Answers in Genesis would rather you didn’t talk about this » « Whoa, Fark achieves a glimmering of enlightenment

Good morning, America!

We greet the day with a heartwarming scene from the Midwest.

Scott Olson of @GettyImages

Scott Olson of @GettyImages


Would you believe that already this morning, on Twitter, I’ve had one guy blaming the parents for bringing their children to a “protest/riot zone”? Of course you would.

Answers in Genesis would rather you didn’t talk about this » « Whoa, Fark achieves a glimmering of enlightenment

Comments

  3. Desert Son, OM says

    From this article at the New York Times:

    In addition to the many lingering questions about the shooting, the local authorities have also come under criticism for how they have handled the protests.

    Norm Stamper, the former Seattle police chief who was in charge during the protests that rocked that city in 1999, said that the wrong tone was set from the first day in Ferguson.

    “The basic perspective that I have over this whole thing, dating back to the shooting incident itself, what we had were largely peaceful vigils and protests that were met with police tactics that were highly aggressive and militaristic,” he said. “That response ignited what we have seen all week.”

    He reserved his harshest criticism for the use of tear gas by the police — a mistake he said he made in Seattle and one he regrets to this day.

    Since the first day of protests in Ferguson, the authorities shifted their response almost daily, adding to the sense that the situation was out of control.

    On one day, protesters were told to gather in one place. Another day, they were told to keep moving. Then a curfew was imposed. The next night, there was no curfew. The local police were in control; then another unit took over. The National Guard was finally brought in to try to temper the unrest, but its role was not exactly clear.

    The more I read, the more I wonder what would have happened if the police had tried the one thing they absolutely did not try—the one single thing—leaving their war materiel at home and showing up in some kind of solidarity, not as a line against the protesters, but walking with them. No handcuffs. No harsh lights in the eyes. No chemical weapons.

    Do the police feel like to show solidarity with protesters is to somehow betray their own, and yet simultaneously ask to be considered “members of the community?” If one is a member of a community, how is it a betrayal of “one’s own” if one joins in solidarity with that community?

    Still learning,

    Robert

  4. Pteryxx says

    Article at the Intercept via Mano Singham. A journalist’s firsthand report of being detained just after midnight on Monday night. As an exercise, try counting the civil rights violations. How many can you find in just this excerpt? In the whole article?

    The police loaded us a vehicle known as a Bearcat and drove us to the command center. We were sitting across from a massive man in a gas mask who looked more like a sci-fi video game character than a police officer. He asked us what we were doing out when police had told people to leave. We replied that we were doing our jobs.

    It was at the command center, a suburban parking lot awash in neon light and men in camouflage, that we learned we were going to jail. No one read us our rights. I was later informed that we–along with just about everyone else in our jail cell–were arrested for “refusal to disperse.”

    When we got to the jail, an officer took all my belongings and placed them in a bag, and told me that I was free to make my one phone call. When I told her that my lawyer’s phone number was in my wallet, she replied that it was too late (pro tip: write your lawyer’s phone number in Sharpie on your arm). The only way my editor learned that I had been arrested was because David Carson, a photographer with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (who took the photographs in this post), happened to be embedded with the tactical team that arrested us. While we were at the command center, I asked him to post news of our arrests to his Twitter feed. (Thanks, David.)

  5. says

    Even though it might sound harsh and impolitic, here is the bottom line: if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you.

    The outrageous thing is not that he says it. The outrageous thing is that we accept it.

    Would we accept “if you don’t want to get shot, just do what the EPA regulator tells you”? Would we yield to “if you don’t want your kid tased, do what the Deputy Superintendent of Education tells you”? Would we accept “if you don’t want to get tear gassed, just do what your Congressman tells you?” No. Our culture of individualism and liberty would not permit it. Yet somehow, through generations of law-and-order rhetoric and near-deification of law enforcement, we have convinced ourselves that cops are different, and that it is perfectly acceptable for them to be able to order us about, at their discretion, on pain of violence.

    It’s not acceptable. It is servile and grotesque.

    http://www.popehat.com/2014/08/19/sunil-dutta-tells-it-like-it-is-about-american-policing/

  6. Spoo says

    I’d like to say a big “thank you” to all those here on Pharyngula who have helped to keep this Brit up to date and informed on all that’s been going on.
    Through The Guardian I have just learnt that A petition for a proposed “Mike Brown Law” has reached the signature threshold needed to get a response from the White House on the online open government initiative We The People.

    Also this editorial also from The Guardian is well worth a read: white people need to use their privilege to dismantle racism.

  7. says

    A volunteer and a young girl play Sorry! at the Wellspring Church. They’re in need of games for older kids #Ferguson

    CNN anchor: National Guard in #Ferguson used the N-word (VIDEO) http://bit.ly/1oZC1K0 pic.twitter.com/lqwj96tXA5

    Laura Ingraham ‏@IngrahamAngle 57m
    On air today Rudy Giuliani said he’s not worried abt ‘militarization’ of #Ferguson: “What do you expect the police to wear? Bermuda shorts?”

    She gave out FREE water & other stuff to protestors & press only to get maced by police. #Ferguson

  8. rq says

    Pteryxx
    That article from the Intercept is jsut frightening…………. And I’m only reading the bits Mano has quoted (work won’t allow the Intercept’s security certificate).

  9. says

    Why are white people scared of black people’s rage at Mike Brown’s death?

    justified agitator ‏@Awkward_Duck 1h
    There’s been well over 100 arrests made in #Ferguson since protests began 11 days ago. None of them are Darren Wilson.

    White boy throws water bottle, police respond by drawing guns on Black activists.. http://bit.ly/1rXRlu4 #ferguson pic.twitter.com/R9WRMMrufL

    DarlingNikki ‏@tanyagloria 4h
    Y’all judging Black parents who have their kids out there marching like White parents didn’t take their kids to lynchings. Shut up #Ferguson

    ‘Children on a bus held their hands in the air and chanted “Hands up, don’t shoot!”‘ http://nbcnews.to/1n9j6g4 #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/JFjZXfzo20

    Here’s Corina’s poster – $10 – all proceeds benefit #Ferguson bail fund: http://corinadross.com/2014/08/19/ferguson-fundraising/ … https://twitter.com/prisonculture/status/502063777265635328/photo/1

  10. rq says

    And tensions rose briefly when someone hurled a bottle at officers.

    That’s not the only thing that sounds like an an understatement about events last night from the Toronto Star (unlocked article). There’s a few bits of information on Mike Brown’s funeral and the upcoming grand jury. Nothing about Michael Brown, but did have this character-raising tidbit on Darren Wilson:

    Wilson was recognized during a Ferguson City Council meeting in February, getting special recognition for what Police Chief Thomas Jackson said then was his role in responding to a report of a suspicious vehicle, then struggling with the driver and detaining him until help arrived. Jackson said the suspect was preparing a large quantity of marijuana for sale.

    Obviously, he was a stellar example of good cophood, and Mike Brown was… nothing? a name in the paper? Fuck that. :(

  11. says

    Conservatives Are Furious That Liberals Are Trying to Register Ferguson Residents to Vote

    I’m talking about the reflexive hostility with which conservatives reacted to the news that protesters in Ferguson had organized a voter registration drive.

    “If that’s not fanning the political flames, I don’t know what is,” Missouri GOP Executive Director Matt Wills told the conservative website Breitbart. “I think it’s not only disgusting but completely inappropriate.”

    Breitbart described the drive as “efforts by liberal organizers to set up voter registration booths”—a rendering that reflects a few revealing assumptions. But let’s begin with the overarching one—that these organizers are engaged in something nefarious; that their real goal here is to advance ideological or partisan interests, unrelated to those implicated by the civic unrest.

  12. says

    rq @ 510:

    special recognition for

    struggling with the driver

    Uh huh. Guess that guy should count his blessings he wasn’t gunned down.

  13. says

    How to Deal With Friends’ Racist Reactions to Ferguson
    Race Manners: Michael Brown’s death didn’t cause a divide between you and the people in your social networks. It simply revealed one. Use the information you’re getting to decide which relationships you value.

    Ethan Marcotte ‏@beep 4h
    “Whatever this country is willing to do to the least of us, it will one day do to us all.

    Elon James White ‏@elonjames 9h
    Seriously #Media: Why go to press conferences held by folks that are lying and tear gassing YOU. You’re enabling them. STOP IT. #Ferguson

  16. says

    White supremacy is the real culprit in Ferguson. The excuses just prove it:
    (excerpt)

    We’ve had enough of the police brutality, of the colorblind mythologies and post-racial rhetoric, of the sweet-talk, of the calls for non-violence; of mass incarceration and systemic poverty, of trigger happy cops and crying black mothers, of the Eric Garners and Renisha McBrides, the Michael Browns and Tarika Wilsons ; of black tears and white terror. Dr Martin Luther King Jr said in 1968 : “A riot is the language of the unheard”. Today, nearly 50 years later, black America demands to not only be heard but heeded – by any means necessary.

    This week in Ferguson, Missouri, there has been more backlash over the resistance of a few black (and some white) protestors than the violence of white police. Meanwhile, according to organizers on the ground, it has mainly been (white) outsiders inciting violence to promote their own agenda. As the writer Sarah Kendzior tweeted : “White people coming to STL to provoke police violence against black residents and get them blamed”. More than blamed: black people are left to bear the brunt of the political mess white infiltration leaves behind, be it by the National Guard or outside organizers.

    As Sean Beale, a 27-year-old local, told the Guardian: “If you don’t live here you don’t worry about the burning and looting. You don’t worry about stores closing, or losing your job, or walking for miles to buy food.”

    But to focus more on the people’s resistance than the police repression that created it – even as tensions cooled in the streets on Monday night – is to participate in the dehumanization and devaluing of black life. To ignore the elders rallying for the sake of our babies and young people peacefully protesting on behalf of our future while some (white) visitors instigate disarray is morally reprehensible. Beyond Ferguson, the pattern is clear. Blacks are always to blame, even as we are brutalized by police, ghettoized by neoliberal policies, and disenfranchised by a racist criminal (in)justice system.

    But that’s the crux of white supremacist racial logic: the problem with black people is … well, black people – not mass incarceration and the deindustrialization of urban America, not educational inequality and generational poverty, not 400 years of slavery, lynchings, and Jim Crow. To be black in America is to be victimized and then made responsible for our victimization. We built this country. But, apparently, it is we who are lazy and dependent. We are bullied politically, socially and economically. But it is we who are called “thugs”.

    “There is never an excuse for violence against police,” President Obama said. Yet there are endless excuses for state violence against black people. For mass incarceration, there’s the “war on drugs”. For poverty and unemployment, there’s “a culture of laziness” and “government dependence”. For the educational gap, there’s the burden of “acting white”. For Eric Garner: “loosies”. And for Michael Brown, there are stolen cigarillos, jaywalking or anything the police can say to shift the narrative from their white supremacist practices to black “ghetto” culture.

    It is to say that black lives do not matter, that our babies deserve death and despair, that our communities don’t deserve protection and justice.

  17. says

    German journalists arrested in Ferguson

    “This was a very new experience. I’ve been in several conflict zones: I was in the civil war regions in Georgia, the Gaza strip, illegally visited the Kaliningrad region when travel to the Soviet Union was still strictly prohibited for westerners, I’ve been in Iraq, Vietnam and in China, I’ve met Cuba dissidents. But to be arrested and yelled at and be rudely treated by police? For that I had to travel to Ferguson and St. Louis in the United States of America.”

  18. rq says

    Inaji @(5)13
    I really appreciate that link, plus it has other awesome ones in it (“I don’t know how to talk to white people”, for one). Thanks. It’s really… I don’t know how to put it. I’ve been having a lot of thoughts and yeah. There’s not much use in me talking about my personal feelings, though, which is why I’ve been doing what I can with the links n stuff. It’s probably the best thing I can do right now: silence and signal boost.

  19. rq says

    Pteryxx
    Yes, you may: Lounge? Because I can’t get into hotmail at work either, I’ll send you direct to my google address.

  21. rq says

    Inaji
    I swear, Ferguson cops are out to set some sort of record for Worst Policing in the WORLD. SO MANY journalists have been saying similar things. Does this not tell them anything? Do they read the news? (Actually, that’s a good question – do they themselves read the news about them? Or are they too tired to bother? Would any of them change their minds or speak out if they did know outside perspectives (which shouldn’t matter, I know, but people are people)?)

  22. Christopher says

    Do the police feel like to show solidarity with protesters is to somehow betray their own, and yet simultaneously ask to be considered “members of the community?” If one is a member of a community, how is it a betrayal of “one’s own” if one joins in solidarity with that community?

    Cops are members of the cop community, not members of the wider community.

    They view everyone outside their cop community as an enemy that wants to kill them.

    There is nothing a cop could do, aside from rat out a dirty fellow cop, that would get other cops to not fully support them. They have 100% solidarity with their community.

  23. says

    rq:

    Actually, that’s a good question – do they themselves read the news about them? Or are they too tired to bother?

    I expect they are too busy terrorizing people to read. Or think.

  24. rq says

    Cops are members of the cop community, not members of the wider community.

    This is a problem.

  26. says

    Yazikus:

    Police raid church and confiscate supplies donated to help protesters

    WTF? WTF? WTF? WTF? WTF? WTF? WTF? WTF? WTF? WTF? Aauuuuuggggh!

  27. yazikus says

    I know, Inaji, I know. Someone needs to step in and suspend the police (or whatever agency they are from) right now. They are way over the line. They have been for 11 days. They need to arrest Wilson, they need to fire the chief of police, they need to stand down.

  29. Christopher says

    Cutting off supply lines is a valid tatic when you are trying to conquer a community and subjugate them to your will.

    Why do you think we tried to make the Buffalo extinct?

    It really is us vs them, and the cops aren’t us.

  31. rq says

    What is the National Guard doing? Protecting the cops, sure, but can’t they bend that a little and protect them from utterly disgracing themselves any further??

  33. says

    Retweeted by justified agitator
    jelani cobb @jelani9 · 5m
    Police are gone, pastor of the church said they’d surrounded the building re charge that ppl were sleeping inside. #Ferguson

    Retweeted by justified agitator
    jelani cobb @jelani9 · 4m
    Pastor Tommie Pierson confirmed police entered church building. Unconfirmed reports that police removed materials. #Ferguson

    justified agitator @Awkward_Duck · 16s
    Police have left, didn’t take anything. This is the 3rd day that they have tried to prevent medical help, food, and safety.

  35. Pteryxx says

    Inaji – re link traffic, I’ve been trying to keep the immediate news links to this thread, so the discussions don’t all overlap. There’s plenty of information for three separate threads, IMHO.

  38. says

    Yazikus:

    Inaji, is that the same church?

    There’s confusion about that right now.

    I have to leave shortly to go to the market. I’m terrified some white person is gonna say something really stupid to me about Ferguson.

  39. Pteryxx says

    yazikus #32 – would you consider transcribing the comments in those images? I would but I’m task-saturated.

  40. Desert Son, OM says

    Christopher at #22:

    Thank you for your reply. Your post kind of highlights what I was trying to get at with my questions, that is: When a culture already violating the public trust calls on the public to think of that culture as “members of the community” it strikes a profoundly disingenuous note if their behaviors do not reflect membership in the community.

    In other words, it’s another example of the communication of the abuser: “I’m sorry I hit you, but I love you, baby. Why are you mad? It’s you and me, together!”

    ****

    rq at #24:

    This is a problem.

    Yes, exactly.

    ****

    Inaji at #505:

    Thank you for that linked article. Interesting that Dutta was 17 years with the LAPD.

    Even my privileged and naive ass has long known that the LAPD is infamous for malfeasance, and that’s going back waaaaaay before 1992, Rodney King, and the L.A. Riots (still reading, caesar?).

    Still learning,

    Robert

  41. yazikus says

    Inaji,

    I’m terrified some white person is gonna say something really stupid to me about Ferguson.

    Gah, yesterday at the bank I had my teller going off on the ‘irresponsible parents’ taking their children to protests & ‘people just tearing their own community apart’. I hope you do not encounter anything like that. Take care.

  42. says

    Jessica Lee ‏@BusquedaJess 2m
    Not confirmed that supplies at St.Marks safe space seized. May have just “inspected” them. Still disgusting. #Ferguson

    Kung Fu Manda ‏@ErykahWest 3m
    RT @MikePrysner: CONFIRMED by pastor: #Ferguson police are raiding community church

  44. says

    Retweeted by justified agitator
    Cocky McSwagsalot @MoreAndAgain · 4m
    So, the church that was raided *is* named St. Marks, but it used to be named St. Sebastian, and Google maps hasn’t caught up, yet.

    justified agitator @Awkward_Duck · 30s
    The confusion is because of name changes. My colleagues, who I trust, believed supplies that we’re being checked were being taken.

    justified agitator @Awkward_Duck · 1m
    This is the 3rd time police officers have showed up to this space to intimidate. You’ve seen my pictures and video from last night.

  45. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    Inaji @ 38

    I sometimes work for my friend’s husband doing office work for his little insurance agency. He’s very right wing; proudly voted for Mitt Romney; extremely fact averse. I’ve actually had conversations with him wherein I explain something and he follows along and agrees the whole way and then simply denies the obvious conclusion in favor of what he already thought. He calls me in when he has work for me to do. The whole time this Ferguson thing has been going on I’ve had my fingers crossed that he won’t call me because I’m afraid he’ll say something about it and then I’m pretty sure I will implode. I’ve spent the last 5 years or so biting my tongue around him when he makes bigoted comments and I don’t think I possess the restraint not to go full nuclear at him on this.

  46. yazikus says

    Transcription of my link @32

    As has been the case the morning after each time that violence has erupted in the streets of Ferguson, residents took to the streets on Saturday morning to help businesses owners clean up broken glass and other destruction.
    –
    At least four properties were broken into and damaged on Friday night, as several dozen young men stole liquor, food and electronics.
    The owners and workers of those establishments were all upset – both with those who attacked their stores as well as the State Highway Patrol, which is now overseeing the crowd control efforts.
    –
    Officers did not intervene during the robberies and representatives from the four damaged stores said on Saturday afternoon, had not offered any investigative or clean up help.
    –
    “They said they’re not going to do anything” said Jay Kanzler, the attorney for the Ferguson Market, a liquor and convenience store that was the site of the robbery allegedly committed by Brown prior to his shooting, which was looted Friday night.
    –
    Across the street at Feel Beauty Supply, which was the first business to be attacked on Friday night, managers said that they have surveillance tape of the robberies – but that police did not ask for it when they stopped by briefly this morning.
    –
    “Their exact words were its out of their hands” said Seretha Alfred, 43, an assistant manger.
    –
    Employees at the beauty supply store said that they are thankful for the dozen or so men who ran out the looters – preventing them from stealing much merchandise.

  47. Desert Son, OM says

    Inaji at #33:

    From the tweets you cited:

    pastor of the church said they’d surrounded the building re charge that ppl were sleeping inside.

    I know I know I know I shouldn’t keep getting surprised by this sort of thing by now, but isn’t it, you know, the church’s decision if people can sleep in there or not? Unless it was church personnel who called to complain about anyone sleeping inside, then it shouldn’t fucking matter to the police because the church is private property. If your busting in on a drug raid, or kidnapping rescue, then just fucking say so. Fuck, if sleeping in church was a crime, you’d have to arrest half the fucking nation every Sunday morning. If the pastor is o.k. with people sleeping in church because, oh, I don’t know, maybe they’re members of the local community who are exhausted because they’re under fucking siege, then the police have no business there.

    I feel like I’m now just made of rage.

    Still learning,

    Robert

  49. says

    Desert Son:

    I know I know I know I shouldn’t keep getting surprised by this sort of thing by now, but isn’t it, you know, the church’s decision if people can sleep in there or not?

    I’d think so, yes. I’ll bet the cops went charging in because there were protesters in the church who weren’t moving! Gods, this is insanity in action.

  51. rq says

    Inaji
    They’ll just have to walk the Way of the Cross, then, all of them, in that church. Round n round n round. Hell, maybe they can incense the cops out of there, next time (that stuff burns the eyes).

    (Desert Son, hello, by the way! :) )

    yazikus
    It’s ‘out of their hands’? The fuck does that mean?

  54. Pteryxx says

    Liveblog at the Guardian. Just covered some statements that attorney general Eric Holder heard from local community college students – he’s now headed to a meeting with community leaders – and before that, a new article on the injuries that “less lethal” weapons can do.

  55. David Marjanović says

    German journalists arrested in Ferguson

    Due to a browser fuckup only the sysadmin could fix, I can’t repost this comment of mine from an older thread in this more appropriate one. It’s about the three German journalists who were arrested in Ferguson; one of them was hit by rubber bullets. Also follow the link in the following comment: it… looks like shooting wooden pellets is illegal.

  57. says

    Raiding a church, now? Invading private property and making off with stuff?

    Wow, the Ferguson cops keep on surprising me. Just when I think they can’t behave any worse, they do something new. Just how deep can they dig that hole, do you think?

  58. Pteryxx says

    Another random thought. As cited, the Ferguson police don’t live in the district they’re responsible for patrolling. Does that mean the taxes the police pay while living their lives, such as property taxes, are going to their own home district’s police force? So they’re drawing salaries *and* extracting traffic fines from the people of Ferguson while paying nothing into that district?

  60. Saad says

    How high does the chain of command go in this particular police force? That person at the top needs to be given a 24-hour ultimatum to have the police stand down and help clean up the town or he is losing his job 24 hours and 1 second after the notice.

    Hey, a guy can dream…

  61. rq says

    I don’t think they even know who’s in charge right now. For really-realz in charge. There’s the Ferguson police, the city police (right?), the state highway patrol, and the national guard. Personally, I think they all should put down their weapons and pick up some brooms.

  62. Pteryxx says

    via Twitter, Riverfront Times on the grand jury hearing beginning today:

    Grand jury hearings can take as little as ten minutes or as long as weeks, according to a former St. Louis county prosecutor who spoke to Riverfront Times on background today. Our source suspects the case against Darren Wilson to take at least a day or longer considering its sensitivity.

    “Grand juries tend to indict more man 99 percent of the time,” says the former prosecutor. “That’s where you get the saying that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich. Unlike a trial jury, they only have to determine probable cause and not guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”

    Still, our source says that Wilson’s indictment is far from guaranteed. He notes that in 2000 a St. Louis county grand jury failed to indict two white undercover officers who shot and killed two unarmed black men in a case that carried much of the same public outcry as the shooting of Michael Brown.

    and from KSDK News:

    KSDK NewsChannel 5Verified account ‏@ksdknews

    Prosecutor Bob McCulloch tells @RyanDeanKSDK it will be until mid October before all evidence is finished being presented to grand jury
    8:35 AM – 20 Aug 2014

    Figures.

  63. says

    At least four properties were broken into and damaged on Friday night, as several dozen young men stole liquor, food and electronics.
    The owners and workers of those establishments were all upset – both with those who attacked their stores as well as the State Highway Patrol, which is now overseeing the crowd control efforts.
    –
    Officers did not intervene during the robberies and representatives from the four damaged stores said on Saturday afternoon, had not offered any investigative or clean up help.

    Echoing Desert Son upthread…
    I shouldn’t be surprised, but I really am. They didn’t do a damn thing to stop the robberies? I can completely see them not helping to clean up, but to not lift a finger to stop the crimes in the first place?!
    What the unholy fuck?!

  64. Pteryxx says

    rq from the previous page – I found my source for what the FBI agents are doing: Rachel Maddow on Monday’s show. (Video – may autoplay at link) (Transcript)

    He [Eric Holder]`ll also be meeting with some of the FBI agents who have been sent into that community to carry out the federal investigation into the Michael Brown shooting. More than 40 FBI agents are already on the ground in Ferguson, Missouri. Apparently, they`re doing door-to-door canvassing of the neighborhood in which the shooting happened, looking for eyewitnesses and other information about what happened last Saturday when that young man was killed by a Ferguson police officer.

  65. Pteryxx says

    Updates mostly on the investigations: MSNBC – 5 things we now know about Ferguson

    The St. Louis grand jury starting Wednesday will hear preliminary evidence presented by prosecutors and decide whether or not there’s enough grounds for a felony charge. The sealed hearings are required by law to bring felony charges. The dozen jurors, which are chosen at random, are already convened. The grand jury does not decide guilt or innocence and there’s no defense present, though like all who face felony charges, Officer Wilson will be given the opportunity to testify.

    According to the prosecutor’s office, the specific grand jury that will hear the case meets weekly, so this process could take months as the sworn witnesses and other evidence is presented to them. Grand juries typically hear dozens of cases during lengthy terms, hearing evidence piecemeal, often over several days or weeks.

  66. rq says

    Pteryxx @64
    Yeah, the last I heard of the FBI was them canvassing the neighbourhood. I’m assuming they’re still trying to talk to all the witnesses. :/

  67. rq says

    Putting a good spin on it in Ferguson…

    So yes, I got twitter back.

    Petition to stop militarization of police.

    This just hurts: no words (his follow-up tweet: people haven’t had time to grieve).

    Former Marine catalogs Ferguson police weapons. Scary stuff, that. Could be repeat info for those following these threads, though.

    A little something from the Missouri statutes regarding police, identification and their right to arrest.

    Here’s more death-threats from cops to protesters, on video.

    … more to come.

  70. says

    Things I learned going into town:

    *Seeing a cop car with lights flashing now induces a panic attack.
    *I am surrounded by clueless white people: store owner watching news, says “I don’t know what this Michael Brown things is about.”
    *I am surrounded by scary white people: man in market, wearing a t-shirt which says ‘one nation UNDER GOD with justice for all’ is staring at me.
    *I feel wary and scared in town, anxious to get back to my cop-free hamlet.
    *Get back to my cop-free hamlet only to see the New Salem sheriff driving around, the idiot who thinks I’m growing pot right by the street (they’re hops). Fuck.

  71. Pteryxx says

    …

    (warning for racism, multiple detailed descriptions of police brutality, and basically losing one’s faith in humanity)

    via Shakesville, along with more articles and discussion of the church being raided, this summary of the history of St Louis, capped by descriptions of police brutality going back to 1961.

    This is the same Slate overview that rq linked above. I’m choosing to excerpt it here because these firsthand accounts are so similar and relevant. I wonder how many such incidents those 40 FBI would hear in 24 hours if they asked.

    Slate – Why the Fires in Ferguson Won’t End Soon

    FERGUSON, Missouri—Talk to anyone in Ferguson and you’ll hear a story about the police. “One of my friends had a son killed by the Ferguson Police Department, about 10 years ago,” said Carl Walker, a Vietnam veteran and former parole officer who came to show his support for demonstrators in Ferguson. “They wouldn’t release the name of the officer who killed him. Why wouldn’t you release the name?”

    “The cops said he shot at them—case closed,” said Al Cole, referring to a cousin who was killed by Ferguson police in 2000. “Even as a teenager, 13 or 14 years old, I’ve been slammed on police cars … now I try to avoid riding through Ferguson.”

    “Some police say they saw me at a house, pulled me, said I fit a description, locked me up, and found out I was on parole,” said Craig Beck, who was watching demonstrators under the shade of a burned-out QuikTrip convenience store. “They said I threw a plastic baggie, which they didn’t have when they took me into custody.” He continues: “I beat the case, but you know, this isn’t new. This happens every day.”

    Everyone—or at least, every black person—can recall an incident. Everyone can attest to friends and relatives who have been harassed, assaulted, or worse by the police.

    […]

    These weren’t isolated events. A 2012 report from University of Missouri–St. Louis criminologist David Klinger found that, from 2008 to 2011, St. Louis police officers fired their weapons 98 times. “Any comparison across cities right now is still missing the lion’s share of circumstances in which people are shot by the police,” Klinger said to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “There are only a smattering of cities that report their officer-involved shootings, and when compared against them, St. Louis is on the high end.”

  75. says

    Chris Geidner ‏@chrisgeidner 3h
    ACLU of MO calls on Highway Patrol to remove officer who threatened to kill people last night: pic.twitter.com/medSEeGNhd

    @chrisgeidner The officer has now been removed from duty. Great work @ACLU_MO!

  76. rq says

    That’s right, Toronto, don’t be so smug. Seen a lot of the ‘but my town/country isn’t as bad, thank goodness!’ from all kinds of directions. False sense of security, I think – there haven’t been the right kinds of events + awareness for these people to realize that this could happen to them, too.

    Racism exists, exhibit #437928374982374982379.

  84. Saad says

    rq @ 67

    Here’s more death-threats from cops to protesters, on video.

    Wow, that video makes me fucking angry. He didn’t even have to make that verbal threat. Just the idea of a police officer pointing a gun like that at someone just standing there is un-fucking-believable! I wish I could feel hopeful about the fact that they got this on video, but I doubt this will change anything. The guy even says in disbelief, “You’re gonna KILL him?”

  85. says

    Hayrr X ‏@Hayrr 10m
    *threatening* to kill people? totally inappropriate. actually killing them? no big deal. #ferguson

    Racists are seriously flooding #Ferguson now, and I can’t take any more for a while. Stay safe, everyone, and don’t stop the signal!

  86. Pteryxx says

    Crossposting my roundup of the calls for St Louis county prosecutor Bob McCulloch to resign, with reports of multiple officer shootings that have gone un-investigated or resulted in no charges, here.

    and after assembling all that, I’m going to take a break.

  87. says

    It’ s my understanding they didn’t even BRING any tazers with them. only guns.

    Yeah, this… This F-ing mentality. Another of the books I read recently is by a cop. And if you think the BS in Furgeson is bad.. First off, the dipstick is a nudist, so he wrote about this fiction city, in Arizona, being set up for nudists. The main characters is a) a cop that lost of wife, retired, but then got rehired as the head of security for stage I of this city. First thing he does is tell the people working for him, “Don’t worry, we will get the permits to have guns soon.” Because, you know.. nude people are so terribly dangerous that the tazers they already have would be like.. totally useless, especially through all the, apparently invisible, body armor, or something, the bad guys would be wearing. Of course, the moron is pro-sherrif Joe, pro-open carry, every nutcase in the fictional city owns a gun, and the “major” incidents they run into are a) a crazy visiting kid, who finds an old ladies gun, then announces he is going to go around shooting the old rich people, because.. everyone else is super responsible, and wouldn’t use them wrong, and b) a terrorist he once put away, who employs some elaborate plot involving some slightly nuts women he gets to help him, sleeping gas, a kidnapping that results in everyone being just left alive (because the whole thing was about getting back at the cop, not killing his new girl friend or visiting grand kids), and it all ends with him being shot, but not lethally, and all his loyal ex-cop/ex-military security buddies pumping hundreds of rounds into the bad guy, who tries to charge them with a board, with nails it. And, everyone lives happily ever after, in this place where everyone including the family dog has a gun, and, apparently, only the bad guys need to be, righteously, shot at.

    It took half the book to get to the point where the rank stupidity, and pure arrogant presumption that any of this made sense at all, came up, but… I am still, days later thinking, “Why the F do you need cops to carry around guns, instead of just using the tazers, in a nudist place? To protect them from being peed on, or something?” And, the only thing I can come up with is, “Well, because crazy people are going to keep showing up, so we need them. And gosh darn.. we might get another terrorist!” I have gone back, for now, to reading about things that make sense now, like werewolves and vampires…

  88. Christopher says

    A nudist colony in Arizona?

    Cops should be packing sunscreen and water instead of weapons, they’ll save more lives that way.

  89. says

    Officers did not intervene during the robberies and representatives from the four damaged stores said on Saturday afternoon, had not offered any investigative or clean up help.

    http://www.copblock.org/27067/police-have-no-duty-to-protect-you/

    Assumption – police are, in part, supposed to “protect” people.
    Reality – time and time again the courts have basically made it clear that the cops don’t *need* to do a damn thing. Someone could walk into a place with an RPG, and an arm load of extra rockets, open fire and destroy an entire preschool full of kids with the damn things, and **technically** be watched doing it by some asshole with a badge, and they wouldn’t have to do a single damn thing about it, other than wait until the bad guy ran out of rockets, then arrest him for the murders, and destruction of property **after the fact**. Well, maybe, if they where not total a-holes, they might try to arrest them after shooting the first one, but not until then, presuming that some new idiot law gave the guy who did it the right to open carry RPG, and point them threateningly at school children.

    Somewhere in this crap, and the numerous body counts, do to cops not responding to 911 calls in time to stop murders, and other such things, there is, supposedly, some sort of f-ed up logic involved.

  92. says

    A nudist colony in Arizona?

    Cops should be packing sunscreen and water instead of weapons, they’ll save more lives that way.

    Yeah, no kidding. Not that, given how F-ing hot it gets around here I haven’t become way, way, way more sympathetic to the idea that even a bathing suit is damned stupid (assuming there is also some shade to stay under), especially this last week. I swears its been bloody 100+, with like 90% humidity or something here, due to the storms that actually decided to show up now, and… sorry, even shorts and a white shirt, which I am allowed at work, is too bloody much to have on, even at work. lol

    Still, there was so much just… stupid in that book, and its obvious that it all came from the guy being ex-cop + Arizona conservative, and just… not getting the concept of “overkill”. Besides which, if the scene near the end had been at all remotely believable, they would have all been treated for burns from all the expended bloody shells hitting every conceivable bare part of their bodies, see through vests (for uniforms) being the only thing, other than gun belts, they had on at the time. Guess nude cops are also impervious to super heated metal shell casings. I literally don’t know whether to laugh at the guys idea of how such a place would function, or bang my head at the stupidity of it all.

  93. Ichthyic says

    This is what happens to a hand that grabs a tear gas canister. #Ferguson

    I WAS wondering, since I recalled those things burn at up to 1000F.

  94. Ichthyic says

    Tear “gas” isn’t actually a gas at all, but a solid, that is dispersed with pyrotechnics inside of a canister; a lot like a standard firework you might buy for the 4th of july.

    if you’ve ever tried to pick one up after it has just finished burning out, you know how hot they can get.

    now imagine it with a metal instead of thick cardboard container.

    tear gas grenades often cause fires when used in homes with flammable carpets or upholstery.

  95. Pteryxx says

    Tear gas grenades also seem to be causing some of those small fires in people’s yards and driveways, though the media often blame those on the protesters.

  96. David Eriksen says

    Long time reader but very infrequent poster.

    I just wanted to say thanks to all of the people who have been collating links and information here. I just got back from vacation and had no idea how bad things really were. I’ve spent the entire day catching up. I wish I had known all of this when I was asked about it a few days ago.

    I don’t have much to add to the conversation but I will say this. I am not OK with what’s happening in Ferguson. I’d like to think that, if enough of us said something, it would make a difference but I’m feeling a bit pessimistic about that.

    As an aside, CattieCat did better than me with exposure to CS gas. When I did the gas chamber in basic, I think I made it through two lines of the Soldier’s Creed before my throat closed completely. That shit is no joke. Long after I had stopped leaking from every orifice in my face, my skin still felt like it was on fire.

  97. Saad says

    awakeinmo #91

    Wow, that’s rich. I wonder what would happen to a carpenter or a librarian if he/she explicitly threatened to kill someone while on the job. Hmm, probably suspension? Maybe reduced pay? Yeah, that’s all.

  98. Pteryxx says

    Crossposting an excerpt from a longer comment here.

    From the St Louis Post-Dispatch on McCulloch’s previous abuse of the grand jury process:

    Grand jury proceedings are secret. McCulloch, in telling the public what the grand jury had found, repeatedly insisted that “every witness” had testified that the two detectives fired to defend themselves after the suspect tried to run them over with his car.

    The Post-Dispatch reviewed the previously secret grand jury tapes and found that McCulloch’s public statements were untrue.

    Only three of the 13 detectives who testified said the suspect’s car had moved forward, in the direction of the two officers who shot him and his passenger. Two of those were the shooters themselves. The third was a detective who McCulloch later said he considered charging with perjury because his account was so at odds with the facts.

    Contrary to McCulloch’s public statements, the grand jury tapes showed that four other detectives testified that they never saw the suspect’s car travel toward the officers.

    McCulloch never brought independent evidence before the grand jury to sort out who was right.

  99. Pteryxx says

    All I could find on the mess of who’s ostensibly in charge of police security on the ground: Vox.com

    From August 9 through August 13, there were at least four police departments in Ferguson participating in the security operation: the Ferguson Police Department, the St. Louis County Police Department, the St. Louis City Police Department, and the Missouri Highway Patrol. There were also reports that additional police from other nearby towns were also on the scene.

    For the first few days of the protests, command of the security operation in Ferguson rotated between different departments, Jackson, Ferguson’s police chief, said during a press conference. As my colleague Dara Lind points out, that system was a disaster in terms of police accountability:
    —

    More importantly, it made it impossible for one police chief to be held accountable for what officers are doing in Ferguson. It wasn’t clear what the relationship was between an “incident commander” who was making decisions at the protest site, and the chief of his police department. But because the public didn’t even know which agency the “incident commander” was with, it was impossible to demand that that police chief restrain his officers. When Ferguson chief Jackson gave his press conference Wednesday, he was asked whether there would be tear gas used on Wednesday night. He said, “I hope not.” But he honestly couldn’t make any promises, because it turned out that the St. Louis County police were the ones in charge. Now, Governor Nixon has officially designated the Missouri Highway Patrol as the agency to whom the public should be directing their demands for accountability and de-escalation.

    —
    On Thursday, August 14, Gov. Nixon “reframed” the command for the security operation in Ferguson, placing Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson, a Ferguson native, in charge of security operations. Although multiple departments are still participating in the operation, they are now under a single non-rotating command. Johnson has publicly acknowledged that communication between departments is poor, with Ferguson police releasing information about the case without telling him first.

    On Monday, August 18th, Gov. Nixon announced that he had also ordered the state national guard to Ferguson, to assist in “restoring peace and order to this community.”

    (added — s because nested blockquotes are really hard to see)

  100. Pteryxx says

    How Missouri’s attorney general hoodwinked a judge with a false concession to the ACLU’s First Amendment challenge: MSNBC

    “When inquiries were made to law enforcement officers regarding which law prohibits gathering or standing for more than five seconds on public sidewalks,” the ACLU of Missouri wrote in its emergency federal court filing to block the apparent policy, “the officers indicated that they did not know and that it did not matter. The officers further indicated that they were following the orders of their supervisors, whom they refused to name.” The ACLU argued the policy was a prior restraint on speech and asked for a temporary restraining order.

    No standing allowed. So everyone is marching along and up and down W.Florissant. https://t.co/cOo1a9BriF
    — Trymaine Lee (@trymainelee) August 18, 2014

    “The attorney general came to court via phone and announced that there was an alternative speech zone that was being set up,” Tony Rothert, the legal director of the ACLU of Missouri, told msnbc. That satisfied the judge, who agreed it was a close call but denied the ACLU’s request to block the policy.

    So where and what was that free speech zone? “It’s supposed to be at the intersection of Ferguson and Florissant,” Rothert said. “There is a field there, but it is padlocked and no one can get in.”

    […]

    The fast-changing and internally conflicting nature of police instructions cause their own problems. “One police officer will tell someone they must stand in a location,” said Rothert, “and the next police officer will tell them they’ll arrest them if they stand there.”

    For both protesters and the press, Rothert said, “the biggest First Amendment issue right now is that no one knows the rules, and when I say no one, that includes the police.”

    The most recent Supreme Court case affirming the primacy of protesting on public sidewalks – even if a state claims that public safety is at stake – was McCullen v. Coakley. In June, the Court struck down a Massachusetts law creating a buffer zone around abortion clinics. “Consistent with the traditionally open character of public streets and sidewalks, we have held that the government’s ability to restrict speech in such locations is ‘very limited,’” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts.

    But courts are a slow mechanism for addressing rights violations, particularly ones that aren’t written down in law. As Rowland put it, “In most of the cases, years after tumultuous times in a city’s history, a court finally rules on whether its actions were problems.”

  101. Pteryxx says

    Cops are threatening protesters again tonight, right now. They can’t even wait for dark to fall before getting their domination on.

    Elon James White ‏@elonjames

    It’s getting problematic already. Cops being aggressive and crowd is responding. Threats of arrests and pepper spray
    6:15 PM – 20 Aug 2014

    (twitter)

    But reports are enough is enough. It’s day 11 and night 11 of the Ferguson siege.

    On Maddow right now, while AG Holder and Captain Johnson hug, they’re saying the community needs a break. The Justice Department may look into the practices of the police departments involved, but the community needs a break. They’re talking about moving the region forward, instituting retraining… I’m missing a lot of the words in this Maddow – will have to re-watch later. Highly recommended.

    One last post. via Feminist Batwoman, images from the Twitter feed of Elon James White.

    (transcripts mine, excerpted from longer conversations)

    EJW: Had a heart to heart w/ some of the organizers & voices on the ground. We’ve come to the conclusion we can’t keep staying out here at night.

    Chris Hayes: that’s interesting. Why?

    EJW: Getting tear gassed every night isn’t getting the work done. We’ve proven what’s happening.

    EJW: We’ve already proven that the police are lying and have a blatant disregard for our safety. They aren’t here to protect.

    EJW: The work isnt done. Folks are organizing their asses off. Im not leaving. This story needs to be told. But our lives & minds are on the line

    EJW: At this point if you don’t believe the police are abusing their power and treating us like animals then you aint paying attention.

    EJW: Understand that many of us can’t stand loud sounds now. Flashing lights give me anxiety attacks. We showed y’all the truth & we paid for it.

    EJW: My job is to tell the story of whats happening on the ground. I will continue to do that job. But we aren’t humans to them. We are vermin.

    EJW: Like i said. I’m not going home. I’ll be here talking to the folks organizing and working here. I will continue to amplify their voices.

    EJW: Many of you are asking what you can do to help. Organize in your own cities. Join groups, perform actions. Make sure this happens everywhere

  104. Pteryxx says

    MSNBC’s O’Donnell, paraphrased:

    “There has never been a killing by police that has received this much federal attention, this much attention from a sitting president”

    …that’s the most simultaneously depressing and hopeful thing I think I’ve ever heard.

  105. Menyambal says

    Live TV shows people still walking.

    But damn, they must be tired. So much effort, so much to be proud of.

    So much for our country to be ashamed of.

  106. Menyambal says

    “Ferguson PD has stock of body cameras for officers, but hasn’t been using them.” Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC

  107. Ichthyic says

    Live TV shows people still walking.

    But damn, they must be tired. So much effort, so much to be proud of.

    yeah, it seems the Ferguson PD have taken to using the old junior-high gym coach approach to controlling “unruly” kid behavior…

    “run a lap!”

    seriously… you can’t stand and protest… have to keep moving… it’s fucking ridiculous.

  108. Ichthyic says

    …actually, I’m reasonably sure the “keep moving” approach is from some CIA torture handbook.

    not kidding.

  109. Pteryxx says

    from Skepchick on Monday: A Day in Ferguson, MO

    I spent this morning looking back over my Twitter stream and photos and tried to process what went down. But I’m still not sure I can in any coherent way. That’s why this blog post has come off more like a report than I really wanted it to be. During the marches, during the protests, and even walking around the neighborhood, I felt empowered and I felt the power and frustration of the resident who were standing up to DO SOMETHING. I was warmed by the obvious dedication of the community leaders who are working day and night to unify their neighbors into positive action. Unfortunately, they haven’t been able to get through to every single person, and they haven’t been able to stop the flux of incoming troublemakers who appear not to even be from the town. But they are there and they ARE heroes in my eyes, as are the observers and volunteers and even random protestors who came from all over the country to try and restore justice to Ferguson.

  110. Menyambal says

    Sleep deprivation is another torture technique.

    And earlier in this mess, they told people they had stand, they could not march. I think it’s just deliberately screwing with people … no, it’s just making them obey. Get them accustomed to following orders.

    Officer Go Fuck Yourself got a feeble excuse for his gun-pointing, was suspended for language. Chris Hayes snarked. (There was a gun in the crowd so he raised his gun, realized it was a BB gun, and …. )

  111. Ichthyic says

    no, it’s just making them obey. Get them accustomed to following orders.

    like a big game of “Simon Sez”

    it’s specifically DESIGNED to get you to break the rules.

    I fucking HATE these wankers that keep saying: “Well, if they would just obey the cops, nothing bad would happen.”

    FUCKING FUCKING WANKERS.

  112. says

    I did a little digging and found that not all the police departments in the United States have chosen to make use of any military equipment. Some even, ::gasp:: choose to communicate with the citizenry, rather than treat them like military combatants.

    Raleigh, N.C.

    The police department in Raleigh has purchased only a small amount of surplus military equipment, but no weapons in the last five years, said police spokesman Jim Sughrue. Among the items purchased are two gun cabinets, four spotting scopes, 30 ammunition cans and a graveyard registration kit.

    “We practice community policing,” Sughrue said.

    The department emphasizes regular contact with community and civic groups, he said. Its philosophy is to use tactical equipment only in certain specialized situations such as serving drug warrants in cases where suspects are believed to be armed.
    The department has a small number of civilian-made armored tactical vehicles, Sughrue said. The vehicles are deployed in situations where members of the public or police force are endangered or “when we are dealing with people who are known to have been involved in violent felonies or are believed to be armed.”

    Patrol officers are armed with sidearms, Sughrue said, though some also carry a backup semiautomatic patrol rifle. Officers have no fully automatic or military weapons, he said.

    Like many departments, the Raleigh force recently switched from shotguns to semiautomatic rifles after studies found that the rifles are safer to deploy, Sughrue said. The department does not take part in the Pentagon’s Excess Property Program, known as the 1033 program, which provides surplus military equipment to state and local law enforcement agencies.

    Sughrue declined to comment on the use of military tactical equipment and weapons in Ferguson.

    –David Zucchino

    Nashville, Tenn.

    The police department in Nashville has been closely following developments in Ferguson, said Don Aaron, the department’s public affairs manager.

    What stands out, he said, is the “lack of communication to the community and, conversely, to the rest of the country” by police officials in Ferguson.

    Unlike police involved in the Ferguson unrest, the Nashville force has never used its SWAT team for crowd control, Aaron said. The department generally uses its horse-mounted police officers for that purpose.

    Nor has the department deployed either of its two armored vehicles – it calls them rescue vehicles – for crowd control, Aaron said. The vehicles are used to rescue civilians or police officers threatened by gunfire.

    “You never say never, but we have not used an armored vehicle in a crowd-control situation,” he said. “It’s just not the type of situation where you would use that type of vehicle.”

    Aaron said the department did not rely on military weapons or equipment, with only a relative handful of items provided by the military.

    One armored vehicle was provided by the Air Force years ago. A more modern vehicle, a civilian-made model called a BearCat, was provided about 10 years ago through a Department of Homeland Security grant, Aaron said.

    The department’s SWAT team, which is issued semiautomatic rifles, is deployed primarily in dangerous situations such as hostage rescue, barricaded suspects or an active shooter, Aaron said. A Special Response Team within the SWAT unit carries semiautomatic rifles to serve outstanding felony arrest warrants, often against people wanted for violent crimes.

    The department received eight military OH-58 observation helicopters around 1997, Aaron said. Four were repainted and used for police work, and four have been used for spare parts. The force also has 10 boats it received from the military that Aaron said were crucial in helping rescue people stranded during devastating floods in Nashville in 2010.

    In January 2013, the Nashville Metropolitan Police Department began allowing officers who undergo training and pass certification tests to carry privately-owned semiautomatic rifles as backup weapons while on patrol. The weapons are not to be used for routine patrol work, Aaron said.

    “Deadly events across the United States over the past few years … demonstrate the high-powered weapons with which criminals are arming themselves,’’ a department news release said at the time. “It has become increasingly clear that a pistol and a shotgun may not be enough for an officer to stop a threat to innocent civilians.”

    The rifles are not intended for crowd control. “Officers are to retrieve their rifles only when it is clear that a tactical advantage over a criminal suspect is warranted,” the release said.

    –David Zucchino

  113. Desert Son, OM says

    Tony! at #612 [112]:

    Thanks for finding that.

    From the quoted portion:

    “Deadly events across the United States over the past few years … demonstrate the high-powered weapons with which criminals are arming themselves,’’ a department news release said at the time. “It has become increasingly clear that a pistol and a shotgun may not be enough for an officer to stop a threat to innocent civilians.”

    I’m troubled by this (not just this, but focusing on this part for now). My understanding was that, nationwide, violent crime overall was declining, and has been for years. Yet this news release (news release? Press release? Are those interchangeable terms?) seems to suggest that an increased arsenal is nevertheless required? Am I mis-reading?

    I applaud efforts by departments not to go full-military, but the overall narrative still feels . . . arms-race-y to me, and that just leaves me wondering how an arms race is a solution to the problem, instead of just a temporary delay of a worse incarnation of the problem. Am I not examining this with enough sophistication?

    Regardless, thanks for the link. So many powerful and important pieces of information in these threads. Many thanks to you and everyone else who has been, as Inaji put it at #585 [85], ensuring the signal does not stop.

    Still learning,

    Robert

  116. says

    rq:
    from your ‘officer go fuck yourself’ link (I snicker every time I read that; like I’m 12 again and using naughty language for the first time)

    It was a chaotic scene as they tried to weed out protesters who had embedded themselves with reporters for protection. The officer, at one point, aggressively asked our reporters to turn off the lights on our cameras as the riot police formed a barricade around the area.

    Um, what’s wrong with protesters embedding themselves with reporters as protection from police? Is there some law that says protesters cannot do this?

  117. rq says

    Amanda Marcotte on Fox News. Love the title.

    Tony
    Obviously, those are trouble-making protesters just trying to hide from justice among innocent reporters. I bet they threw some rocks earlier, or shouted some obscenities, and are now afraid to come forward and face the consequences of their actions.
    Heck, I would be, too!

  118. Gen, Uppity Ingrate and Ilk says

    Kajieme Powell is gunned down by police on a sidewalk of St. Louis

    The police say he was wielding a knife in an overhand grip and got very close to the police car so they shot him in self defense. Unfortunately for them, the whole thing was caught on camera and while he did have a knife, he never raised it and he was a good bit away from the car when they just opened fire.

    Jesus, I don’t even know what to say.

  119. Gen, Uppity Ingrate and Ilk says

    I’m putting this here since this is clearly related to the Ferguson issue – Powell stole some energy drinks from a convenience store, and stood around on the sidewalk waiting for police to come (it looks like from the video) pacing around and acting erratic. When they arrived, he kept yelling “Shoot me now!”

  123. Pteryxx says

    Thanks for keeping with it, rq.

    Saginaw Michigan police are getting rid of their MRAP armored vehicle that John Oliver mocked on HBO.

    Michigan Live

    “I made the decision about a month ago to decommission that vehicle,” Federspiel said, noting he did it based on financial concerns due to unforeseen maintenance costs.

    While the military was to provide any needed parts, Federspiel said he still had to pay for a specialized mechanic to install the parts, along with insurance and fuel for the vehicle.

    When Saginaw County Commissioners asked him to look for cost-saving measures before setting the budget in July, the MRAP was the first thing to go, he said.

    The decision also came because Federspiel decided to direct funds from drug forfeitures into the county’s general fund, he said. He previously planned to use drug forfeiture funds to pay for any costs associated with the MRAP and did so during the installation of a new starter and a new locking mechanism for the door since the vehicle has been in Saginaw County.

    When drug forfeiture funding was put into the county’s general fund, Federspiel said it created a situation in which taxpayers might have to fund some of the costs of the MRAP, which also prompted him to send it back to the Army.

  125. Pteryxx says

    Crossposting from the Why cops have a bad reputation thread: (link)

    via MSNBC just now – Two new lawsuits have been filed against the Ferguson PD related to another death, that of Jason Moore. His case was mentioned as part of the reason the people of Ferguson don’t trust prosecutor Bob McCulloch.

    USA Today

    “The eyes of the nation and the world are watching Ferguson right now,” Holder told a group of community leaders assembled at a local community college. “The world is watching because the issues raised by the shooting of Michael Brown predate this incident. This is something that has a history to it, and the history simmers beneath the surface in more communities than just Ferguson.”

    Among the handful of St. Louis Community College-Florissant Valley students who met with Holder was Molyric Welch, 27, who said her brother died following a encounter with Ferguson police in 2011.

    Welch said the 31-year-old man, Jason Moore, died of cardiac arrest after officers allegedly used a stun gun during a disturbance call.

    “A lot has happened here,” she said. “He (Holder) promised things were going to change.”

  127. Pteryxx says

    rq – there were also reports from Twitter that the main cable TV networks acted squirrely, too. Specifically that news channels went out while entertainment stayed on, though that might be subjective. I’ve been wondering if the police had the streetlights along Florissant shut down, because that stretch of road seemed extraordinarily dark. If they messed with the power and nfrastructure of the area, that also could cause some of the network problems reported, I’d guess.

  128. Pteryxx says

    Holder giving a press statement now, live. (surprised me)

    – talking about the people of Ferguson having a presence there they can trust.
    – That when the attention has died down, the justice department will still be there.
    – Conversation with police about the appropriate use of force, fair and equal treatment.

    I really didn’t do that short statement justice. Look for the reports of it to hit soon.

  129. Pteryxx says

    He’s taking questions even. The MSNBC header I briefly saw : DOJ will continue conversation about trust.

  130. Pteryxx says

    Press notes Holder *did not say* that he had faith and confidence in St Louis County prosecutors.

  131. rq says

    Pteryxx
    What I’ve read on Holder, he seems to know what he’s talking about, and isn’t likely to let things slide. Now if only the system would work with him.

  132. Menyambal says

    Pteryxx, I have been typing your name wrong. My apologies. And my continued thanks.

    Regarding the latest shooting, the man with a knife in an overhand grip. The grip is relevant, as it is less of a threat. The overhand grip on a knife is a poor one, less likely to cause real damage. It’s the grip where the blade sticks out and down next to the little finger, with the cutting edge toward the wrist, usually. The hand is over/above the blade. It’s the way to hold a knife for drama, for driving a dagger into a table, or for dramatically attacking a tyrant. It is a crappy grip for fighting, and, when standing with the knife down, points the blade away from the opponent and towards one’s own thigh. In attack, it limits hits to only the top of the head and shoulders, and leaves the wielder upright and vulnerable. In old movies, when the woman in lace grabs a knife from her dressing table
    and sweeps toward the man, knife held high, and he grabs her wrist and starts kissing her, that’s the overhand grip.

    (The proper knife-fighting grip is with the blade up, from the thumb side, so you can crouch and slash up. It is mostly the same grip as a sword. The hand is under the blade, and the blade is under the target, and it’s “unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops”.)

    My point is that the man wasn’t as much of a threat as he could have been. I don’t know
    what was going through the poor man’s mind, but he was not attacking as much as acting out.

  133. Pteryxx says

    Menyambal, no worries. I rather like seeing how different people interpret my nym.

    Re the latest shooting… his name was Kajieme Powell, by the way. He had a name, too. I think it has to be relevant that a black man’s screaming at police to just kill him already in a town that’s been under siege by brutal cops for several days and nights, repressing protests about the murder of another unarmed black man, in a community crushed by systemic and institutional racism for generations.

  134. Pteryxx says

    I have a serious rant to get out here. The media’s paying attention to the question of prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s (lack of) impartiality, mostly as a close B-story to Eric Holder’s investigation of the Brown killing and policing in general, and I’m glad to see that. I think keeping the public pressure on McCulloch is the only way Brown’s family and the rest of St Louis County have any chance at all of seeing justice for multiple killings by cops.

    HOWEVER. The media *and* the internet are seizing on McCulloch’s family history of his police officer father being killed by a black man when McCulloch-the-prosecutor was a 12 year old boy. All mentions of his impartiality lead with “his officer father killed by a black man” as THE probable reason for accusing him of bias in the first place. And that’s a romanticized, Batman narrative that plays right into white racist narratives of having a personally driven champion who’s going to crush all the obviously-black evil-doers. It would sound ridiculous if we hadn’t just seen a week of racist commentary fueled by exactly that story. And McCulloch plays into it. He RAN FOR OFFICE on that story – that his father being killed drove, and still drives, his desire to see justice. And yes, I can cite that: (Denver Post)

    McCulloch, a Democrat who has been in office since 1991, referenced his father’s death in his initial campaign. He survived a Democratic primary earlier this month and faces no Republican opposition in his re-election bid.

    Protesters questioned his objectivity when grand jurors returned no charges against two officers who fired 21 bullets into a vehicle in June 2000, killing two black men during an attempted drug arrest.

    But at the time, McCulloch said his father’s 1964 shooting by a black man at a public housing complex was an “incredibly irrelevant facet” as he sought to “make sure everybody gets a full and fair hearing.” McCulloch was 12 when his father was killed.

    So it’s convenient for him to reference his father’s death when it’ll help him win the position of prosecutor in the first place, but not when it might raise questions about his ability to ensure justice for victims of police. I think I’ve seen McCulloch cite this story in TV interviews, which would indicate he’s still using the narrative now.

    But as a grown adult, the circumstances of his father’s death should not be of more import to determining whether McCulloch will oversee police brutality cases fairly than the evidence of how he’s handled such cases before. He’s misrepresented grand jury testimony in one major case already, that of the Jack-in-the-Box shooting deaths of two unarmed men in 2001. St Louis Post-Dispatch:

    Grand jury proceedings are secret. McCulloch, in telling the public what the grand jury had found, repeatedly insisted that “every witness” had testified that the two detectives fired to defend themselves after the suspect tried to run them over with his car.

    The Post-Dispatch reviewed the previously secret grand jury tapes and found that McCulloch’s public statements were untrue.

    Only three of the 13 detectives who testified said the suspect’s car had moved forward, in the direction of the two officers who shot him and his passenger. Two of those were the shooters themselves. The third was a detective who McCulloch later said he considered charging with perjury because his account was so at odds with the facts.

    Contrary to McCulloch’s public statements, the grand jury tapes showed that four other detectives testified that they never saw the suspect’s car travel toward the officers.

    McCulloch never brought independent evidence before the grand jury to sort out who was right.

    Ferguson’s representatives and community leaders cite several other cases, including the death of Jason Moore referenced in #125 above, which resulted in new lawsuits *one day* after AG Eric Holder talked with Moore’s family.

    THOSE are justification for removing McCulloch from the role of prosecutor in the grand jury investigation of Mike Brown’s death. THOSE are evidence of his bias and probable professional misconduct. THOSE should be the focus of media pressure to ensure the people of Ferguson have a chance at seeing justice. Not the Batman story that every white racist will love.

  135. Pteryxx says

    …FFS, *as I was posting that comment* I just saw McCulloch talking to MSNBC about how his father was a cop killed in the line of duty. That bullshit, centering that narrative, cannot go unchallenged.

  136. says

    I wonder, how bad has gerrymandering gotten? Has it reached the level of city government? If not, maybe a serious effort to get new people into the city council could ensure proper oversight of the police and long-term change. Has anyone come across information relating to this possibility?

  138. says

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/21/elementary-teacher-suspended-for-asking-white-student-cops-to-shoot-black-michael-browns/

    A sixth-grade teacher at Brantley Elementary in Selma, Alabama has been placed on administrative leave after a parent reported that students were asked to research and reenact the Michael Brown shooting in class, The Selma Times-Journal reports.

    The administration became aware of the assignment after Jessica Lynn Baughn posted about it on Facebook. “His teacher made them reenact the two current shooting of the young black males,” she wrote. “The white students had to play the police officer. She even has them get on the internet and research how many times the young man was shot where he was shot at.”

    “That is absurd to me then you turn around and make them reenact every bit of it including the shooting,” she continued. “Then sit in class and tells them our black children can not walk in their own neighborhood without white people shooting them and she hated to sound racist but whatever.”

    Baughn then accused the teacher of being racist, and of “teaching these children to hate one another when we’re supposed to be teaching them to love one another.”

    Dallas County Schools Superintendent of Education Don Willingham said that the sixth graders were learning about current events and one of them asked about the Michael Brown shooting. The teacher then instructed the students to do research on the events in Ferguson, Missouri, and had them perform a “skit” about them.

    Willingham did not say what that “skit” entailed, but did indicate that he had put the teacher on paid administrative leave until he can determine what happened.

  139. Pteryxx says

    (warning for police brutality and I don’t even)

    Melissa McEwan at Shakesville on the killing of Kajieme Powell.

    On Tuesday, I wrote about the St. Louis police shooting and killing 25-year-old Kajieme Powell, who had stolen two energy drinks and set them on the pavement and was pacing back and forth on the sidewalk. This happened three miles from the shooting of Michael Brown.

    At the time I asked these questions:

    —

    Why didn’t they tase him? Or pepper spray him? Or at least try any other means of relieving the man of his weapon before shooting to kill?

    (Not that people can’t and haven’t died from tasers and pepper spray. But they are generally less lethal than guns.)

    Was there any attempt to establish if this man was incapacitated in some way? Did he actually need medical care? Would it have even mattered if he did?

    How long did they talk to him? How long did they spend trying to negotiate with him, while he was still a yard away from them, begging them to shoot him? How long before BOTH OFFICERS just opened fire in the middle of a neighborhood, where other people could have been hurt?

    —

    Well, yesterday, video of the shooting was made public (it is viewable here), and we now have answers to some of those questions.

    I don’t know why they didn’t tase him. There was no attempt to establish if Powell was incapacitated in some way.

    And as for how long they spent trying to deescalate via negotiation, how long they spent interacting with Powell before killing him: The police arrive on the scene at the 1:23 mark. They start shooting at the 1:40 mark.

    Seventeen seconds.

    They spent all of seventeen seconds at the scene before they both started shooting at Powell, in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

    Seventeen seconds before they shot him twelve times, and then rolled over his dead body and handcuffed his corpse.

    Seventeen seconds.

    #Seventeenseconds.

    The video also calls into question the police account of what happened.

    —

    The chief said that the officers repeatedly ordered the man to drop the knife and drew their weapons after he did not drop it. The chief said the man told the police: “Shoot me now. Kill me now.”

    He said the two officers fired after the man moved toward one of them and came within 3 to 4 feet.

    —

    Nope. The police drew their weapons as soon as they got out of the vehicle. The man did not come within 3 to 4 feet of officers, and had in fact moved away from them when they began firing. If he is brandishing a knife, it’s not even visible in the video, and the police are not ordering him to drop a knife but to take his hand out of his pocket.

    Original reports described Powell as coming at police officers brandishing a knife in an overhead grip. That is manifestly not the case.

  140. Menyambal says

    Pteryxx @ 134, wow. He does want it both ways. And he seems to be one of those conservatives who think words are magic, and whatever is said is true.

    Speaking of that, I seem to recall a mention of that case where the car allegedly moved forward. An expert examined the car itself, and found that it was firmly in reverse, or something like that.

  141. Pteryxx says

    Menyambal #140 – exactly. That was in the St Louis Dispatch article in #134 above.

    McCulloch never brought independent evidence before the grand jury to sort out who was right.

    Nor did he request the testimony of a nationally noted collision expert who investigated the case for the Justice Department. He determined that the suspect’s car had always been in reverse — added proof that it did not move toward the detectives.

    Note that’s a Justice Department investigation going on alongside a secret grand jury – exactly the situation *now* for Mike Brown.

  143. rq says

    I’m not going to be able to do much from work today, but I’ll try to keep on top of things, and hopefully contribute better tomorrow. I’ll be following along as best as I can.

  144. Menyambal says

    Ow, that video of Kajieme Powell. http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/st-louis-police-release-video-calls-city-shooting

    Notice that the people, including the camera, just walk right up near Kajieme Powell, even after noticing that he has something going on. There was no fear, just awareness and some wariness.

    Notice also the white pickup truck which parks right next to him. I say the truck, because the driver stays inside, closed up.

    There is no weapon visible on Powell, and his hand seems to be out of his pocket when talking to the cops. I saw no threat. The cops would had plenty of time to get back in their car and close the doors.

    But no, they could not back down, they could not be disobeyed. Kajieme Powell, who needed help, died.

  145. Desert Son, OM says

    *sigh* That was supposed to be Pteryxx at #139. Apologies.

    Still learning,

    Robert

  146. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    If there is someone in that video who is a danger to society, then it’s those two cops. I used to think that “shoot first, ask questions later” was a movie exaggeration of police conduct, not the regular state of affairs in US (at least where non-white folk are concerned).
    Not that there even seems to exist the “as questions later” part. There’s no need for questions when the only possible answer is “cops did the right thing”.

  148. Pteryxx says

    I have work to do today, too – hope that’s enough to get some conversation amplified. Thanks Menyambal and rq and Tony! and everybody still staying woke with this.

  149. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    I can see where it might have seemed like Powell was about to lunge at them but fuck, fuck, FUCK. The worst thing that would have happened if he had is a scraped elbow or two. Jesus fuck.

  150. dianne says

    @147 rq: One thing I noticed about the list you gave is how many of the reporters who were arrested are from out of the country. US journalists are being “well behaved”? (Though to be fair, no one from al Jazeera, which has been providing reasonably good reporting is on the list either.)

  151. dianne says

    Reporters Without Borders lists the US as #46 in press freedom in 2014. Between Romania and Hiati and well below Ghana and Slovakia. And that’s before they factor in Ferguson, at least as far as I can tell. The US is going to be below Somalia pretty soon at this rate.

  152. The Mellow Monkey says

    Aside from the video footage of Wilson showing no apparent injuries there’s also this:

    Jim Hoft’s Unsourced Claim That Officer Darren Wilson Had an “Orbital Blowout Fracture of the Eye Socket”

    And there’s more evidence that Hoft is trying to pull a fast one again; here is the original image posted at the AAPOS site, showing a CT scan of a blowout fracture (on the left), compared to the image posted at Gateway Pundit by Hoft (on the right):

    [image] Original example CT scan (L), compared to altered image posted by Jim Hoft (R)
    Notice the difference? In the version posted by Jim Hoft, the text at bottom right that says “UNIV OF IOWA” has been crudely erased. Caught you, Jim.

    And

    Time will tell if Wilson is going to claim he had this type of injury, but nobody should take Jim Hoft’s word for it.

    And one more point while I’m at it; Hoft writes:

    This comes from a source within the Prosecuting Attorney’s office and confirmed by the St. Louis County Police.

    If that’s true, it’s highly disturbing that the St. Louis prosecutor’s office and the St. Louis County police department are leaking information to a far right hateblogger known for his unrelenting dishonesty, who uses a white supremacist hate group as a source.

  154. dianne says

    (Not that we’ll know that the US has dropped out of the top 100 for freedom of the press since the US press won’t report it and the end of net neutrality will mean that we can’t access the foreign press.)

  155. Desert Son, OM says

    Mano Singham has a post about two more shooting deaths in Los Angeles. Police shot and killed a Latino man and a Black man, nine days apart, beginning two days after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson.

    Mano contrasts those stories with another about a man open-carrying a gun who was dealt with by police in a manner resolving the issue without violence. The firearm was even returned to the man later.

    That man?

    Was white.

    We continue to create the nightmare.

    Still learning,

    Robert

  156. rq says

    THEY ARE SO BLATANTLY LYING ABOUT EVERYTHING, how do they still have jobs? How does anyone still believe them??? OMFG. I’d be terrified to live in a country where the corruption was that obvious, that bad. And I’m on the, you know, unthreatened end of the spectrum.

    Desert Son
    I’ve been keeping part of one eye on the Ezell Ford shooting aftermath, and I think I tried linking to their protests a few times throughout this whole Ferguson ordeal (because things showed up on twitter). I did not know about Omar Abrego.

    dianne
    I would guess that there’s more foreign press arrested because they’re more likely to report unfavourably on Ferguson cops (ironically……) – or their stories would be more difficult to silence. The American reporters, well, they’re on hometurf and it’s easy to block out or minimize their stories via something else. But those foreigners? Who knows what they’ll say?

  157. dianne says

    Speaking of injustices, does anyone know what happened to the University of AZ professor who got beat up by the cop? Was she able to sue him successfully? Sorry, I don’t remember any names and am not at all sure that it was U Az, but I think that’s right. Somewhere in the SW anyway.

  158. Pteryxx says

    THEY ARE SO BLATANTLY LYING ABOUT EVERYTHING, how do they still have jobs? How does anyone still believe them??? OMFG.

    Yeah, all of this. I remember being shocked a few years ago by a site moderator somewhere saying that the really bad rape threats and racist crap often got posted by doctors and other professionals. That was kiddie pool level shock.

    Ready for it to get even worse?

    I was trying to take a break but I had these three longreads open and it’s really that bad. First, this piece at the Atlantic has been linked several times, and passed around, but not really discussed much. I read it and got shocked into silence again. So, I’m going to excerpt some spoilers from it here.


    I Got Myself Arrested So I Could Look Inside the Justice System

    Ten years ago, when I started my career as an assistant district attorney in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, I viewed the American criminal justice system as a vital institution that protected society from dangerous people.

    He decided to get himself arrested for vandalism. He had to really, really work at it.

    I walked up to the east entrance of City Hall and tagged the words “N.Y.P.D. Get Your Hands Off Me” on a gatepost in red paint. The surveillance video shows me doing this, 20 feet from the police officer manning the gate. I moved closer, within 10 feet of him, and tagged it again. I could see him inside watching video monitors that corresponded to the different cameras.

    As I moved the can back and forth, a police officer in an Interceptor go-cart saw me, slammed on his brakes, and pulled up to the curb behind me. I looked over my shoulder, made eye contact with him, and resumed. As I waited for him to jump out, grab me, or Tase me, he sped away and hung a left, leaving me standing there alone. I’ve watched the video a dozen times and it’s still hard to believe.

    After several DAYS of trying to turn himself in, and having police and security actively ignore him and turn him away, he finally was enough of a nuisance that they put him in jail.

    Some time later the door swung open and a CO led three more men into our cell. Eighteen men were now sitting and lying feet to head, or feet to feet, along the length of the bench and floor.

    “Sir, do you think this is the right way to treat people, piling them on top of one another, when you have an empty cell open all night?” I said indignantly, when morning came, pointing at a vacant cell across the hall.

    “I’ve been doing this 22 years,” the officer replied. “So yeah, I do.”

    By then he’d apparently pissed off enough people in the system that they threw the book at him, relatively speaking. He was found guilty of nine criminal charges and sentenced to fines, community service, and probation.

    At my group probation orientation, the officer handed each of us a packet and explained that we are not allowed to travel, work, or visit outside New York City.

    “Wait, what?” I blurted out. “This is true even for nonviolent misdemeanors?”

    “Yes, for everyone. You have to get permission.”

    After the orientation, I went straight to my probation officer and requested permission to spend Christmas with my family in Massachusetts. I listened in disbelief as she denied my request—I’d worked with probation departments in several states, and I knew that regular family contact has been shown to reduce recidivism. My probation officer also refused to let me go home for Easter and birthdays.

    […]

    I tell my story because this is the side of the system we didn’t get to see where I grew up. In the wealthy suburbs of Massachusetts, our shared narrative told us that people who didn’t live where we lived, or have what we had, weren’t working as hard as we were. We avoided inner city streets because they were dangerous, and we relied on the police to keep people from those places out of our neighborhoods. Whatever they got, we figured they deserved.

    That’s the first article.

  160. Pteryxx says

    The second longread from the Atlantic this morning. (Warning for police brutality, graphic video linked, some insensitive discussion of mental illness, and heartbreaking reactions.) It also links to a wide variety of articles and essays with further discussion.

    The Killing of Kajieme Powell and How It Divides Americans

    A police officer might retort that law enforcement shouldn’t be obligated to take on any extra risk to their own lives in a dangerous situation wholly and needlessly created by a person menacing them. A citizen deliberately baiting police with a deadly weapon cannot expect restraint. Even a small knife can be deadly.

    In the abstract, I can’t disagree with those principles—and if questionable police killings were confined to such circumstances, there’d be less cause than now to complain about overzealous law enforcement. Yet watching this video, it seems certain in hindsight that the threat could’ve been stopped with force short of at least nine and as many as 12 gunshots; and again, if they’d kept more initial distance between themselves and a man they knew to have a knife before they even arrived, perhaps no deadly threat would’ve materialized. If they’d stood well back and engaged, perhaps Powell would’ve kept coming with a knife until stopped.

    But they didn’t even attempt that strategy. (As Elizabeth Brown notes, deadly interactions with the mentally ill happen a lot, and failure to even try deescalating is often a factor.) I suspect that Klein is right when he says that in this case, despite clear video evidence of what happened, “what the police believe to be the right thing and what the people they serve believe to be the right thing may be very different.”

    A blogger cited in the article:

    I know that American police face different risks than British ones, and that gun violence is higher… so let’s park the gun issue and look at the threat from knives on its own. In 2013 armed police were deployed in the UK about 12,000 times. They fired 3 shots and killed nobody. I don’t know how many of those incidents involved knives, but I suspect it was more than one. The St. Louis P.D. bested that in 15 seconds when they fired 9 bullets into Mr. Powell. American gun enthusiasts and police officers always say “you don’t shoot to wound, you shoot to neutralize the threat.” So do British police, and they successfully neutralize the threat with both fewer shots fired and fewer dead citizens. “But the British armed police are top marksmen!” is usually another reply.

    Well… that’s an argument for better firearms training of US officers instead of an excuse for their poor accuracy…

    The most disturbing aspect of this for me is that the police fired several bullets into Kajieme Powell’s body while he lay wounded on the ground, and yet they apparently wanted this video released as it was “exculpatory.” There exists a very deep chasm between what the Police view as justified and what, I think, most reasonable citizens would. In a democratic country where the rule of law exists in such a difference of opinion the difference must always be settled on the side of the people, who are sovereign. In the United States it seems to be settled far too frequently, to put it at its lowest, on the side of the Police.

    Another comment quoted in the article:

    I’ve seen police respond to erratic-behaviour calls of people with far bigger knives than this guy had. I’ve seen police respond to shoplifting calls. I’ve seen police respond to assault calls, to knife-fight-in-progress calls, to armed-and-presumed-dangerous calls… and I have not seen a response like this. There was no attempt to talk him down; there was no attempt to do anything other than bark orders for 10 seconds or so, then unload.

    To me, it looks like they went in with the assumption they’d be shooting this man down, and did so, 14 seconds after exiting their vehicle. They went in with a plan – if you can call it that – of immediate compliance, or death. And they went with death.

    And another:

    The fact that people handle school shooters with kid gloves because they “might” have mental illness but shoot a black person down within 30 seconds of encountering him, and people just call him a “knife wielding suspect” and didn’t harm anyone? That is disgusting.

    I want to highlight this again:

    The most disturbing aspect of this for me is that the police fired several bullets into Kajieme Powell’s body while he lay wounded on the ground, and yet they apparently wanted this video released as it was “exculpatory.” There exists a very deep chasm between what the Police view as justified and what, I think, most reasonable citizens would.

    If I understand correctly, whether a grand jury, say, charges a police officer when they kill a person they’re interacting with, hinges on whether the police officer’s response could be considered “reasonable”. And whether it’s described as such by the officers, policing professionals, and prosecutors giving evidence.

  161. Pteryxx says

    Breaking news – the black community leaders and councilmembers trying to deliver the petition (with 70,000 signatures) to remove Bob McCulloch from the Brown case, were just stopped by a line of police and police tape. They were prevented from entering the public, government building (which was just blocked off today, apparently, not while protests were going on in front of it yesterday). Zachary Roth reports the police said the building was closed. Then they finally let State Senator Jamilah Nasheed, but not the others, enter the building with the petition.

  162. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    This is just…they are really fucking confident that they can actively, blatantly, in broad daylight, violate people’s civil rights and get away with it. Land of the free in-fucking-deed.

  163. Pteryxx says

    There have got to be words for this and I’m just blanking. Like telling the judge there’d be a free-speech zone, so the judge didn’t grant the ACLU’s preliminary injunction, and then locking that zone off with fences and chains. And having an entire cordon, ten cops at least, with police tape, blocking off the courthouse or whatever JUST so they could harass this group of leaders for ten or twenty minutes and finally go Oh I guess the building’s open after all, lol and let the ONE senator through.

  164. zmidponk says

    Menyambal #144:

    Ow, that video of Kajieme Powell. http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/st-louis-police-release-video-calls-city-shooting

    I could understand the reaction of those officers if they couldn’t see the weapon very well and thought it was a gun, but this is obviously not the case, as they were telling Powell to drop the knife immediately before they opened fire, not to mention that the radio call sending them there told them he had two knives, not a gun (though it seems he actually had only one knife). The whole reason things like tasers and CS spray are issued to cops in the US is precisely so that they have alternatives to using guns in situations like this, but these particular cops are either ignorant of this, or simply didn’t care.

  165. Pteryxx says

    Third longread, which was the three articles at Shakesville (so far) on the killing of Kajieme Powell: (first) and (second) which I quoted above. The third: (here)

    Yesterday, Zerlina Maxwell linked to this story about a white man who was shot by police and survived. Note the difference in details between this incident and the killing of Kajieme Powell:
    —

    A possibly suicidal man waving what appeared to be a gun was wounded Wednesday in an officer-involved shooting near De Anza Cove, authorities reported.

    …Officers tried in vain to persuade the man to drop the weapon and surrender.

    …[Local photographer Ed Baier] was one of the first on the scene and one of the only ones to capture every minute of what would turn out to be a standoff that would last for more than an hour. …The standoff ended when an officer opened fire as the man raised the gun, according to police.

    “Like lightning … you see the lightning first, then the thunder. So I saw him go down immediately and then I heard the click the crack of the shot and then that was it,” said Baier.

    Medics took the suspect to a trauma center. Police say he is serious but stable condition.

    —

    One shot. After an hour of negotiating. Versus twelve shots from two officers after seventeen seconds.

    Michael Brown was shot six times. Jonathan Ferrell was shot ten times. Tyisha Miller was shot at 23 times, hit with at least 12 bullets, including four in her head.

    A few examples of many.

    Emphasis, at the very least, mine:

    Not only do we need to talk about why police are increasingly militarized and increasingly less likely to practice good deescalation techniques; not only do we need to talk about why police kill black people at higher rates; we also need to talk about why it is that when police shoot at black people, they seem to shoot more, to ensure no chance of survival.

  166. Pteryxx says

    *headdesk* …I’ll just leave this here.

    Thinkprogress – One Of The Two Officers Involved In Fatal Wal-Mart Shooting Is Back At Work

    The police were called by a customer in the store who reported someone wielding a gun. “When the police came … the BB gun was in a down position,” Wright said. “He was kinda using the BB gun as what it looked like was a crutch. He was just leaning on it. And at some point, he raised it up and he was shot and killed. At no point in time was he facing the officers. At no point in time was there any type of suggestive movements or anything like that.”

    Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine agreed to show Wright and Crawford’s family the video after some 100 individuals demonstrated outside DeWine’s office calling for release of the video, the Associated Press reported. He said he would not immediately release the video to the general public, pointing to the ongoing investigation.

    But on Thursday, the Associated Press reported that one of the two officers involved in the shooting has been allowed to return to work. The other office remains on administrative leave, and officials have not provided details about the role each of the two officers played in the shooting.

  167. Desert Son, OM says

    Rage after rage after rage after rage, waves on an ocean of sadness.

    Still learning,

    Robert

  168. Gen, Uppity Ingrate and Ilk says

    I can not tell you how upset I was after watching the video of Kajieme Powell’s shooting. It’s so clear that he was reacting to what happened to Mike Brown. He wasn’t a threat, he was just really, really upset and pacing up and down, shouting “Shoot me already”. It’s clear to me that he purposefully stole those energy drinks, put them on the ground and waited for the police to come to see if they would shoot him too, like they did Mike Brown.

    They fucking did. They shot him multiple times and he was dead.

    And then they handcuffed his corpse

    I’m beyond horrified. I mean, I don’t even have the fucking words.

  170. Pteryxx says

    Sorry, Gen.

    It’s clear to me that he purposefully stole those energy drinks, put them on the ground and waited for the police to come to see if they would shoot him too, like they did Mike Brown.

    For context, Kajieme died a few miles away from Ferguson. I’m guessing he likely was a local and may have been protesting, for all we know – with the police blockading and LRADing and teargassing everywhere, anyone within miles of the place probably knew what was going on if they didn’t outright get caught in it.

    For further context, when Mike Brown died, Wilson shot him in broad daylight in the middle of a street next to apartments, on a Saturday afternoon. Many, many people in that neighborhood saw his body lying in the street for four hours *next to their homes* while police fuddled about.

    Here’s a picture of the crowd *on Saturday afternoon, the day of the shooting*. (His body’s not visible in this image.)

    Image link

    [description – thirty or more people behind police tape on a grassy verge between apartments, with a dozen police at the tape and on the street in the foreground]

    (something to keep in mind for the damn fools in the children-at-a-protest thread, perhaps.)

    There have been mentions on Twitter of attempts to get professional counselors to these people to help them deal with the trauma.

    The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the news media – heck, *anyone* reporting on or even discussing Kajieme Powell’s death – are being disingenuous if they, and we, fail to mention the context in which Kajieme took a couple of snacks from a store and stood there waiting to be killed by the cops. Remember all those instances of looting on Florissant where the police refused to help or even view the videotapes later?

    Mike Brown’s mother Lesley McSpadden (I had to look that up, to my shame) said to the press very early on that young men here feel they have nothing left to live for. (Gif image link) from this (gifset) Other folks have said that too, including protesters direct to the camera.

    From all we know about the special damage of being betrayed by the people and institutions you thought could be trusted? The POLICE aren’t the ones exercising incredible restraint or humanity in Ferguson.

  171. Pteryxx says

    Forgot to transcribe the gifset – Lesley McSpadden, backed by a crowd of Ferguson folks on what may be that same neighborhood street, leaning forward at a reporter’s microphone as she speaks.

    “You took my son away from me! You know how hard it was for me to get him to stay in school and graduate?”

    “You know how many black men graduate? Not many!”

    “Because you bring them down to this type of level where they feel like I don’t got nothing to live for!”

    “The(y) gonna try to take me out anyway!”

    She wasn’t wrong…

  172. braj says

    The desperation of Kajieme Powell, and how little his life was valued, is unbearable. How sure he could be that there is one request of authority that would be honoured (and so proudly honoured it seems! 17 seconds of textbook what not to do), as he looks behind himself and moves to the side to make sure nobody else is hurt. It seems awfully similar to the desperation of a self-immolation protest; a suicide by cop, as if police have no agency, no choice, guaranteed dispensers of death and misery.

  174. opposablethumbs says

    I just have no words. I’m following these threads, as you all gather and relay the information, and it beggars belief and it just keeps coming.

    shit, I think Desert Son just said it.

  175. rq says

    Pteryxx
    When I get home, I’m going to link again to that song from G.A.G.E., where he uses those of Leslie’s words (and yes, I think they’re from the same day) as sound-bytes in the intro and outro of his song, “I Am Mike Brown”. I know Tony linked to it waaay at the beginning of all these threads, but it would be worth a re-listen. It brings me to tears every time, especially that bit about graduation – like, it’s easy to graduate, right? Just stay in school, do your homework, etc.
    Except it’s not, not for everyone – that was a huge, huge step for Mike Brown, just to do something so simple, and it got him nothing. NOTHING. NOTHING.
    Fuck Darren Wilson and his racist asshole buddies in the force, just fuck all of ’em.

  176. Pteryxx says

    When I hear McSpadden talk about graduation now, I keep thinking of Mike Brown getting his turn to wear one of the two robes the entire class had to share for his picture. (Source)

  177. says

    A police officer might retort that law enforcement shouldn’t be obligated to take on any extra risk to their own lives in a dangerous situation wholly and needlessly created by a person menacing them.

    I might retort that if you’re not willing to incur some risk in the pursuit of justice, what the fuck are you doing working as a cop?

    I’m inclined to think that being a cop is a psychologically harmful job. Cops end up fearful and paranoid, with lowered violence triggers than the average public. Maybe we should consider making police work a limited profession. I.e. automatic retirement after X number of years.

  180. Ichthyic says

    I’m inclined to think that being a cop is a psychologically harmful job.

    not helped by recruitment that self-selects for authoritarian personalities.

  183. says

    LykeX177

    “A police officer might retort that law enforcement shouldn’t be obligated to take on any extra risk to their own lives in a dangerous situation wholly and needlessly created by a person menacing them.”
    I might retort that if you’re not willing to incur some risk in the pursuit of justice, what the fuck are you doing working as a cop?

    Indeed, I would argue that if that isn’t an explicit part of a police officer’s duty (which it’s not anywhere in the States, AFAIK), it bloody well should be. Failure to attempt to deescalate a situation before resorting to violence should be a fireable offence, and remove any legal protections that the officer might otherwise have had regarding said violence.
    Tony!#178
    That’s pretty fucking racist, all right. On a whole lot of levels.

  184. Desert Son, OM says

    From an article at NBC:

    Police in Ferguson, Missouri, did not file an “incident report” on the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Michael Brown because they turned the case over to St. Louis County police almost immediately, the county prosecutor’s office tells NBC News.

    Critics and news media outlets have questioned why Ferguson police released an incident report from a robbery in which Brown was a suspect, as well as security video showing the stick-up, but not the report on the shooting of the unarmed 18-year-old a short time later by Officer Darren Wilson.

    The reason, according to the office of St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch, is that it doesn’t exist.

    Still learning,

    Robert

  185. Desert Son, OM says

    Tony! at #678 [178]:

    From the stats I could find it looks like 79% of the city population identifies as white according to the 2010 census notes listed in the Wikipedia entry, and Columbia is also home to the University of Missouri, which according to a 2012 Fall enrollment chart lists 78% of the undergraduate student body, and 72% of the faculty, as white.

    From the article you cited:

    managing editor Jim Robertson explained:

    “I admit I didn’t anticipate the reaction . . . Racist? Certainly not in intent.”

    Another day in White Privilege, U.S.A., where “Intent is Magic!”

    Still learning,

    Robert

  186. carlie says

    Reports are rolling in on Twitter that there was never an incident report filed on the Michael Brown shooting in the first place.

  187. Pteryxx says

    from the NBC article in Desert Son’s #184:

    The St. Louis County police department presumably did file an incident report, but any such documents will not be made public until a grand jury investigating the officer-involved shooting concludes its investigation, according to officials from the office who briefed NBC News on the case.

    The grand jury reviewing the facts in the case is impaneled until mid-September, but could continue to deliberate beyond its term, in which case their sole focus would be on the shooting of Brown. At the conclusion of its investigation, the grand jury will decide whether to indict Wilson in connection with the shooting.

    I wonder if Ferguson’s specifically using the grand jury to *conceal* any such report, or the lack of one, from the FBI. It’s certainly convenient that the grand jury’s closed to the public.

    re carlie #186:

    Reports are rolling in on Twitter that there was never an incident report filed on the Michael Brown shooting in the first place.

    from this Washington Post blog criticizing Ferguson police chief Jacksonfor not giving a damn ever:

    Perhaps one of the things Johnson might have insisted upon is the release of Ferguson Police Report #2014-12391 and St. Louis County Police Report #2014-43984. We know they exist because the officer who submitted the after-the-fact police report on the alleged convenience store theft by Brown (pictured above) wrote, “It is worth mentioning that this incident is related to another incident detailed” by those Ferguson and St. Louis County police reports. “In that incident,” he writes, “Brown was fatally wounded involving an officer of this department.”

    That those two documents have not been released more than a week after the shooting shows the level of contempt the Ferguson police department — and the St. Louis County police department for that matter — has for everyone demanding answers.

  188. Pteryxx says

    Colorlines: Organizers say St. Louis police harassing church’s school used as a ‘safe haven’

    The night before, on Tuesday, multiple organizers and journalists on the ground said that police showed up to the school while organizers were having an organizing meeting and pointed semi-automatic weapons at people inside. Elon James took to Instagram to explain:

    On a short Instagram video, James says: “They [the police] apparently consider having these prepared materials inciting the folks who are outside.”

    The prepared materials James is referring to are cartons of milk on the table behind him (which helps with soothe the effects of tear gas). He also tweeted about what was happening:

    Cops rolled up on St. Marks and pulled guns. Saying organizes were inciting folks by prepping them for cop attacks. #Ferguson
    — Elon James White (@elonjames) August 20, 2014

  189. says

    Here’s a nice post I found on Postcards From Space:

    Hey, White Americans. We Need to Talk.

    According to a Pew Research survey, only 37% of white Americans think the events in #Ferguson raise important issues about race.

    Okay, fellow white people. We need to talk.

    Let me tell you a story: I was an angry punk teenager. Not violent, but I did a shitton of trespassing, and I got into a lot of screaming matches with cops.

    I have never been arrested.

    I have never been violently attacked by police. Hell, I have never been seriously threatened by police.

    I am fully aware that I’ve survived to adulthood largely on the benefits of my race.

    When you are white in America, you get away with all sorts of shit. Have you read this account from a white dude who actively tried to get himself arrested? You should. It’s telling.

    So, if that’s your main frame of reference for dealing with law enforcement, it is really easy to assume that when someone else gets targeted by the police, they must have done something really bad. After all, you know the police aren’t that petty, right? They’re there to help: That’s what TV tells you, what your teachers told you, what your parents told you. “If you’re in trouble, find a police officer. They’ll help.” And, y’know, if you’re white, most of the time, that’s probably true.

    When you’re white in America, it is awfully easy to pretend that you don’t live in a country where the nonviolent physical presence of black people, especially black men, is considered sufficient threat to justify use of lethal force. It’s really easy to pretend that laws are enforced equally; that arrest rate has any demographic resemblance to actual crime rates; that the police are there to protect us from the bad guys.

    And, I mean, I get that. It’s a lot more comfortable to pretend that safety correlates to virtue than to confront the ugly truth that a system that benefits you very directly does so at the cost of other people’s lives; that what you were taught was the just reward for being a good person is, in fact, the privilege of your skin. That’s a big part of why we work so hard to retcon narratives about how the black people our police murder must have been dangerous, highlight every casual infraction like it’s a killing spree. We are so desperate to believe that the system that feeds us is just.

    It doesn’t feel good to acknowledge that stuff. It feels gross. A system we trusted—one we should be able to trust, that should work for the benefit and protection of everyone has made us accomplice to some deeply horrifying shit.

    But here’s the thing:

    This happened. This is happening. Not recognizing it; stonewalling and insulating ourselves in our little bubbles does not make it go away.

    And not acknowledging it, not having asked for it, does not make us any less complicit, or any less responsible for owning and fixing this. We are actively benefitting from a fucked, corrupt, murderous system. That is on us. As it should be.

    So educate yourself, get the tools, and start dismantling this fucker. You have the time: after all, no one’s shooting at your kids.

    Privilege is the bandwidth to speak up and dismantle because you’re not in fear for your life. And there is no conscionable excuse for failing to use it.

    (via Kieron Gillen)

  190. rq says

    ‘Morning!
    Remember that woman who got shot at the protests? Apparently it never happened. I wonder if there’s an incident report on that… interesting.

    More from the police: actual arrests double than those reported.

    Yes, let’s address those race relations, let this go beyond Ferguson.

    Here’s from The Atlantic, on self-segregation: why is it so hard for whites to understand Ferguson?

    Hey, look over there, it’s white-on-white murder, even though everyone knows black-on-black crime is the real problem.

  191. rq says

    Compiling police violence, apparently there’s no database of police shootings? Looking for information!

    Police brutality in Ferguson – teen gets punched while being arrested.

    Police brutality in New York – during protest in support of Ferguson.

    Senator Claire McCaskill, in Ferguson. (Encouraging people to shop? Really?)

    Via Fascinating Pictures. …

    I don’t like that there’s no obvious, mentioned, demonstrated incident report on Michael Brown. Almost like it never happened, ever, at all.

  192. Desert Son, OM says

    Pteryxx at #688 [188]:

    From Elon James White quoted in your post:

    Saying organizes were inciting folks by prepping them for cop attacks.

    Police to Ferguson: “We don’t even want you taking care of yourself at a basic level. Attempts to safeguard yourself even by basic means will be considered criminal. The desire to help others take care of themselves will be considered suspect.”

    “Then the face of Big Brother faded away again and instead the three slogans of the Party stood out in bold capitals:
    WAR IS PEACE
    FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
    IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH    ” –Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, 1948.

    Still learning,

    Robert

  193. Pteryxx says

    On how St Louis police view Kajieme Powell’s killing: NY Mag

    (warning because they really, really, really don’t give one shit)

    “I don’t think any of us can deny that the tension not only in St. Louis but around the county and the world because of the activities in Ferguson over the last 10 or 12 days certainly has led to us making sure that we got this right and answered as many questions as we could as quickly as we can,” said local police chief Sam Dotson after the video’s release.

    “It’s exculpatory for one thing,” said Jeff Roorda of the St. Louis Police Officers Association.

    At a news conference yesterday, Dotson described the Powell’s death as “suicide by cop,” based on witness accounts. “Every police officer that’s out here has a right to defend themselves,” he said. “Officer safety is the number one issue.”

    The full police report:

    the most extraordinary thing about the Kajieme police report is that the unharmed shooters are designated “victims” pic.twitter.com/3i50gmZtgr
    — Isaac Hepworth (@isaach) August 21, 2014

    Raw Story followed up: St. Louis cops release incriminating video of fatal police shooting, think they look good

    Why would the police tout a video, which not only presents the shooting as unnecessary but directly disproves certain facts as they had presented them? In other words, even if you watch the video and say these guys made the right choice, they still lied about the position of the gun and the distance between Powell and the officers.

    It would be one thing to argue about the justification but what about the veracity?

    I can’t help but think that the police are so out of touch with the communities they “serve,” are so sure of themselves and of their impunity, that they either didn’t care or didn’t notice that they were outing themselves as dishonest or, at the very least mistaken. I can’t help but think that had the victim been white, the police wouldn’t have seen the video as such exculpating. But really, had he man been white, he probably wouldn’t have become a victim in the first place.

    LykeX was saying at #177:

    I’m inclined to think that being a cop is a psychologically harmful job. Cops end up fearful and paranoid, with lowered violence triggers than the average public.

    I’m not sure the police describing that video as “exculpatory” and the two killers as “victims” can be explained merely by the concepts of being out-of-touch with the community, or even arrogant and sure of themselves. That police chief said they were releasing the video and police report because they thought, in the wake of Ferguson, that giving out information quickly was all that constituted “getting it right”. No matter how horrific the information content was. The police, apparently, honestly look at that video, that report, and that situation and don’t see any problem with it. What’s everyone so upset about? They released the information right away, didn’t they?

    There’s evidence that racism can cause people to think black children are 4.5 years older than they really are (source), think black people don’t feel as much pain (source), and even make people perceive harmless objects as guns when in a black person’s hand (source). Maybe the police officers trained and inclined to dehumanize black people for years have simply developed such warped perceptions of reality that they really believe anyone black and moving is still a threat. So much so that they bother to handcuff a black person’s corpse. And they expect that reasonable people will see things the same way.

  194. Desert Son, OM says

    Tony! at #689 [189]:

    Excellent find, thank you for that.

    Still learning,

    Robert

  195. Desert Son, OM says

    Pteryxx at 693 [193]:

    From the article you linked:

    “Officer safety is the number one issue.”

    Officer safety is the number one issue. Not community safety. Not citizen safety. Not suspect safety. Officer safety.

    Still learning,

    Robert

  196. jste says

    From Tony!’s link:

    According to a Pew Research survey, only 37% of white Americans think the events in #Ferguson raise important issues about race.

    Holy fucking hell, what is wrong with your countrymen? ONLY 1 THIRD of white americans can see the racial issues involved here? I hope the statistic on how many white americans can see the police state issues is higher, because holy shit…

  198. Pteryxx says

    Police in Georgia just released scary footage of a hapless police officer getting shot by a man he pulled over in a traffic stop. In 2013. (Rawstory)

    GEE I WONDER WHY THEY MIGHT BE RELEASING THAT FOOTAGE NOW.

  199. Pteryxx says

    via Wesley Lowery, NYT: Among Whites, Protests Stir a Range of Emotions and a Lot of Perplexity

    Possibly the most widely held sentiment among whites is the hope that it all simply goes away. “I feel for everyone involved,” said Shannon Shaw, a jeweler in Mehlville. But, she added, “I think the protesters just need to go home.”

    Still, the events of the last two weeks have left many whites perplexed, not only as to how this police shooting could ignite a neighborhood like a tinderbox, but that there was a tinderbox at all.

    “It was eye-opening to me,” said Jim McLaughlin, the former mayor of Pasadena Hills, a small, majority-black city just south of Ferguson. That some longtime black friends of his were so pessimistic about the justice system came as a surprise.

    “We interact together, we have a good time together, we integrate, but we never talk about these things,” he said. “I think the perspective of a lot of white people is not really thinking that these feelings are sitting out there. And maybe in the black community they’re not only thinking about them, they’re wondering why we’re not talking about them.”

  200. Pteryxx says

    Activity and pictures from Ferguson this afternoon, where things are much calmer.

    @AntonioFrench

    Large, peaceful group down on Canfield right now at the site of #MikeBrown’s death in #Ferguson. pic.twitter.com/AJoBv4Jl7G
    3:19 PM – 21 Aug 2014

    )twitter)

    pd_shutterspeed ‏@pd_shutterspeed

    anonymous group lays 60 plus yards of roses at #MichaelBrown #Ferguson memorial; community lights candles in memoriam pic.twitter.com/JI8xcUSPYV
    7:05 PM – 21 Aug 2014

    (twitter)

    @ryanjreilly

    A young boy plays with an officer’s flashlight and points at a helicopter #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/3Ux7Y46i4N
    6:54 PM – 21 Aug 2014

    (twitter)

    @ryanjreilly

    More interactions between officers and protestors tonight. This crowd is talking sports. #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/ytqPsyUP5t
    7:40 PM – 21 Aug 2014

    (twitter)

    @AntonioFrench

    Teacher tells me more than 160 children have attended this makeshift community school today. #TeachforFerguson pic.twitter.com/HztsQjpEHO
    12:24 PM – 21 Aug 2014

    (twitter)

  201. Pteryxx says

    from Thinkprogress:

    Woman Raises More Than $100,000 To Feed Ferguson’s School Children

    But in the midst of the violence and unrest came a glimmer of good news: a teacher from North Carolina has raised more than $100,000 for the St. Louis Area Foodbank to feed children in the area. The original goal was $80,000.

    The fund had topped $120,000 as of Wednesday morning, with donations from more than 4,000 supporters. It raised more than $30,000 in its first day. The teacher at the helm of the effort, Julianna Mendelsohn, wrote on a blog detailing the progress of the campaign, “We’ve blown past every fundraising goal set for this campaign, and the generosity keeps pouring in.”

    When the sun comes up

    Unrest in Ferguson caused class cancellations for three area school districts Monday and Tuesday. Students remain out of the classroom in the Ferguson-Florissant School District where Pace teaches until Aug. 25 at the earliest.

    “I showed up to school on Monday, I knew it was closed but I just kind of came out with hopes of finding a way to help, and people really couldn’t direct to me to anything besides cleanup efforts,” Pace said. “So I just came to the library and asked if I could get in touch with teachers and families from our school to bring them here, and they said absolutely.”

    Pace and a handful of volunteers stood outside the library Monday with signs that read “School Closed, Bring Your Students Here” which attracted about a dozen students to the library. By word of mouth from parents and others in the community, more than five times as many kids showed up the next day. “We are hoping to have twice as many tomorrow,” Pace added.

  202. Pteryxx says

    and a reflective essay that’s been making the rounds from Matt Zoller Seitz at Rogerebert.com.

    The cop on me asked for my driver’s license, looked at it, looked at me, and said, “Tell me what happened.” I told the cop what happened, exactly as I described it above, including the personal details about why I’d been agitated and drunk, which under the circumstances probably weren’t germane.

    When I finished he said, “Would you like to press charges?”

    “What for?” I asked.

    “Assault,” he said.

    “Why would I press assault charges against him?”

    “Because he hit you first.”

    I said, “Oh, no, he didn’t hit me first. He poked me in the chest.”

    “That’s assault,” my cop said. “He hit you first.”

    “I don’t think he actually meant to touch me, though,” I said, while a voice deep inside me said, Stupid white boy, he’s making it plain and you’re not getting it.

    “It doesn’t matter if he meant to touch you, he hit you first,” he said. He was talking to me warmly and patiently, as you might explain things to a child. Wisdom was being imparted.

    “You were in fear of your life,” he added.

    By now the adrenaline fog seemed to be lifting. I was seeing things in a more clinical way. The violence I had inflicted on this man was disproportionate to the “assault,” and the tone of this exchange with the cop felt conspiratorial.

    And then it dawned on me, Mr. Slow-on-the-Uptake, what was really happening: this officer was helping me Get My Story Straight.

    Understanding, at long last.

    […]

    We have to stop the cycle long enough to realize that what we are really shrugging off is racial inequality. This is not: “Well, if ya factor out race, it’s a class thing.” We all know in our hearts that that is, at best, only partly true. The full truth must include the acknowledgement that if you’re white, different rules apply.

    So much of the crosstalk, the shouting, the debate over Ferguson stems, I believe, from an inability to admit this fact of life, which was illustrated so plainly to me that night in front of the deli. I’ve never been profiled. I’ve never been stopped and frisked. I’ve never experienced anything of the sort because of the gift that my parents gave me, and that my son’s parents gave him: white skin. I’ve had encounters with police, mostly during my youth, in which I’d done something wrong and thought I was about to get a ticket or go to jail but somehow didn’t, because I managed to take back or apologize for whatever I’d said to a cop in petulance or frustration; these encounters, too, would have likely gone differently, perhaps ended differently, if I hadn’t been white.

    Again, I already knew this stuff. But after that night in front of the deli, I understood it.

  203. Pteryxx says

    Here’s the St Louis County incident report #2014-43984 released to the ACLU on Wednesday the 20th, only 11 days after Mike Brown’s death (and 6 days after the ACLU sued to demand its release… and 4 days after the supposed robbery incident report was released).

    Shaun King ‏@ShaunKing

    What they gave the ACLU not only shocked them, but legal analysts all over the country. This is it. 1 page. No info. pic.twitter.com/7OsT1oqTLv
    10:35 PM – 21 Aug 2014

    (twitter)

    Zerlina Maxwell ‏@ZerlinaMaxwell

    THE INCIDENT REPORT IS EMPTY. #MikeBrown they didn’t even care.
    10:35 PM – 21 Aug 2014

    (twitter)

    Trymaine Lee at MSNBC:

    Late Wednesday night, the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri released what it described as a report turned over to it by the police department following a lawsuit it filed to obtain the records. The report is scant on details typically found on an incident report involving a homicide. It lists little more than the date, time and location of the incident. But more curious are the timestamps on the document.

    According to information on the report a supervisor had not reviewed the document until Aug. 19, 10 days after the fatal shooting. And final approval wasn’t given until Aug. 20.

    The ACLU released the report via Twitter on Friday night.
    —

    In response to our lawsuit for #MikeBrown shooting report, STL County Police Dept released: http://t.co/Zu07m9rkJz pic.twitter.com/VYupLYTxTh
    — ACLU of Missouri (@aclu_mo) August 20, 2014

    —
    The prosecutors office says no report, narrative, or details from the investigation will be released to the public while there is a grand jury empaneled to review the incident.

  204. Pteryxx says

    NB: via Daily Kos, the line Nature: Homicide would refer to any incident of death of one person at the hands of another, and doesn’t imply any charge.

  205. Pteryxx says

    From the National Bar Association on the 18th: Press release

    WASHINGTON, DC — Earlier today, the National Bar Association filed a lawsuit against the City of Ferguson, MO and the Ferguson Police Department seeking any and all incident reports, investigative reports, notes and memorandums prepared by Ferguson Police officers, in-dash camera video, photographs, cellphone video and recordings in connection with the shooting death of Michael Brown.

    The National Bar Association also sent a Preservation of Evidence Notice to both entities requesting that they preserve the police officers’ raw notes of all statements, observations, and data collected from the scene of the incident, specifically including the officer involved and all responding officers, officer detail logs from the crime scene, and video & photographic evidence related to the August 9, 2014, fatal shooting of Michael Brown and subsequent arrests of protestors in the City of Ferguson.

    […]

    In wake of the recent events taking place in Ferguson and across the country, the National Bar Association has developed a task force that will evaluate complaints of police misconduct and/or police brutality nationwide, an online petition has been created calling for an independent investigation for the death of Micheal Brown Jr. and an open book request has been filed in 25 cities and states for information on police actions.

  207. says

    I was surprised to find that the incident report which was released was only 1 page long. I thought that surely a homicide would warrant more, but that was my gut, bc I really didn’t know anything about incident reports. I did a little digging, and now I’m wondering if it’s not uncommon for an incident report-even one involving homicide-to only be one page.
    For example, here is a murder/homicide report for the city of Madison. It might look like it’s more than 1 page, but the info is spread out. Were it to be printed, I doubt it would be more than a page.

    This incident report is barely a paragraph long.

    This incident report about the homicide of Kevin Bearden is only a page long

    So perhaps incident reports aren’t typically long, but they are meant to convey certain facts-details of the event. The incident report for the Michael Brown homicide doesn’t contain information from Wilson about what happened (contrast that with the information documented about the homicide of Bearden above). That’s probably down to the fact that Officer Wilson didn’t file an incident report, which is itself problematic. I can’t believe the police thought releasing this tripe was acceptable.
    The eyes of the country (and other parts of the world) are upon the St. Louis County PD and they keep obfuscating and lying. They really don’t care about transparency and honesty, and not only do they think they’ll get away with it, they probably will. ::Sigh::

  208. says

    From the Iceland link @ rq’s #206:

    The Icelandic police department said officers involved will go through grief counseling. And the police department has already apologized to the family of the man who died — though not necessarily because they did anything wrong.

    “I think it’s respectful,” Arnorsdottir says, “because no one wants to take another person’s life. “

  209. says

    The cops in Ferguson want to shoot people. You don’t point a gun at someone unless you intend to use it. It’s an intimidation tactic, they want to shoot people.

    That should not happen. Our police officers shouldn’t be so dead set on firing a weapon at people.

  210. dianne says

    Update, August 20, 2014: We checked back in with the Icelandic Police to get an update on this shooting in December. The superintendent says the police have not used firearms since.

    From Tony and RQ’s link to the situation in Iceland: “Update, August 20, 2014: We checked back in with the Icelandic Police to get an update on this shooting in December. The superintendent says the police have not used firearms since.” What the hell is wrong with police in the US that they can’t go through a single day without shooting someone? Iceland is a lot smaller than the US but it isn’t smaller than Ferguson.

  213. says

    The notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg strikes again!
    Justice Ginsburg: America Has A ‘Real Racial Problem’

    The Supreme Court was “once a leader in the world” in combating racial discrimination, according to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “What’s amazing,” she added, “is how things have changed.”
    Ginsburg, who was one of America’s top civil rights attorneys before President Carter appointed her to the federal bench in 1980, spoke at length with the National Law Journal‘s Marcia Coyle in an interview that was published Friday. In that interview, she lays out just how much the Court’s outlook on race has changed since she was arguing women’s equality cases before it in the 1970s.
    In 1971, for example, President Nixon had begun to reshape the Supreme Court. As a presidential candidate and, later, as president, Nixon complained that the Supreme Court’s school desegregation decisions had intruded too far on local control of public schools. Yet, as Justice Ginsburg points out, Nixon’s hand-picked Chief Justice, Warren Burger, authored a unanimous Supreme Court decision recognizing what are known as “disparate impact” suits, which root out discrimination in employers with policies that disproportionately impact minorities.
    Burger’s resolution of this case “was a very influential decision and it was picked up in England,” according to Ginsburg.
    The Court’s present majority, by contrast, seems much more interested in using its power to thwart racial justice. In 2013, for example, the Supreme Court struck down a key prong of the Voting Rights Act, effectively ending a regime that required states with a history of racial voter discrimination to “preclear” new voting laws with officials in Washington before those laws went into effect. Writing for the Court, Chief Justice John Roberts justified this decision because he claimed that racism is no longer a big enough problem in the states covered by the Act, and thus the Voting Rights Act’s longstanding framework was outdated. Permitting the federal government to apply such a check against racially discriminatory voting laws was an “extraordinary departure from the traditional course of relations between the States and the Federal Government,” and it could no longer be allowed, according to Roberts, because “things have changed dramatically” in states with a long history of racism.
    Two hours after Roberts claimed that racism was too minor a problem to justify leaving America’s most important voting rights law intact, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced that Roberts’ decision would allow a gerrymandered map and a recently enacted voter ID to go into effect. Federal courts had previously blocked both the map and the voting restriction because of their negative impact on minority voters. Alabama made a similar announcement about its voter ID law the same day Roberts handed down his decision. Less than two months later, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory (R) signed a comprehensive voter suppression law adopting many provisions that reduced minority turnout in other states.
    Justice Ginsburg, for her part, warned that tossing out a key prong of the Voting Rights Act “when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
    In what may become the most controversial part of her interview with Coyle, Ginsburg also suggests that public acceptance of gay Americans is eclipsing our ability to relate to each other across racial lines. “Once [gay] people began to say who they were,” Ginsburg noted, “you found that it was your next-door neighbor or it could be your child, and we found people we admired.” By contrast, according to Ginsburg, “[t]hat understanding still doesn’t exist with race; you still have separation of neighborhoods, where the races are not mixed. It’s the familiarity with people who are gay that still doesn’t exist for race and will remain that way for a long time as long as where we live remains divided.”

    I think there is truth to what she says about the acceptance of gay people. That has become a dominant civil rights struggle in America, and in many places-especially the media-the discussion of equality for gays and lesbians gets infinitely more attention than civil rights for African Americans (not to mention the virtually non existent media attention paid to civil rights for Indians or Hispanic Americans). I wonder if this has something to do with the perception by many that racism is over (and fuck ME, where did that perception *come* from).
    Given the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and the view held by SCOTUS about racism, I wonder how things will be viewed in 30 years with regard to the rights of gays and lesbians. Will we see our rights turned back because of a perception that homophobia is over?

  215. opposablethumbs says

    I wonder if this has something to do with the perception by many that racism is over (and fuck ME, where did that perception *come* from).

    Very likely, yes – a lot of us were/are much too comfortable with the illusion that this is “something we can put behind us now, and isn’t that nice”. And also perhaps to do with literal visibility: “Once [gay] people began to say who they were,” Ginsburg noted, “you found that it was your next-door neighbor or it could be your child, and we found people we admired.”
    At least some people must have been confronted by the fact that somebody they already liked/admired/knew/were related to was gay, and they just hadn’t known it before; in contrast it’s rare to find out that someone you already know belongs to an ethnic group you didn’t know they belonged to, precisely because we tend to go by visual markers for race anyway. So people don’t get suddenly confronted by their own prejudices in the same way, and forced to face them and hopefully examine them?

  216. Desert Son, OM says

    From an article at Huffington Post:

    92.7%

    The percentage of total 2013 arrests in Ferguson that involved African-Americans, also according to the attorney general’s report. Of 521 arrests made by the Ferguson Police Department in 2013, 483 involved black suspects. Only 6.9 percent involved white suspects.

    Many additional statistics in the article worth examining.

    Something else. This is the page for Google News that I get right now when I load the url. Ferguson news was at the top for a number of days, but gradually the news of journalist Foley’s execution took over that space, and now the current top story is about Russian aid into Ukraine and Russian artillery. You have to scroll down to find Ferguson news.

    ****

    Tony! at #713 [213]:

    Given the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and the view held by SCOTUS about racism, I wonder how things will be viewed in 30 years with regard to the rights of gays and lesbians. Will we see our rights turned back because of a perception that homophobia is over?

    I wish that wasn’t something to worry about, but as I learn more and more about my privilege, naiveté, and the recursive insularity of broad socio-cultural privilege reinforcement, I think you ask a really important question. I’m grateful you asked, because it not only highlights the history of how these things have often unfolded in the U.S. (and not just in recent decades), but reminds me (and I hope reminds others) that we have to remain alert.

    Your recent posts, and rq’s recent ones, and Pteryxx’s recent ones have been highlighting, among other things, the memory-hole problem that features so prominently in “white surprise” that there’s racism. It seems to me that it’s not just that there’s a memory hole, it’s that the memory hole itself is necessary in order to reinforce and maintain privilege. In order to think that racism against Blacks is ended because the Civil Rights Act passed, or Blacks appear as characters in television and film programs, or a Black man was elected President of the United States, requires a kind of compartmentalization: “This problem space looks like this shape. Along comes a problem-solver peg in this shape. Problem-solver peg goes in this problem space. Problem solved, no further attention required!”

    And even as I type I’m wondering how much of what I’m expressing reflects the blindness I have in my own privilege.

    Still learning,

    Robert

  217. says

    Desert Son:

    I’m grateful you asked, because it not only highlights the history of how these things have often unfolded in the U.S. (and not just in recent decades), but reminds me (and I hope reminds others) that we have to remain alert.

    Another example is how much womens’ rights have been turned back. One would almost think we don’t live in a country with legalized abortion.

  218. says

    OK police officer threatened to arrest women if they didn’t perform sexual favors for him. The women were all black.

    Daniel Holtzclaw, a three-year veteran of the Oklahoma City Police Department, was arrested Thursday afternoon outside Gold’s Gym on charges of rape, forcible oral sodomy, sexual battery, and indecent exposure and jailed on $5 million bond, reported The Oklahoman.

    Investigators said Holtzclaw stopped women while on patrol and threatened to arrest them unless they exposed themselves, allowed him to fondle them, or had sex with him.

    Police Chief Bill Citty said the case angered and disturbed him, and he praised detectives for their work on the case.

    “Trust is something that we are constantly having to work on,” Citty said. “When something like this happens, I have to hope that most of the community realizes that our officers, 99.9 percent of them, are trustworthy, and when something like this happens, our officers take this very personally.”

    Six women have already given statements to police in the case, and another woman is scheduled to provide a statement.

    Citty said all of the victims were black women between the ages of 34 and 58, and all of the assaults took place between February and June during Holtzclaw’s 4 p.m.-to-2 a.m. shift patrolling the northeastern portion of the city.

    Investigators believe there are additional victims

  219. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    I think it has a lot to do with explicitly racist and sexist laws being off the books. You have to actually be paying attention to see racism and sexism now. Then you get oblivious, privileged shitheads who can’t wrap their brains around the idea that their perspective isn’t everyone’s perspective and voila. Post-racial, post-sexist society.

    I think opposablethumbs is on to something too. Nobody is going to suddenly discover that their best friend or respected co-worker, etc. is black or cis-female and thus be forced to reevaluate.

  220. dianne says

    I’m sure this has been linked to before, but I just saw it so…White people ‘perplexed’ by Ferguson.

    This makes me want to shake white people until their brains start working. It’s not perplexing that people get angry that a young man was shot for jaywalking. It’s utterly simple and obvious if you take 2 seconds to look at it.

  221. Desert Son, OM says

    Tony! at #717 [217]

    Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that, too, in recent contexts.

    From your link at #718 [218]:

    I have to hope that most of the community realizes that our officers, 99.9 percent of them, are trustworthy

    This is no longer viable. It just isn’t, if it ever was. You can’t build trust on “hope of realization,” it has to be built on demonstrable action and behavior. The other part that is fiction is the “bad apple/barrel” trope. With evidence arriving every day throughout this country’s history, it’s not just ridiculous to categorize it as an apple/barrel problem, it’s harmful.

    And the war on women continues, at the intersection with racism.

    Still learning,

    Robert

  222. dianne says

    I have to hope that most of the community realizes that our officers, 99.9 percent of them, are trustworthy

    Um…that implies that they have a police force of at least 1000 members.

  223. Desert Son, OM says

    dianne at #220:

    Coming to Pharyngula starting back in 2006 as a lurker was the start of a lot of reciprocating brain kinetics for me. The process continues.

    Still learning,

    Robert

  225. rq says

    So I read on twitter but can’t seem to find confirmation that the GoFundMe campaign for Darren Wilson has actually collected more money than the one for Michael Brown. :( Jenny Trout was asking @gofundme why they were even allowing Darren Wilson’s supporters into the system, but I guess it comes down to money (they get 5% of the final amount, I think). That’s just depressing. Here’s the link to the MB memorial fund.

    Talk about putting your foot in it – police in Alabama assault man recording anti-police rally. Way to prove the point.

    There’s an intersection between policing and mental illness – and cops don’t know how to deal with it appropriately.

    So, Canadians, we’re so much better, right? Haha, no. Thanks, Harper.

  227. says

    What black parents tell their sons about the police:

    I needed advice on how to do this, so I reached out to a small group of people. For black parents, I asked: What rules, warnings, survival tactics are you giving your children as you raise them? For black youth: What have you been taught? What did you learn on your own? And for everyone: What would you have told Michael Brown before he left the house that afternoon?
    Angela Jackson-Browne, 46, Indianapolis, In.

    I have raised a white stepson, who is 26, and my own black son, who is 24. My conversations with them concerning the police are different depending on the circumstances they are entering into.

    When they are together, I have taught my white stepson that he will be treated for all practical purposes the same as his black stepbrother. He gets that his white privilege is null and void when he is hanging with the “brothers.” I have also taught my white stepson that when he is alone or with white friends he will be treated with a certain level of privilege that his black stepbrother will never know, and he has seen this happen time and time again. Ironically, he is the one who likes to sag his pants, yet he has never been harassed by the police even in situations where he probably should have been.

    My black son—I have always taught him to treat the police the same way he would a Klansman, because in parts of the south where he grew up, they were often the same. He is taught to interact with them as little as possible. Get stopped for a traffic violation: Use your Sunday school manners. Keep your hands where they can be seen, and above all else, do not argue. My daddy passed on that lesson to me, and sadly, if I have grandchildren, it seems they too will have to get this same, dirty lesson.

    Michele Sims-Burton, “fifties,” Alexandria, Va.

    I have a 24-year-old son. I have given him the talk. He has been with me when the police stopped me, primarily because the police recklessly eyeballed my son, and didn’t see me—the little old lady—driving the car. So he knows the drill. Ask the police before you reach for your license. Ask the police for permission to get your insurance card and registration out the glove box. Do not answer any questions. Just do as you are told.

    Once my son and I were getting out the car at the shopping mall, the police approached him and asked him: “Did you just leave the mall?” I intervened. I instructed my son to “never, ever answer a question from the police.” Ask the police: “Am I free to go?” Do not answer any questions. Be polite. Be cordial. But never answer any questions. Keep asking: “Am I free to go?” “Am I under arrest?” “What are the charges?” “May I make a phone call?” However, do not move suddenly. Do not get smart-alecky. Do not run. If the police start swinging, drop to the ground, protect your head and vital organs by curling up in a ball on your knees.

    I’ve given my son this talk. And it terrifies me that in 2014, I text and call my son throughout the day not because I miss him so much, but because I am checking on his safety in this racist, militaristic society.

    […]
    Junius Hughes, 48, New Haven, Conn.

    I got the talk when I was about thirteen, in the late ’70s, when I moved from Brooklyn to Virginia. I had a pretty guarded life in Brooklyn, but Virginia was immediately different: blacks only interacted with blacks, and whites only interacted with whites. It made me hate the South.

    I gave your brother the same talk my father gave me: be respectful, but don’t be an Uncle Tom. Never give them a reason. Your blackness is already reason enough—don’t give them another. The moment you resist that authority, it gets out of hand.

    Young black males—we have a lot of braggadocio. We want to look cool, but we don’t always act right. That’s what the black male has to fight against, that kind of brutality against ourselves, and that’s the problem. That’s all that cops see.

    The playing field between white cops and black males will never be equal. There’s an inherent tension. You already fit a profile, and they’re coming to you with that understanding. The white American male will always be on a higher pedestal than you. A cop has a badge, a license to shoot, and a gun, and, if he’s worried about his safety, he’s gonna make sure that if anyone goes home that night, it’ll be him.

  228. says

    rq:

    So I read on twitter but can’t seem to find confirmation that the GoFundMe campaign for Darren Wilson has actually collected more money than the one for Michael Brown.

    The asshole doesn’t need anyone giving him money. He’s likely to get off anyway. The system rarely seems to punish white cops for killing black people.

  229. rq says

    Tony
    Ah, but Justice!
    BTW, you should put up your link about the non-broken eye socket from CNN. I don’t want to steal all your good stuff.

  233. yazikus says

    Um…that implies that they have a police force of at least 1000 members.

    dianne, I thought the same thing. So if your average town force is like 50 members, and this guy is one of them, then you are working with at least 2%, not .01%.

  234. says

    Get a load of this bullshit:

    The grand jury tasked with weighing criminal charges against the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown will have to make sense of a muddled and conflicting series of narratives over the next several weeks.

    Accounts of the deadly police shooting, which has rocked the St. Louis suburb since Aug. 9 and led to nearly two weeks of protests and clashes between police and demonstrators, have varied wildly between police, friends of Brown and residents of the Canfield Green Apartments where the shooting took place.

    Witnesses differ at almost every crucial turn of the story, raising several questions for the jury to answer. Did Brown have his hands up? Was Officer Darren Wilson the aggressor, or did Brown attack him in his car? Was Brown running away when Wilson opened fire?

    A summary of some of the key witness descriptions can be found below:
    […]

    Josie

    A woman who would only give her first name described Wilson’s version of events to a local radio station this week, claiming Brown not only attacked Wilson first but rushed him headlong after the initial shot was fired.

    A law enforcement source has told CNN the woman’s account matches the description Wilson has given to investigators.

    In the interview, Josie said Brown and Johnson were walking in the middle of the street when Wilson asked them to move to the sidewalk.

    After a brief argument, Wilson received a call about the convenience store robbery and noticed Brown matched the description of the suspect and was carrying a box of cigars in his hand, Josie said.

    Wilson pulled alongside the two men again, according to Josie, who said Brown then pounced on the officer.

    “Michael just bum-rushes him, just shoves him back into his car, punches him in the face,” she said.

    The two men struggled for Wilson’s service weapon, which went off once inside the car, she said.

    Brown and Johnson fled, she said, and after another verbal exchange at a distance of about 35 feet, Brown charged at Wilson.

    “All of a sudden he just started to bum-rush him; he started to run at him full speed,” she said in the interview. “He just kept coming; it was unbelievable.”

    Wilson then opened fire a second time, she said, killing Brown.

    http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-ferguson-witness-accounts-20140821-story.html

    WTF LA Times? This last ‘witness’…where did she come from? All the other people listed were actually *there* in the neighborhood. This woman is describing Darren Wilson’s version of events, yet there is no indication that she was even present to *be* a witness!

  239. The Mellow Monkey: Singular They says

    A woman who would only give her first name described Wilson’s version of events to a local radio station this week, claiming Brown not only attacked Wilson first but rushed him headlong after the initial shot was fired.
    A law enforcement source has told CNN the woman’s account matches the description Wilson has given to investigators.

    Yes, she does describe Wilson’s version of events…she describes what Wilson’s wife told her. This is stated clearly in the interview.

    SO IT’S NO FUCKING SURPRISE HER ACCOUNT MATCHES WILSON’S

    Jesus fucking Christ. She is literally just repeating his story. That is all she’s doing and she states she’s repeating a secondhand account. That doesn’t make her a goddamn witness of anything other than a conversation she had with Wilson’s wife.

  240. says

    Tony!

    I wonder if this has something to do with the perception by many that racism is over (and fuck ME, where did that perception *come* from).

    Seven of Mine

    I think it has a lot to do with explicitly racist and sexist laws being off the books. You have to actually be paying attention to see racism and sexism now.

    I’m pretty sure this is correct. It’s a great deal like ‘equity feminism’, although I’m unaware of anyone who’s formally defined it the way Christina Hoff Summers did. Basically, white people see that de jure equality for nonwhites has been achieved (it hasn’t, but most of the really blatantly racist laws have been either taken off the books or overturned by later legislation, and there’ve been a few half-assed stabs at actual anti-racist laws, like Affirmative Action and the VRA, CRA, and the like, and most white people can’t tell the difference), and thus the problem of racism is solved, now it’s all about bootstrappiness, and why don’t all those < ethnic slurs > get a job and stop whining.

  241. Ichthyic says

    I wonder if this has something to do with the perception by many that racism is over (and fuck ME, where did that perception *come* from).

    I can tell you EXACTLY where it comes from. It was a mistake in the direction we took after the civil rights movement to educate that generation about why racism was bad.

    It took the “colorblind” approach (white same as black same as purple). I remember this stuff, in detail, being taught to me when i was in elementary school.

    The problem with this is it IGNORES who the people are who are black, what their history is. it disconnects them from their generations of suffering, and presumes to wipe the slate clean in a flash.

    This was well intended, but ignorant. Of course, it was also largely an educational directive coming from whites, even though they thought it was “progressive” at the time.

    what that resulted in, is that a lot of people in my generation, when they got to be adults, never saw a need for things like affirmative action, because, hey, we’re all the same on the inside, right?

    this, combined with white society fleeing to the suburbs and isolating themselves from issues of racism, lead to them really believing racism had just magically fucking disappeared.

    This is what happened. I’m 100% sure of it.

  242. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    This is what happened. I’m 100% sure of it.

    I think you nailed it.

  244. Desert Son, OM says

    Third in agreement with Ichthyic at #741 [241].

    I remember this stuff, in detail, being taught to me when i was in elementary school.

    I do, too, and from family members, and at Sunday school.

    Still learning,

    Robert

  246. Ichthyic says

    yup, I especially remember the “purple” line.

    in fact, purple became everyone’s favorite color for a while. I recall both my brother and I gaining a fondness for it, right around the same time…

    ironically (or maybe not!) it was actually watching the movie “The Color Purple” way back in 1982 that finally started opening my eyes to what I’d been taught, and why it was horribly incomplete.

  249. Ichthyic says

    oh no, not really, that just scratched the surface. I wouldn’t say I was fully aware of what “white privilege” really meant, REALLY, until I was at least 25 and in graduate school! So basically, it took 10 years of exposure to reality, being challenged on my education and preconceptions, before the lesson finally sunk in. It took books, news, friends, enemies…. it took a LOT to break that conditioning.

    ..which. btw, was also the time I finally went full atheist from agnostic, probably not coincidentally.

  250. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I realized I should expand why I think Ichthyic nailed it.
    As he said, everyone was educated to believe that there was equal opportunity. But there was/is still lingering institutional racism. And what really got lost in all the equal opportunity talk, is equal results as the target at the end of the day. People need more than just to be able to present their credentials, they need those credentials to be taken seriously, and once on the job, they need to be evaluated the same way everybody else is. But, if your bosses still have residual racism/sexism, you have to perform better than any white male. Not that it isn’t hard to do, but it is hard to be recognized as doing it. And seeing a few very capable blacks and women succeed made them feel racism/sexism is over. The playing field is equal. *snicker*
    What they don’t see is problems like police forces. The one where I live is very diverse, and I know because I often go by the police station at shift change. While slightly heavy on the white males, there are blacks, women, latinos, and I suspect some LGBT folks which I can’t identify while driving past at the speed limit *snicker* on my way to work. I do make sure I have all my papers ready, and the city sticker displayed properly. But I do notice a lot of pull-overs appear to be DWB (driving while black/brown). In this area, those driving very carefully without being elderly (who get a pass), often are driving without either papers for their car or themselves. It is also used for the gang-bangers who are so stupid they leave the roach on the dashboard when pulled over. And the cops support each other, so often before the incident is written up, three cars are on the scene. There was incident involving an aggressive dog (and it is aggressive), and three cops, one of which was animal control, were there attempting to talk to the dogs owner.
    I must say I have been pulled over by a city motorcycle cop, who thought I was going too fast through a congested residential street. I have a small and nimble car, and 20/20 alert vision, so I knew nobody was being endangered. As I mentioned, I had all my papers available, so I was given a warning. Being and old male with white/male privilege, and enough money to have their papers like insurance in order (now which one is current?), resulted in that warning.
    I could go on, but enough for now.

  251. Saad says

    I also used to think getting rid of racism would be simple passive process. Just don’t talk about it and things will automatically start fresh anew. Of course, that doesn’t take into account the fact that each generation has links to the previous one (on both sides – the oppressors and the oppressed). Bigoted parents full of hate will at least try to impart that on their children. Disadvantaged, poor people’s children will carry certain burdens with them growing up. It simply can’t be an automatic fresh start across the board. It’s not like all the people are dropping dead at the same time and a new generation springs forth with no memory of what happened before them racism-wise.

    It has to be an active process. It requires enlightenment. It requires recognition that the actions of our ancestors were wrong and, more importantly, just why they were wrong.

  253. rq says

    Saad
    Like women’s rights, like marriage equality, like everything else – the moment we become complacent, and figure things are on the mend so no more attention must be paid, we actually slide backwards into chaos. I have learned this, too.

    +++

    Struggle against white supremacy. There’s two worlds out there, and we’ve been ignoring one of htem for far too long.

  254. Ichthyic says

    …yeah, I’d have to say that it was the anti-affirmative action campaigns that gained headway in CA in the late 80s/early 90s that was the final trigger for me to dump what I had been taught. Looking at WHY people were against affirmative action programs got me to see the reality as to why they were there to begin with.

    by 1992, it was clear to me finally what the fuck was going on, and that affirmative action programs as designed hardly went far enough, but getting rid of them was not only worse, but like you were intentionally forgetting entire generations of people and that segregation was still institutionalized in the US.

    To this day, I doubt any person I ever argued with who was in favor of getting rid of affirmative action programs ever changed their minds. the conditioning we got was THAT strong.

  255. Ichthyic says

    It has to be an active process. It requires enlightenment. It requires recognition that the actions of our ancestors were wrong and, more importantly, just why they were wrong.

    yup. It’s 150 years past time that the US had this discussion.

    get the fuck on with it already! The problems could be solved, but they at least have to be fucking ACKNOWLEDGED to begin with.

  256. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    I don’t have any memory of being taught colorblindness but that’s probably because I grew up in those extremely white suburbs. If memory serves, I think I attended school with a total of 2 black kids and I went to pretty good sized schools: 225-ish kids in my graduating class for example.

    Fun fact, only slightly off topic: the mascot of the high school I attended my freshman year used to be called The Chinks. They’d actually have a male and female student dressed in traditional Chinese clothes at sporting events etc. In the mid seventies the school made national news over being pressed by Chinese American groups to change it. The students voted the motion down at the time but they eventually changed it to The Dragons in 1980. You could still buy Pekin Chinks gear at certain places years later. Just an example of how insulated these white suburbs are and how easy it is to be utterly oblivious to racism.

  257. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    Oh, also, the local roller rink was called The Chink Rink until the mid 80s when it became The 98 Skate since it was on Rt. 98. Talk about yer privilege blindness.

  258. Saad says

    And I get fed up with the “that was then, slavery is over, schools are desegregated, racism is out of the laws” answer.

    Yes, we edited some documents. Yes, we let classrooms have varying melanin levels. But little actually got fixed. It merely got swept under the carpet. And now if someone tries to address the actual issues, they get slammed with pulling the race card accusation. Just because it is possible to “pull the race card” doesn’t mean anyone talking about race is doing it! Pisses me off. That’s just as much of a conversation stopper as some of the shit we get from organized religion.

  259. anteprepro says

    Yay the media continues to be depressing as fucking shit on this issue. Be warned: auto playing videos.

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/22/ferguson-calm-officer-support/14439979/

    The Darren Wilson “Get Away With Murder” National Racism Fund reached 235 thousand in four days.

    Michael Brown’s is still at just over 175k, over nine days.

    And of course: http://www.ksdk.com/story/news/local/2014/08/21/jay-nixon-bob-mcculloch/14411027/

    McCulloch, the blatantly biased person who will be in charge of this case, will be in charge of this case.

    There is no justice in this country. It needs to be burned to the fucking ground. Fuck.

  260. rq says

    Saad
    I think that’s the old ‘well, it’s illegal!’ argument. Never holds much water. Because it’s one thing to have written laws, and it’s another to see them enforced in practice. I have learned that those are two very, very different things.

  261. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Sometimes working for a small company, like I do, timing is everything. The last time we interviewed to hire somebody at my level, we talked to about 5 people including one black. Everybody had the basic credentials, and then some. So the decision came down to who do we best get along with, and who is likely to stay here for a while. The black candidate we talked to, while we could get along with, was from a *big pharma* in the area, and really had credentials that indicated he should have my boss’s boss job. At the time, that job wasn’t open, and we figured he wouldn’t stay. A year later after the company was sold, it was a different story, and the black candidate may have been hired to replace my boss’s boss who resigned at that time. (My boss was eventually promoted after the change ownership). The person we hired was moving back to the area to be close to their parents, and didn’t enjoy/could give up management. (Although I suspect he knows he will be appointed my boss eventually).

  262. anteprepro says

    The distribution of funds is interesting: 6000 donors, 175 thousand.

    Michael Brown fund, there is one 10K donor, 3 2k donors, and 1 1000 dollar donor, and 15 500 dollar donors.

    The Authoritarian Lynch Mob, fund? 5000 donors, 225 thousand earned.
    1 5K donor, a 2.5 K donor, 10 thousand dollar donors, and like 23 or 24 500 dollar donors,

    Though there is one really impressive donor to Michael’s that doubled the value of the top wingnut police brutality fanboy, you see the obvious trend: the pro-killer cop brigade has a LOT more people who can throw 500 or a thousand dollars at their cause.

  264. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Would it be unfair to factor in the $150,000 raised for food for the kids in the community?

    I don’t think so. But only my opinion….

  265. Desert Son, OM says

    Tony! at #747 [247]:

    Am almost certainly still in the process of shaking it off.

    Trigger Warning for incidents of racism and other oppressions and aggressions:

    Some factors that have been helpful and influential for me:

    1) Growing up on the U.S./Mexico border, in a city and region with significant non-white population, and having friends, classmates, and co-workers who were non-white. That wasn’t enough, but it was a start.

    2) Being able to attend an undergraduate institution that had a small but conscientious student body, many from parts of the country or world with which I was unfamiliar, and many with socio-political perspectives that were new to me. Conversations, classroom discussions, patient and encouraging faculty and staff fostering learning, reading and research, and my own stumbling along the way all helped.

    3) Course in my senior year of undergrad: Contemporary African-American Poetry. One of the greatest formal courses in literature—or anything, for that matter—that I’ve ever had. Mind-blowingly good, and eye-opening.

    4) A Senior year undergrad semester with my honors project advisor who was a visiting faculty member, Queer Studies professor, writer, and woman, and who was hounded from a full-time tenure-track position interview in tears by an antagonistic, long-time tenured faculty member who was a man arguing over the utterly stupid and petty issue of literature theory territoriality.

    5) A year living in Scotland, where I befriended a man from Cameroon studying to be a pathologist. Waiting with him and some other friends for a bus home one night, I was present when a drunk approached and began a violent torrent of verbal abuse because of the color of my friend’s skin. It almost turned physical, but gratefully did not. There were six of us to the drunk’s one. I was so scared and shaken . . . and enraged. I didn’t know what to do and I felt awful. A couple of days later I bought a bunch of fruit, nuts, and chocolates, and assembled a fruit basket and gave it to my friend saying how sorry I was. He invited me to a party he and his friends and family from Cameroon were having that weekend. I was one of only two white people at that party, and got to eat wonderful Cameroonian cuisine, and we all danced to West African music, and I had many delightful conversations, and came away realizing just a little bit more how tiny my world was, and how sheltered, and how it needn’t be.

    6) Living for 11 years in Chicago, a city no stranger to issues of racism and more. I witnessed a number of incidents in places ranging from fancy restaurants to underground “L” train stations in the wee hours of the morning. One night I was walking home and passed a parking lot that was a regular landmark on my daily journey. A white man was in an argument with the non-white parking attendant about the parking fee, and the motorist-asshole actually yelled the tragically classic (and utterly ironic), “Why don’t you go back to where you came from?” I turned from my path and walked up, and started yelling, too, at the white guy for all the horrible shit he was saying. White guy told me to “fuck off,” quickly got in his car, and drove away, and I went home, shaken because confrontation alarms me (hence my neurosis about Thunderdome, which is my problem, not Thunderdome’s), angry at what had happened, sad, confused, and feeling no wiser.

    7) Hurrican Katrina and its aftermath. This one alone could take up pages, so I’ll just leave it at that.

    8) Meatspace friends whom I refer to as “The Best Friends in All Explored Space,” with thanks to cartoonist Berkeley Breathed for the reference.

    9) Pharyngula. In many ways, this site (and others at FtB, as well as many of the links that so many excellent posters here provide) has been a massive education for me, as rich, challenging, expansive, complex, dynamic, and uplifting as any I have received. This is such a fantastic place to learn, including when it means getting called on my shit, and then invited to stay on. This place reminds me of the desert where I grew up: large, tough, hot, diverse, beautiful.

    10) Tony!, Inaji, carlie, rq, Dalillama, cicely, CripDyke, CaitieCat, Gen, Janine, Nerd of Redhead, Icthyic, Brownian (who changed ‘nym, I know, and can’t remember the change just now, with apologies), Portia, broken soldier (wherever they are now, and I hope it’s safe), chigau, SallyStrange, Pteryxx, Azkyroth, David Marjanović, A. Noyd, JAL, theophontes, Bill Dauphin (out there somewhere), Lynna, Beatrice, PZ, and all the others I have failed to mention and am sorry that I cannot recall the enormity of the list in one go. Conversations with all of these people have been a huge part of it, and it’s a particular joy to be welcomed back each time after I have to take an Internet break, or need to spend some contemplative time on the Bench-of-Shut-the-Fuck-Up.

    Fuck, am I long-winded, or what? And, I’m worried this turned off-topic.

    Anyway, thank you, and thank you for the question.

    Still learning,

    Robert

  266. says

    I know the time I learned about racism in a deep way almost to the month. It was May 1981, when my friend Stewart played this EP he’d just got from England, where a band called The Specials were putting out second-wave ska in bands made up of white and Black members, on a label called Tutone (two-tone), and whose music explicitly called out racism. “A Message To You Rudy” was the spark; when I became a “rude girl”, I became anti-racist. I was 15.

    Within a year, I was a very active member of the Free Nelson Mandela movement, and the other anti-apartheid work, and from there it just blossomed. It helped that I went to a very diverse high school – WASP people making up less than 20% – with Hong Kong and Black students very prominent throughout the school’s culture. Most of my friend groups were completely diverse – Black, Chinese, Viet, Laotian, Turkish, North African, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, even a few crazy atheists like me. Even so, I had a lot to learn, and fucked up a lot, and I still do. Probably always will.

    Difference is, now when I fuck up, I shut my noisehole and start listening HARD. My own rule of thumb is that if I’m feeling defensive about something a marginalized person is telling me, then I’m probably in the wrong, and the thing I’m defending is my privilege.

  267. says

    Desert Son:

    And, I’m worried this turned off-topic.

    If it is, then it’s my fault, since I asked the question. But I’m not so certain it’s that far off topic. This thread, and others like it may be dealing with a specific topic, but that topic is a subset of a larger issue: racism. I think in that context, a discussion of how biased or prejudicial views were shaken off is perfectly welcome.

    As for long winded, there are 2 people at Pharyngula that I associate with long comments-you and Crip Dyke. Yes, both of you frequently have lengthy comments, but they’re very focused. You don’t meander. You explain your points in meticulous detail, which, among other things, greatly reduces the potential for miscommunication. You both understand the importance of precision with language when making your points. You both *also* have quite a bit of patience, as seen in all the times I’ve read both of you explain things in detail in an attempt to persuade people. Sometimes when I think I’ve jumped a little too soon to insult someone, I try to remember the patience I’ve seen you both display. Not that you two don’t make use of insults, but they seem to be-from my perspective at least-almost a last resort. I think it’s admirable and a quality I try to keep in mind (if not always emulate).

  268. Saad says

    Desert Son #265

    large, tough, hot

    Please reference the post number if you’re going to mention me. =P

    No, I’m happy to read a long story about the topic. Much like with the personal story behind shedding one’s religion, I like hearing about what brought people to become enlightened about racism. I have some similarities in that my undergraduate years and Katrina were also a big eye opener for me.

    But I also have a very different journey from (I imagine) most people here. There is a strong form of anti-black racism in the Indian/Pakistani mindset. Now, they don’t have a history of enslaving, lynching, beating, arresting, etc. So their form of racism takes a very “separate but equal” approach. In a few words, I would label it as “never the twain shall meet”. They believe black people are of a lower class as them and should simply be avoided contact with on a personal level. Marrying a black person for instance, is grounds for disowning at the least. Luckily, I never even started down this line of thinking because my family moved to Georgia (near Atlanta) when I was 11. So growing up, I had a huge diversity of friends, neighbors, people you run into in stores, etc so I was sort of saved from the indoctrination.

    For the most part, whenever I encounter this Indian/Pakistani brand of racism, I just let it go. It literally is pointless to argue with these people. I’ve learned that. Their minds are made up. But the part that actually gets me really angry is not the mean stuff; it’s the patronizing and condescending stuff. For example, one of the few times I actually got so angry I had to speak up was when I heard a conversation between two people where one of them told the other that he gave the black delivery guy a bigger tip because he admires that he chose to do such hard work instead of being on the streets and doing drugs. Just completely nonchalantly and matter-of-factly. Not that my outburst did anything, but I just had to let it be known that my skin color and accent does not mean I’m in the same camp as you. Sometimes silence really does indicate agreement.

    Anyways, I’m rambling now. But it’s cool to hear people’s stories on this!

  270. Ichthyic says

    Waiting with him and some other friends for a bus home one night, I was present when a drunk approached and began a violent torrent of verbal abuse because of the color of my friend’s skin.

    Funny enough, I got that once here in NZ in the exact same circumstances… but instead of race it was because I was an American.

    that was an eye opener.

  272. chigau (違う) says

    Ichthyic #270
    howinhell could he tell that you are American?
    Didn’t you have your Canadian flag?

  273. Ichthyic says

    howinhell could he tell that you are American?

    happens when i speak.

    Didn’t you have your Canadian flag?

    not a bad idea; I’m often mistaken for Canadian.

  275. Desert Son, OM says

    NY Times and Key Factor of Reasonable Fear

    From the article:

    The rules dictate when an officer may move from mild coercion, such as issuing an order or grabbing a suspect’s arm, to stronger or even deadly action. In general, officers are allowed to respond with greater force after a suspect does so, and the type of response — from a gentle push to a tight grip, a baton strike to a stun gun shock to a bullet — rises as the threat grows.

    Every step, however, is overshadowed by a single imperative: If an officer believes he or someone else is in imminent danger of grievous injury or death, he is allowed to shoot first, and ask questions later. The same is true, the courts have ruled, in cases where a suspect believed to have killed or gravely injured someone is fleeing and can only be halted with deadly force.

    I’m troubled by this. I’m not sure I can express it yet—I’m going to have to think about it, and acknowledge that I’ve never been in a position to use deadly force. But something about this description of the conditions mediating use of deadly force feels . . . insufficiently sophisticated, I guess is how I would describe my feeling.

    I don’t know.

    The article continues:

    “It’s a very simple analysis, a threat analysis,” said Geoffrey P. Alpert, a University of South Carolina professor and expert on high-risk police activities. “If a police officer has an objectively reasonable fear of an imminent threat to his life or serious bodily harm, he or she is justified in using deadly force. And not just his life, but any life.”

    “Objectively reasonable” is a standard set by the Supreme Court in 1989 when it said that a police officer’s use of excessive force must be seen in the context of what reasonable officers would do in the same situation, given the danger and stress of police work.

    The analysis is “very simple?” I find that hard to countenance. I’m clearly not privy to all the variables, but . . . “very simple?”

    Lawrence Kobilinsky, chairman of the department of science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said if the evidence shows a close-up shooting and a struggle, it will go better for Officer Wilson.

    Ferguson police officials have said Mr. Brown and a friend were walking in the street when Officer Wilson stopped them. In an ensuing struggle, they said, Officer Wilson was hit in the face and Mr. Brown attempted to take his gun, which discharged. Later, Officer Wilson shot Mr. Brown six times as the two men faced each other.

    Mr. Brown’s friend, Dorian Johnson, has said that Officer Wilson grabbed Mr. Brown by the throat and said “I’m gonna shoot you” as he tried to drag him into the squad car. He and Mr. Brown fled after the gun discharged, Mr. Johnson said, and Officer Wilson, in pursuit, shot Mr. Brown as he stood with his hands up in surrender.

    David Klinger, also a former police officer and a professor and criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, has interviewed in depth some 300 officers who fired weapons in confrontations with suspects. A blow to the head by itself would not justify a shooting, he said, but other factors also could be at work.

    “Sometimes you make a straight-up mistake,” Mr. Klinger said. “ ‘He punched me, so I shot him.’ Punching and shooting don’t go together unless you’re much bigger than me or you have martial arts training.”

    While I find it encouraging reading Klinger admit the possibility of mistakes, and clarifying “Punching and shooting don’t go together unless . . .,” it feels like the context is all about forensic events in just those instants as if all other variables are controlled for, when in fact the context of just those instants is situated in a larger context of problematic police authoritarianism and a long history of racism.

    And then there’s this:

    “Let the physical evidence tell us what happened,” said Pat Diaz, a former South Florida homicide detective who investigated more than 100 police shootings and now works as a court-certified expert witness. “How badly injured was the police officer? Was he dazed? Was Michael Brown on drugs? Let’s see what’s really going on here.”

    Again, physical evidence is a critical part, to be sure, but does that statement also assume that it’s a level playing field in the criminal justice system? Plenty of police-procedural dramas like to tell us in 1-hour segments that it is, but speaking of evidence, the evidence shows it’s not level at all.

    Also, “Was Michael Brown on drugs?” This seems overly simplistic, too. What kind of drugs, and what behaviors have been causally linked to which drugs, if any? What behaviors in the context of drugs are also being mediated by other contextual factors? What if there were drugs, but no causal link, then it shouldn’t matter, except then it has become subject to public perception (and mis-perception) about drugs and the roles they do—or do not—play.

    More:

    At Washington State University in Spokane, researchers have run hundreds of simulated confrontations with suspects, using 60 filmed scenarios based on real life and performed by trained actors. Police officers participating in the simulations are wired to monitor body and brain functions.

    The results show that as the simulations become more complex — adding bystanders, dimming lights, turning up background noise — officers are more likely to make mistakes in judgment, said Bryan Vila, a professor of criminal justice and former police officer who oversees the research.

    Increasing complexity, more likely to mistakes in judgment. Yeah. I’m glad it’s being studied, but that certainly would have been my H1 if I’d proposed the research.

    Which brings me to the last part:

    “People have to make a decision before there’s enough time to study everything about the situation and what all the possible consequences could be,” he said. “Even if a cop does everything right in a very fast-paced, low-information situation where the risks are very high, the potential consequences of a mistake are very high.”

    Isn’t this then an indicator that we need to direct intense amounts of effort toward cultural change? Because there are always going to be situations where there’s not enough time to study all the variables, shouldn’t we work on the variables we can affect, like gun culture, racism, economic injustices, authoritarianism, accountability?

    Still learning,

    Robert

  276. says

    “It’s a very simple analysis, a threat analysis,” said Geoffrey P. Alpert, a University of South Carolina professor and expert on high-risk police activities. “If a police officer has an objectively reasonable fear of an imminent threat to his life or serious bodily harm, he or she is justified in using deadly force. And not just his life, but any life.”

    So when a black man with a knife is walking towards two police officers, that is somehow imminent threat to their lives or represents the potential to serious injure them? Really? They couldn’t have just stayed in the car? Or used the tasers? Or a police baton (which, IIRC is longer than the knife that guy was wielding)?

  279. Menyambal says

    Yeah, when you drive up as fast as possible, immediately jump out of the car and walk toward the person you came specifically to see; you can’t start whining about him invading your space.

    Unless, of course, all the space is your space.

  281. Desert Son, OM says

    Tony! at #778 [278]:

    Westboro Baptist Church will protest Michael Brown’s funeral

    *sigh*

    Attention, WBC! Contrary to speculation generated by so many entrants, there actually isn’t a prize for Most Obnoxious Asshole!

    Still learning,

    Robert

  283. anteprepro says

    “It’s a very simple analysis, a threat analysis,” said Geoffrey P. Alpert, a University of South Carolina professor and expert on high-risk police activities. “If a police officer has an objectively reasonable fear of an imminent threat to his life or serious bodily harm, he or she is justified in using deadly force. And not just his life, but any life.”

    Yet again, another asshole either brings this up when it doesn’t matter, or brings it up in a way that makes it so that ANYTHING in the vicinity of an officer counts as a threat, thus ANYTHING justifies deadly force, thus making me feel like at this point, preemptively shooting a cop would be considered self-defense as well. But that would be assuming that all these Experts aren’t just talking out of their ass.

    Also, gotta love the person in that article who says “Was Michael on drugs?”. As if that fucking matters. By fucking God, get me off this fucking planet.

  286. says

    The 10 Point Plan of the Black Panthers:

    7. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO POLICE BRUTALITY AND MURDER OF BLACK PEOPLE, OTHER PEOPLE OF COLOR, All OPPRESSED PEOPLE INSIDE THE UNITED STATES.
    We believe that the racist and fascist government of the United States uses its domestic enforcement agencies to carry out its program of oppression against black people, other people of color and poor people inside the united States. We believe it is our right, therefore, to defend ourselves against such armed forces and that all Black and oppressed people should be armed for self defense of our homes and communities against these fascist police forces.

    It was written in 1966. Still seems valid today (and I’m not just talking about number 7).

  288. Ichthyic says

    It was the Reaganites that really gave the Black Panthers a bad name.

    you know, painted them as lowlifes and thugs….

  289. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    RE: WBC protesting Michael Brown’s funeral.

    Inb4 they don’t even show. Even if they did, I expect there would be a sudden, inexplicable shortage of parking spaces and hotel vacancies in the vicinity.

  290. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    Those standards for when police can use deadly force remind me of Stop and Frisk and Stand Your Ground laws in the way it leaves it up to what the person can reasonably have believed. The problem with all of them is that they just throw the door wide open for everyone’s unconscious biases to stroll right in at moments where we should be focusing on keeping them out.

  291. Ichthyic says

    it leaves it up to what the person can reasonably have believed

    ..or plain old post hoc lies used as coverup.

  292. Nick Gotts says

    Has anyone thought to investigte if the cop was on drugs? – chigau@282

    He was on at least one, and a very potent and dangerous one: power.

  296. chimera says

    Hello everybody.
    I suppose all you Americans are sleeping at this hour and won’t read this but I’ll try posting it anyways.
    From Tony!’s 227 (What black parents tell their sons about the police) above:

    Ask the police before you reach for your license. Ask the police for permission to get your insurance card and registration out the glove box. Do not answer any questions. Just do as you are told.

    What does “Do not answer any questions” mean here?

    Answer?

    What does “answer” mean here?

    If a cop asks you for your name, how can you not answer? Isn’t it impolite to not answer a question, in general, if anyone asks you a question? And isn’t it a provocation not to answer a question asked by a police officer?

    And if a police officer asks you what you are doing, how can you not answer? I’m on my way to work, to the grocery store, to see a friend…. or whatever? Are you supposed to just stare back at the officer as if you didn’t hear or understand the question?

    “Answer” here means “to talk back”, I guess, i.e. to answer with sarcasm or complain, right?

  297. mildlymagnificent says

    I saw another version of that link from rq @295. The thing that amazes me, beyond all else, is the fact that he made those remarks … in public, from a podium, to people who claim to know their constitution and the law.

    I can sort of understand, a bit, someone making remarks like that in a private conversation among such a group. Maybe even in an undertone. But out, loud and in your face like that? Maybe being Australian disqualifies me from understanding this, but I find it incomprehensible.

  298. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    @ chimera

    No, it just means don’t answer. Cops aren’t allowed to grill randoms on the street for giggles even though many abuse their authority and do it anyway. Unless they’re putting you under police custody for some actual reason, you’re within your rights to leave. You can ask them why they’ve stopped you or if you’re being detained or if you’re free to go but you’re under no obligation to answer them, you don’t even technically have to provide ID in most states.

  301. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    I love Velda’s excuse for claiming gunshots were fired. “I wasn’t spreading misinformation, I was just repeating shit that’s false.”

  307. Pteryxx says

    I had to take a few days off but I’m glad to have read y’all’s conversation above.

    “If you wanted to see what the 60s were like? You’re watching it.” –My grandma as she watches Ferguson unfold

    TyreeBP on twitter via Chris Kluwe and angrynativefeminists tumblr

    —

    From rq’s first link in #303, the Ferguson community organizer describing his arrest:

    He believes he was targeted for arrest just after he finished a media interview.
    “When I came out of an interview, we saw police officers stand directly looking at us. We cross the street and two of them cross the street.”

    Russell was taken to the central police station in Clayton, Missouri, which is about a twenty-minute drive from Ferguson. In jail, Russell saw a Turkish photographer, a Canadian journalist, an “undocumented man from Mexico,” a paramedic, a lawyer and even a “rich guy, who wanted to see the protests and how real was racism and what was really going on.”

    “My response to him was, did it get real for you yet?”

  308. Pteryxx says

    from Feminist Batwoman yesterday:

    The bookstore in my town has a racism section in honor of Ferguson and it gives me a lot of hope

    (Direct image link)

    [image of a small bookstore display with a sign reading “How We Got to Ferguson” and books titled: The New Jim Crow, Raising Racists, Suspicion Nation, The Warmth of Other Suns, Rise of the Warrior Cop, Men We Reaped, Americanah, A Dream of Freedom, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Life Upon These Shores, and The Empire of Necessity]

  309. Ichthyic says

    I think we should sticky this thread for a while. It’s very important to keep track of whether the national dialogue that should happen because of this, WILL happen.

    PZ? threadkeepers?

    stickie plz?

  311. Pteryxx says

    Can threads be stickied? Maybe PZ could link it in the sidebar.

    —

    via angrynativefeminists tumblr, an image of Einstein at a chalkboard, teaching a class of black students.

    “The separation of the races is not a disease of colored people. It is a disease of white people. I do not intend to be quiet about it.”

    via Snopes (yes, I had to check) a 2007 article from the Harvard Gazette:

    Albert Einstein, Civil Rights Activist

    Excerpts:

    Here’s something you probably don’t know about Albert Einstein. In 1946, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist traveled to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the alma mater of Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall and the first school in America to grant college degrees to blacks. At Lincoln, Einstein gave a speech in which he called racism “a disease of white people,” and added, “I do not intend to be quiet about it.” He also received an honorary degree and gave a lecture on relativity to Lincoln students.

    In fact, many significant details are missing from the numerous studies of Einstein’s life and work, most of them having to do with Einstein’s opposition to racism and his relationships with African Americans.

    Einstein continued to support progressive causes through the 1950s, when the pressure of anti-Communist witch hunts made it dangerous to do so. Another example of Einstein using his prestige to help a prominent African American occurred in 1951, when the 83-year-old W.E.B. Du Bois, a founder of the NAACP, was indicted by the federal government for failing to register as a “foreign agent” as a consequence of circulating the pro-Soviet Stockholm Peace Petition. Einstein offered to appear as a character witness for Du Bois, which convinced the judge to drop the case.

    In the wake of the monumental effort to digitize Einstein’s life and genius for the masses, let’s hope that more of us will acknowledge Einstein’s greatness as a champion of human and civil rights for African-Americans as one of his greatest contributions to the world.

    The article authors, Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor, wrote the book Einstein on Race and Racism in 2006.

  313. says

    okay but when you have holocaust survivors and people who were activists during the civil rights movement supporting mike brown and then KKK members and neo nazis supporting the officer you should be able to figure out which side is the right one

    http://blastortoise.tumblr.com/post/95169248156/okay-but-when-you-have-holocaust-survivors-and
    (via angrynativefeminists)
    (incidentally, Pteryxx, I like a lot of the links you’ve provided-not just for their relevance to this thread)

  314. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    +1 for sticky-fying this somehow. The news has slowed down a lot but I think it’s important not to lose sight of this.

  315. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    Tony! @ 313

    …that quote.

    Seriously, if you consider yourself not racist and then suddenly find yourself in agreement with the KKK…that should give you pause.

  316. Pteryxx says

    The *news* hasn’t slowed down all that much, but the coverage has – now that it’s mostly about systemic corruption and not real-time violence, there’s not much to provide stills or video for TV. Also the conversations on social media are fragmenting into multiple conversations – #MikeBrown, #HealSTL and I’m not sure where the corruption-specific news is being channeled.

  317. Ichthyic says

    The *news* hasn’t slowed down all that much, but the coverage has

    of course it has, the media has a bad case of ADD.

    which is another reason I was hoping this thread would get stickied.

  319. Ichthyic says

    I’ve never heard of ‘stickying a thread’,

    I means to stick the thread to the top of the list of threads in the forum, so it doesn’t disappear.

  320. Pteryxx says

    via Twitter, what Wilson’s supporters said at a rally today: (HuffPo)

    A 12-person grand jury began considering whether to indict Wilson for his role in Brown’s death on Wednesday. Some supporters expressed sympathy for Brown’s family, but few seemed to think that the dead 18-year-old should be spared the rush to judgment they insist is happening to Officer Wilson.

    Sharon said Wilson “looks like a decent guy.” Another supporter, Gary Enochs, said Wilson has been “crucified” by the “black community.” A third attendee, Michael Smith, said Wilson “was just protecting his life like any of us would do.”

    One of the replies on Twitter:

    Little to no media outlets reported the KKK’s connection to the pro-#DarrenWilson rally. Fox said several hundred attended.

  321. Desert Son, OM says

    Tony! at #804 [304]:

    Trigger warning for . . . well, let’s see, the list is fairly comprehensive: astonishing misanthropy, racism, misogyny, homophobia, socio-pathology, and utter macho bullshit:

    From your link about officer Dan Page:

    “I flew to Africa, right there, and I went to our undocumented president’s home,” Page says. “He was born in Kenya.”

    *sigh* Heeeere we go . . .

    “I personally believe in Jesus Christ as my lord and savior, but I’m also a killer,” Page says in the video. “I’ve killed a lot. And if I need to, I’ll kill a whole bunch more. If you don’t want to get killed, don’t show up in front of me. I have no problems with it. God did not raise me to be a coward.”

    The footage also shows Page, a retired Vietnam veteran, saying he does not believe in hate crime laws, while also complaining about “sodomites” on the Supreme Court, “sodomites and females” entering the military, and blaming women for causing men to be arrested on domestic violence charges.

    o_O

    The fact that Page is a public servant is—what I believe is technically known as—a huge part of the fucking problem.

    Police chief Jon Belmar said:

    “He does not represent the rank-and-file of [the] St. Louis County Police Department,” Belmar told Lemon in an interview on Friday.

    News flash for Belmar: Page shouldn’t even represent an outlier in the St. Louis County Police Department. Page shouldn’t represent the St. Louis County Police Department at all.

    On top of his suspension, Page was ordered to take a psychiatric exam.

    *contemplates holding breath, decides against respiratory failure*

    Still learning,

    Robert

  322. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    Pteryxx @ 316

    That’s pretty much what I meant. Not much that mainstream media gives a shit about covering but still plenty going on that’s worth talking about.

  323. Pteryxx says

    via Wesley Lowery, a short piece in the Wall Street Journal about integration in Ferguson: WSJ

    Many whites say they would be happy to live in an integrated community, but define ideally integrated as around 10% black and 90% white. Blacks also say they are happy to live in integrated communities—but define that as about half black and half white, said Zoltan Hajnal, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego. Such differing expectations can create instability. “Neighborhoods as they diversify become more attractive to blacks and leave fewer and fewer whites that are willing to stay,” Mr. Hajnal said.

    Sounds like sexism’s 17-percent problem. (NPR)

  324. rq says

    What’s a sticky page? Just keeps appearing on the first page all the time?

    According to Twitter, they’re still registering voters.
    I put up a link yesterday about why some journalists are leaving Ferguson – apparently, it has turned into a media networking fest (see: first link at 299). :( Here’s another.

    That being said, Twitter also had this: how ugly can people get??

    Rally and counter-rally. There is nothing to protest, for Darren Wilson supporters, since he still hasn’t been arrest. Oh, his good name and reputation? He had those? (That second link is about Wilson’s first job… A police force so troubled, they disbanded it – so he went to Ferguson.)

  325. rq says

    Tasers? Still deadly. Man tazed by cops dies in Baltimore.

    A bit more on media and the mob:

    Those of us who admit that we were not there, and do not know what happened when Michael Brown was shot by a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri, seem to be in the minority.

    And then it goes on about ‘two sides’ and asking the right questions and discovering the truth. Pretty ugly by the end:

    If we can’t be bothered to stop and think, instead of repeating pat phrases, don’t expect to live under the rule of law. Do you prefer the rule of the media and/or the mob?

    Because that’s what we’ve been doing, delivering pat phrases.

    I think I mentioned that Eric Holder got threatened yesterday – here’s more.

    March in NY for justice.

  326. Ichthyic says

    keep on keepin up rq!

    another request to sticky this thread, and a request for a special Molly award for rq and Pteryxx.

  327. Ichthyic says

    There is nothing to protest, for Darren Wilson supporters, since he still hasn’t been arrest. Oh, his good name and reputation? He had those? (That second link is about Wilson’s first job… A police force so troubled, they disbanded it – so he went to Ferguson.)

    Reminds me of the Catholic Diocese moving pedophile priests from church to church.

  329. Ichthyic says

    sad to say, no, not really. It’s standard operating procedure in just about any distributed hierarchical business.

    Don’t fix the problems when it’s easier to just move them around.

  330. rq says

    Here’s a piece on that NY protest from the Toronto Star (unlocked article). This happened in July, and 2500 people came out – not huge, but significant. So maybe it won’t all just die down and go away.

    And a Toronto Star update on Ferguson itself, also unlocked.
    Clarification, please: the article says that McCullogh “has said he will not remove himself from the case”. Is he the only one who can do that? Can he be replaced by someone higher up, or is he himself the power that he answers to?
    Oh, and I think this is a good idea:

    U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill said she’s pushing for the local investigation and a separate one being done by the federal government to be completed around the same time so that all evidence in the case can be made public — a step many consider important should prosecutors decide not to charge the officer.

    Meanwhile, Gov. Nixon says the full focus is on seeking justice. Well, I certainly hope he gets it right.
    Will explore CBC.ca later, have some work to do.

  331. rq says

    Okay, fine, I looked now, but then I have to work.

    Good news: the White House will review police militarization programs. Plus some info on Mike Brown’s funeral, Obama will be sending three White House officials. A nice gesture, but too little, I would say. I think he should go himself.

    The CBC timeline of events, which inexplicably ends with August 19. Check out the language:

    Aug. 9: Brown and a companion are confronted by an officer as they walk back to Brown’s home from a convenience store. Brown and the officer are involved in some kind of scuffle, followed by gunshots. Brown dies at the scene.

    …

    Aug. 10: After a candlelight vigil, people protesting Brown’s death smash car windows and carry away armloads of looted goods from stores. In the first of several nights of violence, looters are seen making off with bags of food, toilet paper and alcohol. Some protesters stand atop police cars and taunt officers.

    …

    Aug. 13: Another night of violence wracks Ferguson, with some people lobbing Molotov cocktails and other objects at police, who respond with smoke bombs and tear gas. Two reporters are detained at a McDonald’s. Images of the standoff, showing police using armoured vehicles and pointing assault rifles at the crowds, are widely shared on social media.

    (Funny, still haven’t seen any evidence for the Molotov cocktails, besides an unlit one presented by police at a livestreamed press conference days ago – probably a ‘representative model’, ha.)

    Can Cincinnati be an example for Ferguson (it also mentions LA, but I have my doubts there)?

    “We wanted reform, we wanted justice. But at the end of it, we wanted better police community relations,” Lynch said. “We didn’t want a divisive litigation process where one side wins and one side loses, and so there’s still this tension. We wanted a process that if done right, the entire community wins.”
    The agreement laid out a plan on how to foster better relations, which included community problem-oriented policing “to help the police and community work together to address crime, disorder, and quality of life issues in the Cincinnati metropolitan area.”
    It reformed the police’s use-of-force policy with the goal “that arrests will be the last resort and we look at what the problem is and try to solve it,” Lynch said.

    Finishes to say that they have made progress – they aren’t perfect, but the community approach has yielded positive results.

    Ferguson a “great training tool” in how not to handle protests. Teachable moment, huh?

    “It’s a terrible, terrible situation. So many things have been done wrong,” said Charles Drago, a former police chief for Oviedo, Fla., a police instructor and career police officer who specializes in police practices and use of force. “Certainly not the typical standard of care for these types of activities.”

    “Standard of care”, nice phrase. But he goes on to emphasize the community aspect of policing, and availability of information, among other things – which, I suppose, is good… in the long run.

  333. Pteryxx says

    I forwarded to PZ the request to sticky this thread. (Thanks Ichthyic, but I had a Molly awarded a couple of years ago just before the list was discontinued.)

    —

    Tony! on his blog is also posting even more articles than show up in this thread. For instance, this guest post on Chris Stedman’s Fatheist blog, with some critique about conflating humanists with atheists. As We Know, plenty of atheists run about actively DEhumanizing others.

    Dr. Anthony B. Pinn:

    Sure, there are ways in which theological arguments can distract people from the harsh realities of life and blind some to the dynamics of racial discrimination. But theists aren’t the only ones who sometimes fail to grapple seriously with the consequences of racial dynamics in the U.S. Too many atheists and humanists assume their appeals to reason and logic are a prophylactic against racism.

    This is a mistake—a bad mistake. Behind the humanist hero Thomas Jefferson was a host of dehumanized, enslaved Africans.

    Humanists often claim to be informed, frequent readers, and more intelligent than theists—so the common mantra of “I just don’t know much about African Americans” doesn’t work. Those who make this claim in a society marked by easy access to information should be embarrassed by such intellectual laziness.

    It’s just as easy to find a copy of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk as it is to find a copy of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, okay?

  334. Pteryxx says

    via Tony!, another article from 2009 on the harmfulness of ‘colorblind’ teaching. Tolerance.org:

    Society’s persistent segregation doesn’t make these interactions any easier, says Brown University’s Randy Ross.

    “You don’t get comfortable talking about race by talking to people who look like yourself,” Ross notes.

    The fear of appearing racist also throws up roadblocks. Ross recalled a workshop participant who said she’d been taught to ignore race when she’d gone to college in the 1950s. Now, the woman lamented, she was being urged to practice behavior she considered bigoted.

    But claims of colorblindness really are modern-day bigotry, according to Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a sociology professor at Duke University. In his book White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era, Bonilla-Silva argues that racism has become more subtle since the end of segregation. He considers colorblindness the common manifestation of the “new racism.”

    “Whites believed that the Sixties was the end of racism,” says Bonilla-Silva, who is a Puerto Rican of African descent. “In truth, we have to admit that struggles of the Sixties and Seventies produced an alteration of the order.”

    That alteration upended the rhetoric of the civil rights struggle, Bonilla-Silva said, so that historically oppressed groups would seem to be the perpetrators of discrimination, not its victims. As an example, he points to the way affirmative action foes buttressed their position with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s quote from the 1963 March on Washington.

    “They say ‘like Martin Luther King, I believe that people should be judged by the content of their character.’ People eliminate the history and contemporary practice of discrimination and play the morality tale,” Bonilla-Silva says.

    Even more books for the “How we got to Ferguson” shelf.

  335. Pteryxx says

    More books mentioned in A brief history of black folks and sidewalks

    (warning for violent imagery) (though I’ve likely spoiled the author’s intended effect)

    Your father is big like Mike Brown was. At 6’5″, his walk has heft, his forearms are a bit like boulders, and whenever I think of him making sidewalk drawings with you in the cool of an afternoon, I am newly amused. He sent me pictures of your handiwork, your name emblazoned in a multicolored blast. For you, the sidewalk became a concrete quilt. For you, it told the story of a family. For now, this is all it needs to tell you. For now, this is just as it should be.

    You won’t know this for at least a year or two — we have not started to read books like Henry’s Freedom Box or Freedom on the Menu; you have not heard of Emmett Till, have not seen what it seems that every black child must: his bloated, disfigured face in an open casket — but someday you will understand just how many of our horror stories begin and end with sidewalks.

    Whether stepping off of them to let a white man pass or refusing to cross to one on the other side of a street in order to clear a white woman’s path, sidewalks have never been entirely inanimate for us. Our teeth have been broken against them. After tussling unarmed on one, Trayvon Martin was accused in court of using a sidewalk as a weapon, just before his blood was splattered across it. And even now, with no particular law in place to compel us, some confess to still ceding the sidewalk for white passersby, in spite of ourselves.

  336. Ichthyic says

    I’m really looking forward to seeing what this Attorney General will do; based on everything I have seen of his history, this is the chance he has been waiting for to try and do something to move racial issues in the US forwards.

    good luck to him.

    It’s like Bambi vs Godzilla from what I can see, but hey, even Bambi vs Godzilla got people talking.

  337. rq says

    Yeah, I’ve been stealing links from Tony’s blog (and FB), too. *blush* I have a few tabbed at home that I’ll have to stick up here, if Pteryxx or Tony don’t get to it first.

  339. Pteryxx says

    …I just looked up Henry’s Freedom Box and Freedom on the Menu. The first is a true story of a slave mailing himself through the underground railroad to freedom, and the second is a child’s-eye view of the Greensboro, N.C. diner sit-ins to protest segregation. They’re written for 4- to 8-year-olds.

  341. Ichthyic says

    leave it up at least until Holder decides what he’s gonna do about this mess? probably will get some idea soon.

  343. Ichthyic says

    They’re written for 4- to 8-year-olds.

    that’s about the level the average American needs to hear this at this point.

    maybe if they get through that, we can start them on remedial high school reading in race and economic history and community relations.

    it’s a long, long road, and the surface has 150 years of cracks in it.

  345. Pteryxx says

    from Rawstory:

    Missouri cop brands Ferguson protesters ‘rabid dogs’ in Facebook tirade

    The police department in Glendale, another St Louis suburb, said Friday it had suspended one of its officers who had expressed contempt for the Ferguson protesters on his Facebook account.

    “I’m sick of these protesters. You are a burden on society and a blight on the community,” wrote Michael Pappert, in one of at least five posts that have gone up since Sunday.

    “These protesters should have been put down like a rabid dog the first night,” he added.

    In a reference to the Boston Marathon bombing, he also wrote: “Where is a Muslim with a backpack when you need them.”

    Note, this is a different St. Louis cop than either Officer-Go-Fuck-Yourself, (source) or Officer Kill-a-whole-bunch-more who pushed the CNN host. (source)

    “This officer is not representative of the rank-and-file of [X] department.”

    /skeptical eyebrow raise

    —

    Ferguson does carry echoes of the 1960s – and they’re coming from right wingers

    Take Rich Lowry, the editor of the conservative publication National Review, for example. Reflecting on the incident that sparked the tension in Ferguson, Lowry dismisses the idea that the actions of police officer Darren Wilson were symptomatic of institutionalised police brutality. “Even if Officer Wilson executed Michael Brown in cold blood,” he writes, “he would be one murderously bad cop, not an indictment of the entire American system of justice.”

    A similar line was taken by Fox news presenter Bill O’Reilly, who felt the need to come back from holiday to inform his audience how furious he was about the way Brown’s death was being reported. Explaining the “Truth of Ferguson”, O’Reilly condemned the “charlatans”, “agitators”, and “race hustlers” in the liberal media for presenting only one side of the story.

    O’Reilly’s “truth” included characterising calls for Officer Wilson to be arrested as “lynch-mob justice” and denying that 400 fatal police shootings in 2012 represented anything more than “police efficiency”.

    —

    Remember Victor White, who somehow shot himself to death with a mysteriously appearing gun while he was handcuffed in the back of a police car?

    Autopsy report shows Louisiana police lied about suspect’s suicide by shooting self in back

    According to the first page of the official autopsy report released by the Iberia Parish Coroner’s Office, Victor White III, 22, died from a gunshot to the chest, not in his back as reported by the arresting officer.

    […]

    Questions were immediately raised as to how White could have smuggled a gun into the cruiser and then managed to shoot himself in the back when left alone.

    According to the autopsy report, the bullet entered White’s chest, perforated his left lung and heart before exiting his armpit area and lacerating his upper arm.

    The report still lists his death as a suicide.

  348. rq says

    Pteryxx
    From what I understand, 5 officers have been suspended for similar behaviour (incl. the three you mention). They’ve also made about 270 arrests. Ugh, I think that link I have at home, but I’m pretty sure I got it from Tony in the first place.

  350. Pteryxx says

    rq: meaning, five officers have been suspended for getting caught at it. <_<

    —

    I quoted the wrong portion of the Echoes of the 1960s article – the rhetoric of 'outside agitators' (along with, I think, conflating protesters with looters and protestING with violence) is more relevant than right-wingers being massive racists again.

    James Knowles, the mayor of Ferguson, is a particularly clear example. Claiming in one television interview that the violence in his jurisdiction was emerging from ‘a very small number of protestors who have come from outside of our community’, Knowles has consistently denied that the unrest in Ferguson had any local support.

    In doing so, Knowles follows a familiar path of white officialdom. Those in authority have long preferred to blame violence on a militant and un-American minority rather than admit that large groups of their constituents might hold legitimate grievances. Indeed, the mayor’s comments are eerily similar to those made by Southern segregationists in the 1960s.

    Mayor Allen Thompson of Jackson, Mississippi, for example, blamed “outside agitators” for stirring up trouble and refused to change racist policies that he claimed enjoyed “tremendous underground support from Negroes” in the city.

    Even if it were true that the unrest in Ferguson has been brought in from outside the town – and it is not – Knowles’ response is akin to standing in the eye of a tornado and declaring that everything will be fine once this “outside” wind leaves town.

    Wherever the protesters were coming from, they are calling for a redress of genuine grievances. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in 1963: “Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”

    The quote’s from MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

    I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against “outsiders coming in.” I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

    But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

    Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

    You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

  351. Sili says

    Amusing how people are defending Darren Wilson.

    “If he has done nothing wrong, he has nothing to fear from the courts.”

    Isn’t that what those same people usually say?

  353. David Marjanović says

    Where is the sticker? I can’t find it in the sidebar; it’s not in the “frequently read threads” (lounge, thunderdome, introductions). I only found this thread because there’ve been recent comments in it.

    Many whites say they would be happy to live in an integrated community, but define ideally integrated as around 10% black and 90% white. Blacks also say they are happy to live in integrated communities—but define that as about half black and half white, said Zoltan Hajnal, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego. Such differing expectations can create instability. “Neighborhoods as they diversify become more attractive to blacks and leave fewer and fewer whites that are willing to stay,” Mr. Hajnal said.

    It would be so funny if it… didn’t have any consequences in the real world.

    If we can’t be bothered to stop and think, instead of repeating pat phrases, don’t expect to live under the rule of law. Do you prefer the rule of the media and/or the mob?

    I expect to live under the rule of law, not the rule of police. Separation of powers and all that – Judge Dredd has already been mentioned.

  354. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    David Marjanović @ 353

    Where is the sticker? I can’t find it in the sidebar; it’s not in the “frequently read threads” (lounge, thunderdome, introductions).

    It’s acting like the most recent post, so top of the page if you click the main header.

  355. Pteryxx says

    David M – this thread’s now at the top of the plain old Pharyngula homepage.

    Previous and concurrent Ferguson threads:

    Why cops have a bad reputation, Aug 20, starting from Officer Dutta’s editorial in the Washington Post about how cops wouldn’t have to beat up or shoot anyone if people would just behave nicer while being stopped.

    Cited in the OP:

    In 129 years since police and fire commissions were created in the state of Wisconsin, we could not find a single ruling by a police department, an inquest or a police commission that a shooting was unjustified.

    Ex-fucking-zactly!, Aug 18, starting from John Oliver’s video.

    Why would you support a policeman who shoots unarmed people?, Aug 17, starting with the rally to support Michael Brown’s killer, Darren Wilson. (Also contains news of the autopsy findings from the private autopsy Brown’s family requested, and my notes on prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s previously mishandled police-shooting cases, following up on Inaji’s #371.)

    Time to arrest the police, Aug 17, continuing real-time reports from:

  357. rq says

    Pteryxx
    I think it was the Ex-Fucking-Zactly thread, actually. I’ll have to check later.

    +++

    Ice Bucket challenge plus Ferguson? Yes, please, Orlando Jones!

    Details of the death of Jorge Azucena, I’m going to TW that one for general unpleasantness and death.

    Darren Wilson’s support fund… was set up by Ferguson PD.

    And this is just sad: Mary Engelbreit blasted for Ferguson artwork.

    I think this is via Tony, on colourblindedness as the new racism, sorry if it’s a repost.

    Still searching for that one reference I had to 5 officers suspended, with the 270+ arrests.

  358. Jackie says

    I want to thank everyone who has posted links to keep us all abreast of the corrupt police actions in Ferguson. Thank you for linking petitions and ways to donate.

    Friday, on his way home from work, a friend of mine was stopped by a state trooper for talking on his cell phone while driving. (Something I have seen cops doing a few times, but is illegal.) He was then told to get out of the car. He was patted down and ask his age. He’s in his thirties like me. I cannot imagine why a cop would ask a grown man his age. The trooper then locked him in the back of his patrol car while her searched my friend’s car. He found nothing and was pissed off that he found nothing.

    Guess what color my friend is and guess what color the statie was?

    This happened in Southern IL. It happens everywhere in the US, every single day.

  359. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    Darren Wilson’s support fund… was set up by Ferguson PD.

    wat

  360. says

    Wow…it’s illegal to stop someone for driving while using a cell? Here it’s the opposite, using a cell while driving is a stoppable offence, with a summary outcome like a speeding ticket. Under our Highway Traffic Act, the only part of Ontario justice which is “guilty until proven innocent”, it’s an offence to drive while using a phone, either for texting or talking. Personally, I’m in favour of that, given the studies showing the deleterious effects of doing so, and my own crippledness coming from an inattentive driver (in my case, a drunk driver who t-boned my car while running a red light).

    That said, if it’s not illegal to do where you are, then you’re right, that’s a shitbag stop. And the search and other stuff is shitbag whether or not it’s illegal.

    I’m so sick of white people, and especially white cops. :(

  361. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Wow…it’s illegal to stop someone for driving while using a cell?

    Actually it can be legal here in Illinois. The law changed the first of year. From DrivingLaws.org:

    As of January 1, 2014, a new law in Illinois bans the use of all hand-held devices while driving in Illinois. Only hands-free technology such as speakerphones, bluetooth, and headsets are pemitted. In addition: (1) all cell phone use is prohibited while driving in a school zone; (2) all cell phone use is prohibited while driving in a highway construction zone, and (3) all cell phone use is prohibited if you are a novice driver. All Illinois drivers are prohibited from texting.

    So if it was a hand-held cellphone, it was a legal stop.

  362. Jackie says

    Yes, it’s more like a speeding ticket. Am I using the wrong word? I thought speeding was considered illegal too.

  363. Pteryxx says

    from rq’s #357:

    Details of the death of Jorge Azucena, I’m going to TW that one for general unpleasantness and death.

    …No kidding. It’s awful. Jorge died in police custody, of asthma, after begging for hours for medical attention and being ignored or dismissed by at least a dozen officers. This is backed up by an autopsy and the results of an independent investigation, just released.

    Nearly a year after Azucena’s death, LAPD officials have not yet determined whether any of the officers involved that night should be disciplined for failing to summon help and, in the case of some officers, for lying to investigators. Nine officers and two sergeants are the subjects of ongoing internal investigations, while another sergeant under scrutiny recently retired, said Capt. Paul Snell, who commands the LAPD’s Southwest Division, where the death occurred. As is customary, prosecutors from the county district attorney’s office are reviewing the case to determine whether the inaction amounts to criminal behavior.

    […]

    Steve Soboroff, president of the civilian commission that oversees the LAPD, declined to discuss the specifics of the case but said it was “troubling” that so many officers ignored Azucena. The case, he said, underscored the need to better train officers on department policies that require them to call for an ambulance whenever a suspect complains of breathing problems.

    “I don’t think this points to a culture of officers who don’t care about people,” Soboroff said. “But it’s important that we make sure officers know they can follow their own moral compass and can feel comfortable speaking up in any situation if they have questions about what is going on.”

    Pulling this quote out for a separate content warning. It’s just a sample.

    At another point, he began yelling to onlookers.

    “Help me, help me, help me,” he shouted, according to the inspector general’s report. “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Help me, please.”

    In response, a sergeant ordered officers to place him in the back seat of a patrol car, believing he was trying to incite the crowd watching, the report said.

  364. Jackie says

    It was a legal stop. There was no reason to search his person or his vehicle or put him in the patrol car.

  365. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    I think people are reading this:

    Something I have seen cops doing a few times, but is illegal.

    as meaning it’s illegal for cops to stop you for it. That’s how I read it at first anyway. I assumed you meant it was something like some old seat belt laws used to be where it was technically illegal but a cop couldn’t pull you over specifically for that.

  366. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    There was no reason to search his person or his vehicle or put him in the patrol car.

    Correct.

  367. Jackie says

    Had it been me, I’d have likely either gotten a warning or a ticket and been sent on my way with a “Have a nice day, Ma’am.”

  368. Jackie says

    Sorry for being unclear. I meant that I have seen cops talking on their hand held cell phones while they drive on different occasions. They’ll just cruise through my neighborhood, chatting away without a care in the world. They don’t care who sees them. Why would they? No one is going to pull them over, frisk them and treat them like shit. They’re golden.

  372. Pteryxx says

    At Ed Brayton’s: ‘Sovereign Citizen’ is Sorry/Not Sorry for Shooting at Cops

    Authorities say the 60-year-old fired shots from his AK-47 at police officers and firefighters in a gated community in North Dallas on Monday, Aug. 11.

    Two bullets reportedly hit a fire truck, with firefighters inside.

    Leguin told CBS DFW he didn’t try to hit anyone. He asked, “Did any bullets hit anybody that day? What is the answer?” He then answered his own question: “No!”…

    When asked if people who are sitting in a vehicle that’s being fired upon believe or know that he’s not aiming for them, Leguin paused, and replied, “All they had to do is go down the road, I wasn’t aiming at them.”…

    When asked what he would say to the police officers and firefighters who responded that day, Leguin said, “I’m sorry if they were under stress, but it was a good training operation for them. They do get shot at.”

    —

    Miri of Brute Reason has an entire post about “Flipping the Social Justice Script” in various contexts. Two relevant articles from there:

    Medium.com: While you are all briefly worried about black men getting shot by police

    Around every 40 hours a black woman dies giving birth in America — a rate comparable to developing countries without enough modern medical infrastructure. This rate is nearly four times as many as white women giving birth. These were, like Mike Brown, all real human beings with names and families and place they used to live.

    Black babies die in childbirth at the rate of about 21 per day, which is twice as high as white babies. Many of them didn’t have names, despite also being real human beings.

    A lot of this has to do with the rate of uninsured people of color in America, as well as access to prenatal care, education, preventative medicine, and even fucking fresh fruits and vegetables.

    In 1951, black activists petitioned the UN to investigate the US government for genocide, and were stonewalled. Their petition was “We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People”. (wiki link) (ScribD link)

    Demilitarizing the police would be only step one to learning that black people are people. The police and prison system are only the most action-movie part of a system that grinds through African-American communities, producing a great pile of human bodies. This is an accumulating debt of American misery and shame that remains largely uncounted, except as “the way things are.” The ways of misery and death that count the least are those, like maternal and infant mortality, that happen to black women, who, it may ultimately surprise many people to find out, are also human beings.

    —

    and The Nation: Strange Fruit in Ferguson (warning for brief descriptions of lynchings)

    But for me, the detail that sticks is that Brown’s body was left in the street for at least four hours. Not only did people in the community witness the shooting, they were forced to look at the aftermath. For hours, they had to see Michael Brown’s bullet-ridden, bloody body lie rotting in the street.

    It’s not unlike Henry Simmons’s bullet-filled body being hung from in tree in Palm Beach, Florida, in June of 1923. Or that of William Turner, whose body was hung, then cut down, then hung again before being burned in a bonfire in Helena, Arkansas, in November 1921. There was also Jim Roland, shot and killed by a mob in Camillia, Georgia, after having refused to dance for a white man who was pointing a gun at him in February 1921. And also Frank Dodd, shot and hung from a tree “in a negro settlement on the outskirts of DeWitt, Arkansas, in October 1916.” And so many more.*

    They were lynched. They were killed and displayed publicly for the amusement of the lynch mobs and other white folks, and for the further terrorization of black people.

  373. rq says

    Seven of Mine
    Oh yes. wat, indeed.

    +++

    Being kind will get you pepper spray.

    Possible re-post: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/20/white-people-black-people-michael-brown-death-ferguson?CMP=twt_gu"why white people are scared of black people's anger.

    I want to apologize if anything I post is a re-post, there’s been so much stuff from at least three directions that I get confused, and I’m not being good with keeping track. Hopefully it’s all good re-posts, though, ones that are worth re-posting.

  374. The Mellow Monkey: Singular They says

    Autopsy reveals Louisiana cops lied about shooting of suspect in custody

    Deputies handcuffed White and took him to the Sheriff’s Office for processing, but said White refused to exit the car when they arrived. State Police also said in their initial report that while the deputy was requesting assistance, White produced a handgun and shot himself once in the back.

    Where this handgun came from, and why it was not confiscated by the police officers at the time of the arrest remains a mystery. Adding to this mystery was the fact that police have stated there were no surveillance cameras in the part of the parking lot where the alteration occurred. But an autopsy performed by the Iberia Parish Coroner’s Office has found that White was not shot in the back. He was shot in the chest:

    According to the autopsy, the bullet entered White’s chest, then perforated his left lung and heart before exiting his armpit area and lacerating his upper arm.

    Given that the report still rules the death a suicide, how exactly does a man with his hands cuffed behind his back produce a gun and shoot himself in the chest?

  375. rq says

    Pteryxx
    re: the Jorge Azucena link
    What really gets me is, how difficult is it to call the paramedics? If he’s faking, they check him quick and go, ‘He’s faking’. If he’s not, they take him to the hospital for care, with a police guard, if necessary. How is any of that more difficult than listening to a dying man plead for his life???

    Strange Fruit, by the woman who does it best.

  378. Menyambal says

    Yeah, cops do illegal and dangerous stuff, and think it is okay because they are cops. Talking on a handheld cellphone while driving is illegal, but some cops do it. It is legal for them to pull someone over and ticket them for talking on a cellphone (I dunno the fines and punishments per state). It is wrong for the police to do anything more to a cellphonor, though, as a search requires probable cause.

    (I was in the locker room at the gym, nekkid and avoiding eye contact, when I did notice that one guy was really packing … a pistol, I mean. It was scary and uncomfortable, and against gym policy and the sign on the front door. I went to the front desk and reported it, and nobody knew what to do. It turned out he was a sheriff’s deputy. Dammit, if he thought he was exempt, he could have at least kept it out of sight, but he should have left it outside.)

  379. rq says

    Mmkay, not finding what I want, but I’m going to pull more stuff from Tony (though I do recommend you visit his blog!):

    Ferguson is an old story. Intro:

    The story of Ferguson, Missouri, goes well beyond the tragic murder of a young black man. It is a story about demography and race going back to the great migration out of the south when many northern cities absorbed hundreds of thousands of African Americans over the course of only a few decades, creating the conditions for severe racial tension.

    From RawStory, more about that broken face of Darren Wilson’s. Or unbroken, as it were.

    Echoes of the 1960s – I think this one’s been covered, actually.

    I like this one, though little chance it will get wider reading: 400 Sociologists demand justice and change in policing, specifically regarding communities of colour.

    Read this list of key witnesses carefully. Some of them may not be so key…

  380. rq says

    Ouch.

    Probably already discussed: what black parents tell their sons about the police. Intro:

    A Tumblr quote floated over to me about around the time of Trayvon Martin’s murder, from a Jonathan Lethem book that I’ve never read (The Fortress of Solitude). At this point, I don’t really need to read it, because it’s already asked me the most important question I’ve heard in a long time: “At what age is a black boy when he learns he’s scary?”

  381. Pteryxx says

    rq: we’ve all posted hundreds of links, some reposts are just going to happen. I keep finding tabs still open and can’t remember if I’ve already posted the info from them or not.

    Why not call paramedics… I guess, for these people, listening to a dying man plead for his life isn’t difficult at all, as long as that man is black. Some of them regard his pleading as a nuisance, some as a threat (‘inciting the crowd’ indeed, the crowd has a damn good reason to be upset). Some of them appear to enjoy it, from how they go out of their way to torment and torture people… and they have fans and supporters, as seen from the comments of Officer Wilson’s supporters. People used to buy postcards of lynchings.

    Having empathy for a hurt or frightened or dying black person, though, THAT would take a huge effort, overcoming their habitual behavior, their training, and going against the full social and institutional support of their peers. It’s likely the first officer to actually call a paramedic for Jorge Azucena would have found themself ostracized immediately, and would never see a promotion or a favorable job assignment again.

  382. rq says

    Pteryxx @381
    I understood everything you said, and it all sounds too terrifyingly plausible. :/

  383. says

    Ferguson community leaders encouraged after meeting with Eric Holder:

    Holder met with about 60 people, including Ferguson students, residents, local leaders and law enforcement at St. Louis Community College’s Florissant Valley campus to discuss race relations in the area.

    Patrick Green, mayor of neighboring city Normandy, attended the meeting and says he will work hard to get the voices of young African-Americans like 18-year-old Michael Brown heard.

    “They want a future,” Green said. “Their future does not look good in the Saint Louis area. These young African-Americans want to know, not that I’m just being heard but that it’s being taken seriously through some action plan, some results, some reporting of the process so that there’s accountability.”

    According to the 2010 census, the population of Ferguson, Missouri, is just above 21,000 people. African-Americans account for 67.4 percent.

    Ruby Curry, interim president of Florissant Valley’s St. Louis Community College, was also at the meeting. She said Attorney General Holder’s presence had a huge impact on the crowd and tackling racial tensions.

    “I think his comments were very earnest about us trying to come together as a community to collaborate and really work together to solve the issues,” she said.

    As a leader in the community, Curry said Holder’s words had a positive impact on her attitude towards moving Ferguson forward.

  386. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    I think he should get his ass out there instead of trying to balance on the fence. Who gives a fuck what his conservative critics will say? They’ll say that shit anyway. And I find it hard to imagine congress being any more obstructionist than they already are.

  387. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    Also, he’s already in his 2nd term so it’s not as if he has an upcoming election to worry about losing. Which is of course not to say going there would hurt him in that sense anyway since, IIRC he’s the first in history to win a presidential election while losing the white male vote.

  388. Pteryxx says

    How the Guardian is covering Darren Wilson’s supporters… have your spare irony meters at the ready.

    “We will no longer live in fear”

    Supporters of Darren Wilson, the white police officer who fatally shot unarmed black teenager Michael Brown on 9 August, after which the town of Ferguson was hit by protests, riots and looting, on Saturday staged a rally outside a St Louis pub.

    During the rally, a statement was read to the crowd by an unidentified woman who said she was speaking on behalf of the Support Darren Wilson online campaign. The woman, wearing mirrored sunglasses, eye black and a baseball cap, criticized the media for what she said was “a strong bias” against Wilson’s supporters.

    […]

    “We have no desire to engage in the negativity and hate which has paralyzed Officer Wilson’s ability to pursue justice,” said the unidentified woman at the Darren Wilson rally, adding that many supporters of Wilson had received death threats. The woman said that contrary to media suggestions, Wilson supporters were not affiliated with hate groups, though “we respect each individual’s first amendment rights in this country”.

    The woman said Wilson supporters would now be more vocal in his defense.

    “We will not hide, we will no longer live in fear,” she said. “We ask this question: can justice ever be attained if one side’s supporters are living in fear of speaking out?”

    The Guardian also mentioned the NAACP-organized march for Michael Brown that day, estimated at 1000 participants, and noted what some of those participants said about Wilson.

    A white woman held a sign reading: “Arrest Darren Wilson.” An African American man nearby held another, expressing discontent that Wilson was not detained: “If I killed a man I wouldn’t be on vacation.”

    One of the protesters, who gave his name only as Walter G, said he had been in the army and added that the attitude of some of the police in Ferguson reminded him of men in combat.

    “I was in Vietnam. Some of the cops here think they’re in Vietnam. Their adrenaline gets all pumped up and they just want to pump bullets into a corpse,” he said. “I like the people in this community. I like living here. It’s just these asshole cops.”

    and at the end:

    Money raised by Saturday’s St Louis rally in support of Wilson will be added to online fundraising efforts that have so far raised more than $300,000. The first GoFundMe page to be set up in aid of the officer raised $234,000; by Saturday evening, a new Wilson /Shield of Hope GoFundMe page had raised $71,000.

    No mention of the KKK support, or that Shield of Hope is a rebranded police union charity (not a secret – TheWire, Buzzfeed) or the flood of racist comments on GoFundMe’s page, or the calls for GoFundMe to adhere to their own TOS which does not allow items that

    “items that promote hate, violence, racial intolerance, or the financial exploitation of a crime.”

    (Colorlines), (Salon)

    But the Guardian will repeat that Wilson has received death threats. (I find that plausible, but not documented, while the racism of many of his supporters IS blatantly obvious.)

  389. says

    I often find good stories at The Good Men Project. This article is not one of those:
    http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/just-because-youre-black-doesnt-mean-you-have-to-be-a-victim-dg/

    With the recent deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner there has been a lot of talk about racism in America. Were they killed because they’re black? I don’t know if anyone can honestly answer that question. I also don’t know enough information about either situation to speak about them. It would be insulting for me to try. What has happened, as a result, has been pure chaos. The city of Ferguson, Missouri has been turned upside down.
    […]
    Many in the African-American community believe that if you’re black you won’t get the same opportunities that a white person would. To be fair, I’m not the voice of the entire African-American community, I can only speak to what I’ve seen as a young black man. But, based on what I’ve seen, I call that hogwash!
    […]
    Growing up, my friends preached that if you were black you wouldn’t get a fair shake in life. When my friends and I talked, I told them about all of my dreams. They told me not to even bother, because being black I couldn’t do those things. White people wouldn’t let a black man “come up” like that. I would talk to my parents about this, but they told me just to ignore those kids. My mother ingrained in me that if you wanted something badly enough, it didn’t matter what your skin color was, you could make it happen. She said my friends needed to stop playing the victim card. That was the first time I ever heard that term.
    […]
    Too often in the black community we’re looking for a hand out. Yes there are situations when people need help. I get that. But there are many when someone just wants something for free.
    If you grew up, or are growing up in a rough situation, you have to look inside of you for the power you’ll need to overcome your hardships. You have to figure out what you want from life, and more importantly why you want it. You have to walk, run, crawl, roll or do whatever it takes, to create a better life for yourself. The past doesn’t have to define you. The situation or the color of your skin doesn’t have to determine what you do with your life. Surround yourself with people who want something out of life, ignore the people who cry victim. Be willing to work harder than you ever have in your life realizing what awaits you when you do.

    That’s just a taste of the uninformed, ignorant bullshit from this poor opinion piece by a man who thinks his experiences are representative of the experiences of black men across the country and who appears to not understand the extent to which the system is stacked against black people.

  390. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    Contrast that with Neil DeGrasse Tyson who had the same experience essentially but, instead of going all bootstrappy, recognized that others might not have had the support he had.

  391. Pteryxx says

    rq, the info that five Ferguson/St Louis officers have been suspended so far came from here, which may have been one of your links originally:

    AddictingInfo – Another Ferguson Cop Goes Off On Social Media; Threatens To Punch The US Attorney General

    Weston has not been suspended yet. Given the false information, threats against the AG and the inflammatory nature of posts he’s made on twitter (see others here) there’s no doubt he should be.

    Thus far at least four officers working the protests in Ferguson have been suspended. One for pointing a gun in a reporters face, threatening to kill him. One for posting racist comments on facebook, in which he referred to protesters as “rabid dogs” who should have been put down the first night. A third was suspended after pointing a gun in the face of protesters, saying “I will kill you.” Most recently, officer Dan Page was suspended after CNN reporters exposed a video full of racist, homophobic and violent hate speech, which the officer had posted on youtube last year.

    So we’ve got Officer Punch-Eric-Holder, Officer Go-Fuck-Yourself, Officer Rabid-Dogs, and Officer I’ll-kill-a-whole-bunch-more. (Looks like Officer GFY, aka Lt. Ray Albers (WaPo source), got counted there twice.)

  392. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    Totes not representative of the rank and file, yo. And if you believe that, I have some swampland in Florida to sell you.

  394. says

    The story of Ferguson goes back decades:

    The story of Ferguson, Missouri, goes well beyond the tragic murder of a young black man. It is a story about demography and race going back to the great migration out of the south when many northern cities absorbed hundreds of thousands of African Americans over the course of only a few decades, creating the conditions for severe racial tension. Newly arrived black people competed for housing, land, schools and jobs with a range of white ethnic groups, many of whom bonded to suppress the “threat” from the new population.

    The story of racial conflict that emerged in the 20th century north is well documented in histories written by Isabel Wilkerson about the migration northward, by Tom Sugrue about the decline of Detroit, and by Arnold Hirsch about the south side of Chicago. These and other urban histories describe how formal laws and policies were developed to maintain racial separation by restricting where black people could live and work, and how violence and intimidation were used when these explicit policies were not sufficient. Control over the local political structure, and the police, were essential in this effort. The historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad has documented the way that city police departments reinforced racial order in northern cities by actively targeting African Americans. Sociologist Christopher Muller has shown that racial disparities in rates of arrest and incarceration began to emerge in the places that were absorbing the greatest number of black people, and during periods when the black population was expanding most rapidly.

    As the black population in northern cities grew, it was the police that played the most active day-to-day role in preserving the racial order. It is not surprising that so many of the riots that broke out across northern cities in the late 1960s were sparked by acts of perceived police aggression. In Harlem in 1964 a police shooting of a black teenager led to six days of riots. A month later in Philadelphia, an argument between a black woman and two police officers escalated into three days of riots in the northern part of the city, resulting in hundreds of arrests. In the Watts section of Los Angeles in 1965 the arrest of a black man for reckless driving escalated into six days of rioting that spread across several miles of the city. In Detroit in 1967 a raid of an unlicensed bar turned into a riot that spanned several days, resulting in dozens of deaths and thousands of arrests.

    This ugly chapter in America’s story about demography and race, which was set in central cities of the north, came to an uneasy conclusion in the 1970s. Advances in civil rights from the 1960s and earlier made racial discrimination in the housing market, the lending market, the labour market and the polling booth illegal. Even as rates of incarceration continued to grow, the widespread, blatant intimidation and oppression of African Americans subsided, as did the urban unrest that had engulfed American cities. As the set of tools that had been used to maintain racial separation became less effective, white people retreated to the suburbs. The next chapter in the story of demography and race takes place in those smaller suburban cities and towns that lie outside the nation’s major cities, places like Ferguson, Missouri.Ferguson, located just a few miles northwest of St Louis, represents the type of community to which white people retreated when they left central cities. From 1940 to 1970, its population grew from under 6,000 inhabitants to almost 29,000. White people living in cities such as St Louis were able to leave because of federal policies that subsidised home ownership by providing mortgages directly to Americans. But the rules for the provision of home mortgages also ensured that these new suburban communities would be segregated by race.

  396. rq says

    The Brown family is holding a public memorial on Monday. JAQ: has Michael Brown’s body been returned to his family? They did finish with all the autopsies, right? There were rumours that they asked for privacy, but apparently that is false, everyone welcome (except Westboro Baptist).

    National Guard still in Ferguson (Twitter).

    Edward Crawford – waiter, father of 3, and total badass.

    And more of Ferguson’s angry young men. Angry for lots of reasons.

    But mostly they are young black men and some women from Ferguson and the surrounding inner suburbs of St. Louis who see themselves in Brown — not just because he was 18 and black, but also because they have their own tales of being harassed by the police. They’re groups of friends, mainly, with no single leader, and organized only by an emotion: anger. So when police officers have told them to get off the street or move out of a parking lot, they have often responded by spitting out, “Fuck you!” or picking up a full water bottle and flinging it at the cops.

    […]

    “They’re always angry — and with good reason,” said Antonio French, a St. Louis alderman who’s risen to national prominence for his role in the protests. “When your local government goes to war with you, you’re talking about introducing a match to a pool of gasoline.”

    […]

    “We live in a war zone right now,” he said. “I want to make sure I can live here safely with my kids.”

    Here’s a pic, since none in the article showed for me.

  397. says

    I just realized…if Wilson doesn’t get charged with any crime, what happens with all that money raised in his name?

    “Hey, here’s $500,000 for killing an unarmed black man and getting away with it.”

  398. rq says

    Picture. No real reason, just kind of liked the composition of photos there.

    Oh, I wanted to quote from the article on Crawford:

    But now that the image of Crawford’s mighty heave is on T-shirts, posters, walls and all over Twitter, Crawford has new ideas. He’d like to get more involved in the community, he said. Talk to youth. Organize the movement.

    And maybe, he said, help change St. Louis.

  399. rq says

    Tony
    Yup, get-rich-quick schemes are brutal, but toooootally worth it! (If you’re a white cop.)

  400. anteprepro says

    *Warning: Bitter sarcasm*
    I’m sure Wilson will just save the money raised for the next time he might need a lawyer because he brutalized or murdered a black kid. I’m sure he and the wingnuts will just consider it an investment for his future endeavors.

  402. Pteryxx says

    Back on the 15th (…this has been going on for 13 days now…) author Jim C. Hines posted a huge roundup of background statistics about racial profiling in traffic stops, disproportionate sentencing, unemployment and so on. (Black and White in the U.S.)

    Including this:

    A report on 313 black people killed by police, security guards, and vigilantes in 2012. Note that at least 44% were unarmed.

    The original report: Operation Ghetto Storm: 2012 Annual Report on the Extrajudicial Killings of 313 Black People by Police, Security Guards and Vigilantes (PDF link) by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. It’s 130 pages of reports collected from publicly available media, police reports, and court documents, starting off with a list of the names of all 313 persons killed (only three are unknown).

    The oft-cited “Every 28 Hours” comes from this report. From their FAQ, page 12: (my transcript from the PDF)

    Does a Black person really get killed by police, security guard or vigilante every 28 hours?

    No: No doubt it’s worse than every 28 hours. After months of marathon internet searching, we are sure that the actual number is closer to one state-sanctioned killing of a Black person every 24 hours. We found the names of more than 70 additional people whose race we could not confirm and countless others who the press never bothered to identify after police departments refused or delayed releasing their names. And, there were others who were in critical condition from police shootings, but the press never reported on whether they survived.

    With time, we estimate another 60 to 80 cases might emerge – that would bring us to the horrible conclusion that “one Black person is killed every 24 hours by police, security guard or vigilantes.” The 313 killings in this Report are only the ones we could verify in a timely way. With another few months of research, we could verify more, but with only one primary volunteer researcher, this is the best we could do and still release the Report before it contained “old news”.

    From page 13 on verifying their information:

    Alternative sources: To find the data presented in this Report, it was necessary to click on five to ten websites, sometimes many more, to complete the entry on one killing. This is especially unfortunate because most media echo police reports and police are notorious for “testilying.” One study found 76% of officers said they frequently bent the facts to establish “probable cause;” and 48% of police themselves said judges were correct in tossing police testimony as untrustworthy.(8) Frequently, when names are withheld, the corporate press never bothers to follow-up. And to ascertain whether someone died after police shot them, whether they were Black, whether they posed a threat, often required multiple clicks to find obituaries, facebook entries, comments in community press and “images”. Some departments are especially opaque: Philadelphia, Detroit and Chicago, among others, offer very incomplete reports on their killings.

    That reference comes via an extensive Vice.com article: Testilying: Cops are liars who get away with perjury

    First- and second-degree perjury is a felony, and yet none of these cops will face any charges for straight up lying in a courtroom under oath. The rules are different for cops. As infuriating as that might seem, this pattern of behavior has been known fact for decades.

    A 1987 study from Chicago found that 76 percent of officers agreed that that they frequently bent the facts to establish probable cause; 48 percent said that judges were right in tossing police testimony as untrustworthy.

    (Anyone with library access got the chops to search up the source?)

    Back to the main PDF. Data breakdowns follow, such as which states see the most extrajudicial killings (those with high black populations), how killings often were initiated (43% with racial profiling stops, 22% from domestic violence victims whose partners threaten their lives), and how many of those killed suffered from mental health problems or were intoxicated (self-medicating) – 22%. On page 24 are the stats for unarmed victims:

    Not Armed: Most of the people executed were not armed. The police and the corporate media often justify fatal shooting of “suspects” by loudly announcing that they were armed. Yet, it is legal to carry guns – even unregistered guns – in most states.(2) We have tabulated the number of people killed by police who were armed, not because we agree with the authorities that weapons’ possession is in itself a criminal activity – especially on the part of young Black men. Rather, we present this data only to demonstrate how flimsy police justification often is.

    136 (or 44% of 313) had no weapon at all at the time they were executed.

    83 (or 27% of 313 allegedly possessed a gun. It has been demonstrated that police reports of gun possession frequently turn out to be false. (3) Police are infamous for planting weapons or declaring that a cell phone, wallet or other harmless object is a gun. We, therefore, coded “armed status” as “alleged” if there was no corroboration that a suspect was indeed armed. Another 6 people or 2% were alleged to possess knives or other cutting tools.

    62 (20% of the 313) Did, in fact, possess guns – and that total includes at least 3 toy or replica guns. Another 23 (7%) had verified knives or cutting implements.

    It is also important to keep in mind that after reading through the details of 313 killings, only 42 of them (13%) involved a “suspect” definitely or allegedly shooting – which would make the gun possession illegal.

  403. Pteryxx says

    Taking a break. I’ve been trying to get the time to write that one up all weekend.

  405. says

    There were more comments I meant to respond to, but this is a big, fast moving thread.

    Pteryxx

    Many whites say they would be happy to live in an integrated community, but define ideally integrated as around 10% black and 90% white.

    Something similar happens with community organizations; if the board/group is more than ~30% black, whites will decide it’s a ‘black thing’ and not participate, but if it’s less than ~30% black, black people will (not unjustifiably) figure it’s one more case of tokenism and whites running everything, and won’t participate.

    I quoted the wrong portion of the Echoes of the 1960s article – the rhetoric of ‘outside agitators’ (along with, I think, conflating protesters with looters and protestING with violence) is more relevant than right-wingers being massive racists again.

    Eh, it’s kind of all mixed in with the racism; the ‘outside agitators’ are often specified as being of despised ethnicities, and there’s often overtones (or explicit statements) to the effect that black people wouldn’t be able to organize things on their own without outside help (historically evil Commies, usually Russian), but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear the current right-wing blithering about ISIS attacking America merge with the ‘outside agitators’ crap and claim that Islamist infiltrators are responsible.
    from the link @ rq’s 357

    As is customary, prosecutors from the county district attorney’s office are reviewing the case to determine whether the inaction amounts to criminal behavior.

    How the fuck much reveiwing does that take, seriously?
    Seven of Mine

    I think he should get his ass out there instead of trying to balance on the fence. Who gives a fuck what his conservative critics will say? They’ll say that shit anyway. And I find it hard to imagine congress being any more obstructionist than they already are.

    slightly OT, but I’m sick and fucking tired of liberals saying “Oh, but Obama/Congressional Democrats/Whoever can’t suggest/do/push this because the right wing will lose their shit.” The right wing will lose their shit no matter what, and are already pretty close to maximum possible levels of shit-losing on a day-to-day basis. Just take the right losing their shit for granted and move on with actually doing things.

    Also, yes, the President damn well should go to Ferguson in person.
    From Pteryxx’ 388:

    “We will not hide, we will no longer live in fear,” she said.

    This sentence enrages me beyond words. I am sickened. I cannot coherently respond; all I can muster are strings of profanity.

  407. says

    Some of what Cornel West said:

    “The thing is,” West told Frank, Obama “posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free. The war crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza, the war criminals go free.”

    “He posed as if he was a kind of Lincoln,” West continued, but “we ended up with a brown-faced Clinton. Another opportunist. Another neoliberal opportunist.”

    On the topic of the current racial relations in the United States, West said that, “with Ferguson, you get it reconfirmed even among the people within his own circle now, you see. It’s a sad thing. It’s like you’re looking for John Coltrane and you get Kenny G in brown skin.”

    West blamed Obama’s failures as a president to his “modus operandi,” which is to always “occupy the middle ground.”

    “He doesn’t realize that a great leader, a statesperson, doesn’t just occupy middle ground,” West said. “They occupy higher ground or the moral ground or even sometimes the holy ground. But the middle ground is not the place to go if you’re going to show courage and vision. And I think that’s his modus operandi. He always moves to the middle ground. It turned out that historically, this was not a moment for a middle-ground politician. We needed a high-ground statesperson and it’s clear now he’s not the one.”

  408. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    Yep. I especially don’t get this middle ground bullshit at this point in his presidency like I said earlier. The right is in a constant state of losing its shit, congress has already become a parody of itself and there are no more elections to worry about losing.

    I find it especially galling particularly on the issue of race because I know he understands the status quo isn’t neutral. He’s sitting there, first black man in the oval office and he’s using his time there to prop up the very system that produces birthers and a congress which blocks everything he does rather than cooperate with a black man.

  409. consciousness razor says

    Cornel West expresses his disappointment with President Obama. Doesn’t hold back.

    Heh. He’s not one to hold back.

    He’s right about Hillary Clinton too. Whatever happens in the mean time, I’m probably not going to be happy in 2016.

    More from the Salon interview:

    I think part of it is just temperament. That his success has been predicated on finding that middle ground. “We’re not black. We’re not white. We’re not rich. We’re not poor. There’s no classes in America. We are all Americans. We’re the American family.” He invoked the American family last week. It’s a lie, brother. You’ve got to be able to tell the truth to the American people. We’re not a family. We’re a people. We’re a nation. And a nation always has divisions. You have to be able to speak to those divisions in such a way that, like FDR, like Lincoln, you’re able to somehow pull out the best of who we are, given the divisions. You don’t try to act as if we have no divisions and we’re just an American family, with the poor getting treated in disgraceful ways and the rich walking off sipping tea, with no accountability at all, and your foreign policy is running amok with Israelis committing war crimes against precious Palestinians and you won’t say a mumbling word about the Palestinian children. What is history going to say about you? Counterfeit! That’s what they’ll say, counterfeit. Not the real thing.

  410. Ichthyic says

    Yep. I especially don’t get this middle ground bullshit at this point in his presidency like I said earlier. The right is in a constant state of losing its shit, congress has already become a parody of itself and there are no more elections to worry about losing.

    there was an article someone posted in this thread or a related one where his advisors were interviewed and basically said that their data showed that whenever Obama came out strongly against an issue conservatives favored, the polarization of viewpoints on the issue across America became even worse than if he said nothing at all, so they have been advising him to keep a more neutral profile.

    but… the problem, IMO, is that this polarization NEEDS to occur. As you say, there IS NO MIDDLE GROUND wrt to segregation, both racial and economic, in the US. This discussion needs to have a resolution based in reality, not one imagined from some fantasy spot in the middle, where “everyone” is gonna be happy. Sometimes, one side of an issue really is simply wrong, and it needs to be pointed out repeatedly, regardless of whether that causes increased levels of recalcitrance.

  411. Ichthyic says

    if Wilson doesn’t get charged with any crime, what happens with all that money raised in his name?

    “Hey, here’s $500,000 for killing an unarmed black man and getting away with it.”

    If my prediction holds, that money will end up in the accounts of the Brown family as awards during the inevitable civil suit that will get filed.

    oh the irony, that the money the “Wilson supporters” donated will end up helping Brown’s family instead.

    in fact, if Wilson had ANY sense at all, he would publicly announce he already planned to donate that money to the Brown family. That would be a good thing to do, no matter what.

    it won’t happen. Because Wilson really IS a dumb racist, and won’t even think of it.

  412. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    Exactly. We’re not doing the nation any favors by pretending that the question of whether people who aren’t cis-het white male should be recognized as full humans is a thing reasonable, decent people can disagree about.

  416. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    Wow the title of that book: The Violence of Organized Forgetting

    The state of US culture summed up in five words, right there.

  417. rq says

    More police violence in Ferguson.

    Life in Ferguson, working for justice beyond Mike Brown.

    A daily routine has started to develop in which residents come over after work and join the protests. Many go home before the sun sets, but others stay out until there is a confrontation with the police and officers clear the street — and inevitably make arrests. Then the next morning, volunteers in the area show up early and clean the debris from the night before. Then, the pattern repeats.

    […]

    “This is bigger than Mike Brown,” said De Andrea Nichols, 26, a social entrepreneur in St. Louis. “This is an issue that has been occurring regularly in our nation, and it took this death to make everyone go over the tipping point. In the future, we shouldn’t have to wait for something to happen to have our measures, our strategies, our tactics in place to prevent it.”

    Oh, body cams put police officers’ lives at risk? Tell me more, officer!

    John Rivera, president the Police Benevolent Association, also said the introduction of body-mounted cameras “will distract officers from their duties, and hamper their ability to act and react in dangerous situations.”

    Other people disagree:

    If anything, the cameras would hamper their ability to write fabricated police reports, not to mention physically abuse citizens.

    I wonder who is more right.

    By DNLee, another look at media portrayals of young black men, and how that affects the perceptions of the public, etc.

    As scientists we brag about objectivity, but in that room many folks admitted to “taking short cuts”. We all agreed that it shouldn’t matter, but the hard truth is that sometimes we do pay more attention to the packaging and look and see what’s on the inside later – after we’ve already made some major decisions about who has access to science in the first place. And these biases aren’t just about who we see as good scientists, but who we see as other roles, too.

    […]

    But I challenge everyone reading this to examine both of these questions: – What makes a good scientist/What makes a thug? Examine deeply the judgements you make in your own lives, the things you unconsciously say in front of your children or students.

    And some more police violence in Ottawa (Kansas) and in Chicago.

  420. rq says

    Ichthyic
    I left the sarcasm tag off, since I thought it would be pretty obviosu… But thanks for the comparison, anyway!

  421. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    …the fuck is a body mounted camera any more distracting than any of the other gear they wear!? Sad part is there is no shortage of people who could hear that and go “oh well, I guess you have a point, carry on then.”

  422. rq says

    Second news (?) article in Latvia on Ferguson (article in Latvian), by a journalist I usually enjoy reading, as he has demonstrated himself to be more liberal than many others, and willing to admit so.
    Basic information: he presents a version of events in Ferguson far more adherent to the facts, rather than the media version written up a few days ago; he touches on the militarization of police and their attitude towards the residents of Ferguson, which leads to a quick discussion of racism – fairly superficial, but okay; then he discusses the racial distribution in the police force and the city council, with a note on the overwhelming whiteness of both. Then, though, he references low voter turn-out in the black community of Ferguson (comparing this to low voter turn-out here, which is, in my mind, a different story), and, in the end, blames Ferguson for the overly-white situation in which they find themselves. Never once mentioning voter registration issues in America (there is no such issue here, being able to vote is the easiest thing ever, plus never mind the voter registration happening in Ferguson right now). So, overall, while attempting to make a point, he actually misses the point. Anyway. That’s one Latvian’s take on Ferguson, and what teachable material it can offer: go vote or don’t complain.

  424. Nick Gotts says

    the fuck is a body mounted camera any more distracting than any of the other gear they wear!? – Seven of Mine

    The “distraction” would be having to think about whether they had legal grounds for stopping/searching/arresting/tasing/shooting their current target.

  426. rq says

    On Saturday, there was a march for Eric Garner – Fox News wanted it to be a bloodbath? How surprising.

    The lack of violence surely came as a serious disappointment to Fox News, who spent the days leading up to the march solemnly predicting that the whole thing would melt down into a full-scale race war.

    Sorry, Fox, but sometimes people just want to make a point by protesting peacefully.

    The front page of the St Louis Dispatch today. Lookit all that uneven distribution.

    Here’s some people doing good stuff on the ground in Ferguson. Wherever those skills are used, that’s useful.

    Michael Brown’s and Trayvon Martin’s parents on Today, speaking with Craig Melvin.

    A look at the business side of police crackdowns.

    The companies getting mileage out of the unrest in Ferguson are vast. The LRAD Corporation manufactures the long-range acoustic devices that have emitted piercing noises at protesters in Missouri. These sound devices can cause headaches and other types of pain. The police in Ferguson are also using the Bearcat armored truck manufactured by Lenco. That vehicle, costing $360,000, was paid for with Department of Homeland Security grant money, according to the New York Times. Since 2003, over $9 million in grants from Homeland Security have flowed to police in St. Louis, according to the Times. Overall, since the September 11 terror attacks, $34 billion in such grants have been given to law enforcement agencies across the country, showing it is the federal government fueling police militarization.

    My mind boggles at the amounts of money floating around – so much for the equipment, so little left over for the schools…!

    A message from an 11-year-old:

    “The people of Ferguson I believe don’t need tear gas thrown at them,” Govan said. “I believe they need jobs. I believe the people of Ferguson … they don’t need to be hit with batons. What they need are people to be investing in their businesses.”

    […]

    “All the wrong issues are actually being discussed and brought up,” Govan said. “But none of the issues with jobs – about why we can’t get jobs in our neighborhoods and why can’t we get better education just like the people in West County and South County. We need people investing our businesses in North County. And we’re just not getting it.”

    … mtc … (but only a little more)

  427. rq says

    50 years ago – another summer of riots.

    It started as a traffic dispute: A white police officer tried to remove an African-American woman from a car that had stalled at an intersection. Salaam says conflicting accounts of what happened quickly spread through the streets.

    DeRay McKesson – My Blackness is Not a Weapon.

    I’ve been tear gassed 3 times, chased by an armored SWAT vehicle, and have had to hide under my steering wheel to avoid detection, in Ferguson, MO. And on the first night that officers patrolled the entire area on foot, when they stormed the crowd, I ran with my hands high, thinking that I could be taking my final steps. I’ll never forget running past the police, fighting back tears, with my hands as high as possible, afraid of my country.

    […]

    As a kid, I remember the nights we slept on the floor because the gunshots were so close to the house and it was less likely that a bullet would go through a floorboard than a window or wall.

    I became a teacher because I wanted to make sure that kids in communities like mine had the skills and opportunities to follow their dreams. I wanted to show my students that they, too, could master math skills and content and love it.

    But I also want them to be alive. Kids deserve to walk down the street and feel free, feel like they have ownership of their bodies and the spaces in which they live. As the child of a recovered and recovering drug addicts, it is important to me that life circumstances don’t limit kids’ understanding of what is possible in their life and their world.

    […]

    A key part of being college and career ready for many black boys is simply remaining alive until then.

    A reminder. Still no arrest (not the right arrest, anyway).

  428. rq says

    Two from the NY Times: a bio of Mike Brown that seems to emphasize all the times he wasn’t perfect(“He did not have a criminal record as an adult, and his family said he never got in trouble with the law as a juvenile, either.” I mean, really? That’s important to point out?), and some information on the funeral and the family’s request for peace.

  429. nich says

    David Weigel over at Slate is crowing that libertarians have been leading the charge against police militarization all along. This kind of pisses me off. For one thing, while it is true that some libertarians, notably Radley Balko, have been vocal about rural cops in MRAPs, many of these same libertarians also support legislation that enabled this, this, and this. It does no fucking good to piss and moan about militarized cops while enabling the George Zimmermans of the world. I think a lot of libertarians are concerned about police militarization not so much out some concern for the welfare of inner city black youth, but because of bullshit like this.

  432. says

    This thread, and the others like it, make me want to start a group blog, “People Who Give a Shit” or something, as an ongoing aggregator/curator of this kind of news, pointing to the voices of POC on the topic, and continuing the great work you’ve all been doing. Nice of me to volunteer other people for it, no? But it’d be a nice dream.

    Thanks again, all of you – too many to name! – who’ve been continuing to pay attention, to…stay woke.

  433. Pteryxx says

    Mike Brown’s funeral starts at 10 AM local time, or exactly one hour from now (less a few minutes for my composing this post).

    About 200 mourners are already lined up at the church on Martin Luther King drive. (It can seat 2500.) St Louis Post-Dispatch

    (Direct image link in the next post to keep under the link limit)

    Three White House officials in attendance: KMOV

    The officials attending the funeral are Broderick Johnson, who leads the White House’s My Brother’s Keeper Task Force. He’ll be joined by Marlon Marshall, a St. Louis native who attended high school with Brown’s mother, and Heather Foster. Both Marshall and Foster are part of the White House Office of Public Engagement.

    Brown will be eulogized at the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis.

    More on the service, pastor, and people in attendance: St Louis Post-Dispatch

    As his family has grieved, the Rev. Charles Ewing has spent this past week writing the eulogy he plans to deliver today for his nephew, Michael Brown, whose shooting death by a police officer began nearly two weeks of unrest in Ferguson.

    Ewing said he was writing “what God is giving me. To heal the hurt. Not only in the city of Ferguson, but the whole nation. The whole world is hurting.”

    He will deliver his message today to a crowd expected to overflow Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis, one of a handful of area churches capable of accommodating the expected large turnout.

    Attending the service will be civil rights leaders such as the Rev. Al Sharpton, who was asked to speak, and black elected leaders such as U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis.

    But also present will be a number of African-American families who know what it’s like to lose someone in a way that’s so violent, so sudden and so public. Their losses also have triggered protests drawing attention to the nation’s racial divisions and questionable use of force by law enforcement.

    They include the parents of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old who was unarmed and fatally shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer two years ago in Sanford, Fla. The cousin of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old who was tortured and murdered in 1955 by whites for reportedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. The aunt and uncle of Oscar Grant, the 22-year-old who was unarmed and fatally shot in 2009 by a white police officer inside a subway system in Oakland, Calif.

    And there are more. Each time a new family is added, members of this network reach out. Many said they would be there today.

    “As a unit we’re growing, unfortunately,” said Erica Gordon-Taylor, Emmett Till’s cousin, in St. Louis for a second time in two weeks.

    Also present are relatives of Jordan Davis (the “loud music” shooting). Grant’s relatives say they had to decide whether to travel to Ferguson or to New York to support the family and community of Eric Garner.

  434. Pteryxx says

    from my previous:

    Direct image link [A line of people of all shapes and ages filling a sidewalk, most in conversation with each other, as more people walk by to join the end of the line. Most are black, a few white.]

  435. The Mellow Monkey: Singular They says

    CaitieCat

    This thread, and the others like it, make me want to start a group blog, “People Who Give a Shit” or something, as an ongoing aggregator/curator of this kind of news, pointing to the voices of POC on the topic, and continuing the great work you’ve all been doing.

    I quite like that idea.

  436. Pteryxx says

    MSNBC is airing live coverage of the service for Michael Brown and interviewing the speakers. Livestream here: MSNBC

    (script blockers: allow msnbc.com, nbcnews.com, nbcudigitaladops.com, theplatform.com)

    —

    Last night, a moment of silence at MTV’s Video Music Awards. St Louis Post-Dispatch

    “Hip-hop has always been about truth and has been a powerful instrument of social change, from Melle Mel to Public Enemy to Kendrick Lamar,” Common said. “Hip-hop has always been presented a voice for the revolution.”

    MTV President Stephen Friedman had said just hours before the show that the network would air a 15-second spot focusing on race in hopes of spurring a discussion about the events surrounding the Aug. 9 police shooting death of Brown, who was unarmed when he was killed.

    That spot opened with a logo of Ferguson, then featured a background chant of “Don’t Shoot, Hands Up” over a quote from author James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

    Friedman said: “It’s a call to action to our audience that we have to confront our own bias head-on before we can truly create change.”

    MSNBC’s live reporter says they have heard unconfirmed reports that some music stars will be attending the service, also.

  437. Pteryxx says

    MSNBC just confirmed they saw Spike Lee enter the church.

    They’re showing *some* coverage live on TV among the other news, while the livestream appears to be constant. I’ll try to keep an eye on the stream but that’s asking a lot of my computer…

  438. vaiyt says

    Mind you, the thing about targeting people with milk. It happened in Brazil last year, too, with people who were carrying vinegar.

  439. dianne says

    @rq 431: Sadly, the article you linked didn’t even have space to go into the entirety of the problem. Take diabetes, for example. There’s an excellent correlation between how much prejudice there is against a particular group and how likely it is to get diabetes. Seriously: the highest risk is in African-Americans, next in Amerind and Hispanics, with only a minor increase in Asians compared to whites. Oh, and Cubans are less likely to get diabetes than Mexicans. Hmm…almost as if their “we’re ‘good immigrants’ running from Communism” status protects them…

    Then there’s mulitple myeloma. In the 1990s, whites actually did worse than minorities in terms of myeloma survival. By 2008 or so it was the opposite. No way to claim that that’s due to genetics. Access to newer medications on the other hand…

    I could keep ranting, but probably shouldn’t.

  440. Pteryxx says

    Milk’s still neither an offensive weapon nor a preparation, like a gas mask conceivably could be. You can’t pour milk on your eyes *beforehand* to make yourself immune to tear gas. It’s completely useless (except as a drink) until *after* one’s been gassed.

    Besides, some of the people living there have kids and babies that *need* milk. They had to walk through the blockaded area just to get groceries.

  441. Pteryxx says

    dianne: Someone needs to write up an overview of medical and health risks of prejudice. It’s not talked about nearly enough. If you’ve got cites to hand I think this would be an appropriate place.

  442. Pteryxx says

    …I do hope some of us atheist-inclined folks are watching this livestream so we can consider having emotions about 2500 mostly-black people singing in unison as a way of healing their community. I can’t make out the words, but I really wish MSNBC were just playing the audio on TV instead of split-screening it with interviews. It’s beautiful, a community chorus of thousands.

  443. Pteryxx says

    Seriously, MSNBC should not be showing a split-screen of a black congregation singing in unison alongside a voice-over of a legal expert talking about autopsies and bullet wounds. That’s just disgusting.

  444. Pteryxx says

    Speakers and family are now being seated as the chorus sings for their entrance, over and over.

    Lyrics:

    I shall wear a crown. (2x)
    When it’s all over (2x)

    I shall see His face (2x)
    When it’s all over (2x)

    (Invert parts after each set of 2)
    I’m going to put on my robe, tell the story how I made it over. (2x)

    I’m going to put on my robe, tell the story how I made it over (2x)

    I’m going to put on my robe, tell the story how I made it over (vamp)

    Soon as I get home (repeat)

  445. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    From the comment section on the MSNBC live stream page:

    I wish that we can spend more time as a group of people at college graduations and other happier events in life than the time we spend at funerals. RIP young man.

    Indeed.

  446. Pteryxx says

    Pastor Michael Franks reading powerfully from Psalms 27: (reference)

    1The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? 2When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall. 3Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident. 4One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple. 5For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock. 6And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the LORD.

  447. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    Wow…

    first speaker from the family not sure what his name is: If we wanna have more of this (gesturing to the crowd and everyone gathered together) we gotta have less of this (i.e. funerals).

    *sniff*

  448. Pteryxx says

    That may have been, I swear, ten minutes straight of singing and dancing, clapping to time. Audience members singing and dancing in place or in the aisles. (One little old lady brought a tambourine.) Pastor’s now calming the audience down so the speakers can begin… “Turn to your neighbor and say ‘You *did* come to a church!’ ”

    I’ve only been to two funerals in my (more than three) decades, and both were somber. However, I was raised in a fundamentalist Baptist subculture.

    I’ve mentioned before how my sect banned all dancing and any interesting music – anything that was syncopated, or used electric guitars, or more than a couple hundred years old basically. I *thought* that was just how religious people acted, banning everything fun or exciting. Now… I’m thinking it sure wasn’t being *Baptists* that led my church-of-origin to ban music and dancing as sinful.

  449. Pteryxx says

    The most recent speaker started out by offering his phone number to anyone who might want his support and counsel for their grief; and then asked the community not to add to the family’s pain or distract from the investigations by giving in to the need for retaliation, by violence or looting.

    (Noting for those who would claim that black communities don’t address such things.)

  450. rq says

    Pteryxx
    I can’t watch that, I’m not going to see any of it if I tried. :( People singing in unison really get to me (for a lot of reasons), but especially at funerals. It’s enough to read about it.

    dianne
    Thanks for that rant, I think you should keep going.

    +++

    More responses to that NY Times article:
    The author. Apparently he was in Ferguson at some point.

    A comparison: Mike Brown vs. the Boston Bomber. :/ No words from me.

    Someone providing material in advance for their NY Times obituary.

    And, really, who among us is an angel? Really?

    Kind of, but not really relevant. DMB fans will be amused.

    And finally: after three autopsies, what can you expect? So sad.

  451. rq says

    Police Chief Thomas Jackson to Ferguson residents: we couldn’t care less. Well, not in so many words:

    For more than a week, we have watched and read with astonishment the stunning ineptitude of Ferguson, Mo., Police Chief Thomas Jackson. “We couldn’t care less” appears to be his and his department’s motto. Not about the residents of that tense Missouri town, not about state and local federal officials trying to keep a lid on tensions and not even about their own reputation. Each Jackson appearance is followed by an immediate facepalm. And little tidbits in the Sunday papers only add to the negative impression.

    (The article is a week old; only saw it now.)

  452. Pteryxx says

    Now reading from MLK’s “Nonviolence and Racial Justice”: (reference)

    After his emancipation in 1863, the Negro still confronted oppression and inequality. It is true that for a time, while the army of occupation remained in the south and Reconstruction ruled, he had a brief period of eminence and political power. But he was quickly overwhelmed by the white majority. Then in 1896 through the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, a new kind of slavery came into being. In this decision the Supreme Court of the nation established the doctrine of “separate but equal” as the law of the land. Very soon it was discovered that the concrete result of this doctrine was strict enforcement of the “separate,” without the slightest intention to abide by the “equal.” So the Plessy doctrine ended up plunging the Negro into the abyss of exploitation where he experienced the bleakness of nagging injustice.

    […]

    True peace is not merely the absence of some negative force–tension, confusion or war; it is the presence of some positive force–justice, good will and brotherhood.

    Started with MLK’s famous quote

    paraphrase of Amos 5:24 – We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

  453. rq says

    Pteryxx
    Everything in this whole string of events has shown me that black people address all the issues they are supposedly not addressing, and a heck of a lot more than white people addressing similar issues. If a future needs to be built, I’d rather the people being active did it, rather than those who choose to ignore the reality in their faces.

  454. Pteryxx says

    During this speaker’s piece about “the blood crying from the ground for justice” referencing Cain and Abel, among the cases of injustice he named was Sandy Hook.

  456. Pteryxx says

    Sharpton – Michael Brown does not want to be remembered for a riot – This is not about you. This is about justice.

    – America, how do you think we look when the world sees you can’t come up with a police report but you can find a video [crowd standing and cheering]

    How do you think we look when young people march nonviolently, asking for the land of the free and home of the brave to hear them, and you put snipers on the roof – how do you think we look?

    (paraphrased heavily thanks to MSNBC’s closed captioners – please see transcripts when they go up!)

  457. Pteryxx says

    Sharpton – We respect police, but those that are wrong need to be dealt with, just like the ones who are wrong in our community need to be dealt with. Take the rotten apples out of the bushel – We’re not the ones making the cops look bad!

  458. Pteryxx says

    Much much more – Sharpton’s currently … ‘Blackness was never about being a gangster or a thug – Blackness was about how much we were pushed down and rose up anyhow!’

    and MSNBC on TV has gone to commercials, and to other news, so there aren’t closed-captions anymore. Transcript, please, MSNBC.

  460. Pteryxx says

    MSNBC’s now showing speakers from earlier in the funeral, talking about Brown’s family. (Meanwhile on livestream Sharpton’s decrying black youngsters who call themselves n-words. I think MSNBC might’ve used a bit of delay to cover themselves…)

  461. Pteryxx says

    Sharpton’s asking the White House representatives to stand and for people to welcome them and the other dignitaries who came. I think that made it onto MSNBC’s TV coverage.

  463. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    It started buffering pretty badly for me and then went down altogether but came right back when I refreshed.

  465. carlie says

    Pteryxx – there’s definitely an entire subset of Baptists who think music and dancing is sinful (hence the joke: Why don’t Baptists allow premarital sex? Because it might lead to dancing!) It’s pretty variable, though – there are something like half a dozen types of Baptists, and within each there is space for variation – the SBC, for example, technically only requires adherence to a few specific larger doctrines, and all of the small stuff is up to each church to decide for themselves.

  466. Pteryxx says

    MSNBC’s TV coverage isn’t playing live *sound* from the funeral now, but showing lots of live *video* as split-screen and alternating general Ferguson coverage with voice-over summaries of what Sharpton has been saying. (And other news, and commercials.) I’m glad to see their team discussing the community’s *reasons* for distrusting this prosecution team, not because of McCulloch’s family but because of how prosecutors usually have close ties to the police, and because of how badly the police have handled everything else up to and including letting Brown’s body lie in the street. They’re focusing on the NYT’s coverage of that, rather than the NYT trying to make Mike Brown look bad (see rq’s #428.)

  467. Pteryxx says

    carlie – I don’t want to derail right now, but I was hinting that my church likely was saying syncopated and modern music and dancing were sinful/hedonistic/obscene not because of reasons, but because *black* congregations have that kind of music and dancing. This funeral’s in a big Baptist church and someone brought tambourines. O_o *whiteperson amazement*

    The heck with white churches, I’d probably have kept showing up if they let us dance.

  468. Pteryxx says

    They’re singing the dignitaries out now – I think Sharpton did most of the speaking and the service is wrapping up. Kids are in school, after all (Sharpton said) so they need to not take too long.

  469. Pteryxx says

    Camera just panned over the parking lot – packed crowds a block in either direction, a LINE of limousines, and (I think) seven TV satellite dishes on vans in the background. This church holds 2500 and today had expanded seating for 2000 more.

  470. David Marjanović says

    Seriously, MSNBC should not be showing a split-screen of a black congregation singing in unison alongside a voice-over of a legal expert talking about autopsies and bullet wounds. That’s just disgusting.

    o_O What in the fuck.

    Speakers and family are now being seated as the chorus sings for their entrance, over and over.

    Lyrics:

    I shall wear a crown. (2x)
    When it’s all over (2x)

    I shall see His face (2x)
    When it’s all over (2x)

    “When it’s all over” immediately makes me think of “only the dead have seen the end of war”.

  471. Pteryxx says

    Singing the casket out now as congregants hug and pay their respects to Brown’s family members walking behind it. The song’s cheerful, upbeat, and fast, with clapping, and they just keep it going and going.

  472. Pteryxx says

    and I think the livestream is over. MSNBC’s text article here.

    At least 4,500 attendees flocked to Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church to remember the teen, who was fatally shot more than two weeks ago by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson. Some worshipers began standing in line as early as 6 a.m., enduring stifling heat. A few hundred mourners were left outside when the doors locked for the start of the service at 11 a.m. ET. Brown’s grandmother was blocked temporarily from walking into the church.

    Hundreds of family members attended, along with celebrities and an emissary from the White House. Ron Davis, the father of unarmed black teen Jordan Davis who was fatally shot in Florida two years ago, arrived with Oscar Grant’s uncle, Cephus Johnson. Grant was shot by a police officer in Oakland, California, on New Year’s Day in 2009. Film director Spike Lee, civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson, children of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Missouri lawmakers Claire McCaskill and Maria Chappelle-Nadal were among the notable people in attendance. But Gov. Jay Nixon, who was criticized for his initial reaction to the shooting, didn’t appear at the service “out of respect for the family,” said Scott Holste, his press secretary.

    Throngs of local residents, some who previously protested in the streets of Ferguson, also showed their support. Dozens of mourners riding motorcycles arrived together, the roar of their engines snarling outside the church.

    “I couldn’t go and protest. I don’t go into the county at all because you can’t go over there without the police stopping you,” said George Fields, of St. Louis. “But nothing could stop me from being here.”

    A St. Louis Cardinals baseball hat and dozens of red roses were placed on top of the teen’s closed casket inside the church. A collage of photographs, a quilt with Brown’s image, bouquets of flowers and wreaths surrounded Brown’s casket, in place at the front of the church. Leaders of the ceremony were forced to skip speeches by a few individuals previously scheduled, due to time restraints with the City of St. Louis. Attendees heard from several of Brown’s family members, including his uncle, Pastor Charles Ewing, and their attorneys.

  473. rq says

    Okay… I was going to link to separate tweets, but I’m just going to present Sean McElwee’s twitter feed. He has a list of tweets comparing the description of Michael Brown with descriptions of various serial killers and other terrorists in American history (who happen to be white). And here’s his article on why we’re not living in a post-racial society.

    In America, race determines not just where someone lives and what school he or she attends, it affects the very air we breathe. Although many whites wish to believe we live in a “post-racial” society, race appears not just in overt discrimination but in subtle structural factors. It’s impossible to delineate every way race affects us every day, but a cursory examination of major structural racial problems can give us a feeling for how far we still have to go.

    Oh, and this deserves individual attention.

    Al Sharpton speaks.

    I’m black, my brother is a white cop who shot a black man. Whoa.

    Also, there was Ramarley Graham back in 2012. The shooting of Michael Brown is not an exception.

  474. Jeff S says

    Was watching “Sun News Network” (the Canadian equivalent of Fox News) for some reason last night and was absolutely disgusted.

    The anchor was saying “Is it fair to criticize Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for only speaking out against Inter-racial issues and not INTRA-racial issues?”

    The response from the guest was “Absolutely fair, they are the equivalent of Ambulance Chasers”
    Both the anchor and guest were young white women.

    Yikes. So sad to see shit like this on TV.

  478. Pteryxx says

    MSNBC’s The Reid Report is about to cover how the Ferguson police department was founded (their words?) upon the collapse of a neighboring department. They may be referencing the Jennings police department, where Officer Wilson first worked (Washington Post reference).

    —

    A professor interviewed just now mentioned the combination of activism and mourning in Brown’s service, and the long history of funerals in civil rights activism, such as when Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmitt Till, insisted on an open (glass-topped) casket so that the world could witness what had been done to him. A few references:

    CommonDreams.org – Open Coffins: On Noah Pozner and Emmitt Till

    For some observers, Pozner’s fortitude and determination to make the horror real echoes that of the mother of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black boy hideously murdered in 1955 after he allegedly whistled at a white woman. His mother Mamie Till-Mobley famously insisted on an open coffin at his funeral, which drew tens of thousands of mourners. “There was just no way I could describe what was in that box,” she said at the time. “No way. I just wanted the world to see.” The world did see, and evidently remembered. Today, the murder of Emmett Till is viewed as a seminal moment in the civil rights movement.

    Smithsonian Magazine – Emmett Till’s Casket Goes to the Smithsonian, an interview with Till’s cousin Simeon Wright.

    They designed the casket with the glass over it and what not. She said it herself, she wanted to world to see what those men had done to her son because no one would have believed it if they didn’t the picture or didn’t see the casket. No one would have believed it. And when they saw what happened, this motivated a lot of people that were standing, what we call “on the fence,” against racism. It encouraged them to get in the fight and do something about it. That’s why many say that that was the beginning of the civil rights era. From experience, you can add, what they mean by that is we was always as a people, African Americans, was fighting for our civil rights, but now we had the whole nation behind us. We had whites, we had Jews, Italians, Irishmen jumping in the fight, saying that racism was wrong.

    […]

    [Interviewer] Why did you decide to donate the casket to the Smithsonian?

    Donating it to the Smithsonian was beyond our wildest dreams. We had no idea that it would go that high. We wanted to preserve it, we wanted to donate it to a civil rights museum. Smithsonian, I mean that’s the top of the line. It didn’t even cross our mind that it would go there, but when they expressed interested an in it, we was overjoyed. I mean, people are going to come from all over the world. And they’re going to view this casket, and they’re going to ask questions. “What’s the purpose of it?” And then their mothers or fathers or a curator, whoever is leading them through the museum, they’ll begin to explain to them the story, what happened to Emmett. What he did in Mississippi and how it cost him his life. And how a racist jury knew that these men were guilty, but then they go free. They’ll get a chance to hear the story, then they’ll be able to… perhaps, a lot of these young kids perhaps, they will dedicate their lives to law enforcement or something like that. They will go out and do their best to help the little guys that can’t help themselves. Because in Mississippi, in 1955, we had no one to help us, not even the law enforcement. No one to help us. I hope that this will inspire our younger generation to be helpers to one another.

    and from Juan Williams, the author of Eyes on the Prize: (Brookings in 2000) cited in (Daily Kos)

    You know, I remember in interviewing people in the course of doing [Eyes on the Prize] that it was not only young black people who spoke about Till, but young white people as well, who had the idea that this is someone our age, you know, a pre-teen really, or young teen, and if you can see that happening to a young black child down in Mississippi, it’s not only black kids who say, “Well, it’s not that I can’t be the teacher or nurse, but if they kill people, this is serious,” and that young white people also said, “If they’re killing people, it’s not just a matter of some folks don’t like colored people, this is horrible, and this can’t be allowed to go on. I’ve got to do something about this.”

    — Juan Williams

  479. zmidponk says

    rq #417:

    Oh, body cams put police officers’ lives at risk? Tell me more, officer!

    John Rivera, president the Police Benevolent Association, also said the introduction of body-mounted cameras “will distract officers from their duties, and hamper their ability to act and react in dangerous situations.”

    It’s somewhat ironic that, in the UK, it’s pretty much the reverse – body cameras are being trialled, and are being welcomed by the police, but the idea is coming under fire from civil liberties groups, on the basis that it might not be clear when the public is being filmed by the police using these cameras.

  480. Pteryxx says

    Joy-Ann Reid now speaking face-to-face with Kadiatou Diallo, mother of Amadou Diallo.

    (paraphrased) – What do we do about those young sons who (have) completely lost their sense of direction? We need to send them to the best education they can go to – and black and Hispanic young people killed by police – America needs to have a dialogue about this.

    How Amadou was killed, making her part of the community of loss: Democracy Now

    Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea, died on Feb. 4, 1999 when four white New York police officers fired 41 shots at him. He was standing in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment unarmed. Police opened fire when he reached his wallet. They claimed they had mistaken the wallet to be a gun. He was 22 years old.

    After a trial jury acquitted the officers, the family responded by filing a civil suit against the city for tens of millions of dollars. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was elected after the shooting, said, “I’m just glad that we were able to come to a financial settlement with the family and let’s get on with it.’’

    See also 1999 coverage from NY Times (here) and (here).

  481. noxiousnan says

    @ Caesar @31 (late to the game, only on #31, but had to respond):

    “If people don’t want to get gassed or shot, they should protest ….in the designated area.”

    Fuck you you fucking fuck! The whole of the US is a designated area for Constitutional rights.

  482. dianne says

    Almost off topic, but…Scott Olson’s images are brilliant. No wonder they arrested him.

  484. rq says

    dianne
    Yes, they are. He has such an amazing eye for capturing the message of an image.

    Pteryxx
    I was all done with my fuzzy eyes until Colorlines. :(

  485. jrfdeux, mode d'emploi says

    Jeff S #474

    Too right, although I cling to what I perceive as Sun being nowhere near as successful as Fox, as Canadians will only tolerate so much ultracon bullshit. Sun also seemed to take a cookie-cutter to the Fox formula. They hired Krista Erickson as an anchor, and she posed for cheesecake photos while working at Sun. You never saw any of that while she was at the CBC.

  487. Seven of Mine, formerly piegasm says

    Found a partial transcript of Sharpton’s eulogy here.

    Pretty sure that’s most of it.

  488. says

    Jeff S@474, if it’s any comfort you probably increased Sun News Network’s viewer numbers during the time you were watching by 10 percent. Their ratings were horrible when they debuted, and have only gotten worse as time has gone on. It’s the right wing radio folks in Canada that are more of a worry. I hate to think what someone like Charles Adler might have been saying about Ferguson.

    Not that it’s just commercial radio hosts that are problematic. Given the tin ear he has on a lot of issues I’ve been hoping that if CBC Radio 1 has an episode of Cross Country Checkup on Ferguson they won’t have Rex Murphy hosting. So far they haven’t, and Murphy seems to be on hiatus again.

  490. robro says

    This essay has a painful wrinkle to it. It’s titled: “I’m black, my brother’s white … and he’s a cop who shot a black man on duty.”

  491. rabidwombat says

    Ichthyic:

    but… the problem, IMO, is that this polarization NEEDS to occur. As you say, there IS NO MIDDLE GROUND wrt to segregation, both racial and economic, in the US. This discussion needs to have a resolution based in reality, not one imagined from some fantasy spot in the middle, where “everyone” is gonna be happy. Sometimes, one side of an issue really is simply wrong, and it needs to be pointed out repeatedly, regardless of whether that causes increased levels of recalcitrance.

    I agree with this entirely. I think when these divisions and false dichotomies occur, reasonable people, even if they thought they agreed with the wrong side of the argument, can become shocked out of their thoughtless complacency by the hatred these people display for their fellow human beings.

    These conversations need to happen, to force the comfortable and privileged to ask themselves where they draw the line, and how extreme someone has to be before they stop supporting them. They need to really see the endgame these bigots are pushing for, and hear it from their own, hate-filled mouths.

  493. rabidwombat says

    Al Sharpton:

    This made me cry:

    Whatever the circumstance an investigation leads to, to have that boy lying there, like nobody cared about him. Like he didn’t have any loved ones, like his life value didn’t matter…

  494. Ichthyic says

    These conversations need to happen, to force the comfortable and privileged to ask themselves where they draw the line, and how extreme someone has to be before they stop supporting them. They need to really see the endgame these bigots are pushing for, and hear it from their own, hate-filled mouths.

    MLK was famous for having noted that perhaps the largest problem with overcoming racism in the US was not the racists themselves, but the self-proclaimed “moderates” on the issue.

  495. ck says

    jrfdeux, mode d’emploi wrote:

    Too right, although I cling to what I perceive as Sun being nowhere near as successful as Fox, as Canadians will only tolerate so much ultracon bullshit. Sun also seemed to take a cookie-cutter to the Fox formula.

    I think one big thing that keeps them from being credible with Canadians is their tabloid newspapers, which is always plastered with bombastic (and usually quite absurd) headlines. It’s very hard to take their TV newscast seriously when their newspaper looks like a cheap Canadian knockoff of the National Enquirer. I hope they never stop publishing it except to go into bankruptcy.

    The Sun papers are also far more explicitly partisan than Fox is. Fox vaguely pretends to be neutral. Sun doesn’t bother.

  499. rq says

    Something to remember: this isn’t just now.

    Candlelight vigil at WVU.

    Here’s a better take: Michael Brown’s unremarkable humanity.

    And if Michael Brown was not angelic, I was practically demonic. I had my first drink when I was 11. I once brawled in the cafeteria after getting hit in the head with a steel trash can. In my junior year I failed five out of seven classes. By the time I graduated from high school, I had been arrested for assaulting a teacher and been kicked out of school (twice.) And yet no one who knew me thought I had the least bit of thug in me. That is because I also read a lot of books, loved my Commodore 64, and ghostwrote love notes for my friends. In other words, I was a human being. A large number of American teenagers live exactly like Michael Brown. Very few of them are shot in the head and left to bake on the pavement.

    (It’s a short read, but with a point.)

    Don Lemon really gets it from Taleb Kweli. Not feeling sorry at all.

    Here’s a re-cap of the funeral, warning – autoplay video.

    City Council meeting in Ferguson postponed… because they need a bigger venue. !!

  500. rq says

    More from the funeral: one, two.

    More support across the country: students at Washington U.

    I’ve seen the headlines for ’60 years ago’, here’s one 80 years of Fergusons:

    From the Civil War through the early 1900s, what we now call “race riots” were expressions of white rage. Often spurred by labor strife, rumors of a crime committed against a white person, or fears of black families moving into primarily white areas, whites would set entire black neighborhoods to the flame, destroying property and murdering blacks at will.

    That changed in Harlem in March 1935, when a black teenager named Lino Rivera attempted to steal a knife from a store on 125th Street. Rivera was caught by the manager, Jackson Smith. When the police came, they took Rivera to the back of the store to avoid a crowd that had gathered outside, but rumors began to spread that Rivera had been beaten or killed. When police refused to let the crowd see the boy, the incident took on a primal echo of the terror that Harlem’s black residents had come north to escape. Someone in the crowd threw something that shattered the store’s front window.

    Please grant amnesty for warrants:

    “The City of Ferguson has more warrants than residents,” the letter states. “Most of these warrants are from unpaid fines for nonviolent offenses. For many young people, these warrants act as a barrier to employment and housing. Just as importantly, the psychological trauma of spending each day subject to arrest and incarceration is debilitating.”[emphasis mine]

    A closer look at Captain Ronald Johnson.

    Absent from the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church, though, will be a tall, bald black man who now personifies this touchstone moment nearly as much as the 18-year-old being laid to rest. He is Capt. Ronald S. Johnson of the Missouri Highway Patrol, who, in many days of working to restore calm here in Ferguson, has redefined leadership in crisis: equal parts police official, preacher, mediator and neighbor, unafraid to convey his inner conflict, unafraid to cry.

    Besides Michael Brown, who else does the media call ‘no angel’?

    The following Times passages are what resulted from a query for the phrase “no angel” in the digital pages of the paper. We’ve excluded reviews of pieces of fictional entertainment, and this list is not exhaustive. However, when looking at the paper’s usage of the phrase when describing people of note, a pattern emerges. “No angel” seems to most commonly describe either hardened white criminals, or men of color.