sets of four to six officers to arrest those suspected of being in the drug trade. But she says the tactic is “rarely used anymore.”
    The “Crime Suppression Unit” deals with things like burglaries and robberies and may also operate in unmarked cars with their own set of tactics. They will “go to the immediate area” of the crime and look for suspects. “If the crime suppression team comes across a person in close proximity that matches the physical description,” they will stop that person. She said they’re supposed to be in full uniform and marked police cars, but some do operate wearing exterior vests. This comes from what they call a “look-out.”
    According to testimony at a recent oversight hearing, and a 2007 federal appeals court case on a jump-out involving a “look-out,” typical descriptions can be as vague as black man, black jacket, jeans, with general height and weight parameters. “Apparently, a ‘lookout’ broadcast encompassing virtually any casually dressed black man in the vicinity made all black males fair game,” the dissenting judge remarked in that case.
    On multiple occasions when asked about jump-outs, Lanier emphasized that there are more than 20 different law enforcement authorities policing the city, including the capitol police, park police, metro police, and federal authorities, and that she cannot account for tactics they may use that resemble a jump-out.
    Seema Sadanandan, policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of the Nation’s Capital, has balked at Lanier’s claim that the tactics she described are “rarely used” by MPD. “The Chief’s assertions are directly contradicted by the experiences of hundreds of District residents who have interacted with the Metropolitan Police Department’s Vice Unit officers, who are often traveling in unmarked cars and utilize a ‘jump-out’ tactic to initiate the contact,” she told ThinkProgress. Sadanandan said she has heard “hundreds of anecdotal stories” over the past few years during community meetings and trainings.

  431. rq says

    Officer Put On Leave For Tweeting To Bait Public Into Violence

    For a member of law enforcement to actively attempt to bait members of the public he is sworn to protect into a violent confrontation is stupid on levels I’m seriously having trouble conceptualizing. The good news is that the San Jose police reacted swiftly and took this clown off the streets, hopefully removing the gun he’d been boasting about as well. In addition to being placed on leave by the police department, Menlo College also relieved Mr. White of his duties as an assistant basketball coach.

    “The college will not be represented by expressions of intolerance and bigotry on the campus, on social media, or on the Internet,” the college said in a statement.

    Look, free and open speech is immensely important, but anyone who thinks it’s okay for a public officer to publicly bait members of the public to a potentially violent confrontation in public is publicly dumb. Nearly as dumb as Officer White, who thought that hurried attempts to delete his tweets would keep him out of trouble. We shouldn’t want to hear from him again until a well-thought-out psychiatric evaluation is conducted.

    FREEZE PEACH!!!

    Chicago:
    #BlackLivesMatter RT @deray: Chicago. Die In. #Ferguson;
    Justice protests shut down Chicago intersection, near DePaul University! Right now! @deray (map of the intersection the shut down);

    New York:
    7 Minute Die-In at @NYPD25Pct for the 7 minutes NYPD refused medical aid 2 #EricGarner. #ICantBteathe #ThisStopsToday ;
    Now demo at NYPD 25th Precinct East Harlem, has some of the most racially disparate arrest records #BlackLivesMatter.

    High school students:
    Walk-out/Die-in happening NOW at Lindblom HS!!! #BlackLivesMatter #EricGarner #MikeBrown.

  432. rq says

    Information still missing from the released GJ documents? Anyone know if taped FBI interview w/ the Sergeant who interviewed DW on 8/9 was released? I can’t find it & it’s not transcribed in GJ 5. (This guy, apparently – You should check out @tchopstl, who is doing the comprehensive breakdown of grand jury evidence media should have been doing #Ferguson.)

    “Racism and patriarchy go hand in hand,” @bdoulaoblongata says. “And from those two things come sexism, ageism, homophobia and more.” (cont);
    “It’s so important to make sure that while you’re fighting for racial justice you don’t ignore the intersections.” @bdoulaoblongata. These are the kinds of conversations occurring on and off twitter. So here’s to decentralized, community leadership.

    How dope is this? A Brazilian crayon company creates a set of crayons with 12 real skin tones. This is magic to me. The funny part? I’m pretty sure the lightest tan colour there is too dark for me (in winter). :D

    Looking for an article on this: #LAProtest arrestee loses job offer after illegal arrest shows up on background check. This is not right or acceptable.

  433. rq says

    Holy shit. Illinois woman files trademark application for ‘I can’t breathe’

    An Illinois woman has called dibs on the rights to Eric Garner’s last dying words after filing an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Smoking Gun reported.

    Catherine Crump, a 57-year-old woman listed as living in Waukegan, filed an application Saturday for its use on hoodies and T-shirts for men, women, boys, girls and infants.

    Crump states that she has been using the slogan for commercial use since “at least as early as” August 18 — that’s one month after the New York man’s death.

    She told the Smoking Gun that her filing has “nothing to do with the Garner family” and she hasn’t spoken with them.

    Talk about disrespect.

    Why Selma Matters Today

    In Selma, an evocative look at Martin Luther King Jr. and his fight for a voting rights bill, director Ava DuVernay shows just how this looks. King has an agenda. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended the formal structures of Jim Crow, but its institutional support remained. In much of the South, blacks were still disenfranchised, blocked from voter registration with poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and elaborate registration tests. (Here’s an example from Louisiana.) Despite contempt from elected political officials and violence from elected sheriffs, blacks couldn’t hold them accountable. […]

    n real life, activists from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, began organizing with local civil rights leaders in early 1963. For more than a year, facing arrests, beatings, and intimidation from Alabama Sheriff Jim Clark and other police officers, they worked to desegregate public places and register blacks to vote. Unfortunately, these efforts ended after an injunction from a local judge barred group gatherings under the sponsorship of SNCC and other civil rights groups. […]

    No, the point of the marches—including the one that would enter historical memory as “Bloody Sunday”—was to galvanize public opinion and bring to it to bear on President Johnson, with a message. As long as you don’t work toward a solution—as long as you don’t bring voting rights legislation to Congress—we will march, and you will deal with the political fallout of brutal state violence against American citizens.

    In other words, King is raising awareness and trying to create a specific outcome through particular pressure points. But Johnson has agency. If he doesn’t want to have to deal with the images of Selma—tear gas, racist cops, and dead volunteers—then all he has to do is say “yes.” […]

    It’s noteworthy that Selma had a similar—if quieter—moment between SNCC representatives James Forman and John Lewis and the on-site leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, including King. Forman, in particular, was frustrated with King’s attempt to claim leadership and displace SNCC activities. King’s argument—the reason he thought he was right to take control—was that he and the SCLC had a record of getting results. And while they didn’t have the grassroots connections of the SNCC activists, they knew how to channel anger into action and action into accomplishment.

    With his checkered past and mixed history of practical and political success, Sharpton can’t make this argument, or at least, it would be hard. At the same time, you can credit Sharpton for his commitment to this traditional approach of outside activism and inside baseball. For all of his faults, he understands that change requires partners, and while he isn’t a compelling figure to young activists, he has knowledge worth knowing.

    There’s no doubt that this is a vital moment. With protests across the country and endorsements from major figures in American society, “Black Lives Matter” might be the most significant youth movement in recent history. But right now—and not unlike its contemporary, Occupy Wall Street—it reads as just an exercise in catharsis, a declaration of dignity and a plea for humanity. This isn’t a bad thing, but it isn’t a strategy. Not only could “Black Lives Matter” shift attitudes on criminal justice and force a needed conversation about police culture and police violence, it could create political space for changes to law and policy. Indeed, if we want reform, it must.

    In other words, as it builds grassroots power, this movement also needs to build an agenda. And regardless of what it includes, it needs to give the other side—the side with institutional power—a way to say “yes.” That may not end in radical change—few things do—but it’s a start, and that can’t be overrated.

    Mixed feelings about that article, though it has a point that makes sense.

    ‘Daily Show’ Skewers Critics of Police Brutality Protesters

    In the above video, Stewart begins his takedown by showing clips that reveal the ridiculousness of some news anchors’ complaints about protesters who have flooded the nation’s streets.

    “But when you block traffic, that’s a form of violence,” said Fox News’ John Stossel in one clip.

    “How dare these marchers put our streets in some kind of…let’s call it a ‘chokehold’ of traffic,” quipped Stewart, referencing Eric Garner’s death after NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo choked him.

    Stewart then epically rakes Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera over the coals. Rivera suggested that LeBron James should wear a T-shirt that said “Be a better father to your son. Raise your children.” Rivera, of course, was implying that black men abandon their children. Stewart’s response revealed exactly how hypocritical Rivera’s words are. He put an image of Rivera next to James and said, “One of these men has five kids in various locations by multiple baby mamas—and the other is LeBron James.”

    But Stewart at his best comes at the 3:49 mark, when he takes on the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, whose president, Jeffrey Follmer, demanded this week that Cleveland Browns football player Andrew Hawkins apologize for wearing a “Justice for Tamir Rice and John Crawford III” shirt before the NFL team’s Sunday game against the Indianapolis Colts. Police shot Crawford, 22, to death in August while he held a toy gun he had picked up in a Walmart in Beavercreek, Ohio, and 12-year-old Rice was shot in November while playing with a toy airsoft gun at his neighborhood park in Cleveland.

    Stewart played damning news clips from a Justice Department report about the use of excessive force by Cleveland police.

    “I guess the only difference is when football players use excessive force, they get penalized,” said Stewart.

    Video at the link.

    Personal account of participation in an Eric Garner protest in New York. Stop Resisting: How to Get Arrested at an Eric Garner Protest

    We snaked around through the streets, trying to find a way into the Christmas tree lighting, but the police had everything blocked off and kept telling us if we walked north there would be a way in. They basically kept us walking around the perimeter of Rockefeller Center, and when we asked if we could go to the lighting we were denied entry. The police were letting people in who they assumed owned property near Rockefeller Center, or who looked like tourists. But if you looked like you were even remotely involved in the protest, they were not letting you in.

    After taking a full loop around Rockefeller Center, people were agitated. We kept getting denied access to the ceremony, and they kept trying to make us walk in circles. After a while, Brian had to go home, which left me alone, and I got separated from the protest group I was with.

    I eventually found a big group of people chanting in the middle of the street, and the police were talking on bullhorns saying there would be arrests because we were blocking oncoming traffic. People started to retreat, which was pretty wack because I thought that the whole point of a protest was to go against what was being asked. I also believed the whole massive-arrests threat was a bluff. I didn’t think the NYPD would arrest hundreds of people for blocking a street. […]

    I was simply recording what was going on, along with the 10 or 15 other journalists who were videotaping and taking pictures. One of the cops in riot gear saw I was recording. He took my hand and said, “Let’s go, you gotta keep it moving.”

    We were directly behind the people getting pushed down the sidewalk block, so we physically could not walk faster. A black cop tried to warn me of what lay ahead if I stayed.

    To be honest, I felt a sense of security momentarily. I followed a direct order from a police officer to follow him, and we were in constant motion and not blocking the street. That sense of security dramatically disappeared when one of the higher-up officers saw I was recording. He pointed at me directly out of the crowd, and started shouting “GRAB HIM! HE’S THE ONE, GET HIM!”

    The cops falsely accused me of resisting arrest. They also made the false claim that I was involved in a group that had assaulted an officer by throwing water on him. I did not have any real time to resist arrest. Before I could even drop my book bag and find a clear route to make my escape, I felt hands grab me from behind.

    My right arm was twisted into a chicken wing.

    I was never told I was being placed under arrest. I repeat: I. Was. Never. Told. I. Was. Being. Arrested. I still had my book bag on, and when I turned to see who was twisting my arm, I saw three or four cops. They all yelled the same thing at the same time.

    “Stop resisting!”[…]

    The cops then gave me over to a man who I’ll call “Officer L” for the rest of the story. Officer L was my arresting officer. The weird thing is that this man was literally nowhere near me when I was grabbed. He did not even see the arrest or what really happened, which he even later admitted.

    The other officers handed me over to him, and he walked me to the middle of the street where there was a line of people who were also being arrested. I kept hearing the term “five bodies” said over and over. It seemed like all the arresting officers were focused on achieving a body count of five, which would explain the random arrests. They were filling quotas.

    As I was on line, I kept pleading with Officer L to do something about the cuffs because I was in pain. My book bag had various schoolbooks inside, and the weight of it kept pulling down on my wrist and the cuffs were already extremely tight to begin with. When I told him this, Officer L responded, “They’re not supposed to be comfortable.”

    Disgusted by his lack of regard for my safety, I sat down in the middle of the street to stop the pressure on my wrist. At this moment, a lady yelled to me from the other side of the barriers and asked if I was being hurt. I responded, “Yes!” […]

    In the police van, I was with five other people. Three were journalists, and the other two were bystanders who were grabbed randomly. There was only one other black guy. While waiting to be transferred to 1 Police Plaza, I found out that I still had my phone in my jacket pocket. I proceeded to take a video in the car, and I posted it to Facebook. I did this because as soon as I unlocked my screen, Facebook was the first app that came up, and I knew that if I posted a video letting people know that I was in trouble someone might alert my mom.

    My hands were behind my back, so I did not have time to send a text to my mom and I didn’t want the cops to see that I was on my phone so I had to be quick. I took the video, posted it, turned the phone off, and hid it.

    When we arrived at 1 Police Plaza, the cops lined us up and went over what we were arrested for. I wasn’t surprised that they said I was resisting arrest, since they had been yelling about resisting when they grabbed me. But it was surprising that they pinned resisting arrest on the other black guy who got arrested.

    He had been very calm on the arrest line, cracking jokes with the officers, and he’d even said he understood that the cops were told to arrest people and that they had a job to do. So when they accused him of resisting arrest we were both in shock together. But now that I look back at it, we were all randomly selected to be arrested, but only the two black guys in the group were pinned with extra charges such as resisting, and the assault charge. […]

    I overheard cops bragging about arresting people, and some were even thanking us for helping them buy their families Christmas presents. To be honest, after a couple of hours I wasn’t even fazed about being arrested. It was the arrogance and total disregard for what we were fighting for that really infuriated me. Regardless of what people may think about protestors, we were all grieving, not just for the life of Eric Garner, but all the black lives that had been stolen. It felt like so many of our people died in vain because police were never punished for their actions.

    It wasn’t until early Thursday morning that they started to let people out of the cell to go home. They started calling people one by one to exit, but the people who weren’t allowed to go home—either because of an unpaid ticket or warrant, or in my case, resisting arrest—stayed in the holding cell and waited to be transferred to central booking (a.k.a. The Tombs).

    When they called my name. I stood up and walked to the back room so they could get my fingerprints and take more mug shots. I asked my arresting officer, “If you’re supposed to be my arresting officer, and claim that I resisted arrest and such, why weren’t you there when I actually got grabbed by the cops and arrested? Did you even see me resist arrest?”

    Officer L admitted that he was not physically present during my arrest, and didn’t see me resist, but since they told him I resisted he had to follow orders. Later on in the night he explained that during a protest, if a higher-up tells him to grab you, even if you’re not doing anything at all, he has to make an arrest or he’s liable to get in trouble. […]

    After hours of pondering why this was happening to me, I realized the police wanted to scare me into not protesting ever again. They saw that I didn’t have an arrest record, and felt that this would be a good way to scare me straight. After realizing this, I knew that I couldn’t let them break my spirit and see that I was in pain. I waited and waited, then called my mom through the operator phone, which charged a ridiculous $13 a minute. I let my mom know that I was physically OK, and when they finally called my name I tried my best to get up and walk with a sense of pride and dignity.

    They took me upstairs with a group of three other older Hispanic men, and told us to wait in this smaller cell while the lawyer came to speak with us. My lawyer called me to the screen separating the cell and said that since it was my first arrest and that I didn’t have any priors, I could take an ACD (Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal). This meant that if I stayed out of jail for six months all the charges would be dropped.

    Initially, this sounded appealing, but then I thought about it and realized that because I didn’t actually do anything, I should take it to trial and beat the case. My lawyer said she’d represent me, but warned me if I were found guilty I would face a year in jail and it would go on my record. This didn’t bother me because I truly had done nothing wrong. Then I realized that this was the same justice system that had let Daniel Pantaleo get away with murder.

    Assuming the system wouldn’t necessarily take my side regardless of the facts, I went with the ACD. I’m now regretting it, because even if I get arrested for anything as simple as not having I.D. on me during a stop, my ACD is thrown out and I have to go to trial.

    When I finally got to see a judge, she read me the charges and gave me the ACD, and I was finally released to my mom and sister, who were waiting for me inside the courthouse. I was also relieved to see my history teacher there. […]

    Although it felt like a never-ending nightmare, I learned a lot about myself and how much pressure I can withstand. There was a time when I felt like we were all alone in this battle and that no one really heard us, but seeing all the races and ages of people who got arrested just proved to me how tired people are of the bullshit. People are finally making a concerted effort to change, but we all need to take part in it, no matter what age, race, gender, or sexual orientation. The future depends on it. I’m only 17 but I refuse to bring my children into a society that considers them a threat, or views their lives as less valuable than the next person’s simply because their skin is tinted. For the rest of my life, I will do everything in my power to resist that.

    Daźay Burnett is a 17-year-old Harlem native. A senior at Beacon High School in Manhattan, he is actively involved in performing arts, songwriting, and youth activism groups (New York Youth for Justice). He plans to attend college in the fall of 2015, with Theater Arts as his intended major.

  434. rq says

    What Are the Limits of Police Subterfuge?

    The next time you call for assistance because the Internet service in your home is not working, the ‘technician’ who comes to your door may actually be an undercover government agent. He will have secretly disconnected the service, knowing that you will naturally call for help and—when he shows up at your door, impersonating a technician—let him in. He will walk through each room of your house, claiming to diagnose the problem. Actually, he will be videotaping everything (and everyone) inside. He will have no reason to suspect you have broken the law, much less probable cause to obtain a search warrant. But that makes no difference, because by letting him in, you will have ‘consented’ to an intrusive search of your home.

    This chilling scenario is the first paragraph of a motion to suppress evidence gathered by the police in exactly this manner, from a hotel room. Unbelievably, this isn’t a story from some totalitarian government on the other side of an ocean. This happened in the United States, and by the FBI. Eventually—I’m sure there will be appeals—higher U.S. courts will decide whether this sort of practice is legal. If it is, the county will slide even further into a society where the police have even more unchecked power than they already possess. […]

    So instead they repeatedly cut the guests’ Internet connection. When the guests complained to the hotel, FBI agents wearing hidden cameras and recorders pretended to be Internet repair technicians and convinced the guests to let them in. They filmed and recorded everything under the pretense of fixing the Internet, and then used the information collected from that to get an actual search warrant. To make matters even worse, they lied to the judge about how they got their evidence.

    The FBI claims that their actions are no different from any conventional sting operation. For example, an undercover policeman can legitimately look around and report on what he sees when he invited into a suspect’s home under the pretext of trying to buy drugs. But there are two very important differences: one of consent, and the other of trust. The former is easier to see in this specific instance, but the latter is much more important for society.

    You can’t give consent to something you don’t know and understand. The FBI agents did not enter the hotel room under the pretext of making an illegal bet. They entered under a false pretext, and relied on that for consent of their true mission. That makes things different. The occupants of the hotel room didn’t realize who they were giving access to, and they didn’t know their intentions. The FBI knew this would be a problem. According to the New York Times, “a federal prosecutor had initially warned the agents not to use trickery because of the ‘consent issue.’ In fact, a previous ruse by agents had failed when a person in one of the rooms refused to let them in.” Claiming that a person granting an Internet technician access is consenting to a police search makes no sense, and is no different than one of those “click through” Internet license agreements that you didn’t read saying one thing and while meaning another. It’s not consent in any meaningful sense of the term. […]
    It cannot be that every time someone allows one of those technicians into our homes they are consenting to a police search. Again from the motion to suppress: “Our lives cannot be private—and our personal relationships intimate—if each physical connection that links our homes to the outside world doubles as a ready-made excuse for the government to conduct a secret, suspicionless, warrantless search.” The resultant breakdown in trust would be catastrophic. People would not be able to get the assistance they need. Legitimate servicemen would find it much harder to do their job. Everyone would suffer.

    It all comes back to the warrant. Through warrants, Americans legitimately grant the police an incredible level of access into our personal lives. This is a reasonable choice because the police need this access in order to solve crimes. But to protect ordinary citizens, the law requires the police to go before a neutral third party and convince them that they have a legitimate reason to demand that access. That neutral third party, a judge, then issues the warrant when he or she is convinced. This check on the police’s power is for Americans’ security, and is an important part of the Constitution.

    In recent years, the FBI has been pushing the boundaries of its warrantless investigative powers in disturbing and dangerous ways. It collects phone-call records of millions of innocent people. It uses hacking tools against unknown individuals without warrants. It impersonates legitimate news sites. If the lower court sanctions this particular FBI subterfuge, the matter needs to be taken up—and reversed—by the Supreme Court.

    That’s the second such suit that I know of. Journalist Arrested in Ferguson While Filming on Sidewalk Sues St. Louis County Police

    Yingst was filming on the eastern sidewalk of South Florissant Road, near the Ferguson police station, at 11:30 p.m. on November 22 when police — under Vollmer’s command — began ordering protesters to move across the street to the western sidewalk. Here’s what happened next, according to the lawsuit:

    Vollmer pointed at Yingst, and a few subordinate patrolmen moved towards Yingst, partially surrounding him. As the patrolmen surrounded him, Yingst, fearing imminent arrest, told Defendant Vollmer, “Sir, I’m just standing on a public sidewalk.” At Vollmer’s direction, the patrolmen handcuffed Yingst and placed him under arrest. While officers were arresting Yingst, he asked them, “Why are you arresting me?” The arresting officers proffered no response.

    “Lock him up,” Vollmer told officers under his command before they arrested Yingst, the lawsuit says. […]

    Yingst’s lawsuit against police and Vollmer includes a count for defamation over what the department tweeted about Yingst’s arrest. The official St. Louis County police Twitter account tweeted: “@TreyYingst reporter from D.C. taken into custody for failure to disperse. Was asked to leave street by the commander and refused. #Ferguson”

    Yingst says he didn’t refuse an order to leave the street and that police knowingly lied to explain his arrest in the tweet.

    The day before police arrested Yingst, a judge ruled that police could not detain “individuals who are photographing or recording at public places,” as long as they don’t interfere with police operations. Another court decision just before Yingst’s arrest said police couldn’t arrest anyone for “peaceably standing, marching or assembling on public sidewalks in Ferguson.”

    “It is troubling that the First Amendment rights of the media continued to be trampled despite multiple court orders prohibiting such government overreach,” says Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU of Missouri.

    From Brasil/São Paulo More than 15,000 in the act against genocide of black youth.#Ferguson #Anonymous #Brasil .

    Episode #32: White Supremacy & Capitalism

    #32: White Supremacy and Capitalism, from 1492 to Ferguson – Rebellion has erupted around the country in the aftermath of grand jury decisions to allow the murderers of Mike Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York to go free without legal charges. Why did this happen, when authorities knew that this would spark furious protests and international condemnation? In Episode 32 of the Ex-Worker, Clara and Alanis try to understand the persistence of racist police violence by delving into the historical roots of capitalism and white supremacy in European conquest and colonization of the Americas and the transatlantic slave trade. Along with a survey of resistance and backlash since the grand jury announcements, we share excerpts from the recent feature “The Thin Blue Line is a Burning Fuse,” tracing the role of anti-police anger in catalyzing nearly all recent major social upheavals around the globe. [Agency] http://www.anarchistagency.com), a new anarchist media project, shares an excerpt from an article analyzing the Ebola outbreak and anarchist perspectives on public health. We run through a wide range of news, discuss listener comments on transcripts and international coverage, and even offer a radical holiday song!

    You can download this and all of our previous episodes online. You can also subscribe in iTunes here or just add the feed URL to your podcast player of choice. Rate us on iTunes and let us know what you think, or send us an email to [email protected]. You can also call us 24 hours a day at 202–59-NOWRK, that is, 202–596–6975.

    Standing up for #DontreHamilton today in Milwaukee. #BlackLivesMatter

    Wearing shirts that read “I Can’t Breathe,” Milwaukee County supervisors Khalif Rainey, David Bowen, Martin Weddle, Willie Johnson and Michael Mayo said they believe former MPD officer Christopher Manney should be charged in the shooting death of #DontreHamilton. They also called on Governor Scott Walker to not activate the National Guard once the district attorney announces his decision on whether to charge Manney.

    Thanks for stepping up for justice supervisors. Who’s next?

    #BlackLivesMatter

  435. rq says

    Oops, didn’t count the links IN the text there. Did well with the others!

    Repost? Burning Ferguson.

    4 things that should happen now that we know the truth about Witness #40, a white supremacist

    Knowing all that we know about her testimony, here are four things that should happen immediately.

    1. Sandy McElroy should be immediately charged with perjury. She was clearly told by the FBI and the prosecutors that lying about being there was a crime and was given chance after chance to back down. Instead she doubled down and added very specific and destructive details about what she saw Mike Brown do that day.

    Furthermore, Sandy McElroy is not at all like an eyewitness who was actually there and sincerely believed she saw the events unfold in a way that may be different than the facts of the case. In her back and forth with the FBI, they even went so far as to clarify that it was not a crime to recall something you actually saw and state it in a way that is slightly off from what truly happened.

    2. Sandy McElroy should be charged with creating and submitting false evidence which is a felony in Missouri and in most states. She completely and totally fabricated a journal months after the murder, never mentioned it to the FBI, and was allowed to actually show it to the prosecutors and grand jury as a form of proof she was telling the truth.

    3. Prosecutor Bob McCulloch, who undoubtedly will not resign until hell freezes over and pigs fly, should at the very least explain why Sandy McElroy was called to testify. Having taken months and months to run the grand jury system, McCulloch was well aware of who she was, but clearly believed she should remain anyway.

    4. A special prosecutor should be appointed and a new grand jury convened immediately. Gov. Jay Nixon still has the power to do such a thing—as does a circuit court judge in Missouri. Typically this would only happen in cases in which it can be proven that the prosecutor went out of his or her way to support the defendant in a case and the evidence for that in this case grows daily.

  436. rq says

    The Courage of the Protest Athlete

    Mr. Hawkins didn’t kill anyone. He didn’t assault anyone. He simply wore a shirt. He was then asked to apologize. Nope, he did not. His statement was instructive. He broke down why it was difficult to wear the shirt: “I worked extremely hard to build and keep my reputation especially here in Ohio, and by most accounts I’ve done a solid job of decently building a good name. Before I made the decision to wear the T-shirt, I understood I was putting that reputation in jeopardy to some of those people who wouldn’t necessarily agree with my perspective. I understood there was going to be backlash, and that scared me, honestly. But deep down I felt like it was the right thing to do. If I was to run away from what I felt in my soul was the right thing to do, that would make me a coward, and I can’t live with that.”

    This is the struggle for all Black folks. We get whatever piece of the pie we have and we are holding on, with clenched fists, to keep it. I get it. Many of us work hard because we are trying to make ourselves impenetrable to racism, to being murdered, to being seen as less than. We are concerned that we may alienate others, we know that it will take a psychic tidal wave to disrupt racism so why put ourselves on the chopping block. I heard him. And, in that, I heard the silence of so many entertainers and actors, etc. over the years. The difference, Hawkins decided to be courageous. It takes bravery and strength to take a stand, to speak up. You have to step onto the ledge without a safety net.

    In the same way that Beverly Johnson spoke, eloquently, about her fear to come forward: “As I wrestled with the idea of telling my story of the day Bill Cosby drugged me with the intention of doing God knows what, the faces of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and countless other brown and black men took residence in my mind. As if I needed to be reminded. The current plight of the black male was behind my silence…” All of this shit takes courage. Speaking out against the ills of society takes courage. I am heartened that these folks are articulating the totality of their fear as they bust through it.

    And, the thing is, in order to get where they are, athletes and entertainers have to stand in and overcome scary spaces, repeatedly. They are no different from the rest of us. We are all in this, together. It takes just as much courage to put your career in jeopardy as it does to wake up to children whose mouths you can’t feed. This is the cost of living within a society that is, fundamentally, unequal.

    Daily, we wrestle with difficult matters that have been thrust on our doorstep. We didn’t cause it. We didn’t ask for it. But, we have to put our livelihoods in jeopardy to confront it.

    The protesters are emboldening all of us. They are taking the greatest risk. They are stepping out onto the ledge without fear (maybe even with fear). By taking a stand for our lives, they give us courage. Whether entertainers and athletes know it or not, the protesters are standing for them, too. For their right to speak. We are, slowly, realizing that we have each other’s backs. Protesters, athletes, entertainers, people from all walks of life. We know we are not stepping out on the ledge alone. That is the firepower of social media, we can turn on and see that we have back up.

    And, yes, there are those who can’t access social media. Who are trying to eat, live, survive. Some who don’t give a shit about racism because they’re too busy suffering it. So, they may see a Lebron James, in a t-shirt, before they get wind of a protest march over the Brooklyn Bridge. How do we reach their lives in a way that is meaningful? There is much work to be done but it feels like we are back on the path. We cannot dismiss the power of the protest athlete. The visual of “I can’t breathe”, resonantes.

    No one had more courage than Trayvon, Renisha, Jordan, John, Eric, Tamir, Rekia, Jonathan, Mike Mike, no one has more courage than them. They accepted the worst fate. The fate of stepping into the streets of America in Black skin. The least we can do is stand for them. THE LEAST WE CAN DO. Stay courageous.

  437. rq says

    Portland High School Women’s Basketball Team.

    #Ferguson: The Unbelievable True Story (NYC Subway Art) (check the picture).

    New Bedford parents upset about 2nd grade protests

    According to school officials at the Alma Del Mar Charter School students were taking a class where they learned about the recent protests in Ferguson when they decided to hold their own protest.

    “They couldn’t do anything that would be anti-police or anti-any particular people. The scholars agreed to that and they asked the principal for permission as well,” Will Gardner, executive director of the Alma Del Mar Charter School, said.

    One parent, a police officer in town, saw the protesting students in front of the school as he drove by.

    “Having the children off school property without any parental permission slip is inexcusable,” Officer George Borden said. “I found that extremely upsetting, multiple people I’ve spoken to felt the same way, I’ve shown them pictures of this.”

    School officials said the protest was completely voluntary.

    “We had a group of Scholars who just wanted to play. They were on the monkey bars having their normal recess while this was going on,” Gardner said.

    Borden said that because he is a police officer he is already in a tough position, but this makes it even more difficult.

    “The first thing she said to me when she got in my car wax ‘daddy, do you shoot people?’”

    Good question.

  438. rq says

    Phoenix. Man dies from injuries in Thursday Phoenix police shooting. It’s the secnod in Phoenix this week – read about the first one (end of the article). I mean, wow.

    Not sure where, but another sports team wears “I Can’t Breathe” shirts.

    Sony Hack Re-ignites Questions about Michael Jackson’s Banned Song

    “They Don’t Care About Us” was denounced by The New York Times even before its release, and did not reach much of its intended audience because the controversy caused by the New York Times article would go on to overshadow the song itself. Radio stations were reluctant to play it and one of the short films Jackson created for the song was banned in the U.S.

    Bernard Weinraub, husband of Sony Pictures Chief Amy Pascal, was the writer of the Times article.

    “They Don’t Care About Us” was Jackson’s statement against abuse of power and the political corruption that enabled it. Two key events inspired the song:

    In 1992, five white police officers who stood trial in Los Angeles for the videotaped beating of Rodney King were found not guilty by a jury with no African American members. Then, as now, there were riots and protests about longstanding policies of racial profiling and systemic police brutality.

    The following year, Jackson, who had not been charged with any crime, was forced to undergo a humiliating 25 minute strip search by the same LAPD. The Santa Barbara District Attorney and police detectives arrived at Jackson’s home in Los Olivos, California with a photographer who documented his private parts on film.

    […]

    When the controversy over “They Don’t Care About Us” arose, Jackson asked Geffen for public support, but he would not go on record. Jackson’s manager, Geffen’s pick Sandy Gallin, refused to speak on television. He fired Gallin and never spoke to either of the men again.

    Geffen refused to be interviewed about Jackson for Greenburg’s book.

    Jackson and Spike Lee made two separate short films for “They Don’t Care About Us.” “He was not having good relations [with Sony/Epic]…there was friction there,” said Spike Lee in a recent interview with Iconic magazine.

    The first version, recorded in Brazil, features the Afro-Brazilian drumming group Olodum. If you’re familiar with the song, this is the version you’ve probably seen. Already in production at the time of the controversy, it uses sound effects to obscure the objectionable words.

    But the “Prison” version is a tour de force; Jackson had even more to be angry about. Jackson and Lee chose to film in a Long Island jail, said Lee, because “a lot of people in prison shouldn’t be there. A lot of people are there for a much longer time too. In American prisons, there are more brown and black people than white.”

    All Jackson’s frustrations seem to be on display in this raw and angry performance. [… – see video at link]

    Jackson would later go on to have a public feud with executives at Sony Music, accusing them of racism. His protests were eyed skeptically by many at the time.

    One particularly vicious 1995 Newsday review of this song read in part: “When Michael Jackson sings ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ you’ve got to wonder who he thinks ‘us’ is.”

    The Black Lives Matter protestors don’t wonder.

    Reverse racism? Ha. ‘You are a white lady telling me what is racist!’: Whoopi Goldberg loses it with Rosie O’Donnell on The View in heated debate about Barack Obama being mistaken for a valet. Twitter consensus seems to be that Whoopi doesn’t get it this time.

    Goldberg dismissed the confusion as one of stupidity, with Americans failing to identify the most important man in the country and the world.

    But when O’Donnell suggested racism may have been a key factor in the incident, Goldberg became enraged.

    ‘You are a white lady telling me what is racist to you,’ she shouted.

    O’Donnell hit back in the segment: ‘I’m a gay American whose been called an [expletive].

    ‘I have a black kid at my house, Whoopi. I have a black kid I raise!’

    Goldberg exclaimed: ‘That is not the same thing.’

    O’Donnell: ‘You don’t have to be black to know what racism is.’

    More at thel ink, including video.

    This idea that opposing racism is snobbish has got to stop, particularly among liberal commentators who should know better.;
    Being racist is not the ‘natural’ state of working-class people; in fact they have been at the forefront of anti-racism in Britain.

  439. rq says

    London. It’s not #BlackLivesMatter, but it may as well be, as Jimmy Mubenga died in police custody under rather unclear circumstances, and the officers were just cleared of any wrongdoing.

  440. rq says

    Mano Singham’s post The incredible whininess of the police rehashes police responses to professional athletes speaking out for justice for black lives, and also links to an excellent perspective letter, “To Protect You… From Me.”

    Josh…

    As one 70 year old Black man who was born and raised in “segregated America” and raised my son in the new and improved “post-racial” America, please let me help you out.

    You wrote…

    “What interests me about these confrontation is this: I think people who are part of or sympathetic to the movement tied to Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and others sometimes miss just what deep wells of support and trust police have in the population. Police officers are consistently among the most trusted professions in the country, as attested in numerous public opinion surveys. That said, respect and trust and deference to police is heavily tied to public perceptions of the threats they protect us from. And as we’ve discussed, crime rates have been falling rapidly for two decades. “

    We supporters don’t “miss” the “deep wells of support and trust” police have in the majority population. They have always had such support and trust. It just doesn’t matter here. What you seem to miss is that the reason that such support and trust exists is due to the fact that what they are protecting the majority population from, in the minds of far too many in that population, is us! From the Slave patrollers to the rural sheriffs, to the modern police forces, the threat perceived most vividly by the population they “protect and serve” is that of the (violent) black person. Even a cursory look at the history and culture of this nation will reveal that in popular culture for many decades the majority culture was told to be scared of people of color. The result of this villainization of Black, Brown, Red and Yellow skin is a populace that believes, at least subconsciously, that any stranger with a dark skin is a potential threat. Thus the differing rates of charging and conviction between white and minority populations. It is that perception that drives a lot of the injustice minorities complain about.

    I worked for over 30 years in the legal system of this country as an “officer of the court”. I have seen the disparity in criminal charges and sentencing up close and personal. I have seen the biased perceptions of our police result in imprisonment, beatings, mistreatment and yes, even death. But it is not only the overt physical violence that minorities are subjected to, it is the presumption of guilt that we confront on a daily basis. It is the cop who pulls you over for a “routine” check because to him or her you look suspicious. It is the clerk who keeps a close eye on you when you step into the shop, because “you know those people steal”. It is the assumption that you will never be able to repay the loan you apply for, or afford the car you walk in to look at. It is the surprise you see in the eyes of someone who has just been told you are a judge, not a bailiff. It is the fear you see in the eyes of an elderly White person who you pass on the street in the twilight hours.

    I could regale you with many stories, experiences and scenarios that I, my family and friends have experienced. Not episodes of racism or racist acts in the common understanding of the terms, but just folks reacting based on unfamiliarity, lack of knowledge and cultural stereotypes. But the bottom line is that this reaction is a widely shared one in the majority population. And it can be deadly. They want their police to protect them from the black person in the mugshot on the front page of the news paper. They don’t question his or her guilt. And they don’t question whatever actions the police take to apprehend them. And they don’t question whether I am any different.

    But listen to the defenders of the police in these latest cases… do you really want to live in the world they are promoting? One where you must immediately acquiesce to any request/order give by anyone in a uniform, without question or complaint… under penalty of death if you don’t comply, or comply too slowly for them? Do you really mean to give people in uniform the power to kill, maim, imprison any person simply because they questioned why they were being confronted or resisted rough treatment? Is the uniformed officers word to be deemed absolute, without recourse… and his/her power to punish to be deemed limitless?

    I can tell you from experience that police officers are just like everybody else – they are not all the benevolent guardians of small children, grannies and fluffy puppies. They do over use their authority, they do have bad days and they do lie, cheat and steal. But just as importantly, they do mostly try to do what they are asked to do. And what they are too often asked to do is… to protect you… from me.

    Not from the educated, lawyer/judge me, or the granddad me, or the mentor teacher me… but from the Black menace me. The problem is that for too many of our citizens and our police they are one in the same!

    So, we don’t miss the support and trust police have in the majority population… t’was always thus… we just don’t care to let that support and trust kill more of our sons and daughters. We are tired of letting their subjective “fears” be reason enough to make us bury another child.

    The injustices being protested in this instance do not stand in isolation, apart from the larger fabric of this society. They are woven into the warp and weave of it’s fabric. From the movie houses to the churches to the neighborhoods, to the schools, to the Whitehouse and Congress. And to the courtrooms and prisons. Unfortunately Black people can’t change how White people perceive them. That is something they must do. But, we can fight to change how we are treated… and that is something we must do.

    Stay well…
    AJ

  441. rq says

    Minneapolis is having action in Mall of America today. They have already set up a bail fund, if anyone’s following along and able to contribute.

    Sign honoring 4 slain Oakland officers knocked down

    “This outrageous act of disrespect does not represent the majority of our community’s feeling about the Oakland Police Department,” said Officer Johnna Watson, agency spokeswoman. “We have received overwhelming support from many people in recent weeks regarding our hard work, dedication and professionalism during these difficult times.”

    Watson added, “The sign will be repaired, and the officers’ sacrifices will never be forgotten.”

    Aha. Ferguson prosecutor says witnesses lied under oath to grand jury

    Speaking with KTRS radio, McCulloch said his goal was to have any individual who claimed to be a witness testify before the grand jury.

    “Clearly some were not telling the truth,” he said.

    Specifically, McCulloch noted that one woman in particular who said she witnessed the shooting but “clearly wasn’t present.” According to McCulloch, “she recounted a story right out of the newspaper” that matched up with the account of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed Brown on August 9. […]

    Despite apparently knowing some witnesses were not telling the truth, McCulloch said he does not have second thoughts about the way he conducted the case, nor does he plan on pressing charges against those who lied.

    “It’s a legitimate issue,” McCulloch said, as quoted by NPR. “But in the situation — again, because of the manner in which we did it — we’re not going to file perjury charges against anyone. There were people who came in and yes, absolutely lied under oath. Some lied to the FBI — even though they’re not under oath, that’s another potential offense, a federal offense.”

    The comments comes as one Missouri lawmaker is pushing for an investigation into the prosecutor’s behavior during the grand jury proceedings, citing allegations that he “manipulated” the situation.

    “Many St. Louis-area residents believe — and there is at least some evidence to suggest — that Mr. McCulloch manipulated the grand jury process from the beginning to ensure that Officer Wilson would not be indicted,” wrote State Rep. Karla May in a letter to Sen. Kurt Schaefer.

    Schaefer’s Senate committee is currently looking into Gov. Jay Nixon’s response to the protests that raged following the grand jury decision, and May wants the review expanded to include McCulloch role as prosecutor. […]

    Elsewhere in his interview, McCulloch defended the decision to announce the grand jury ruling at night, saying, the events that followed were out of his control and would have happened anyway.

    “There was no good time to make the announcement,” he said. “Those who were bent on destruction, they weren’t demonstrators, they’re common criminals.”

    Yuh, mmhm.

    Commentary: The Young New Face of Black Leadership

    The leaders of this new movement aren’t waiting for approval from the old guard before they act. They’re not bound by “respectability politics” of the past or dress codes of the civil rights movement. The “Black Lives Matter” movement is a 21st century invention.

    I first noticed this in Ferguson last August, as I watched protesters in t-shirts and jeans walking up and down West Florissant Avenue chanting, “We young! We strong! We marching all night long!” They weren’t trying to impress white society with their grammar or their clothing. Some marched with bandanas over their faces. Some wore tattered shorts. Some wore baggy jeans. And some young men stood around shirtless in the humid St. Louis summer heat.

    Such a protest would never have taken place in Dr. King’s time, but he lived in a different era when African-Americans were more constrained, and even then his actions were considered “too radical” for some. Yet King still praised what he called a “marvelous new militancy” that others condemned.

    The Black Lives Matter movement represents today’s new militancy, finally unleashed from the old rules and not beholden to the leaders of the past. It’s a group that booed the Rev. Jesse Jackson when he asked for donations and told Black Panther Party leader Malik Shabazz to “go home” when he tried to rally demonstrators one night on his bullhorn.

    They’ve openly criticized President Obama for his response to the Michael Brown and Eric Garner grand jury decisions, questioned CNN anchor Don Lemon’s attachment to “respectability politics,” and complained about Rev. Al Sharpton’s admittedly non-revolutionary march on Washington last weekend.

    The new leaders aren’t just breaking the rules, they’re setting their own. The organizers have selected no national spokesman to represent them, and they’re not waiting for the NAACP, the National Action Network, or any other group to lead them. Instead, they’re marching through the streets, organizing on Twitter, writing provocative articles, circulating blog posts on Tumblr, and live streaming protests that mainstream media don’t, won’t, or can’t cover.

  442. rq says

    Oh! Brilliant!! Dozens of Armed Protesters March To Walmart Aisle Where Police Shot and Killed African American With Toy. Check out the pictures! They say a lot in and of themselves, as the ones carrying the firearms are white people, but they stood together with black people and went out in open-carry to Wal-Mart to make a point.

    Since the shooting death of Crawford, various protesters have turned out to the large rallies and vigils, personally armed with legal firearms. At one of the first of such protests, a self-described member of the Anonymous “hacktivist” group could be seen holding a sign that pointed both to his “toy gun” and to his “real gun”. […]

    This Saturday, less than 24 hours after the a large protest scheduled for Friday afternoon, the massive open carry protest, organized by Ohio Open Carry, saw dozens turn out with real assault weapons, not air rifles.

    Virgil Vaduva, the man in charge of the group, says that the protest is not just about justice, but about educating the public and police alike about the law. Nothing that John Crawford did was illegal. In fact, police did not even have the right to confront him about anything he had done, and would not have had that right even if he was carrying an actual assault weapon like protesters did today, standing in the very place he lost his life to over-zealous police. […]

    This rally and march was a historical first, as open carry protesters have typically not taken a stand for African Americans shot by police unjustly. But the City of Beavercreek and the Greater Dayton area has seen a lot of cross-over from people of all segments of society coming together to demand an end to the police war on African Americans.

    So there you go, there are the gun nuts, standing up for once. Just a little bit, just a few of them. But it’s a start.

    [SHADE BRIGADE]
    How Do We Get to Post-Bill O’ReillyAmerica?     As the article itself says, it’s the author’s biggest gripes from the week in black culture. Mentions of protests, Bill O’Reilly, etc. Interesting.

    Why won’t McCulloch charge Witness #40 with perjury? Time for a special prosecutor, new grand jury

    Before his interview today, McCulloch had only two options on what he could say about allowing McElroy to testify.

    1. McCulloch could’ve said that he was completely and totally unaware of how thoroughly discredited McElroy was as a witness and that he didn’t learn until after she testified that she had a history as a compulsive liar and had even injected herself into a high-profile criminal case in St Louis decades earlier. This would seem far-fetched, since her interrogation by the FBI was included in the grand jury documents and her own sordid history was as easy to find as a few quick Google search.

    or

    2. McCulloch could admit he was fully and completely aware that McElroy actually concocted her entire story from scratch, that she was never on the scene the day Wilson killed Mike Brown, that he knew she was a racist hack and Wilson supporter who meant the case harm, that she had perjured herself extensively before the FBI, and, if called before the grand jury would also perjure herself over and over and over again. This would seem to be the more likely of the two options, but it’d be hard to imagine McCulloch ever actually admitting such a thing.

    Today, however, in the brazen and flippant manner in which he has done nearly everything regarding this case, he did just that.

    McCulloch fully admitted that witness #40 “clearly wasn’t present” at the scene of the shooting and that “she recounted her story right out of the newspaper.”

    Actually hearing him admit this is shocking because it’s an almost indefensible strategy to call a witness before a grand jury when that witness has already been thoroughly discredited as a destructive liar who willfully perjured herself. The point is this—Sandy McElroy was not a witness. To call her to testify as such, not once, but twice, makes no legal, moral, or ethical sense whatsoever.

    In his radio interview, McCulloch said he “determined early on” that he would allow witnesses to testify even if “their statements were not accurate.” However, McElroy was not an inaccurate eyewitness who struggled to recount the facts of a traumatic event she actually witnessed, but is in a different category altogether. She wasn’t inaccurate. She was delusional and destructive and nowhere near Canfield Drive on Aug. 9. To group her in with residents who were actually there, but gave wildly varying accounts, which is typical of eyewitnesses, is insincere at best. McElroy was not only dozens of miles away, she only came forward with the express intent of boosting Wilson’s narrative. […]

    Again, why go through these motions for someone who has been thoroughly discredited as a complete and total sham? As McElroy clearly committed perjury, the question now arises about whether Bob McCulloch suborned perjury. Here’s the legal definition of the crime,

    It is a criminal offense to induce someone to commit perjury. In a majority of states, the offense is defined by statute.

    Under federal Criminal Law (18 U.S.C.A. § 1622), five elements must be proved to convict a person of subornation of perjury. It first must be shown that the defendant made an agreement with a person to testify falsely. There must be proof that perjury has in fact been committed and that the statements of the perjurer were material. The prosecutor must also provide evidence that the perjurer made such statements willfully with knowledge of their falsity. Finally, there must be proof that the procurer had knowledge that the perjurer’s statements were false.

    It appears that all five elements of this crime were actually committed by Bob McCulloch in the case of Sandy McElroy.

    The following four elements of this crime are obvious and verifiable. On their own this is enormously troubling.

    1. There must be proof that perjury was committed. CHECK.
    2. The statements of the perjurer must be material. CHECK.
    3. The perjurer has to have made such statements with willful knowledge of their falsity. CHECK.
    4. There must be proof that the procurer (Bob McCulloch) had knowledge that the perjurer’s statements were false. CHECK.

    The final element required is proof that the defendant made an agreement to testify falsely. A very strong case can be made that when the prosecution, fully and completely aware that McElroy did not witness the crime, asked her to bring in and present her journal from the day of the shooting, which was presented as evidence, that it was done so with the full knowledge that whatever was in it was completelyd false. In fact, the record shows that the prosecution knew that what was in the journal was false before they allowed it to be presented as evidence, but that they, in agreement with the witness, not only allowed her to perjure herself, but also fully encouraged the entire charade.

    In their questioning of McElroy, members of the grand jury are actually recorded as telling her that they do not believe her to be a liar even though the prosecution has now admitted that everything McElroy said that day was a lie. In essence, a perjurer was given a full platform, for hours and hours, over the course of two days, to poison the well. […]

    Equally troubling is McCulloch’s statement that he has no intention of bringing charges of perjury against McElroy. Why tell her before she testified that “perjury is a crime” if when she commits perjury, in the most flagrant way possible, in the most important case in the modern history of St. Louis, if no true intention existed to hold them to this? How does the threat of a perjury charge hold any weight at all if it’s threatened, but not used in such an obvious case?

    Now that we know the facts of how McCulloch managed this case, a special prosecutor must be called and a new grand jury convened.

    Don’t hold your breath, folks, though. Something tells me this is unlikely to happen.

    A bit of history: the SNCC.

    when all your white sheets and hoods are in the laundry
    There is a joy in causing black pain that ain’t nothing but the devil. “I can breathe” is just vile.

  443. rq says

    For Dontre Hamilton:
    Stand off between peaceful jail support and police suiting up to intimidate/arrest #Justice4Dontre;
    This minor inconvenience is brought to you by a major injustice. #dontrehamilton #ShutItDown #BlackLivesMatter;
    73 #DontreHamilton supporters arrested tonight in #milwaukee Hamilton was shot 14 times by MPD officer Manney @ColorOfChange;
    #Breaking: Group of protesters walking on I-43. #WISN12;
    .@deray protests happening in Milwaukee for #BlackLivesMatter! #DontreHamilton #EricGarner #MichaelBrown.

  444. rq says

    Thanks Council Members @alondracano @CameronAGordon for the letters urging @mallofamerca not to interfere w us.
    The letters, full text:

    Thank you to Minneapolis City Council Members Alondra Cano and Cam Gordon for writing these letters to the Mall of America management asking that they respect our demonstration.

    *********

    Dear Mall of America Managers and Owners,

    There is a national surge of attention on the numerous deaths of African American fathers, young adults and children at the hands of police officers. Unfortunately, our region has also seen its share of this impact on our Minneapolis-St. Paul and suburban region. In other words, Minnesotans are not immune to this hurtful pattern.

    The numbers are so many and the circumstances so illogical and inexplicable that as an elected official I ask that you listen to the hundreds of community members, families, and residents that will come to the Mall this Saturday.

    The goal is to have a peaceful demonstration.

    I repeat, the goal is to have a peaceful demonstration – and to highlight the need to stop the senseless violence against the African American community and other communities of color.

    Please do not threaten, intimidate or disrespect the freedom of speech these tax paying residents are planning to exercise this Saturday.

    In these times of difficult national reflection and local action we need more listening, more understanding and more bridge building to help us pave the way towards a meaningful solution.

    Your understanding is much appreciated and I look forward to seeing your full cooperation in letting the ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬ people speak and share their story.

    One that you and your mall will certainly benefit from.

    Sincerely,
    Alondra Cano
    Minneapolis City Council, Ninth Ward

    **********

    Dear MOA Vice President, Maureen Bausch,

    I am writing to you today in my capacity as a Minneapolis City Council Member. We have never met but I would welcome the opportunity.

    I understand that a peaceful protest is planned for tomorrow at the Mall of America. I have been asked by some of the organizers to reach out to you and assure you that their goal is to have a peaceful protest and raise awareness about the need to stop violence against communities of color.

    Recently City Hall and the City Council offices was the scene of a similar protest. There, hundreds of protesters gathered and spoke for several hours. I met with them and listened to them, as did several of my colleagues. During the course of the protest I was impressed with how well managed it was, with how constructive, although often dramatic and emotional, and safe it was. No one was harmed. No one was arrested. No business was prevented from occurring and when it was completed the protesters left peacefully without incident. Had our police and security guards been anything other than patient, tolerant, and respectful, the outcome could have been dramatically different.

    Tomorrow I ask you to please support the right of these Minnesota residents to express their views and help our community understand and address the persistent, historic racism that still plagues our society and damages the lives of so many of our fellow Minnesotans and Americans. In this time of national turmoil we need understanding, patience and the willingness to listen to one another. How wonderful it would be for the Mall of America to be a safe place where this kind of healthy civic endeavor can occur.

    You will be doing a great service to the community, to the state, and I believe to your organization’s image, by helping facilitate a positive rally and allowing the Black Lives Matter participants to tell their stories.

    Please feel free to contact me if I can be of any assistance anytime.

    In peace and cooperation,

    Cam Gordon
    Minneapolis City Council Member, Second Ward

    Another message. On young leaders, old leaders, and being sorry – for getting caught, not for doing wrong.

    This Awesome 16-Year-Old Wants To Be The Youngest African American Chess Grandmaster (interlude).

    Here’s When the Ezell Ford Autopsy Report Will Be Released

    However, due to the controversial nature of Ford’s death with him being yet another unarmed Black man killed by police officers in America and the constant unwavering call for answers and accountability regarding his death from the community, Mayor Eric Garcetti ordered Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck to release the report before the end of the year.

    At a Nov. 13 press conference flanked by District Attorney Jackie Lacey, 9th District Councilmember Curren Price and Chief Beck, the Mayor said, “I am ordering the results of this autopsy be released. I think that is important for the family, that is important for the community, that is important for our city as well as our department.”

    Chief Beck said the autopsy contains “significant evidence that could add tremendous credibility” to whatever witnesses, should they come forward, tell investigators.

    Well that was Nov. 15 and today is Dec. 19.

    On Dec. 8, on an “Ask the Mayor” segment on KNX 1070, the mayor reiterated that Angelenos would not have to wait until Dec. 31.

    Well, I’d argue that we’re cutting it pretty close with only 12 days left in the year. But I digressed.

    The mayor went on to say that “I think we’ll see it before the end of the year, probably [in the] next week or two.”

    This was said on Dec. 8. A week from Dec. 8 was Dec. 15. Two weeks will be Dec. 22.

    In order to not make a liar out of the mayor, the LAPD would have to release that autopsy report and presumably the Department’s investigative findings by Dec. 22.

    There’s only one hitch, Mayor Eric Garcetti has left the state on a family vacay and won’t be returning until Festivus—that is Tue. Dec. 23.

    St. Louis lawmaker asks committee to investigate McCulloch

    “Many St. Louis area residents believe – and there is at least some evidence to suggest – that Mr. McCullo(ch) manipulated the grand jury process from the beginning to ensure that Officer Wilson would not be indicted,” May wrote in her letter.

    In the letter, she said those beliefs would erode the trust in the criminal justice system “until there is a comprehensive and unbiased investigation into Mr. McCull(och)’s actions.”

  446. rq says

    CHicago:
    #blacklivesmatter #traintakeover Deshawn performs for the Northbound Redline train as part of a peaceful protest;
    #traintakeover #BlackLivesMatter;
    Chicago activists are staging a #BlackLivesMatter #TrainTakeover on the Red Line. Follow @EthosIII for updates!

    Mayor Slay wants more police to combat the “Ferguson effect”. Huh? The Ferguson effect has been in effect in N. St. Louis for 60yrs.
    Basically, anyone unironically tweeting that #PoliceLivesMatter or #BlueLivesMatter right now is a shitty person crashing a funeral.

  447. rq says

    (Only the first three are from Chicago, sorry for the terrible labelling.)

    Repost? Policing is a Dirty Job, But Nobody’s Gotta Do It: 6 Ideas for a Cop-Free World

    But police are not a permanent fixture in society. While law enforcers have existed in one form or another for centuries, the modern police have their roots in the relatively recent rise of modern property relations 200 years ago, and the “disorderly conduct” of the urban poor. Like every structure we’ve known all our lives, it seems that the policing paradigm is inescapable and everlasting, and the only thing keeping us from the precipice of a dystopic Wild West scenario. It’s not. Rather than be scared of our impending Road Warrior future, check out just a few of the practicable, real-world alternatives to the modern system known as policing

    6 practical suggestions that may or may not work.

    Ugh, here’s another one on McCullogh: Prosecutor Says He Knew Some Witnesses Were Lying To The Ferguson Grand Jury

    KTRS: Why did you allow people to testify in front of the grand jury in which you knew their information was either flat-out wrong, or flat-out lying, or just weren’t telling the truth?

    McCulloch: Well, early on, I decided that anyone who claimed to have witnessed anything was going to be presented to the grand jury.

    And I knew that no matter how I handled it, there would be criticism of it. So if I didn’t put those witnesses on, then we’d be discussing now why I didn’t put those witnesses on. Even though their statements were not accurate.

    So my determination was to put everybody on and let the grand jurors assess their credibility, which they did. This grand jury poured their hearts and souls into this. It was a very emotional few months for them. It took a lot of them.

    I wanted to put everything on there.

    I thought it was much more important to present everything and everybody, and some that, yes, clearly were not telling the truth. No question about it.

    Yes, that’s an actual quote from the interview.
    And St Louis Post-Dispatch on the same: Some witnesses lied to Michael Brown grand jury, McCulloch says. So why have them testify?

    TRIGGER WARNING FOR GRAPHIC IMAGE OF LYNCHING. White boy talking bout my painting is of a bunch of thugs, but it’s a recreation of a photo of his history…

    Alla those good cops out there? Here (was) another one. Cop Stops Fellow Cop From Choking a Handcuffed Man, She Was Then Beaten and Fired

    Former Buffalo Police Officer, Cariol Horne is fighting for her pension since she was fired after 19 years on the force, over an incident in 2006 when she stopped a fellow officer from choking a handcuffed suspect.

    Horne had received a call that Officer Gregory Kwiatkowski was at the scene of a domestic dispute and in need of assistance. When she arrived, she witnessed Kwiatkowski violently punching the handcuffed suspect in the face.

    Horne and other officers on the scene removed the suspect from the house, but once outside Kwiatkowski pounced again, this time choking the handcuffed man. Believing Kwiatkowski to be out of out of control, Horne removed his arm from around the man’s neck.

    “Gregory Kwiatkowski turned Neal Mack around and started choking him. So then I’m like, ‘Greg! You’re choking him,’ because I thought whatever happened in the house he was still upset about so when he didn’t stop choking him I just grabbed his arm from around Neal Mack’s neck,” Horne told WKBW.

    Infuriated that she had crossed the thin blue line, Kwaitkowski then punched Horne in the face. The punch so was hard that Horne ended up having to have her bridge replaced. She was then injured again as officers dragged her away from trying to defend herself.

    Here is where things get crazy.

    The good cop, who was trying to stop abuse by her peer, was fired for “jumping on Officer Kwaitkowski’s back and/or striking him with her hands,” something that Kwaitkowski himself denied ever happening in a sworn statement.

    The bad cop, who was choking a man and then punched his female co-worker in the face, kept his job. It wasn’t until he choked another officer at a district station house that he was forced to retire. He was already under investigation for punching another officer while he was off-duty at a local bar.[…]

    While many police may choose this line of work because they want to be “heroic,” Horne is a true hero- and she does not regret her actions. Nobody ever said being a hero is easy.

    Just something to think about.

    She also happens to be black. I wonder how that played into her treatment by the force.

    Soudn cannon in NY: NYC Cops Are Blithely Firing A Potentially Deafening Sound Cannon At Peaceful Protesters.

  449. says

    Found out about this thanks to SallyStrange–
    Meet the pro-slavery Fairview Park auxiliary cop.
    In the wake of the discovery of his vile racist and homophobic comments, he has resigned as an auxiliary cop. He claims that some of the views he expressed were “a product of my youth and immaturity”. The dude is 20. The comments (which can be seen at the above link) were from 2 years ago. Yes, a lot can change in 2 years, but given that he made the following comment in February:

    “Abolishing slavery was the worst thing we could have done. These people should be exterminated.. Unbelievable.”

    I don’t think he’s changed his racist opinions of black people.

  450. says

    McCulloch should be fired. Then arrested. Or arrested. Then fired. I don’t care what order.

    And I knew that no matter how I handled it, there would be criticism of it. So if I didn’t put those witnesses on, then we’d be discussing now why I didn’t put those witnesses on. Even though their statements were not accurate.

    This. Is. Bullshit.
    “Witness” @40 wasn’t even a witness! You don’t put on people who weren’t witnesses. Period. No one would have criticized him if he’d not included her bc she wasn’t even at the scene of the execution.

  451. rq says

    Yah but Tony Darren Wilson would probably have been indicted then. And erbody knows you shouldn’t be tried for killing those black folks. *puke*

  452. says

    From a new article in The New York Review of Books:

    […] The upscale, white shopping centers like Frontenac Plaza were guarded by police before McCulloch addressed the press. There was no police protection in the strip malls where blacks shopped along West Florissant Avenue, which had been a main trouble spot over the summer. These facts suggest that the authorities wanted the nation and the world—the international press waited in parking lots behind the protesters—to see what a lawless community young black Ferguson would be without a firm hand. […]

    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jan/08/in-ferguson/

  453. says

    This is from another new article in The New York Review books — it applies in some ways to the USA putting so many people of color in prison, or at least saddling them with a criminal conviction. Yet another way in which our criminal justice system is unjust. Police pick up lower class persons and persons of color, interrogate them, and convince them to plead guilty to a lesser charge of some kins:

    […] True, to call the process “plea bargaining” is a cruel misnomer. There is nothing here remotely like fair bargaining between equal parties with equal resources or equal information. The prosecutors’ power—as Judge Rakoff describes—is extraordinary, far surpassing that of prosecutors of years past, and in most cases, far surpassing the judge’s. Judge John Gleeson, a federal judge of the Eastern District of New York, made this clear during a case involving a charge for which there is a mandatory minimum sentence.1 As a result of the prosecutor’s decision to charge the defendant with an offense for which there is a mandatory minimum sentence, no judging was going on about the sentence. The prosecutor sentenced the defendant, not the judge, with far less transparency and no appeal. […]

    “Has anyone coerced you to plead guilty,” I would ask, and I felt like adding, “like thumbscrews or waterboarding? Anything less than that—a threatened tripling of your sentence should you go to trial, for example—doesn’t count.”

    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jan/08/why-innocent-plead-guilty-exchange/

  455. Pteryxx says

    more from Lynna’s @452, a reporter’s in-depth story from the night that Wilson’s no-indictment was announced: In Ferguson

    Reverend Sekou—everyone was calling him simply “Sekou”—observed that as of the 107th day of protests in Ferguson, these young people had sustained the second-longest civil rights campaign in postwar US history. “Ferguson has worn out my shoes.” They were a third of their way to equaling the Montgomery Bus Boycott in its duration. The young knew the history, he went on, and to know your history is to become politicized. But in Sekou’s view, too much black political capital has been spent in electoral politics. Elections are thermometers, social movements the thermostats, he said, echoing King. They set the agenda, whereas elections merely monitor them.

    To Sekou, it matters how we define political participation. “If it’s only the ballot box, then we’re finished.” He sees voting as “an insider strategy,” one without much relevance to a town like Ferguson where two thirds of the adult population have arrest warrants out against them. Things don’t come down to the vote, they come down to the level of harassment as people get ready to vote, he added. Sekou ventured that given the little black people have got for it, voting fits the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and each time expecting a different result.

    […]

    Sekou refused to go inside the MSNBC compound on West Florissant to do an interview if we, his people, couldn’t come in, too. At the sound of gunfire, the MSNBC guards dropped to the pavement with us. Sekou didn’t wait to be turned down by MSNBC again, and walked us to a parking lot in the rear where we remained for two hours, hiding in the dark behind a brick shed. I recall a fire truck coming at one point, but it went away, maybe driven off by gunfire. Buildings burned on either side of us, huge boxes of acrid flame, and what really confused me was the honking. It sounded like a football victory at times. Except for the gunfire.

    I was afraid of what the police helicopters with searchlights might mistake us for. And then I was wary of two black youths who seemed to be loping in our direction. They weren’t loping, they were making their way along the sides of the parking lot, looking for shelter from the smoke and overhead buzzing. The one with dreadlocks turned out to be a grandson of a pastor whom Sekou knew. I had to ask myself, When did I become afraid of black youth? How had I, a black man, internalized white fear?

  457. Pteryxx says

    via BoingBoing, more business as usual: TX SWAT team beats, deafens nude man in his own home, lies about arrest; judge declines to punish cops or DA

    A well-meaning friend of Chad Chadwick called the Missouri City, TX police to say that he was afraid that Chadwick was having emotional difficulties; the cops lied to a judge to say that they had reason to believe Chadwick was heavily armed, then they sent a SWAT-team to his house (where he was asleep in the tub), beat 11 kinds of shit out of him, gave him permanent hearing loss, held him in solitary confinement, fraudulently accused him of resisting arrest, and tried to have him imprisoned — he was acquitted, but a judge wouldn’t punish the cops or the DA, because “There is no freestanding constitutional right to be free from malicious prosecution.”

    Chadwick was bankrupted by the process of defending himself against the multiple felonies that the DA and the police manufactured to justify the violence. The jury offered him “comforting hugs” when they acquitted him of all charges.

    Source article at FOX Houston

  458. Pteryxx says

    Lynna’s article @453 is excellent, too, but I just haven’t finished reading it yet.

    It is true too, in view of such threats of long terms in prison, that there is a strong possibility that the innocent may plead guilty. It may well be a rational calculation, given the penalty of going to trial, for there is clearly such a penalty. The prosecutor typically induces a plea by offering a “carrot,” the lesser charge, and at the same time a gigantic “stick.” It is not simply that he may well tack on additional charges enabling mandatory or even consecutive punishments, should the defendant go to trial. He also can threaten that he will introduce evidence of uncharged conduct at the sentencing, or even evidence of counts for which the defendant was acquitted, so long as the defendant is convicted of something. No other common law country in the world enables the prosecutor to seek a sentence based on criminal conduct never charged, never subject to adversary process, never vetted by a grand jury or a jury, or worse, charges for which the defendant was acquitted.

    Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines introduced in 1984, such alleged conduct by the defendant can “count” toward a higher sentence, as evidence of additional “loss” in a white-collar case or quantity in a drug case. It can substantially increase the sentence, an effect unheard of in other, nonfederal jurisdictions, and indeed, unheard of before the passage of the guidelines. (Prior to the guidelines a judge could have considered uncharged or even acquitted conduct generally, but it did not have the same serious consequences in the post–mandatory minimum, post-guideline era in which a specific quantity of drugs or a specific amount of criminally obtained money, or both, almost exclusively drive the sentence.)

    Whatever we call them, the prosecutor’s tactics impose very serious penalties for going to trial, for choosing to have a jury decide your fate, or even for challenging unconstitutional conduct. In fact, the guidelines encourage rushing to the prosecutor to plea bargain as soon as possible, before your codefendants do.

    I retired from the bench in September 2011, after seventeen years. Prior to that, I had been a criminal defense lawyer. I am back in practice (among other activities like teaching and writing). I can see how the defense of federal criminal cases has changed. Do you risk challenging this unconstitutional system when it may mean that the more compliant—perhaps more culpable—defendants get a better deal? Do you risk litigating the case in the face of the trial penalty that could well double or triple a defendant’s sentence?

  459. says

    http://www.businessinsider.com/r-protesters-shut-down-part-of-mall-of-america-in-minnesota-2014-12

    Hundreds of protesters against police violence shut down part of the Mall of America in Minnesota on Saturday, during the final weekend before Christmas as shoppers scrambled to buy gifts at one of the nation’s largest shopping centers, a community group member said.

    Demonstrators at the Mall of America shouted “Hands up, don’t shoot!”, referring to the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Missouri, and “Black people can’t breathe, while we’re on our shopping sprees,” referring to the chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York.

    Police made 12 arrests in the demonstration on private property at the Mall of America in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, said Bloomington police spokesman Mark Stehlik.

    Protesters held their hands in the air while mall officials displayed an electronic billboard message warning demonstrators they risked arrest, according to an image posted on the Twitter account of Black Lives Matter Minneapolis.

  460. Pteryxx says

    Lynna’s article about plea bargaining consists of responses to this November 20 article in the New York Review of Books: Why Innocent People Plead Guilty

    In 2013, while 8 percent of all federal criminal charges were dismissed (either because of a mistake in fact or law or because the defendant had decided to cooperate), more than 97 percent of the remainder were resolved through plea bargains, and fewer than 3 percent went to trial. The plea bargains largely determined the sentences imposed.

    While corresponding statistics for the fifty states combined are not available, it is a rare state where plea bargains do not similarly account for the resolution of at least 95 percent of the felony cases that are not dismissed; and again, the plea bargains usually determine the sentences, sometimes as a matter of law and otherwise as a matter of practice. Furthermore, in both the state and federal systems, the power to determine the terms of the plea bargain is, as a practical matter, lodged largely in the prosecutor, with the defense counsel having little say and the judge even less.

    […]

    The reason for this is that the guidelines, like the mandatory minimums, provide prosecutors with weapons to bludgeon defendants into effectively coerced plea bargains. In the majority of criminal cases, a defense lawyer only meets her client when or shortly after the client is arrested, so that, at the outset, she is at a considerable informational disadvantage to the prosecutor. If, as is very often the case (despite the constitutional prohibition of “excessive bail”), bail is set so high that the client is detained, the defense lawyer has only modest opportunities, within the limited visiting hours and other arduous restrictions imposed by most jails, to interview her client and find out his version of the facts.

    The prosecutor, by contrast, will typically have a full police report, complete with witness interviews and other evidence, shortly followed by grand jury testimony, forensic test reports, and follow-up investigations. While much of this may be one-sided and inaccurate—the National Academy of Science’s recently released report on the unreliability of eyewitness identification well illustrates the danger—it not only gives the prosecutor a huge advantage over the defense counsel but also makes the prosecutor confident, maybe overconfident, of the strength of his case.

    Against this background, the information-deprived defense lawyer, typically within a few days after the arrest, meets with the overconfident prosecutor, who makes clear that, unless the case can be promptly resolved by a plea bargain, he intends to charge the defendant with the most severe offenses he can prove. Indeed, until late last year, federal prosecutors were under orders from a series of attorney generals to charge the defendant with the most serious charges that could be proved—unless, of course, the defendant was willing to enter into a plea bargain.

    […]

    Third, and possibly the gravest objection of all, the prosecutor-dictated plea bargain system, by creating such inordinate pressures to enter into plea bargains, appears to have led a significant number of defendants to plead guilty to crimes they never actually committed. For example, of the approximately three hundred people that the Innocence Project and its affiliated lawyers have proven were wrongfully convicted of crimes of rape or murder that they did not in fact commit, at least thirty, or about 10 percent, pleaded guilty to those crimes. Presumably they did so because, even though they were innocent, they faced the likelihood of being convicted of capital offenses and sought to avoid the death penalty, even at the price of life imprisonment. But other publicized cases, arising with disturbing frequency, suggest that this self-protective psychology operates in noncapital cases as well, and recent studies suggest that this is a widespread problem. For example, the National Registry of Exonerations (a joint project of Michigan Law School and Northwestern Law School) records that of 1,428 legally acknowledged exonerations that have occurred since 1989 involving the full range of felony charges, 151 (or, again, about 10 percent) involved false guilty pleas.

  461. Pteryxx says

    More from NY Daily News – reactions to the shooting deaths of two NYPD officers. (Probable graphic images, and some police-worshiping)

    NYPD cops furious with Bill de Blasio turn their backs on the mayor as he enters hospital where officers died

    The police unions have been ticked off by the support de Blasio has shown the legions protesting a Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict a cop in Eric Garner’s July 17 chokehold death.

    Believing City Hall has betrayed them, cops demonstrated their anger Saturday by turning their backs on Mayor de Blasio as he entered a Brooklyn hospital to pay respects to two murdered officers.

    A startling video shows a hallway at Woodhull Hospital filled with cops silently facing away from de Blasio as he walks a blue gauntlet.

    The demonstration, captured by WPIX11 News, included the presidents of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association and the the Sergeants Benevolent Association.

    “Mayor de Blasio, the blood of these two officers is clearly on your hands,” Ed Mullins, president of the sergeants association, said in a statement to his union members Saturday night.

    […]

    Hundreds of cops are signing a petition asking Mayor de Blasio and Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito to stay away from their funerals if they are killed in the line of duty, Sergeants Benevolent Association President Ed Mullins said Tuesday.

    […]

    “We depend on our police to protect us against forces of criminality and evil,” the mayor said. “They are a foundation of our society, and when they are attacked, it is an attack on the very concept of decency. Therefore, every New Yorker should feel they, too, were attacked. Our entire city was attacked by this heinous individual.”

    Eric Garner protesters express sympathy for mourning police as fourth arrest is made in Brooklyn Bridge beatdown

    Instead of defiantly blocking foot traffic at the city transportation hub by sprawling out on the floor, a crowd of 15 sat peacefully as cops stood nearby and watched them.

    As most sat quietly, some protesters gave cupcakes and cards to the officers dispatched there to maintain order.

    “This is about standing with any family that has had to bury their child, or father, or brother, or person that they love,” said protester Jessi Nakamura, 34.

    “Murder is wrong and that’s that. We’re still going to be here, but we’re in support of you,” Lucy Sun, 25, told the cops standing near her. “Tonight we stand with you.”

    Cops appeared stoic before the protesters, but their minds were elsewhere.

    “Everybody wants to go to the hospital and pay their respects, but they are keeping us here,” said an officer assigned to the protest. “I’m not in the mood for this s— today.”

    I think this is an editorial: Lupica: NYPD killings come as some think cops are the real threat

    This was a couple of hours before shots were fired into a patrol car and into the heart of the city outside the Tompkins Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant, in Brooklyn, shots that killed two policemen at a time when there has been this shameful notion, as shameful as we have ever had, that somehow it is cops, heroes of the city, who are the real threat in New York City.

    I was standing on the West Side of Manhattan and talking to a cop about everything that has happened around here lately, about demonstrations that began after the cop who put Eric Garner down was not indicted in Staten Island.

    “Other than our own people,” the cop said, “who speaks up for us these days?”

    […]

    Only it is too late to save two cops in a patrol car who never had a chance. At a time when there has been the general notion that cops in New York City are under attack, these two cops were the ones attacked in Brooklyn, but will inspire no movements or crusades, from Al Sharpton or anybody else. They will not rouse those such as the actor Samuel L. Jackson to sing about them, the way he sang not long ago about “racist police.”

    The cop I spoke to on Saturday, on the other side of the Brooklyn bridges from where two cops would be shot dead, said, “People have been acting like a couple of cops are all of us.”

    This doesn’t exonerate the chokehold cop of Staten Island, or that Ferguson cop, Darren Wilson, who shot and killed Michael Brown because he decided his life was in danger. But there has been this other shameful notion that all of these moments are the same; that Ferguson had something to do with Eric Garner; that both of those moments had something to do with Akai Gurley being accidentally shot in the Pink Houses. Only they are not the same, whether all of the victims of African-American or not.

    This is how it is. An execution for an execution isn’t going to solve a damn thing, obviously. It won’t un-corrupt the system or make police *more* likely to de-escalate. But even when sympathy is offered, by protesters, by their own mayor, these police and their supporters cannot accept it, because that would mean acknowledging the people of the Other Side as something more than implacable enemies of all things cop.

  462. Pteryxx says

    ThinkProgress: Family Owes $1 Million In Medical Bills Because Their Toddler Was Injured In SWAT Raid

    The Georgia SWAT team was trying to locate Bounkham Phonesavanh’s 30-year-old nephew, who was suspected of selling methamphetamine. After being tipped off by a confidential informant, drug agents got a “no-knock” search warrant, a controversial police tactic that allows officers to burst into private homes unannounced. After struggling to beat down the door of the home with a battering ram, they threw in a grenade; it landed in the 19-month-old toddler’s playpen.

    The child, nicknamed “Bou Bou,” suffered serious burns and slipped into a medically induced coma after the grenade exploded. He was in a coma for five weeks, and had extensive surgeries to repair his face and torso. Doctors are still trying to assess whether he will have lasting brain damage.

    And while Bou Bou was fighting for his life, his family was accumulating significant medical debt from his intensive treatment. The Phonesavanhs have set up a online fund to solicit donations to help pay the bills, which they say are approaching the $1 million mark.

    “Before this we didn’t owe anybody anything,” Alecia Phonesavanh told ABC News this week. “And now after all this, they have completely financially crippled us.”

    Officials in the Georgia country where the raid occurred maintains have refused to pay the Phonesavanhs’ bills, saying they are legally prohibited from doing so. A section of the state constitution stipulates that local government cannot “grant any donation or gratuity or to forgive any debt or obligation owing to the public.”

  464. says

    But there has been this other shameful notion that all of these moments are the same; that Ferguson had something to do with Eric Garner; that both of those moments had something to do with Akai Gurley being accidentally shot in the Pink Houses. Only they are not the same, whether all of the victims of African-American or not.

    They do all have something to do with each other, for fuck’s sake. Seriously, what kind of disingenuous bullshit is this? (I know, I know; it’s the kind spouted by privileged asshats who will do anything rather than admit that some demographics are systematically fucked over).

  465. rq says

    So there’s this thing called a Veiled Prophet Ball in St Louis. Apparently it’s racist as fuck.
    The Mystery of St. Louis’s Veiled Prophet

    In 1878, grain executive and former Confederate cavalryman Charles Slayback called a meeting of local business and civic leaders. His intention was to form a secret society that would blend the pomp and ritual of a New Orleans Mardi Gras with the symbolism used by the Irish poet Thomas Moore. From Moore’s poetry, Slayback and the St. Louis elite created the myth of the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, a mystic traveller who inexplicably decided to make St. Louis his base of operations. […]

    The entire process was suffused with elaborate ritual: A person would be chosen by a secret board of local elites to anonymously play the role of the Veiled Prophet. The Veiled Prophet would chose a Queen of Love and Beauty from among the elite ball attendees (of course, invitation list to be kept strictly confidential as well) with whom he would dance a “Royal Quadrille” before presenting her with an expensive keepsake such as a tiara or pearls. Often these gifts were so expensive that they became family heirlooms. The ball would be accompanied by a just-as-spectacular parade and fair. In October of 1878, civic elites organized the first parade. It attracted more than 50,000 spectators. […]

    According to historian Thomas Spencer in The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration: Power On Parade 1877-1995, the primary goal of the VP events was to take back the public stage from populist demands for social and economic justice. More than just a series of gaudy floats traversing the city streets, the parade and all its pomp was meant to reinforce the values of the elite on the working class of the city. The symbol of a mystical, benevolent figure whose identity is a mystery—only two Veiled Prophets have ever had their identity revealed—was meant to serve as a sort of empty shell that contained the accumulated privilege and power of the status quo.

    In fact, to underline the message of class and race hegemony, the image of the first Veiled Prophet is armed with a shotgun and pistol and is strikingly similar in appearance to a Klansman. On October 6, 1878, the Missouri Republican reported, “It will be readily observed from the accoutrements of the Prophet that the procession is not likely to be stopped by street cars or anything else.” Spencer takes “streetcar” to be a reference to the labor strikes. The message was clear: We, the bankers and businessmen, have a monopoly on violence and wealth. We are grand and mysterious, and also to be feared. The first Veiled Prophet, the only one ever willingly revealed by the organization, turned out to be St. Louis Police Commissioner John G. Priest, an active participant in quelling the railroad strikes the year before. […]

    The tradition of protest in St. Louis is a heartening counter-narrative to the divisions that makes it necessary. That’s been apparent from the railroad strikes of 1877 to the #handsupdontshoot response to the killing of Michael Brown. The 1972 Veiled Prophet was unmasked in what was one of the most dramatic guerrilla protests ever organized by local civil-rights leader Percy Green. The Ball that year was held in cavernous Kiel Auditorium. Activist Gena Scott, dramatically sliding down a power cable a la Mission Impossible, unmasked the enthroned Prophet. It turned out to be the then-executive vice president of Monsanto, Tom K. Smith. Scott’s car was bombed and her house vandalized.

    The unmasking in Kiel Auditorium helped highlight the embarrassing inequities that the VP Fair and Ball represented. The organization loosened up a bit, even opening its ranks to African-American members in 1979, but by the late ’70s, even the members seemed a bit embarrassed of the spectacle. Spencer quotes William Martiz, a VP member, as saying, “A lot of members in the late 70’s ‘felt uneasy with the social connotations’ and people were saying ‘get that goddamn ball off the television, don’t force that on the community.’” By 1992 the name of the event was changed to Fair Saint Louis, nominally erasing the connection to its past. […]

    Feeling the heat from industrial competitors to the North and labor unrest inside the city, the business elite of St. Louis decided in 1878 to double down on the static racial and economic power structure of the city. The Veiled Prophet Ball and Fair was a powerful symbol of that reassertion of control. But the underlying social issues continued to fester. St. Louis declined, suffering countless self-inflicted wounds, visible and invisible. Michael Brown is part of that story now. If the 1972 unmasking of the Monsanto executive unveiled the secret power structure running St. Louis, Brown’s shooting was equally revealing of the victims of the inequality institutionalized by the Veiled Prophets.

    Twitter guesses have McCullogh as the veiled prophet. And yeah, racist as fuck.
    Here’s some photos: Prolly McCulloch RT @deray: And who is the Veiled Prophet? Y’all, this is deep. #Ferguson ;
    Things our city “leaders” should be ashamed of, yet participate in. RT @deray Veiled Prophet Ball. STL. #Ferguson;
    @ClassySportsFan @deray @WyzeChef Here’s a 1965 pic of a protest of the VP with Percy Green, I believe..

  466. rq says

    Some more on the two NYPD officers, sorry if it doubles up on anything, I’ll admit to laziness in sorting tabs:
    Police union prez blames protesters for murder of 2 NYC cops, did he forget that the protesting was because of cops killing Black folks?;
    A person who murders a woman in the afternoon then kills two cops does not remotely represent what has been a nonviolent movement in NYC.

    These four tweets in series:
    The president of the police union just gave a fiery press conf in which he explicitly blamed today’s deaths on protesters – and the mayor;
    He laid the blame on “those that incited violence on the street under the guise of protest”;
    …And said the blood started “on the steps of city hall, in the office of the mayor.”;
    “When these funerals are over,” he said, “those responsible will be called on to the carpet and held accountable.”

  467. rq says

    NYPD officers turn their backs on Mayor de Blasio

    Many members of the NYPD turned their back on Mayor de Blasio as he entered the hospital after the deaths of two NYPD officers.

    (Video at the link.)

    @deray The New York Times that alleging that in their blog on the coverage of the shootings. Screen shot from blog.

    “The Mayor’s hands are literally dripping with our blood because of his words, actions and policies,” read the statement, “and we have, for the first time in a number of years, become a ‘wartime’ police department. We will act accordingly.”

    Current word is that this particular statement is a hoax. But who knows? All I know is police response to protest, no matter how misplaced, will become even worse.

    Ooooh, here’s more on the Veiled Porphet ball this year: Merrill Clark Hermann is picked at Veiled Prophet Ball

    Hermann, a college sophomore majoring in business, is a graduate of Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School. Her community service includes being a co-founder of the St. Louis Children’s Hospital youth board, a national Charity League member and a food outreach volunteer.

    She was captain of her high school varsity squash team and a member of the varsity tennis team.

    The retiring queen is Katherine Falk Desloge, daughter of Ann and Stephen F. Desloge.

    The Veiled Prophet ball is held each December. It’s a tradition in St. Louis that dates to 1878.

    The Veiled Prophet Organization is a civic group that is also behind the annual VP Parade and Fair St. Louis.

    About 30 people protesting police shootings in Ferguson and around the nation marched and shouted chants outside the Hyatt as the ball was taking place inside. A line of police blocked the entrance to the hotel.

    A bright and promising future.

    Here’s another two officers murdered a while ago: Deadly Arkansas Shooting By ‘Sovereigns’ Jerry and Joe Kane Who Shun U.S. Law

    Both Kanes were deeply immersed in the the anti-government movement known as “sovereign citizens,” estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands across the country. Sovereigns frequently have run-ins with the law, and this time the confrontation proved deadly.

    Video released by West Memphis authorities shows the graphic detail. As the officers questioned Jerry Kane, his son Joe suddenly leaped out of the minivan and opened fire on the officers with an AK-47 assault rifle.

    Moments later, the father and son got back into the vehicle and drove off, with Joe still firing his rifle.

    Two Officers Killed in Shooting

    When first responders arrived, they found the two officers dead — one in the street and the other in a ditch by the side of the road, shot in the head.

    “Oh my f***ing God,” said one officer on radio chatter as he drove up to the scene.

    And yet somehow white sovereign citizens don’t get killed by cops on a regular basis. Strange, that.

    Wonkette on McCullogh and liars before the Grand Jury: Ferguson Prosecutor: Sure, I Sent Liars To Grand Jury. That’s A Problem Now?

    Honestly, it’s not really a prosecutor’s job to prepare a case, it’s just to serve as a sort of line attendant, to make sure that everybody gets to the witness stand without tripping. Let the grand jury figure out who’s lying — after all, they got some excellent guidance about what the law was, so they’re the deciders.

    For some reason, some people seem to think that maybe McCulloch is admitting to behavior that’s somehow unethical or even criminal. Maybe what he did was suborning perjury, maybe it wasn’t. Why not just have a bunch of people who’ve read about it on the internet go before a grand jury and see what charges they come up with, if any?

  468. rq says

    Oh, look! I’m sensing a pattern here. Antigovernment Obsession Preceded Las Vegas Shootings

    Documents the police found in Ms. Fielder’s apartment, where the Millers had been staying for the last two weeks, indicated that they may have planned even greater destruction: A search warrant inventory said that the authorities had seized “numerous papers including detailed plans to take over a courthouse and execute public officials.” […]

    This year, in what may have amounted to an attempt to join a revolution, the couple were believed to have briefly joined the antigovernment militia assembled at the Nevada ranch of Cliven Bundy, who became a symbol of opposition to the government this spring for his refusal to pay grazing fees for his cattle on federal land. The couple dressed in camouflage and carried coolers full of guns and ammunition, neighbors said, and Ms. Miller even left her job at Hobby Lobby. Mr. Bundy said Monday that militia members had told him about a couple on the ranch who “made radical comments” and had said the man admitted to being a felon and carried arms. Members were concerned, Mr. Bundy said, and he believes someone asked them to leave.

    “We believe this is an isolated act,” said Kevin McMahill, an assistant sheriff with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. But he added, “There is no doubt that the suspects have some apparent ideology that’s along the lines of militia and white supremacists.” […]

    Their posts on Facebook sometimes threatened violence, and last month, Mr. Miller used the website to ask people to send him “a rifle to help stand against tyranny.” Neighbors said Mr. Miller talked incessantly to anyone who would listen about the evils of welfare or President Obama. He worked as a street performer, and would often dress as Batman or the Joker; Ms. Miller would sometimes accompany him dressed as the villain Harley Quinn.

    Sheriff McMahill said that the police believed the Millers may have moved in with Ms. Fielder in recent weeks because their own apartment had become unsanitary.

    Ms. Fielder said she never believed the Millers would actually act on any of their talk of revolution. She said Ms. Miller’s parents called her on Monday morning, trying to confirm that it was indeed their daughter who had been involved.

    “They were horrified,” Ms. Fielder said. “I feel hurt and disgusted. I have to live with this on my shoulders now. I should have called the cops, but I didn’t know they were going to do this.”

    And yet a black man can’t hold a toy gun in a store selling them without dying for it. So much wrong with this picture.
    (Also, the current two-officer shooting may be tied to the protests somehow, with some radical elements taking matters into their own murderous hands. Then again, it very well may not be, since the vast majority of protestors have been very vocal and insistent on peaceful yet disruptive protesting.

    Interlude: US Retailer Target Criticised For Selling Black Barbie Doll For Twice The Price of The White Version.

    Mall of America and other actions:
    Mall of America Shut Down by Black Lives Matter Protest

    A peaceful crowd of Americans fed up with our nation’s chronic unwillingness to prosecute police for killing black people crammed into the rotunda of the Mall of America this afternoon. The crowd was allowed to demonstrate its deep-seated displeasure, fists and cell phones raised, for six minutes until an Orwellian voice boomed from the PA system above:

    “This demonstration is not authorized and is in clear violation of Mall of America policy…” The rest of the statement was drowned out by a thunderous chorus of incredulous, angry boos. […]

    Stores near the rotunda were ordered closed by mall security for an hour and a half while the protesters were shooed out of the mall. One woman, Mary from St. Paul, said she was stuck in Barnes and Noble for a half hour during the protest.

    “People thought it was a waste of time. They were frustrated,” she said. “I don’t really know what they’re hoping to prove by this. There’s a lot people out here, a lot of young kids, a lot of families just trying to do their Christmas shopping and it’s just not fair.”

    It’s just not fair. Hear the loud, resonant whine of white privilege. Not fair. Not bloody fair, indeed.
    Some folks have pointed out that the Mall of America is private property. That’s true. So was this.
    Workers and shoppers from Lush with hands up in solidarity. #BlackXmas #BlackLivesMatter;
    Cops tell workers they can’t stand in solidarity. Closes door on them. #BlackLivesMatter #BlackXmas #moa.

  469. rq says

    Mall of America:
    All the protestors have sat down despite warnings to leave. Cops are lining up. Silence from protestors.;
    Riot police clearing out #MallofAmerica, multiple arrests. #BlackLivesMatter #FTP #ACAB #tcshutitdown #BlackXmas.

    Various:
    Downtown Cleveland block intersection prior 2 dispersal. #Ferguson2Cleveland Justice 4 #TamirRice & #TanishaAnderson ;
    Riot cops at #BlackLivesMatter protest inside mall in Seattle ;
    Cops are pushing and making arrests. Kansas #BlackLivesMatter Cops with mace in hand, 4 arrests.

  470. rq says

    Mall of AmericA:
    #ICantBreathe #BlackLivesMatter protest. (photos);
    Because nothing says “We’re not really an Orwellian police state” like imperious threats displayed on a giant screen.
    Do you sell militarized police bears @buildabear? @mallofamerica any answers? This seems pretty outrageous. #Ferguson;
    More protestors outside #MOA east entrance. ;
    Police are blocking the North and East entrances to the Mall of America because of the #BlackLivesMatter protest;
    One of the visible organizers in Minneapolis changed her hairstyle b4 today’s action and the police are all confused. Love it. #Ferguson. I laughed at that last one.

  471. rq says

    Community building in Ferguson (?):
    This is what community looks like #Ferguson #transform #transition #BlackLivesMatter ;
    In the words of @deray, “the movement lives.” #Ferguson #BlackLivesMatter #transform #transition.

    Yay? Cops cancel “let us search your house for guns” program.

    Various:
    Press release from Rev. Al Sharpton regarding fatal shooting of 2 NYPD officers

    STATEMENT FROM REV. AL SHARPTON ON THE POLICE SHOOTING IN BROOKLYN, NY TODAY

    “I have spoken to the Garner family and we are outraged by the early reports of the police killed in Brooklyn today. Any use of the names of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, in connection with any violence or killing of police, is reprehensible and against the pursuit of justice in both cases.

    We have stressed at every rally and march [every? you mean the one?] that anyone engaged in any violence is an enemy to the pursuit of justice for Eric Garner and Michael Brown. We have been criticized at National Action Network for not allowing rhetoric or chanting of violence and would abruptly denounce it at all of our gatherings. The Garner family and I have always stressed that we do not believe that all police are bad, in fact we have stressed that most police are not bad.

    We plan to hold a press conference in the morning to express our otrage and our condolences to the families and the police department. Details to follow.”

    AP sources: Cops’ killer angry at chokehold death. Aha.

    Bratton confirmed that the suspect made very serious “anti-police” statements online but did not get into specifics of the posts. He said they were trying to figure out why Brinsley had chosen to kill the officers. Two city officials with direct knowledge of the case confirmed the posts to The Associated Press. The officials, a senior city official and a law enforcement official, were not authorized to speak publicly on the topic and spoke on condition of anonymity.

    The shootings come at a tense time; Police in New York and nationwide are being criticized for their tactics, following the July death of Garner, who was stopped on suspicion of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes. Amateur video captured an officer wrapping his arm around Garner’s neck and wrestling him to the ground. Garner was heard gasping, “I can’t breathe” before he lost consciousness and later died.

    Demonstrators around the country have staged die-ins and other protests since a grand jury decided Dec. 3 not to indict the officer in Garner’s death, a decision that closely followed a Missouri grand jury’s refusal to indict a white officer in the fatal shooting of Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old. Bratton said they were investigating whether the suspect had attended any rallies or demonstrations.

    Brinsley was black; the officers were Asian and Hispanic, police said.

    The Rev. Al Sharpton said Garner’s family had no connection to the suspect and denounced the violence.

    “Any use of the names of Eric Garner and Michael Brown in connection with any violence or killing of police, is reprehensible and against the pursuit of justice in both cases,” Sharpton said.

    Brown’s family also released a statement condemning the shooting. “We must work together to bring peace to our communities,” the statement says. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the officers’ families during this incredibly difficult time.”

    Mayor Bill de Blasio said the killing of the officers in the nation’s largest department strikes at the heart of the city.

    “Our city is in mourning. Our hearts are heavy,” said de Blasio, who spoke softly with moist eyes. “It is an attack on all of us.”

    Scores of officers in uniform lined up three rows deep lined the hospital driveway and stretched into the street, their hands raised in a silent salute, as two ambulances bore the slain officers’ bodies away. The mayor ordered flags at half-staff.

    In a statement Saturday night, Attorney General Eric Holder condemned the shooting deaths as senseless and “an unspeakable act of barbarism.” President Barack Obama, in a statement issued while he’s vacationing in Hawaii, said he unconditionally condemns the slayings.

    Quick to condemn this one, is Obama.
    RT @HarrietThugman: Are we going to dig up the background info on the murdered policemen or…does that just happen to the victims? hmm.

  472. rq says

    Authorities say cop killer wanted retaliation for Michael Brown, Eric Garner deaths

    Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, wrote on his Instagram account: “I’m putting wings on pigs today. They take 1 of ours, let’s take 2 of theirs,” hours before the killings, two city officials with direct knowledge of the case confirmed for The Associated Press. He used the hashtags Shootthepolice RIPErivGardner (sic) RIPMikeBrown. The post also included an image of a silver handgun and the message, “This may be my final post. The post had more than 200 likes but also had many others admonishing his statements.

    And one more: Gunman executes 2 NYPD cops as ‘revenge’ for Garner.

    Atlanta:
    Protesters heading to Atlanta City Jail to rally once final arrested protesters are in paddy wagon. #ShutItDownAtl;
    Arrest happening. TUNE IN NOW;
    Just look at how the Atlanta organizers have blocked this street. Incredible. Protest. #Ferguson (via @MaxBlau) ;
    Atlanta firefighters have started to cut out protesters from lockboxes. They’ve been there an hour. #ShutItDownAtl.

  473. rq says

    4 great photos from the Mall of America protest.
    #BlackLivesMatterMOA #BlackLivesMatter outside east parking at MOA ;

    #Cudell Recreation Center. #TamirRice #TaneshaAnderson, your lives matter. #Ferguson2CLE ;
    hahaha RT @milesfan79: RT @Shakez843 this ain’t the jigga that raised me smh RT @deray: Jay Z. Warhol. Flawless.

    just announced: Beavercreeek Walmart was shut down 4 the day!!!#BlackLivesMatter @Dreamdefenders @FreedomSide @deray ;
    Not the first major protest at MOA: Hundreds Attend Native American Protest At MOA.

  474. rq says

    “I Can Breathe,” and the Occasional Fear of Covering Protests

    As a reporter, I’ve often assumed there is limited value in covering such events. The whole thing is a spectacle, often with people who come out simply to get time in the media. Yet the theater itself can be revealing, and the mechanics of the staged protest informative. For example, there were probably not more than 200 protesters, counter protestors, media and cops combined on the ground, yet the NYPD appeared to have two helicopters flying overhead.

    There is also something great in getting to talk face to face with people with whom I agree about little, like those who would go out on a night with sub-freezing temperatures to defend the police in the fall of 2014. Yet, there is something fundamentally scary about being a black reporter in such a setting. I have never been a war reporter, but I’ve felt in danger a couple of times before (in Israel/Palestine in 2008, and while covering an anti-gay marriage rally in the Bronx in 2011). I felt so last night, too. Here I was, surrounded by angry white people with shirts reading “I Can Breathe.” The protesters on the other side of the barrier were primarily people of color. Except for one black woman on the pro-police side (a woman who seemed not especially balanced as she chanted, “The NYPD needs love too! Close ranks!”), they were all very angry white people around me, mostly men and mostly large. One protester grabbed another reporter’s camera next to me and started screaming at us that we were the “scum of the earth” and should be on other side with the “rest of the garbage,” because that’s who “you really support.” […]

    I was most scared when I got a retired, large white cop to talk to me. He was trying to convince me that Eric Garner should have known how to submit, because he’d been arrested so often. The man put his hands on me to demonstrate what a chokehold was, and what it was not. I hoped Whitney Dow and CS Muncy, another white journalist friend of mine standing nearby, would step in if anything happened. But I momentarily thought I would panic, and my heart raced.

    Here I was, being “protected” by the NYPD on duty, surrounded by angry, white, retired and off-duty cops and their supporters. Who hated the press and, it seemed, Black people — and I was in the middle of them. I wanted them to talk, and I wanted to hear what they had to say, so I didn’t say much back, even to the man trying to convince me that if Garner had been pliant enough, he wouldn’t have died.

    I just try to keep people talking in these situations. Whitney could do it a little easier here, because at least he’s White. Sometimes my fear gets the better of me. Sometimes, I worry about walking the line between trying to give visual cues that I am hearing someone (no matter how offensive) and not being willing to give them any indication that I agree with anything they say. I wonder, as I transition from doing interviews for print and radio journalism and into doing interviews for ethnography and social science research, whether this will get harder or easier. Especially, as I’ve found in a decade of interviewing people for media, that those with the most offensive things to say are usually the most aggressive about trying to elicit cues of agreement.

    None of this is easy. On evenings like tonight, it’s downright terrifying.

    Another one of these: Ferguson Prosecutor Knew Witnesses Lied.

    Honestly this is so much easier when I stay caught up, but alas, life.
    The linkdump continues. Further are slightly older posts, the ones from the day before yesterday that I didn’t put up.

    Back at 1st district. #Ferguson2CLE ;
    Walmart blocking own entrance at steelyard. #Ferguson2CLE #BlueLivesMatter;
    #Shutitdown outside Cleveland PD for #TamirRice #DCFerguson #Ferguson #ThinkMOOR ;
    We come back to our cars & find this racist bs. Psychological warfare. Cowardice. #DCFerguson #Ferguson2CLE (pictures of notes left on cars saying things like “Population control”, “Should have shot three times” and the like).

  475. rq says

    Breaking: Banner Drop #nyc2ferguson #BringMumiaHome #EndPoliceViolence at @ajmuste #NYC (GR HQ) #IcantBreathe`;
    A small group of the 74 freedom fighters arrested were finally released. #Justice4Dontre #Ferguson2Milwaukee (those in Milwaukee, I believe two days ago now);
    1/2 – One of the protesters arrested tonight is being held on $100,000 bail for suspicion of lynching. #LAProtest;
    2/2 a “Lynching” is a felony charge that describes taking a person from the custody of police by means of a riot—or attempting to do so.

  479. rq says

    Oh, and in case we have forgotten, McCullogh did indict one officer once: Ferguson Prosecutor Indicted Black Cop For Hitting Man’s Hand.

    In July of this year, Bob McCulloch charged a black police officer, Dawon Gore, 44, with second degree assault for “striking a MetroLink passenger on the hand with his expandable baton,” according to a CBS Local news report.

    Gore, a 13-year veteran of the force, was placed in jail on a $3,500 cash-only bond.

    Bob McCulloch is the St. Louis County prosecutor who decided to put the decision of whether or not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the murder of 18-year-old Michael Brown to a grand jury — a decision his spokesman acknowledged was strange, as in cases like these, the prosecutor will usually ask a jury to endorse a charge, rather than leaving it entirely up to them.

    I’m not going to pretend that I’m a legal expert and that I in any way have a full understanding of the ins and outs of these two cases, but the side-by-side comparison of the charges these two officers faced seems to speak for itself.

    Darren Wilson, a white man, fires multiple shots at an unarmed 18-year-old black teen, killing him, and receives no charges. Dawon Gore, a black man, hits a 24-year-old subway passenger with his baton, and is charged with second degree assault, placed in jail on a $3,500 cash-only bond and is suspended with no pay. If convicted, Gore faces up to seven years in prison.

    A bit of background: the victims in both cases were young black men and the subway passenger, Pierre Wilson, was allegedly left with three broken fingers. Wilson was reportedly asking for help finding his missing girlfriend, which led to an argument between him and Gore, resulting in the injury. Neither officer filed a police report about the incidents.

    Officer Gore was interviewed by TheFreeThoughtProject.com and spoke about racism within the St. Louis County Police Force: “I’ve been embedded in St. Louis County for 14 years and I am going to tell you this on camera, that’s the worst entity I have ever worked for.” Gore said. “I’ve been in the military, I’ve served the St. Louis metropolitan police department… but when I got there I ran into this big wall of cultural bias that I had never seen before.”

    Gore requested help from the same organizations that raised over $400,000 for Officer Darren Wilson — organizations that are supposed to support cops. At the time the TheFreeThoughtProject.com article was posted, Gore had raised only $25 on his gofundme account.

    The ordeal has left Gore disenfranchised with police work and he has vowed to never again don the blue uniform. “I am Mike Brown, I just wore a uniform,” Gore said.

  480. rq says

    Two NYPD cops get killed and ‘wartime’ police blame the protesters. Have we learned nothing?

    This time, the bloody violence was clear, and the social-media threat appears real, but the racial and power dynamics are as confusing as they are telling: A black man, Ismaiiyl Brinsley, apparently shot his ex-girlfriend (race unknown), then traveled to New York, where he “assassinated” an Asian officer and a Hispanic officer of the New York Police Department (NYPD), in their squad car. In between, an Instagram photo: a gun, revenge and references to the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. You will believe what happened next – white head of the police union declares war on protesters within hours – but it shouldn’t have to be this way.

    Violence executed is definitely violence enacted.

    This kind of moment requires dynamic leadership, but beyond a brief statement, President Obama was no more going to re-route Air Force One from Honolulu to New York than he would ever direct it to Ferguson. And Mayor Bill de Blasio has such little credibility with his own force that cops turned their back on him when he arrived at the hospital where officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were declared dead. […]

    Yes, the cops blamed the protesters. (So did Rudy Giuliani, but don’t get me started on him.) Even more chilling, the police union declared that the NYPD has “become a ‘wartime’ police department. We will act accordingly.”

    Violence threatened is also violence enacted.

    Wartime? These are the marching orders to the 35,000 armed members of the biggest police department in the United States. This is the message now sent to protesters around the nation who have been finding novel and peaceful forms of expression to resist oppression – who have been protesting in reaction to police violence, not causing it. […]

    Now the necropolitics have flipped, and the armed cops are in a position where they feel as vulnerable as the unarmed folks saying, “Hands up, don’t shoot.” And trust me: that’s when things get ugly. On Friday night, I went to a rally in support of the NYPD, which has been under increased pressure since a grand jury’s decision not to indict in the killing of the unarmed black father Eric Garner in a chokehold. You had almost all white pro-police supporters on one side, and non-white police critics on the other. The non-white people would chant, “Hand up, don’t shoot” – and the white people would respond, “Hands up, don’t loot.” Many of the white protesters invoked 9/11, and they sung “God Bless America” … and they wore t-shirts that read I CAN BREATHE.

    Six years ago, I went for a run in New York City. I’d left my watch and phone at home, so when I saw two NYPD cops on a corner, I stopped and said, “Excuse me, officers, can you tell me the time?”

    One officer reached for his gun, pulled it out of his holster, and – when he saw the terror in my eyes – started laughing.

    “Just kidding,” the white cop said as he put away his gun. “Gotcha!”

    He didn’t kill me, obviously. But I was going to die. What little faith I had in the most powerful police force in America died in that moment, too. I felt “social death” in the humiliation and shame of being too frightened to go back and get his badge number. I felt powerless when I tried to report the cop’s threat to a civilian accountability board and was told there was nothing they could do.

    A cop pointing a gun at me as a “joke” and a cop getting a bullet in his head are no parallel, to be sure, but no one – cops included – should have to live even under the threat of violence, which is a form of violence itself.

    So we must not let these brutal cop killings stop an honest movement built on affirming justice and peace.

    We must not allow more police departments to adopt a ‘wartime’ mentality, just when we thought we were getting somewhere after the War on Terror military reenactments in Ferguson this summer. […]

    All of this violence is connected. We owe it to those taken from us too early – from the woman in Baltimore, to young black men in Ferguson and Ohio and beyond, and certainly to those two NYPD cops in their squad car in Brooklyn and their families – to break the American cycle of violence, even when it starts spinning in reverse.

    And the Guardian on the original killing, Gunman murders two NYPD officers in Brooklyn before shooting himself.

    NY Police Union: Blood of Murdered Officers is on Hands of Mayor, Protesters

    “Mayor de Blasio, the blood of these two officers is clearly on your hands,” Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association said in a statement to his union members Saturday night, according to the New York Daily News. “It is your failed policies and actions that enabled this tragedy to occur.” […]

    Patrick Lynch, the head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association agreed with the sentiment: “That blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall in the office of the mayor.” He then said that “those who incited violence on the street under the guise of protest that tried to tear down what NYC police officers did every day” are also to blame for the killings.

    Nice rhetoric there.

    So one cop doesn’t represent all cops, but one black guy who killed some cops represents all black people? Ohh racist America. So racist.

    Noted: NYT story on murder of two NYPD cops avoids vague, passive language used for NYPD’s killing of Eric Garner. Highlighted phrase comparison of Ismaaiyl Brinsley doing the shooting, vs. “Officer Pantaleo, whose armfinds its way around the struggling man’s neck”. “It wasn’t me, it was my arm!” :P

    White people are NEVER asked to apologize for white men who kill cops. #BlackLivesMatter protesters shouldn’t have to apologize now, either.

  481. rq says

    Wow, Fox has already made a super-cut of Sharpton, Holder, Obama calling for reforms to justice system. Implying they inspired NYPD murders;

    Pat Lynch blasts de Blasio – “Those that allowed this to go on will be held accountable” (youtube video of his statement).

    Assata Shakur’s 1998 open letter is eerily relevant today

    Below are some notable excerpts.

    Assata on her innocence

    I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one. In the 1960s, I participated in various struggles: the black liberation movement, the student rights movement, and the movement to end the war in Vietnam. I joined the Black Panther Party. By 1969 the Black Panther Party had become the number one organization targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program. Because the Black Panther Party demanded the total liberation of black people, J. Edgar Hoover called it “greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and vowed to destroy it and its leaders and activists…

    I was falsely accused in six different “criminal cases” and in all six of these cases I was eventually acquitted or the charges were dismissed. The fact that I was acquitted or that the charges were dismissed, did not mean that I received justice in the courts, that was certainly not the case. It only meant that the “evidence” presented against me was so flimsy and false that my innocence became evident. This political persecution was part and parcel of the government’s policy of eliminating political opponents by charging them with crimes and arresting them with no regard to the factual basis of such charges.

    What really happened on the New Jersey Turnpike?

    On May 2, 1973 I, along with Zayd Malik Shakur and Sundiata Acoli were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike, supposedly for a “faulty tail light.” Sundiata Acoli got out of the car to determine why we were stopped. Zayd and I remained in the car.

    State trooper Harper then came to the car, opened the door and began to question us. Because we were black, and riding in a car with Vermont license plates, he claimed he became “suspicious.” He then drew his gun, pointed it at us, and told us to put our hands up in the air, in front of us, where he could see them. I complied and in a split second, there was a sound that came from outside the car, there was a sudden movement, and I was shot once with my arms held up in the air, and then once again from the back. Zayd Malik Shakur was later killed, trooper Werner Foerster was killed, and even though trooper Harper admitted that he shot and killed Zayd Malik Shakur, under the New Jersey felony murder law, I was charged with killing both Zayd Malik Shakur, who was my closest friend and comrade, and charged in the death of trooper Forester.

    Never in my life have I felt such grief. Zayd had vowed to protect me, and to help me to get to a safe place, and it was clear that he had lost his life, trying to protect both me and Sundiata. Although he was also unarmed, and the gun that killed trooper Foerster was found under Zayd’s leg, Sundiata Acoli, who was captured later, was also charged with both deaths. Neither Sundiata Acoli nor I ever received a fair trial We were both convicted in the news media way before our trials. No news media was ever permitted to interview us, although the New Jersey police and the FBI fed stories to the press on a daily basis. In 1977, I was convicted by an all- white jury and sentenced to life plus 33 years in prison.

    In 1979, fearing that I would be murdered in prison, and knowing that I would never receive any justice, I was liberated from prison, aided by committed comrades who understood the depths of the injustices in my case, and who were also extremely fearful for my life.

    A call for action on behalf of the “voiceless”

    Like most poor and oppressed people in the United States, I do not have a voice. Black people, poor people in the U.S. have no real freedom of speech, no real freedom of expression and very little freedom of the press. The black press and the progressive media has historically played an essential role in the struggle for social justice. We need to continue and to expand that tradition. We need to create media outlets that help to educate our people and our children, and not annihilate their minds. I am only one woman. I own no TV stations, or Radio Stations or Newspapers. But I feel that people need to be educated as to what is going on, and to understand the connection between the news media and the instruments of repression in Amerika. All I have is my voice, my spirit and the will to tell the truth. But I sincerely ask, those of you in the Black media, those of you in the progressive media, those of you who believe in truth freedom, To publish this statement and to let people know what is happening. We have no voice, so you must be the voice of the voiceless.

    Free all Political Prisoners, I send you Love and Revolutionary Greetings From Cuba, One of the Largest, Most Resistant and Most Courageous Palenques (Maroon Camps) That has ever existed on the Face of this Planet.

    Assata Shakur Havana, Cuba

    Sixteen years later and yet this could have arguably been written today. Assata Shakur’s letter is a sobering reminder that the unrest and frustration we’ve experienced this year over Ferguson is just one piece of a much bigger issue in this country.

    There’s also video of her speaking at the link. Powerful stuff.

  482. rq says

    Oh, and I think I hear some very loud Twitter ‘Fuck You’s to this: They want us to hold off on protesting until the officers are laid to rest? Yet we cant bury 1 blk person before another is killed by police.

    Im sick of this white supremacist system that will not acknowledge our deaths but demands we acknowledge the deaths of those who kill us.
    NO! “@FeministaJones: No RT @ABC7NY: #BreakingNews Eric Adams calls on protesters to hold off on demonstrations until officers laid to rest”.
    See?

  484. rq says

    Talked to dozens of New Yorkers today and not one person said they blamed protesters for the officers’ deaths. Like not one person.;
    Asked Cleveland PD chief why his badge isn’t visible. He said “You know who I am.” Oh that’s how this works?

    The link between Cuba and protestors is Assata. Christie weighs in on Cuba move with demand in letter to Obama

    “I do not share your view that restoring diplomatic relations without a clear commitment from the Cuban government of the steps they will take to reverse decades of human rights violations will result in a better and more just Cuba for its people,” Christie wrote in the letter to Obama, first reported by FOX New Sunday.

    “However, despite my profound disagreement with this decision, I believe there is an opportunity for Cuba and its government to show the American people it is serious about change … I urge you to demand the immediate return of Chesimard before any further consideration of restoration of diplomatic relations with the Cuban Government,” he continued.

    Did they offer to pay for the educations of Eric Garners kids? @MichaelSkolnik. Because the NY Yankees have offered to pay for the education of one of the murdered cops’ kid. It’s a sweet move, but yes – Eric Garner’s kids, too?

    Nice chart: “slavery was so long ago, get over yourself.”

    Someone needs to do a study on all the 911 calls that lead to police response that lead to unarmed citizens being killed by police.

  485. rq says

    Motel 6 employee fired after allegedly assaulting protesters from Ferguson

    “I was very firm that we had paid and that I was not going to take bad service,” said Charles Wade who booked the rooms under his name. The 32-year-old works with a group called, “Operation Help or Hush.” He’s from D.C. but has been protesting in Ferguson since August 19th. Wade came to the Cleveland area to march in the protest for Tamir Rice happening throughout this weekend.

    Wade said there were three employees behind the counter and the first woman tried to throw a computer at them. The second was Kocinski-Brown who came from the back and he said she became, “very belligerent.”

    In his group there were five people including an interracial couple. Wade said Kocinski-Brown seem to focus her comments toward her and her African-American husband.

    Autoplay video at the link.

    Meet the Pro-Slavery Fairview Park Auxiliary Cop . Yes, they have those, too.

    D’Angelo’s ‘Black Messiah’ is a protest album for the ages

    The politically charged record dropped in the middle of unrest over police brutality, particularly the killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Activists have led street-sweeping protests, calling for reform against decades of minority deaths at the hands of cops. Crowds chanting “Black lives matter!” and “I can’t breathe!” have shut down major highways and bridges, disrupting everyday life.

    This is why, after years of waiting around, D’Angelo rushed to release the record. What makes it so effective is its deliberate purpose — a protest album, not just a single dedicated to the unrest.

    Like the movement itself, Black Messiah was lying dormant, catalyzed by an event in Ferguson that changed an entire city, a state, a country. […]

    Things didn’t look promising for that third album. But then Ferguson happened.

    In an interview with The New York Times, D’Angelo’s manager Kevin Liles said the singer called him after the grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson, the white police officer who killed black teen Michael Brown in August. D’Angelo kept saying, “Do you believe this?” Later, the singer told his tour manager, Alan Leeds,

    “The only way I do speak out is through music. I want to speak out.” And so he did.

    Haven’t heard the album yet, but I want to.

    Aha. Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown

    Among the projects awarded for the period 2014-2017 is a Cornell University-led study managed by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research which aims to develop an empirical model “of the dynamics of social movement mobilisation and contagions.” The project will determine “the critical mass (tipping point)” of social contagians by studying their “digital traces” in the cases of “the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the 2011 Russian Duma elections, the 2012 Nigerian fuel subsidy crisis and the 2013 Gazi park protests in Turkey.”

    Twitter posts and conversations will be examined “to identify individuals mobilised in a social contagion and when they become mobilised.”

    Another project awarded this year to the University of Washington “seeks to uncover the conditions under which political movements aimed at large-scale political and economic change originate,” along with their “characteristics and consequences.” The project, managed by the US Army Research Office, focuses on “large-scale movements involving more than 1,000 participants in enduring activity,” and will cover 58 countries in total.

    Last year, the DoD’s Minerva Initiative funded a project to determine ‘Who Does Not Become a Terrorist, and Why?’ which, however, conflates peaceful activists with “supporters of political violence” who are different from terrorists only in that they do not embark on “armed militancy” themselves. The project explicitly sets out to study non-violent activists:

    “In every context we find many individuals who share the demographic, family, cultural, and/or socioeconomic background of those who decided to engage in terrorism, and yet refrained themselves from taking up armed militancy, even though they were sympathetic to the end goals of armed groups. The field of terrorism studies has not, until recently, attempted to look at this control group. This project is not about terrorists, but about supporters of political violence.”

    The project’s 14 case studies each “involve extensive interviews with ten or more activists and militants in parties and NGOs who, though sympathetic to radical causes, have chosen a path of non-violence.” […]

    Minerva is a prime example of the deeply narrow-minded and self-defeating nature of military ideology. Worse still, the unwillingness of DoD officials to answer the most basic questions is symptomatic of a simple fact – in their unswerving mission to defend an increasingly unpopular global system serving the interests of a tiny minority, security agencies have no qualms about painting the rest of us as potential terrorists.

    More on the research and (non)answers to questions at the link.

  486. Ichthyic says

    Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown

    the writing has been on the wall for well over a decade now.

    no society in history has survived this level of wealth inequality for very long, but I’m sure that THIS time, it will be different, and the rich will survive unscathed…

    uh huh.

  487. rq says

    There’s another grand jury decision coming up:
    ACTION! Whenever the #DontreHamilton indictment decision is announced, (rumored to be Monday, 12/22) meet at Red Arrow Park @Justice4Dontre;
    Please follow & amplify this streamer in Milwaukee, they are expecting a GJ decision #DontreHamilton @superbranch (link to the stream is here).

    Facebook page for the Dontre Hamilton / Milwaukee: Coalition for Justice, with a notice that they’re expecting a decision today (December 22).

    Family – We’ve gotten word that the District Attorney will most likely release his decision tomorrow (Monday, December 22, 2014). We are asking that no matter what the decision turns out to be, as soon as the decision is released please meet us at Red Arrow Park.

    @wbtphdjd @stackizshort @deray National Guard is now mobilized at the request of Milwaukee sheriff following Friday’s action. They’re ‘on call’, from what I understand.
    Article on that: Guard on alert if needed to respond to Hamilton protests

    The Wisconsin National Guard began calling up members over the weekend to respond, if needed, to protests in Milwaukee related to the fatal shooting of Dontre Hamilton by a Milwaukee police officer.

    Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. made the request, which was approved by Gov. Scott Walker, Maj. Paul Rickert, the Guard’s director of communications, said Sunday.

    “We are currently making preparations to stage National Guard members and will be ready to respond rapidly if needed,” Rickert said. “We don’t have a mission yet but should we be needed, we will be able to send those forces.”

    Clarke’s request Saturday came one day after protesters blocked traffic on I-43, an action that resulted in the arrest of 74 people.

    Hamilton’s death has prompted a series of protests in downtown Milwaukee. Demonstrators have called for Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm to issue charges against former officer Christopher Manney in the fatal shooting of Hamilton on April 30 in Red Arrow Park.

    During a confrontation at the park, Hamilton gained control of Manney’s baton and struck the officer at least once before Manney fired, shooting Hamilton 14 times. A charging decisions seems to be drawing near, and Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said Saturday that he believed a decision would be made “sometime in the next few days.”

    Flynn also described the sheriff’s request as a “preparatory move.”

    “We don’t have a mission for (the Guard),” Flynn said Saturday. “We don’t anticipate using them for city assets, but I also recognize there are far-flung county assets that may need protection. … From my point of view, I think we are positioned to respond appropriately to whatever response develops regarding the DA’s decision.”

  488. rq says

    Oh, and those arrests in Milwaukee mentioned: Over 80 arrested in Milwaukee: Justice For Dontre Hamilton

    Arrest were made by The Milwaukee County Sheriffs Department. Sheriff David Clark has become to be known in Milwaukee as “a cowboy” desperately seeking media attention to advance his career. His deputies acted very aggressively and violently. One man was reported to have been tassed. They violently attacked women and men “throwing them to the ground” and “smashing their faces into the concrete.” It was described as “extremely Violent” After arrest, one man was taken to the hospital and treated for cuts to his eye socket and to flush out possible glass in his eye due to sheriff deputies smashing his eyeglasses into his face.

    Pictures at the link.

    In related news, “Law and order will prevail in Milwaukee County:” City leaders prepare for more protests

    Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke made the request this weekend to have the National Guard on stand-by. Their use has also been approved by Governor Scott Walker.

    But some state leaders are questioning that move.

    Frustrated there’s been no charging decision against former Milwaukee Police Officer, Christopher Manney, for killing Dontre Hamilton — protesters are planning their next move.

    “It’s my understanding that there is a direct action group meeting right now to possibly plan further disruptions,” said Milwaukee Police Chief, Ed Flynn.

    After blocking traffic on I-43 Friday night, 73 adults and 1 juvenile were arrested. They remained at the jail overnight, and so did the protesters outside.

    Law enforcement agencies are anticipating another wave of demonstrations this week.

    Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke says the National Guard is on stand-by just in case crowds get out of control

    “Let me say in as unambiguous terms as I can, law and order will prevail in Milwaukee County,” said Clarke.

    Clarke made the request this weekend with Governor Walker’s authorization. Clarke’s decision has so far been met with skepticism by some local leaders.

    “There hasn’t been any reason to believe that violence is going to erupt,” said Democratic State Representative Mandela Barnes.

    Barnes says he disagrees with how the situation was handled on Friday.

    “I don’t think that people should have been taken to jail,” said Barnes.

    And thinks the prolonged decision is the real harm.

    “The longer you draw it out, the more conversations are being had and more attention that is being brought to the issue,” said Barnes.

    I like that last quote: the longer you draw it out, the more attention is paid to the issue. Why is this a bad thing? So much better when it all gets swept away without a single conversation on the subject, neh?

    The police felt us this weekend in Cleveland. Walmart was utterly shocked when we shut it down. Cavs stadium didn’t know what to do.;
    Solidarity banner hung at the @RAIDERS game in solidarity with #oaklandprotests #ICantBreathe #FTP #ACAB @mrdaveyd;
    History: No white people allowed in zoo today, 1950s.

  489. rq says

    That guy who shot the two cops?
    More on him and the shootings (turns out the woman he shot is not dead, but is in critical (but so far, survivable) condition):
    Baltimore Woman Shot by NYPD Killer Identified

    Officials in Baltimore County identified the woman Sunday as Shaneka Nicole Thompson, 29. Authorities say Thompson was shot in the abdomen Saturday by Ismaaiyl Brinsley and remains in critical but stable condition.

    Authorities say she is expected to survive her injuries, and they hope to interview her later Sunday if her condition improves. Police believe Thompson and Brinsley had a previous romantic relationship. […]

    “The execution of two young police officers doing nothing more than sitting in their car is shocking and reprehensible. Hearing this news yesterday, following days of observing tremendous acts of kindness from our police officers, who had been buying and distributing gifts for disadvantaged families in our community, was heart wrenching. This was a tragic reminder that police officers are vulnerable at all times; simply because of the uniform we wear.”

    Quoting that last little bit for… well, for self-perception, I suppose. A uniform that can be taken on or off.
    Gunman’s Maryland shooting spurred dire warning to NYPD: ‘Threats on police’ and NYPD recounts killer’s history of violence.

    Another story from history, with pictures: 1959 Miles Davis beaten, arrested by NYPD for walking a white girl to a cab and having a cigarette outside Birdland;
    “I was just starting to feel good about changes in this country” Davis said. His arrest sparked riots in NYC;
    All he said to the cop was “why should I move?”

  490. rq says

    Y’all, don’t sleep on St. Louis. Mayor Slay still wants to increase the number of officers. #Ferguson;
    I believe the people posting these images mean us harm. These are little more than veiled death threats. Dangerous.;
    Friday night, I watched white off-duty cops laugh about and mock #EricGarner’s death. Saturday, they demanded our sympathy. Sorry, no.;
    Protesters occupying intersection of Bardstown & Eastern Pkwy calling out names of victims #BardstownShutdown;
    @CassandraRules in Bakersfield, CA today. ;
    #Ferguson 2 #Baltimore #Gaza 2 #Ayotzinapa.

  491. rq says

    #Ferguson 2 #philly #PhillyBlackOut .

    Old article (August 10) but still relevant: White Fear: The Single Greatest Killer of Black People in the US

    Explanations as to why Brown was killed abound. According to the AP, the FBI is already looking into the causes of his death. But, initially, police authorities were not releasing any information regarding the homicide to anyone including the teen’s family. Following the shooting, police sectioned off the area and left Brown’s body lying in the streets for hours as the community looked on in anger, hurt, and rage. As the crowds grew and organized into a protest, over 100 cops with assault rifles, shotguns, and dogs were called in to ‘protect the crime scene.’ […]

    While watching this horror unfold, all I could think about was the multitudinous historical events of terror inflicted on blacks since the 1790s. From the mass beheadings and maimings on the heels of Nat Turner’s Rebellion to the destruction of private property in the 1920s burning of Black Wall Street conveniently called the “Tulsa Race Riots” (although only whites were rioting), white fear has taken the form of terror for black folks attempting sanctity and mobility in their own lives.

    White fear has manifested itself in outright violence post-slavery through the imposition of Jim Crow segregation. White fear has manifested itself legislatively via redlining laws and cruel lending practices barring blacks from owning property in ‘white neighborhoods.’ White fear has manifested itself in so many structural ways that it has become part and parcel with the fundamental functions of every private and governmental institution in this country. White fear is inescapable.

    The fear that black people would become too wealthy or accomplished was what caused early twentieth century southern whites to strategically lynch some of the most accomplished black families, the ones who owned a horse and buggy or a nice suit jacket. The fear that black women would steal white ‘massas’ from their whites wives resulted in the intentional objectification of black women’s bodies and hair, demoralizing them, beastializing them, making them into sexual beings rather than human beings. The fear that blacks were thinking too highly of themselves and threatening white business ownership was what caused them to burn it down on June 21st, 1921. White fear has systematically and by design demolished and suppressed black wealth, mobility, and familial progress for over three centuries. What we are witnessing today is no accident.

    When black families were lynched, whites would congregate, often taking pictures with the corpses of black bodies post-mortem. They would leave the bodies for days – and sometimes weeks – hanging in trees birthing the phrase “strange fruit.” This was a primary point of control for whites because seeing the swinging corpses both struck fear into other blacks, potentially dissuading them from rocking the boat, and also made clear that whites deemed blacks absolutely worthless. While we rarely see hanging nooses now, we often see dead, dying, or demoralized black bodies struggling for humanity in streets, Walmarts, apartment hallways, etc. We see them and their purpose is identical.

    White fear doesn’t just exist on an individual level. Yes, it was to blame when Michael Dunn shot and killed Jordan Davis, when George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, when Theodore Wafer shot and killed Renisha McBride, when Johannes Mehserle shot and killed Oscar Grant, when Officer Randall Kerrick shot and killed Jonathan Ferrell, and even now as we discuss John Crawford and Michael Brown. But it is much graver than individual animus.

    You don’t have to be white to suffer from white fear. White fear causes upper-class black people to whitewash and downplay their own blackness just to achieve social ‘success.’ Perceived social benefits of ‘acting white’ cause many blacks to also fear ‘the other’ black people who might harm them or their families. But, make no mistake, it is a tool of oppression created by whites seeking unrelenting and perpetual dominance in the US.

    Many (white) people believe it only exists between people because they choose to ignore its tentacle-like influences on public media, popular culture, education, immigration policy, and social welfare programs. They use their fear to justify their senseless aggression toward black and brown bodies. Then they sit as judge and jury indicting black teens for eating snacks, smoking weed one time, or running fast. Meanwhile, white teenaged boys live fruitful lives after mowing down entire groups of people while under the influence of stolen alcohol because they suffer from ‘affluenza.’ A drunk white murderer is worth more than a dead black honor student. Such is the function of white fear.

    White fear is killing us. It is causing us to fear black skin. It is segregating neighborhoods. It is closing public schools. It is cutting welfare benefits to mothers and children. It is undermining a presidency. It is criminalizing black bodies. It is incarcerating black identities. It is limiting black potential. It is sexualizing black girls. And, it is shooting black boys in the streets of their own neighborhoods.

    White fear is the single greatest cause of death for black people today and has been so since this country’s inception. White fear.

    Some opinion from cops: Protesting Police Brutality is “Stupid S**t,” Police Across the Nation Lash Out Against Opposition

    The president of the New York Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, Patrick Lynch, was recorded in a private meeting last week candidly expressing his contempt and level of disrespect for those who wish to hold police accountable.

    Lynch even went so far as to call those who dare criticize the violent nature of the NYPD, “enemies.”

    “If we won’t get support when we do our jobs, if we’re going to get hurt for doing what’s right then we’re going to do it the way they want it,” he said. “Let me be perfectly clear. We will use extreme discretion in every encounter.”

    “Our friends, we’re courteous to them. Our enemies, extreme discretion. The rules are made by them to hurt you. Well now we’ll use those rules to protect us.”

    It didn’t stop there, the us vs. them mentality, which is overt in Lynch’s words, continued.

    Lynch said Mayor Bill de Blasio acts more like the leader of “a f**king revolution” than a city.

    “He is not running the city of New York. He thinks he’s running a f**king revolution,” Lynch said, to which the delegates responded with applause and cheering.

    The recording, obtained by the Capital, lifts a veil and shows how these police officers really feel about those who bring into question their violent and brutal tactics. […]

    Because calling out police violence is “stupid sh*t,” right Lynch?

    Lynch also encouraged officers to sign an affidavit saying that in the event they’re killed in the line of duty, they do not want the mayor at their funeral or wake, a letter that has been criticized by the mayor, NYPD Commissioner and even Timothy Cardinal Dolan.

    “If they’re not going to support us when we need ‘em, we’ll embarrass them when we can,” Lynch said.

    Does this sound like a group of people who want to work with others to foster peace?

    I don’t think so. They sound more like a rogue group of spoiled children, throwing a temper tantrum after being scolded by their parents. Only these children can kill you with impunity.
    Unfortunately the vitriolic lashing out by Lynch is not reserved solely for the New York Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.

    Police Unions across the country are calling for apologies, or worse, from anyone who speaks out against the overt injustices in this country.[….]

    To demand an apology for someone asking that justice be served in the killing of a 12-year-old boy, or the execution of a man attempting to purchase a BB gun at Walmart, is sickening, to say the least.

    There is also the case, not related to the killing of anyone, of a Spokane county deputy saying that they have armored police tanks so they can defend themselves against “constitutionalists.”

    When video of this incident went viral, the Sheriff responded by accusing those of us who covered it, of spreading dangerous hate speech.

    Sherrif Knezovich actually put out an 8 minute video trying to convince people that being worried about his deputy saying he has armored vehicles to defend against constitutionalists, is somehow unpatriotic and hateful.
    Police in this country are circling their wagons and it seems more than just a defensive move. It actually seems antagonistic.

    “It strikes me as being very strident, more strident than usual,” William King, a criminal justice professor at Sam Houston State University in Texas, told TPM in a phone interview of the Cleveland police union’s statement specifically.

    “Normally, it’s a very procedural justice message: ‘Just wait and see what the investigation finds,’” he continued. “These messages are different. They seem almost, perhaps, maybe, just a little bit antagonistic.”

    TPM also spoke with another criminal justice profession at American University in Washing D.C., Ed Maguire, who said,

    “Down to a person, what [police] they’re saying is ‘It’s such a horrible time right now, such a difficult time to be a police officer. We’re under attack from every angle.” He continued, “So it does seem like some of the more vocal police unions are ramping up in a way that we haven’t seen in the past.”

    In a time when there is so much public disapproval and mistrust in the American police system, why on earth would police not be apologetic, or at the very least diplomatic, instead of confrontational?

    It seems that police have forgotten their role as public servants and instead have assumed a role of a third party, occupying force, accountable not to the people, but to their well connected Union bosses.

    Again, I’m all for unions as an idea and concept and labour rights, etc. But when unions are the ones fostering these sorts of attitudes, something needs to be reworked.

    Vimeo video: #BlackLivesMatter @ MOA.

  492. rq says

    K, I’m over my limit for the NY Times, but here’s an article Updates on the Brooklyn police shooting. I believe it rehashes what I posted above about the statements from the union and the like, as it was up on FB with the following discussion/comment:

    So now we see who really is in charge not the supervisor not the mayor but the unions.
    In the wake of the shootings, a statement purporting to be from the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the biggest police union, gave instructions that effective immediately, “At least two units are to respond to every call, no matter the condition or severity, no matter what type of job is pending, or what the opinion of the patrol supervisor happens to be.”
    The statement, which circulated among officers, added: “Absolutely NO enforcement action in the form of arrests and or summonses is to be taken unless absolutely necessary and an individual MUST be placed under arrest. These are precautions that were taken in the 1970’s when Police Officers were ambushed and executed on a regular basis.”
    This tells me that the police are basically not to do there job and let the people fend for themselves. I think they should do away with the police unions because thats what is giving the police zero accountability.

    I’m not inclined to believe that unions need to be done away with completely. But there is definitely a problem with the power structure. And perception of power.

  493. rq says

    Racism is dead, you say! Hip Hop Mogul Jay-Z Is Reduced To A Crack Dealer By Fox News

    The lie-riddled Fox Nation, the community website for Fox News, posted an article sourced to their sister publication, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. The headline blared “Andrew Cuomo Meets With Admitted Former Crack Dealer Jay-Z to Discuss Police Policy.” Notice that nowhere in the headline did Fox note that Jay-Z was one of New York’s most prominent businessmen. Nor that he was a chart-topping creative artist. Nor that he has a long record of philanthropic service to the community. The only part of Jay-Z’s long resume that has any significance to the Fox Nationalists is that he had engaged in some criminal activity in his youth while growing up in a rough neighborhood where opportunities were scarce.

    Jay-Z’s life story ought to be one that conservatives like those at Fox celebrate. Despite the harsh realities of his childhood, through hard work, creativity, and perseverance, Jay-Z beat the odds and achieved unparalleled success. He left behind what might have been a life of crime and heartache to become a respected member of society whose contributions have helped many others to find their own pathway to self-reliance.

    If the only label that Fox can affix to a man with Jay-Z’s life experience is that of a drug dealer because he sold drugs many years ago, then News Corpse has some suggestions for a few of the people that Fox News employs and frequently fraternizes with. Here is how Fox should introduce the following people:

    Fox News host and convicted arms trafficker and perjurer, Oliver North.
    Former New York Police Commissioner who was convicted of tax fraud, conspiracy, perjury, and ethics violations, Bernie Kerik.
    Racist ex-cop, felon, and Fox contributor, Mark Fuhrman.
    Video mangler convicted of improper trespassing in Senator’s office and ordered to pay $100,000 for defamation, James O’Keefe.
    Election fraud convict, Dinesh D’Souza.
    Prostitute patron, Sen. David Vitter.
    Suspected car thief and arsonist, Rep. Darrell Issa.
    Fox News host and sexual predator who paid out millions to his victim (Andrea Mackris), Bill O’Reilly.
    News Corp. CEO whose company hacked into the accounts of hundreds of politicians and celebrities and even a murdered schoolgirl, Rupert Murdoch.

    And because their names need to be known as well, (a few) names of trans WoC who’ve been murdered this year:

    Deshawnda Sanchez
    Aniya Parker
    Ashley Sherman
    Gizzy Fowler
    Mia Henderson
    Yaz’min Sancez
    Tiffany Edwards
    Zoraida Reyes

  494. rq says

    So regarding Dontre Hamilton, Ex-Milwaukee officer won’t be charged in Dontre Hamilton shooting

    “This was a tragic incident for the Hamilton family and for the community,” Chisholm wrote. “But, based on all the evidence and analysis presented in this report, I come to the conclusion that Officer Manney’s use of force in this incident was justified self-defense and that defense cannot be reasonably overcome to establish a basis to charge Officer Manney with a crime.”

    Hamilton’s family has repeatedly called for the officer — who has since been fired — to face criminal charges. Hamilton’s death has been the subject of a series of protests in downtown Milwaukee, led by his family and supporters.

    The Coalition for Justice and other supporters of the Hamilton family are expected to gather at Red Arrow Park in the wake of the decision.

  495. rq says

    Yankees will pay for education of slain NYPD officer’s two children.

    There was a pretty incredible press conference on the no-charges in the Dontre Hamilton case, but this really stood out for me: DA references Supreme Court case saying that citizens have no right to resist even an unlawful arrest. #DontreHamilton.

    Blue Lives Matter

    For activists and protesters radicalized by the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, this weekend’s killing may seem to pose a great obstacle. In fact, it merely points to the monumental task in front of them. The response to Garner’s death, particularly, seemed to offer some hope. But the very fact that this opening originated in the most extreme case—the on-camera choking of a man for a minor offense—points to the shaky ground on which such hope took root. It was only a matter of time before some criminal shot a police officer in New York. If that’s all it takes to turn Americans away from police reform, the efforts were likely doomed from the start.
    Related Story

    Barack Obama, Ferguson, and the Evidence of Things Unsaid

    The idea of “police reform” obscures the task. Whatever one thinks of the past half-century of criminal-justice policy, it was not imposed on Americans by a repressive minority. The abuses that have followed from these policies—the sprawling carceral state, the random detention of black people, the torture of suspects—are, at the very least, byproducts of democratic will. Likely they are much more. It is often said that it is difficult to indict and convict police officers who abuse their power. It is comforting to think of these acquittals and non-indictments as contrary to American values. But it is just as likely that they reflect American values. The three most trusted institutions in America are the military, small business, and the police.

    To challenge the police is to challenge the American people, and the problem with the police is not that they are fascist pigs but that we are majoritarian pigs. When the police are brutalized by people, we are outraged because we are brutalized. By the same turn, when the police brutalize people, we are forgiving because ultimately we are really just forgiving ourselves. Power, decoupled from responsibility, is what we seek. The manifestation of this desire is broad. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani responded to the killing of Michael Brown by labeling it a “significant exception” and wondering why weren’t talking about “black on black crime.” Giuliani was not out on a limb. The charge of insufficient outrage over “black on black crime” has been endorsed, at varying points, by everyone from the NAACP to Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson to Giuliani’s archenemy Al Sharpton.

    Implicit in this notion is that outrage over killings by the police should not be any greater than killings by ordinary criminals. But when it comes to outrage over killings of the police, the standard is different. Ismaaiyl Brinsley began his rampage by shooting his girlfriend—an act of both black-on-black crime and domestic violence. On Saturday, Officers Liu and Ramos were almost certainly joined in death by some tragic number of black people who were shot down by their neighbors in the street. The killings of Officers Liu and Ramos prompt national comment. The killings of black civilians do not. When it is convenient to award qualitative value to murder, we do so. When it isn’t, we do not. We are outraged by violence done to police, because it is violence done to all of us as a society. In the same measure, we look away from violence done by the police, because the police are not the true agents of the violence. We are.

    More at the link.

    Why are there no mall boycotts in Ferguson, you may ask. Simple: In Ferguson, there are no malls left to boycott

    In the St. Louis metropolitan region, three malls were temporarily closed. The first, the Galleria, is in the commercial suburb of Richmond Heights and is popular with black middle-class St. Louisans. (On a map of St. Louis that went viral in April, this area was referred to as “where black people go to shop.”) The second, West County Center, is in the wealthy town of Des Peres in St. Louis’s affluent West County, and primarily serves white middle-to-upper class shoppers. The third, Chesterfield Mall, is the largest in the state of Missouri. A thriving commercial megaplex, it is even further out in West County, in an area populated primarily by wealthy white conservatives.
    1

    There were no mall boycotts near Ferguson, because there are almost no malls left to boycott.

    The Black Friday boycott was called to bring attention to how little black lives are valued in America. One look around majority black North County, the area surrounding Ferguson, and this becomes clear. The malls of North County stand vacant, stores shuttered, weeds sprouting in the parking lot. “If we don’t get it, shut it down!” cried the protesters (referring to an indictment), but in North County, commerce was shut down long ago, leaving an impoverished majority black population without resources or job opportunities. This is the landscape of abandonment, where things crumble quietly and communities scramble to survive. […]

    In Florissant, another city bordering Ferguson, the Jamestown Mall stands empty, a giant gold “Cash Paid for Anything of Value” sign looming over where an entrance once was. Jamestown is St. Louis’s most recently closed mall, having shuttered in July 2014, a casualty of the recession that never ended. By 2013, the mall was so poor the owners could not pay to heat it on Black Friday. By January 2014, Macy’s, the last remaining store in the mall, had closed, laying off 88 employees. They are among the thousands in St. Louis who have lost their jobs in the past decade as mall after mall collapsed. [..]

    Mall protests in St. Louis are not new. For years, Reverend Larry Rice, a champion of the homeless in St. Louis, has brought residents of his New Life Evangelistic Center shelter to malls in order to demonstrate the chasm between St. Louis’s rich and poor. In 2012, he proposed the Galleria be used as a shelter to protect the homeless in the scorching summer heat. St. Louis’s problems of poverty and racism long pre-date the events that drew attention to the region in 2014. But they remain, in spite of national attention, unaddressed.

    In the region surrounding Ferguson, the real problem is that there is little left to boycott. Much of North County suffers quietly, commuting to wealthier suburbs as their own region is left to rot, their tax base erodes, and their officials derive revenue through racially-biased exploitation schemes. Opportunity, here, has long been in foreclosure. Apathy to the suffering of poor and black citizens has shut down more than any protest ever could.

  496. rq says

    Neighbor Talks About Shooting Before NYPD Killings. Another one on that. A

    Manney use of force in Hamilton shooting ruled “justified self-defense,” will not face charges

    “After reviewing all the evidence, I believe there can be little serious doubt that P.O. Manney was justified in firing at Dontre Hamilton, who was attacking him with a deadly weapon (baton). The more difficult issue is whether P.O. Manney fired more shots than necessary, or continued firing after he could reasonably perceive that Hamilton was clearly no longer a threat.

    “It does not appear to me, based on all the evidence I have reviewed, that P.O. Manney continued firing after the point in time when a hypothetical “reasonable officer at the scene” under the totality of the circumstances existing in this case, would have stopped firing. The use of deadly force against Dontre Hamilton was not a choice P.O. Manney made voluntarily, but was instead a defensive action forced upon him by Dontre Hamilton’s deadly attack with a police baton.”

    There will no doubt be more commentary on this later.

    Oh! Don’t have time to transcribe, but at the Mall of America, Lush employees went out to show support to protestors – and were locked behind their own doors by police. Well, a woman complained – about them showing support. Lush has replied. Excellent text within: Shoutout to @lushcosmetics ⛄️ #BlackLivesMatter #moa. Basically they support free speech and peaceful protest. Yes!

    Important: Condemn, without qualification, the murder of the police. Refuse, without any doubt, to apologize for the protests.

  498. rq says

    Allathis will be in no particular order and with few comments because time. But here goes, mix and mash from all over the country.

    And it seems that I’m not the only person who has questions about the recent #Ferguson Commission announcement(s). (Unsure of the context here, I’m hoping there will be more in further updates this evening.)

    If ‘Black Lives Matter’ killed NYPD officers, Tea Party killed Las Vegas police . Post-racial America.

    Blue Lives Matter

    Talking about “police reform” obscures the task. Today’s policies are, at the very least, the product of democratic will.

    A while ago Samuel L Jackson challenged other actors and people. We Ain’t Gonna Stop, Till Our People Are Free!!! That’s Dru Hill’s response.

    “It’s a sin to point an accusatory finger toward the police.” – Dean Angelo, Sr., president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police. A SIN, I TELL YOU!!

    MSM shows DeBlasio & Bratton sayin to stop protests, and Lynch’s “war.” What about #EricGarner’s daughter going 2 funeral of slain officers?

    Officer Will Not Be Charged in Yet Another Shooting, Victim’s Brother Says ‘We Must Wake The People Up’

    Dontre’s teary eyed brother made a few comments about the non-indictment this afternoon. Speaking to a crowd of people, he said:

    “We’re not going to cover up injustice with our tears…We deserve justice, justice is our right.”

    He continued to say,

    “fight that we are going to endure, we going to stay strong, we’re not going to waver.” “fight that we are going to endure, we going to stay strong, we’re not going to waver.” “We’re going to stay strong. We must wake the people up — we must show them injustice does exist.”

    The facts on whether or not you consider this shooting to be justified are yours to gather and observe. They are out there, so you should go out and gather the facts and decide for yourself. You may want to take the time to analyze the raw evidence. In any case, this comes in the midst of these other police killings: Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Ezell Ford, and so many more who were killed when they really did not need to be.

    Please share this with as many people as possible as an important development in the situation we have been drawn into, knowing people who have fallen victim to police brutality, abuse, and even murder. We’ve watched police and authorities get away with it time and time again, with zero consequence in nearly every incident.

  499. rq says

    Bah, moderation.

    Don’t Stop the Protests Against Police Brutality — Black Lives Still Matter

    The lives of the officers killed in Brooklyn were no more valuable or precious than those of Garner or Brown, to say nothing of Tamir Rice (fatally shot by police at age 12 while playing with a toy gun) or John Crawford (fatally shot while walking through Wal Mart with a BB gun). But today an apparently cowed de Blasio called for the protests, which were spawned by the killings of the aforementioned black males, to stop. “Put aside protest,” he said, “put aside demonstrations, until these funerals are passed. Let’s just focus on these families and what they have lost.”

    Stop protesting police brutality. Stop demanding racial justice. Stop fighting for black life.

    The murders of the two NYPD officers were ghastly, but no group of Americans should be asked to stop exercising their Constitutional rights because of what occurred in Brooklyn. This is particularly true for black Americans who have long been admonished to wait their turn. Black citizens are always expected to give up so much for a country that has given them so little. But, despite Saturday’s horrible events, black lives still matter.

    Police Union President Equates Police Reform Protests with “Culture of Hatred Toward Law Enforcement,” Casts Blame for Murder of Two New York Cops

    Turner’s statement casts his ire, and blame, equally at “media, politicians, and community activists [who] have been vilifying the police.” He goes on to say their words “fueled” the anger of the man who shot the two officers in New York—along with “the anger of many Americans.” It’s a statement that echoes the inflammatory “wartime” comment of New York’s leading police union boss.

    How did this happen? The cold-blooded assassination of two of New York’s finest in broad daylight? For months now, the media, politicians and community activists have been vilifying the police. They call us murderers and racists. Now, these same people who so quickly crucified the police are backpedaling. They are blaming a crazed gunman for the deplorable shooting. But it is their very words that fueled his anger and the anger of many Americans with unfounded accusations characterizing all police as brutal thugs. They have created a culture of hatred towards law enforcement nationwide. This can’t go on.

    And it also misunderstands the community frustration that’s fueling what have largely been peaceful and constructive protests (other than when the same few people shout expletives at riot cops), not the other way around. In Portland, organizers led by young people of color have taken the streets with specific demands for change—and those organizers have pledged to hold monthly meetings with Mayor Charlie Hales to see some of those details become reality.

    ACTIVISTS BLAST NYPD ATTEMPTS TO SILENCE MOVEMENT FOR CHANGE

    New York, NY — Activists issued a scathing statement this afternoon in response to recent attempts by the NYPD to silence the efforts of citizens seeking justice for victims of police violence. The letter, drafted by Ferguson Action, and cosigned by over a dozen grassroots organizations takes aim at PBA president Patrick Lynch and Commissioner Bratton for their reckless attempts to conflate constitutionally protected protest activities with the tragic murders of officers Ramos and Liu:

    “The events of this weekend are tragic.

    “We renew our condolences to the families and friends of those injured and killed this weekend. As those who stand with the victims of police violence, we know all too well the deep sense of loss that a community feels when they lose a loved one. They are in our thoughts and prayers as we continue our movement for justice.

    “This is not a time for political grandstanding and punditry. Unfortunately, we continue to see elected officials and police leadership twist this tragedy into an opportunity for them to silence the cries for justice from families who have lost their loved ones to police violence. Our families matter, too.

    “Those exercising their First Amendment rights to secure a justice system that works for ALL are being thrown under the bus by police departments and their union leaders who want to skirt their responsibility to our communities.

    “This weekend, Patrick Lynch used his role as the President of the largest police union in New York to essentially declare war on Black communities. This is unacceptable and should be condemned. Under his leadership, the police union has resisted nearly every positive criminal justice reform— including the end of discriminatory stop and frisk practices, protecting the Miranda rights of those arrested, and inviting community input in the creation of policies that govern the police.

    “Commissioner Bratton must also immediately end his shameful attempts to use the deaths of these officers to attack democracy by advancing unfounded claims to connect this tragedy to protests. A troubled young man who began his day by attempting to kill his ex-partner, shot two officers and then killed himself has nothing to do with a broad non-violent movement for change. The NYPD is conveniently ignoring the facts surrounding this tragedy in order to score cheap political points.

    “Commissioner Bratton and Patrick Lynch must immediately apologize to New Yorkers who desperately want change in the city. Mayor DeBlasio and other elected officials should condemn these opportunistic distractions that attempt to avoid meaningful reform.

    “A concerted attempt to defame the millions who have acted on behalf of those lost to police violence proves that the NYPD leadership has no intention of creating any trust between this department and the communities they purport to serve.

    “Our communities are in crisis. We’ve responded by meeting in our homes, offices, and schools— and walking out of them, with our hands up. Thousands of others have organized small actions that when woven together have tremendous impact. The problem isn’t the diverse voices that participate in dissent, a cornerstone of our democracy.

    “The problem is a discriminatory pattern of police violence that continues unabated and that police brass don’t care to stop it.

    “This movement was sparked by the grief that millions across the country have felt. Joining Eric Garner, Mike Brown and Tamir Rice are the thousands of lives lost in the last decade to police shootings. We are in the streets because we are fighting for the right to live our lives fully and with dignity, without the threat of unconstitutional police violence and repression.

    “Our work continues and we invite those who stand on the side of justice to join us.”

    Ferguson Action

    Black Lives Matter

    Brooklyn Movement Center

    Black Alliance for Just Immigration

    ColorofChange.org

    Hands Up United

    National Domestic Workers Alliance

    Dignity & Power Now

    Dream Defenders

    Organization for Black Struggle

    Million Hoodies Movement for Justice

    Concerned Citizens for Justice

    PICO Network

    Southerners on New Ground

    TransAfrica

    Project South

    Audrey Lorde Project

    Hello Racism

    Youth United for Change

    Baltimore Algebra Project

    Ferguson Commission picks a managing director and receives a $150,000 donation

    The commission was created by Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon to address the economic and social conditions highlighted by months of protests following the killing of Michael Brown by Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson.

    Johnson-Javois, 40, will be paid $138,915 annually — the same salary she earns in her role running the Integrated Health Network. She will take a leave of absence from that job.

    Rich McClure, co-chair of the commission, said that the commission had worked with “volunteers in the executive search business” who helped him and co-chair Starsky Wilson select Johnson-Javois.

    McClure declined to say how many other candidates were interviewed.

    Johnson-Javois is a trustee for the Deaconess Foundation where Wilson is the president and CEO.

    The commission voted unanimously to delegate the authority to hire a managing director to Wilson and McClure at its first meeting on Dec. 1.

    As managing director, Johnson-Javois will assemble the commission’s staff, and oversee community engagement and commission activities, including meetings, work groups and initiatives. She will also help develop a report outlining the commission’s findings and recommendations that is due in September.

    Johnson-Javois will no longer be a commission member; instead she will serve in an ex-officio capacity, according to a news release.

    Worrying: Seattle Police Held a Hackathon to Figure Out How to Redact Body Cam Video Streams

    As GeekWire reports, about 80 people—including developers, community members, and law enforcement agents—attended the Seattle Police hackathon. The goal was to work on techniques for redacting things captured in streamed dashboard or body cam video such as people’s faces or license plate numbers. The hackathon was specifically looking to address these topics as they relate to Washington’s privacy laws, but the work could be relevant all over the country.

    “With 1,612,554 videos already on our servers—and more on the way through our upcoming body cam pilot program—our department is looking for a better, faster way redact those videos and make them accessible as public records,” Seattle police said in an announcement about the event. “SPD is working to release more video than ever before, while striking the right balance between transparency and privacy. … We’re looking for a few good hackers who can help.”

    Seven groups presented redaction tools, each with a different balance of automation and human review. The challenge is quickly processing large amounts of footage so the videos can become part of the public record without violating privacy. Many videos need no redaction if they are filmed in public spaces, but some groups, such as minors and people on private property, are afforded protections that must be reflected in the footage. Redaction of faces and facial blurring was a popular topic, with presenters from a group of University of Washington students as well as Simon Winder from the robotics and machine learning company Impressive Machines.

  500. rq says

    Ex-Milwaukee officer won’t be charged in Dontre Hamilton shooting.

    Chicago Artists Took Over A Whole Train Line With A #BlackLivesMatter Protest

    According to spoken word artist and activist Ayinde Cartman, the protesters were met with a range of responses. Some train riders simply put in their headphones or avoided eye contact, while others took part in chants and a few even asked how they could be a part of future demonstrations.

    The goal of organizers, according to a news release, was to “creatively and peacefully engage train riders who may otherwise be distracted our checked out, particularly as many move onto their holiday break.”

    “The intention was to disrupt, and in the most productive and constructive way possible,” Cartman told HuffPost. “We were trying to include you, rather than separate you from the movement. On the train, folks didn’t have a choice but to experience it.” […]

    “Most people are suffering and some people are not, and we can’t let that slide, like this isn’t a part of what our society is designed to be like,” Cartman said. “Our goal was to bring the things we love to the table to demand and strongly, strongly suggest a societal transformation.”

    The demonstration was peaceful, and organizers say they plan to organize another similar event to take place sometime in January.

    Good photos at the link.

    NYPD deaths and the vulgar racial narrative

    The Mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, is being targeted by the police union, whose president, one Patrick Lynch, somehow managed to blame him for the killings. One can always count on the police, it seems, to issue calming words at moments of crisis. The substrate here, of course, is that de Blasio has a Black spouse and two brown children.

    The social media mob is howling as well. Why, goes the shrieky refrain, aren’t there riots in the streets when two white police officers are killed?

    Except that the victims weren’t white. One was Asian, the other, Hispanic. A minor detail that demolishes the Helter Skelter narrative.

    Nope, these were not the opening shots of a race war, any more than the killer’s earlier attempt on the life of an ex-girlfriend was the beginning of armed conflict between the sexes.

    The majority of cop killers (and these days, one has to disambiguate that phrase — I mean people who kill police officers) are white. One can draw no coherent conclusion from that bare fact, certainly not a racial one. Policing is dangerous work, and there will inevitably be casualties in the line of duty.

    In this case, however, the shooter made his motives clear beforehand. The police as an institution was his target. He saw police — all police, regardless of race — as the collective enemy of Black people. He read and watched the same media as you or I. He saw the utter impunity with which white police officers casually gun down Black people right across the U.S. Yet — and I find this striking — he did not racialize his anger by going after white police officers. He didn’t fall into the same trap, in other words, as too many commentators have, absurdly seeing here the beginning of some sort of apocalyptic anti-white resistance — The Turner Diaries in reverse.

    For Brinsley, this was all about the structure of power. No one can morally justify what he did. But the root causes are obvious, Patrick Lynch’s stupid attempt at a diversion notwithstanding. The Mayor did not kill Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu by calling for better police/community relations. A crazed and angry man did, but one who saw things more clearly than those who insist that he was the sharp point of of some imagined anti-white bigotry at the core of the nationwide protests against white supremacy. The institutional racism of too many American police forces — ironically — has just claimed two more non-white lives.

    NYPD Union President Patrick Lynch Is Completely Nuts: A History

    To understand why he would say something so wrong and inflammatory, you need to delve into Lynch’s long, checkered history of issuing similarly insane statements. His public declarations over the past 15 years are essentially pro-police agitprop: Cops can do no wrong, while victims of their state-sanctioned violence always had it coming. They are also a deep well of masculine anxiety, hurt feelings, and barely disguised racism.

    A list of Lynch’s ‘greatest hits’ follows.

    Red Arrow Park. #DontreHamilton was sleeping next to the arrow, shot 14 times near the flagpole. #AmericaFailedAgain.

    Charges Expected To Be Filed Against MOA Protest Organizers. It’s as silly as it sounds, though quite serious in intent.

    “You had people yelling and screaming inside the mall that wanted out and you had people yelling and screaming outside the mall that wanted in,” he said. “I would say the mall was less than half as busy as it should have been considering what day it was.”

    “This was a powder keg just waiting for a match,” said Johnson.

    The City Attorney is now building criminal cases against the protest organizers. She said she’ll try to get restitution for money lost by the mall, the city and police agencies that came from as far away as Hastings and Red Wing.

    “The main perpetrators are those who continued on their Facebook site to invite people illegally to the Mall of America,” she said.

    Police are looking at the group’s social media posts, as well as video from inside the mall.

    “Who led that march through the Mall of America?” said Johnson. “If we can identify those people who were inciting others to continue with this illegal activity, we can consider charges against them too.”

    Lena K. Gardner of the group “Black Lives Matter” said several groups, including several faith leaders, took part in organizing Saturday’s protest.

    Gardner said the financial losses are not the fault of protesters.

    “We came to sing carols and raise awareness,” she said, “and the Bloomington police are the ones who shut down the mall, not us.”