“You first, motherf*cker.”

Henry Rollins. Credit: Heidi May.

Henry Rollins. Credit: Heidi May.

Henry Rollins latest column tackles the deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, the media, white privilege, and the problem of two Americas. Here’s a bit:

…I’m an educated, Caucasian, heterosexual male. Does this ensure I will have success and live the American Dream? Obviously it doesn’t, but it damn sure drops me on second base with a great opportunity to steal third.

I live solidly in one of the Americas but have been aware of other Americas for decades. For the last week, I have heard politicians use a phrase that nauseates me whenever I hear anyone say it. The need to “come together.” To that I say, “You first, motherfucker.”

Since an upgrade will not occur on a national level via presidential pen stroke or SCOTUS decision, you have to take it upon yourself to be an infinitely fantastic person every single day. There will be times when it will be a bitch to be so awesome, but you’ll handle it. This century will be about incredible individuals. Bold acts of kindness and a genuine desire to at least try to see things from someone else’s perspective are but two of the mandatory requirements for betterment moving forward.

Don’t wait for your government. It’s a broken machine that can only deliver damaged goods. Prejudice coats the mechanics of the USA’s OS. Attempts to clean the parts are attacked as big-government, special-interest meddling. It’s by no means a Gordian knot, but a total system retool is required. It would be incredibly expensive and time-consuming, and the growing pains would be enormous. Not gonna happen.

Equality, tolerance and decency are not inherently American or human traits. They are values you choose to adopt and use or not. So, be amazing all the time.

Not much I can add to that. Be amazing, people.

Full column here.

The Complexity of Road Signs.

roadsign1The North Dakota DOT is replacing the old Highway Signs, as pictured on the right. Being that this is happening in ND, it will take half of forever, and the old signs will still be seen for some time, unless people start stealing them all, which might happen. Out in my part of the wilds, the old signs are still all over the place.

I’ve been conflicted about writing this up, it’s a bit more complex than it seems on the surface. It seems that most people feel replacing these signs is erasing Native people, and their presence here in Indian Country; that it’s a mark of disrespect and whitewashing. A lot of people are unaware of the history behind the sign, and who it honours. No, it’s not a generic Indian profile. It’s a specific honour to Red Tomahawk, later known as Marcellus Red Tomahawk. The Red Tomahawk family is a large one here in ND, and as far as I know, they are all good people.

The reason Marcellus Red Tomahawk was chosen to be honoured on the road markers was because white people felt he brought peace to the Plains by executing Sitting Bull. Marcellus Red Tomahawk was not in the least shy about recounting the event, but other peoples’ versions disagree with his account. Almost all of the accounts narrated by people other than Red Tomahawk place Bull Head as shooting first, striking Sitting Bull in the torso, whereupon Red Tomahawk pulled out a pistol and shot Sitting Bull in the head.

At this time, the Ghost Dance was spreading, and the white government and military feared it greatly. I don’t think it would be unfair to say that the white people at the time believed in it more than Natives did. The 7th Cavalry carried out their massacre at Wounded Knee, citing the Ghost Dance as the justification. Sitting Bull did not take part in the Ghost Dance, however, he did not forbid his people from dancing. White authorities feared this meant the Indians would regains strength and continue to fight, rather than settle down into assimilation. The order was given to arrest Sitting Bull. The federal government had started instituting police on reservations, and Marcellus Red Tomahawk was one who joined the police force at Standing Rock rez. He had also embraced Christianity and was devout in that regard. Marcellus Red Tomahawk never disavowed his heritage, but it became terribly twisted by a desire to not only assimilate, but to be an important person among those he sought to be a part of, that of white men. While he himself often stayed dressed in regalia and traditional clothing, photos of his family show his wife and children dressed in the Western white manner. He sent his own children to the Carlisle Indian School:

richard-pratt-carlisle-indian-school

One of Red Tomahawk’s sons came home in 1909 and committed suicide. I look upon what happened to Red Tomahawk as a tragedy, a by product of genocide and the demands of assimilation. It makes me feel so sad and wounded. Sitting Bull would never have survived arrest, he would have been murdered anyway, as Crazy Horse was, but it’s a hard thing to face that he died at the hands of his own. Personally, I’m glad the signs are being replaced, because they were never meant to honour Indigenous people at all. They were honour to a murder, an honour to the white way of doing things, a paean to how colonialism works.

Bulletproof Warrior.

Jim Glennon. Credit: Elizabeth Flores, Star Tribune.

Jim Glennon. Credit: Elizabeth Flores, Star Tribune.

The seminar was called “The Bulletproof Warrior,” and the instructors urged the law enforcement officers in the hotel conference room to make the decision to shoot if they ever feel their lives are threatened.

Videos of bloody shootouts between police and civilians emphasized a key point: Hesitation can kill you.

In the audience at the May 2014 seminar was a young St. Anthony police officer, Jeronimo Yanez, city records show. He’s now known around the world as the officer who killed Philando Castile minutes after making a traffic stop in Falcon Heights last week.

Amid intensifying demands for changes in police training in the wake of the shooting deaths of Castile and others, such “survival” courses for officers are flourishing nationally. But some in law enforcement are distancing themselves from the approach.

The Houston Police Department, for example, won’t pay for its officers to attend the Bulletproof Warrior seminar, which is put on by an Illinois for-profit company called Calibre Press.

And the leader of an international police training association said he thinks some seminars like those offered by Calibre and other firms foster a sense of paranoia among officers.

Oh, you think? As if the militarization wasn’t bad enough, there’s shit like ‘bulletproof warrior’, which is little more than an expensive exhortation to shoot! shoot! shoot!, but not white people if you can avoid it.

“Police training became very militaristic and it caused a lot of the problems that are going on in the nation,” said Michael Becar, executive director of the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training, with offices in Idaho and Washington, D.C.

Ah, there it is. Nice to see this acknowledged, but are you going to move past that?

Jim Glennon, a co-owner of Calibre who co-taught the seminar Yanez attended, said it’s wrong to link the course to the officer’s actions last week. “Everybody’s going after this kid,” Glennon said Wednesday. “Nobody should be judging what he did yet without the evidence.”

Well, you see, we have evidence. Evidence of murder. It’s right there, for everyone to see. Perhaps if you hadn’t invested so much time in making cops hyper-aggressive, this might not have happened.

The Bulletproof Warrior is one of 15 sessions offered by Calibre and its parent company, LifeLine Training. The courses are well-known and popular in law enforcement circles. Facebook photos show conference rooms and auditoriums filled with officers to hear the Bulletproof Warrior message.

Fans say it provides a valuable “wake-up call” in police safety tactics for the street: how to read the body language of someone preparing to attack, for instance. Training professionals note that Calibre was a pioneer decades ago in teaching basic police safety.

The body language of someone preparing to attack. Right. Interesting how the body language of PoC is always “oh no, gonna attack!”, while that of white people, even when firing at police, is not, so you end up with dead PoC, and white people arrested. Something is seriously fucked up with your warrior training there.

Yanez took the 20-hour seminar on May 21-22, 2014, according to a summary of Yanez’s training that the city of St. Anthony provided after a public records request. A year earlier he attended “Street Survival,” another of the company’s seminars, records show.

Yanez also took 20 hours of training in 2012 in “Officer Survival” from a different organization. In May of this year, he took two hours of training titled “de-escalation,” the only instruction in his four years with the department that appears to focus on that approach, the records show.

Over 40 hours of “training” in how to be a bigoted profiler, hyper-aggressive, and a killer. Great. And a whole 2 hours in de-escalation. Wow, I am just so impressed. I don’t want to be funding cop shops, when they are doing this sort of shit. Who in their right mind would? (I said right mind.)

William Czech was also in the Bulletproof Warrior class in the Ramada in Bloomington those two days in 2014. Czech isn’t a police officer. He’s a 47-year-old electrician from Mendota Heights with a keen interest in police training because of incidents involving a mentally ill family member.

Czech posed as a student to get into the class. He said he was horrified. He said he expected to see a presentation about understanding both how to avoid using deadly force as well as how to realize when it’s unavoidable. Czech said the course consistently emphasized the risk of hesitation.

[…]

Still, there are some in law enforcement training who question the courses.

Becar, who leads the international law enforcement training group, said his organization has no position on LifeLine Training and Calibre. But he said he has attended Calibre classes.

“Everything they were doing made the police officers very paranoid,” Becar said. “At some point they wouldn’t even stop a car without three backups.”

The Houston Police Department will not pay for officers to attend the Bulletproof Warrior seminar, said Houston police spokesman Kese Smith. Officers can go on their own time and expense, he said.

Smith said he couldn’t elaborate, saying only that “some of their instruction is not what we instruct.”

“No position.” “Can’t elaborate.” Why in the fuckety fuck not? If there are good cops, who think all this shit has gone much too far, why don’t you have a position? Why can’t you elaborate? Why in the hell aren’t you speaking out and denouncing this absolute crap? Why aren’t you doing your damn job, to protect and serve?

Full article here.

ISIS, Pokémon Go, and Cyber-Demons.

wiles3-2-800x430Rick Wiles, a radio show evangelist Christian pastor with a fervent wish for end times, and an endless appetite for hate, has a new target.

Rick Wiles, who frequently warns the apocalypse is near, called police last week after spotting a middle-aged man apparently taking pictures with his phone outside his “TruNews” offices — but officers told him the man was playing the augmented reality game, reported Right Wing Watch.

That freaked Wiles all the way out, and he let his imagination run wild.

“These Pokémon creatures are like virtual, cyber-demons,” Wiles said. “What this man, Friday, was trying to find was the Pokémon demon that had been placed inside the ‘Trunews’ office.”

Wiles worried that terrorists could use information harvested by the app to target Christians.

“What if this technology is transferred to Islamic jihadists, and Islamic jihadists have an app that shows them where Christians are located geographically?” Wiles said.

Uh oh. All you people happily playing a game, you’re playing with DEMONS! I really don’t think that anyone, terrorist or no, would have any difficulty in locating Christians in uStates. It’s not as if we have you all handily quarantined to one geographical location. I don’t think it would be terribly difficult to find Christians anywhere. You don’t need the help of virtual cyber-demons of the Pokémon kind. Any old cyber-demon will do.

“The enemy, Satan, is targeting churches with virtual, digital, cyber-demons,” Wiles said. “I believe this thing is a magnet for demonic powers.”

It didn’t have to be terrorists, he warned, saying everyday Americans could be tricked into doing the wicked bidding of these “cyber-demons.”

“At what point does this game go live and the Pokemon masters are telling people to kill people in those buildings?” Wiles said. “People are losing touch with reality.”

Some people are losing touch with reality, yes. That’s quite obvious. It’s just not who you think, Pastor Wiles. *Cough*

He compared Pokémon GO to the Facebook Live broadcast of a traffic stop that led to Philando Castile’s fatal shooting, saying it showed how digital technology could alter reality.

“I thought, either this is staged or she has lost touch with reality,” Wiles said. “Which one is it? Both of them are weird and frightening.”

Ummm…so everything on the internet now is the equivalent of people shouting “photoshop!”? Generally speaking, someone who stages a death isn’t then buried. This is so damn offensive, I don’t know what to say. Except perhaps they should get off the radio, immediately. I hear it’s infested with fakery demons.

Wiles’ co-host, Edward Szall, agreed — and he backed up their argument with a fake quote by the creator of Pokémon that supposedly endorsed Satanism.

“They’re spawning demons inside your church,” Wiles said. “They’re targeting your church with demonic activity. This technology will be used by the enemies of the cross to target, locate and execute Christians.”

Oh, how convenient. So, virtual cyber-demons are going to locate, target, and execute Christians, and that’s all for real and genuine, but a live stream of cops murdering a man in broad daylight, why that’s just fake nonsense. Got it.

Via Raw Story.

Why Killer Cops Aren’t Prosecuted.

Max Becherer/AP Photo

Max Becherer/AP Photo

Steve Russell (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is a Texas trial court judge by assignment and associate professor emeritus of criminal justice at Indiana University-Bloomington. He lives in Georgetown, Texas) has a good article up at ICTMN. I’m just going to include a few points here. Click over to read the full, two page article.

2. When the officer is the perpetrator of the homicide, he or she is almost never interviewed in the same circumstances as other persons accused of homicide.

A civilian person of interest in a homicide may be interviewed without even a chance to change out of bloody clothes, and investigators will conduct the interview without a defense lawyer present, if possible. A spokesman for the Baton Rouge Police Department told The New York Times that the officers involved in the shooting of Alton Sterling were not interviewed the day of the incident because “we give officers normally a day or two to go home and think about it.”

Taking a human life unleashes powerful feelings even when doing so was necessary. Considering that, a police officer involved in a shooting will often be sent home right away and only returned to duty in a desk job. By union contract or by custom, the officer will have a lawyer provided and plenty of opportunity to talk to that lawyer before giving a statement for the record.

When the system finally does get around to recording the officer’s statement, the officer knows what’s on the video (if there is one, and there so often is now with phones and body-cams prevalent), and so is unlikely to give a statement that conflicts with it.

3. The normal burden of proof is reversed.

In normal circumstances, the homicide investigator is looking for facts to show probable cause to believe that an unjustified criminal homicide took place and the person of interest committed it.

Studies of how innocent people get convicted show a lot of “confirmation bias.” That is, investigators start with a theory of what happened and they minimize or disregard evidence that does not support their preferred theory.

When a police officer has deployed deadly force, the bias of every police investigator is to believe that the use of force was justified. Nobody wants to charge a fellow officer with a crime for coming down on the wrong side of a line around which they have had to dance. Rookie officers don’t get assigned to investigate other officers.

8. The prosecutor needs the police department and vice versa.

Should prosecutors and police start urinating on each other’s shoes, there is no practical limit to how bad each can make the other look in court, and in the court of public opinion.

For this reason, the investigation and prosecution of all officer-involved shootings need to be taken away from the department for which the accused officer works. The choices are a prosecutor from some other jurisdiction (complicated), a special prosecutor (expensive), or a prosecutor from the state Attorney General’s office (possible conflict of interest if the AG has to defend a civil suit from the same incident).

The final way to mitigate the team spirit between prosecutors and police officers is to go to a federal agency. To do this routinely would require legislation, because every officer involved shooting does not contain a federal issue.

Are the feds more competent and honest than the state police? Indians on reservations have strong opinions from watching Major Crimes Act cases.

We’ve come a long way since Indians could not testify against white people in court, but most of those rules came from states. The federal government has been better than that, the modern federal government lionized for honesty in the face of temptation in The Untouchables.

The FBI reported that between 1993 and early 2011, their agents killed 70 people and wounded 80 others. All 150 incidents were internally investigated by the agency that claims to be incorruptible and the source of forensic science that is state of the art for the entire world. How many FBI shootings out of 150 were found to be legally justified?

One hundred and fifty.

Full article is at ICTMN.

Cops, Bigotry, Cops, Bigotry…

Louizandre Dauphin's selfie after he was pulled over by police (Photo: Instagram)

Louizandre Dauphin’s selfie after he was pulled over by police (Photo: Instagram)

First up, for a change, a story from Canada, where a man was confronted by cops for reading while black.

Louizandre Dauphin of Bathurst, New Brunswick snapped a selfie of his arched eyebrow for Facebook with red and blue police lights flashing behind him. The former high school English teacher pulled had over by the water to read a book by C.S. Lewis. All he wanted was a nice quiet place to read his book. But he had been pulled over.

The officer said that they had received several calls from concerned citizens who said that they saw a “suspicious person” on the wharf. He left his teaching job and now serves as the city’s director of parks, recreation and tourism, which might be why he sought out the city’s wharf as a place to read. But his appreciation of nature isn’t why he thinks people called to complain, The Province reports. He thinks it is because he’s black.

Full Story Here.

Shutterstock.

Shutterstock.

The Seattle Police Officers’ Guild, the union that represents the city’s police officers, has scrubbed its social media accounts less than a week after suggesting the Black Lives Matter movement was to blame for the fatal shootings in Dallas, The Stranger reported.

Not only was the guild’s website offline, but a Twitter search for its account came up empty as of Monday, as seen below: (See image at linked story.)

As the Seattle Times reported, the guild’s Facebook page was also taken down, just days after a post commenting on the Dallas attack by saying, “The hatred of law enforcement by a minority movement is disgusting” and adding the tag #Weshallovercome, a reference to the Civil Rights Movement protest song.

Geekwire published a screenshot of the post prior to its deletion, which can be seen here:

ScreenHunter_5537-Jul.-12-20.07

Guild President Ron Smith, a detective with the department, said at the time that the post was criticized because people took it out of context.

Oh. Always a good sign when someone decides to go full court Sam Harris, and scream context. There really isn’t any complex context to consider here.

“Somehow some folks were offended that police officers are disgusted at the level of violence directed toward law enforcement officers across this country by the vitriol spewed by a small segment of society,” he said.

So, people of colour are a small segment of society. Interesting. If that’s the case, why are all these white bigots so damn upset, screaming at how white people are a minority and will soon become extinct? You don’t get to have this both ways. Also, Mr. Smith, if people of colour are such a tiny segment of society, why in the hell are almost all extrajudicial murders by cops happening to PoC? Something smells, don’t you think? Full Story Here.

whitecouple6-800x430

Teen confronts white couple over racial statements (Facebook/screen grab)

Live Facebook video caught a Texas couple shouting racial slurs at an African-American teenage girl.

According to Media Takeout, the girl was dining with her family after church at Chester’s Hamburgers restaurant in San Antonio and began streaming the encounter live on Facebook after the couple made racial statements.

“So, Facebook, this is what racist people look like,” the girl announces to her followers.

Both families tell each other to “shut the f*ck up” before the white man begins calling the black family “god damn n*ggers.”

“You’re a f*cking n*gger!” the white woman wails.

“This is what racism looks like!” the teen recording the video shouts back.

“F*ck you, honky!” one of the women in the black family exclaims.

“I can be a honky! I can be cracker too!” the white man yells.

“Take your n*gger ass back to Africa!” the white woman says.

“I was born right here in America!” one black woman points out.

“My ancestors owned your mother f*cking ass,” the young white woman squawks. “My ancestors owned your ass, bitch.”

The woman adds, “Black people don’t belong in America.”

[…]

They call us monkeys and n*ggers and nobody is paying attention. You know, I had to record it to let you all see. Because it’s real in San Antonio too. For everyone who thinks it’s not real, it’s real in San Antonio.”

“That’s the problem though,” she notes. “You can’t fight these people because that’s how you end up in jail.”

And right there is a prime reason that white people need to be good, strong allies in this fight. Don’t be silent. Don’t turn your back. Don’t look down. Don’t tell yourself “this isn’t my fight.” It is your fight, it’s the fight of every thinking, decent person, and a lot of the time, you won’t find yourself up against stone asshole racists, like the ones quoted above. You’ll be facing nice people who think they are good, and decent and kind. And for the most part, they are right in that self-assessment. But they don’t know enough, and they don’t think enough. I found myself in that situation at the pain clinic yesterday, laying on a slab, half naked, with a needle in my spine. For a moment, I considered letting the remark about those poor cops slide, then thought “no, you cannot do that.” So I didn’t. Talk, even when you think “eh, not the right time”, talk anyway. You never know when you can get another person to think deeper, and they’ll end up wanting to know more.

Full story here.

 

Oh For…No. No. No. No.

Starcasm.net - TLC Promo Photos

Starcasm.net – TLC Promo Photos

Earlier, Vincent Schilling had a column up at ICTMN about Native headdress showing up on a reality show. A short while later, Vincent Schilling was able to talk with the designer about this, um, travesty. There’s nothing quite so rabidly defensive as a white person busy appropriating another peoples’ culture and traditions, all while getting it spectacularly fucking wrong in every possible respect.

Before we get to the spectacular fucking up, a word about traditional Cherokee clothing. (The groom in the show claims Cherokee ancestry. If that’s so, I’d think he’d want Cherokee clothing, but I guess “Native American” will do.) Cherokee people were never big on feathers, and they certainly never had anything even close to Plains Indians’ headdresses. There were a few various ways that men chose to style their hair and decorations, but when a headdress was worn, it was in the style of a turban, as in the painting of Sequoyah.

WWsequoyahYou can read up on traditional Cherokee dress here, here, and here. On to the monumental ignorance and stupidity.

Gypsy dress designer Sondra Celli created a Cherokee-themed dress and a Native American-influenced headdress for Hunter and Dalton Smith on the reality series My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding.

In an exclusive interview with ICTMN, Celli said that the ‘Native-inspired’ headdress was made by her design team, and the headdress for the groom — who claims Native ancestry — was purchased from a Native American company over the internet.

Celli told ICTMN because the groom was Native American, she did not alter any of the groom’s outfit and that he approved of the bride’s outfit.

“Because he is Native American we made sure we bought a true Native American headpiece made by Native Americans. We bought him a true Native American shirt made by Native Americans. I made sure it came from an authentic Native American company.”

*Resists impulse to pound head into wall* If there is one thing to get into your skull if you are not an indigenous person, it’s this: there is no such fucking thing as “Native American” anything. Repeat over and over until you get it. Indigenous peoples (many of whom are not American) can not be conveniently dumped into a pail of whitewash so we come out with every nation believing the same, having the same traditions, the same clothing, the same housing, and so forth. We are all different. There just isn’t enough eyeroll in the universe for this shit.

What about the bride’s wedding outfit?

She is a gypsy. Hunter is a cowgirl and would not give up her boots. I told her, ‘I am going to Sondra Celli you up’ and I made her a Native American-inspired dress … and [the groom] was real cool with her being her. I am very respectful of the fact he is Native American. This is what they told me — please understand that I am just the designer.

I made sure we did not touch his headpiece and it stayed exactly the way we bought it. The shirt is exactly the way we bought it. We ordered it on the Internet from a Native American company.

I made her headpiece, and the girl who works for me studies Native Americans. She put all of those feathers on. Like we say on television, it is native-inspired. We do not say this is a Native American costume. This is a Sondra Celli gypsy rhinestone costume that is inspired by Native Americans.

Emphasis mine. I’m just going to wander off and scream for a moment.

What is your response to Native people that say this is appropriating Native culture?

I think the fact that their clothing is so beautiful and the detail is so beautiful, they should be accepting of the fact that we borrowed from their clothing. I said “inspired” through the whole show. I never said it was authentic Native American clothing, not once.

Um…Yes, you did say that. You wouldn’t shut up about all the authentic “Native American” clothes. Right up there ^.

I don’t find a problem with putting something inspired from the beauty of Native American clothes on someone who is not Native American. They should be honored that we think their clothing is so beautiful, that we took some of the colors from it.

Honoured. Right. Oh, all you did was borrow colours! Well, that makes it okay.

This is a TV show, so you have to take it for what it is. I do not believe this dishonors people. I would never do that.

That’s convenient. You don’t believe this dishonours anyone, so of course, it doesn’t. White magic.

I’ve taken the idea of kimonos from Japan and they are rhinestoned. I never say they are Japanese kimonos. I say they are inspired.

Every designer from all over the world has taken ideas from Native Americans.

Oddly enough, we notice things like that.

The PBS Museum just had an exhibit, Native American designers that have come into the modern world made Native American inspired clothing with plastic metal who are getting ideas in a way from our world and made really cool clothes with beading. I was blown away.

I think they were inspired by what we do in the modern [world].

Fuuuuuck me. I really do have to scream now. Yeah, just a few of us Indians are crossing the bridge into the modern white world, where of course, we’re stealing ideas from white modernity, while the rest of us are back home in primitive Indian land, everyone dressed the same, all in a tipi, of course. It’s absurd to think that Indians are a part of the world. Christ, she makes it sound like we live in Faerie or something.

As much as I admire their craft, I think they should admire the fact that I took the ideas that they have and turn it into something modern for someone who is not Native American.

Um…oh hell, I give up. White people, please get a fucking clue. In the comments, Beatrice pointed out something I should have noted in the first place:

As if distilling all the variety of different heritages of Roma people into “over the top trashy clown show” wasn’t offensive enough…

This isn’t just spectacularly fucking up Indigenous peoples’ cultures, it’s spectacularly fucking up that of Roma culture as well. I guess all is fair game for a white designer. If you can call pasting rhinestones all over something design.

Vincent Schilling’s article is here.  TLC’s ‘Gypsy’ Wedding Is Offensive to Romani, Too.

Faces.

A woman confronts stormtroopers. Credit: Jonathan Bachman/Reuters

A woman confronts stormtroopers. Credit: Jonathan Bachman/Reuters. Source.

 

Faces2

A man being “detained”. Credit: Jonathan Bachman/Reuters. Source.

Jonathan Bachman/Reuters

Ieshia Evans. Credit: Jonathan Bachman/Reuters. Source.

 

Police arrest activist DeRay McKesson during a protest along a major road that passes in front of the Baton Rouge Police Department headquarters. (Max Becherer/Associated Press)

Police arrest activist DeRay McKesson during a protest along a major road that passes in front of the Baton Rouge Police Department headquarters. (Max Becherer/Associated Press).

 

A man being "detained" by stormtroopers. Credit: Jonathan Bachman/Reuters.

A man being “detained” by stormtroopers. Credit: Jonathan Bachman/Reuters.

 

Another person being "detained". Credit: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters.

Another person being “detained”. Credit: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters.

#All Plates Matter.

All too often black people are met with incredulous dismissal when we talk about the realities of being black. These realities– police brutality, extrajudicial executions, public humiliation, etcetera–inform the sentiment behind #BlackLivesMatter. #BlackLivesMatter is a hashtag, a movement and a mantra. It means that black people are suffering. When black people say that our lives matter, when we use the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, it denotes recognition of that suffering.

On the contrary, #AllLivesMatter contributes to black suffering. It’s the moral equivalent of telling someone who just stubbed their toe, “all toes matter.” Like, we know all your untouched toes matter, but can we focus on alleviating the pain of the person with the stubbed toe? #AllLivesMatter has become the rallying cry of those bereft of critical thinking faculties.

Here’s a skit that breaks down the canyon between #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter hilariously and creatively, right down to the metaphor of choice. Created by Peace House, a hub for creative and politically thought-provoking comedy, the skit succinctly nails down the frustration of being black in 2016.

Via Safy-Hallan Farah at Paper.

Once You’ve Broken the Law, There Is No Safe Space.

48941084.cached

The stormtroopers in Baton Rouge have been particularly scary the past few days, and their more than questionable behaviour continues. Cops everywhere have been making up little Catch 22s that will see people arrested no matter what. Prior to DeRay McKesson being arrested, people were told to get on the sidewalk. When Protesters pointed out they were on the shoulder, because there wasn’t a sidewalk, they were arrested. In Baltimore, bus service to the protest area had been stopped by cops. Cops told people to disperse, but many of them had no way to do that because there were no buses. So, arrested for not dispersing. Ieshia Evans was arrested for impeding traffic, while that massive line of armored stormtroopers blocking the street was somehow just dandy for traffic. Now, when a homeowner offered her property as a safe place for protesters, the cops twisted about and came up with excuses to roust and arrest people anyway, saying there is no safe space, because you know, you just fucking might break the law at some point.

Hundreds of people in Baton Rouge who were peacefully protesting on private property Sunday evening were thrown into the street by police—and then several were arrested for being on the street.

Approximately 500 people had gathered at France and East in downtown Baton Rouge after first coming together at a nearby Methodist church to protest the police killing of Alton Sterling. Meeting the protesters were about 100 officers in riot gear. A homeowner gave the protesters safe refuge on her front lawn so they would not be arrested for being in the street.

“No justice, no peace!” they yelled.

After 90 minutes of peaceful assembly, police charged the crowd for no apparent reason. Protesters scattered, many running down a side street. Those protesters were then arrested for obstruction of a highway.

A wall of riot police then pushed the scattered protesters further away, block by block, and arrested some at the front of the crowd. “Clear the streets and leave the area!” one officer shouted through a bullhorn. “This is an unlawful assembly!”

The homeowner told CBS News she was “stunned” by police behavior.

“I kept telling them: ‘This is my property, please do not do that, I live here,’” she said. “They just looked at me and ignored the things I was saying.”

Lt. Jonny Dunham of the Baton Rouge Police Department said the protesters were arrested for previously breaking the law by obstructing a public passage by trying to get on an interstate on-ramp. “Once you’ve broken the law, there is no safe space.”

Throughout the confrontation, police threatened to arrest all journalists without credentials.

Allow me to emphasize that statement: “Once you’ve broken the law, there is no safe space.” We are fucked. All of us. If there’s no reason to arrest, they will make one up. Arrests will be justified on the basis of possible intent. Welcome to the dystopian nightmare.

Via Daily Beast and Raw Story.

Cops Are Ministers of God.

Fox News contributor Robert Jeffress (screen grab)

Fox News contributor Robert Jeffress (screen grab)

Flaming asshole Robert Jeffress has decided to speak up, in defense of cops, naturally. Couldn’t possibly be concerned about all those corpses strewn in the wake of police everywhere.

Dr. Robert Jeffress, pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas, lashed out at what he called “bogus ministers” who did not preach about having “respect for the police.”

During an Sunday interview on Fox & Friends, Jeffress called on churches “to instill in their a members a respect for the police.”

“The New Testament says in Romans 13:4 that law enforcement officers are ministers of God sent by God to punish evil doers,” he opined. “When you think about it, police officers are just as called by God to do what they do as pastors and priests are called by God. And I think we need to remind our members of that.”

Policing is a called by god vocation now? You could say that of any profession, that’s no reason for automatic respect and obeisance. I’m not about to give those things to someone who is allowed to get away with murdering a person in broad daylight, in front of witnesses.

“There are some police officers that maybe engage in overreaction,” Jeffress said, adding that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump had “the leadership to stop the downward spiral of this nation.”

Ohhhh. So that’s what the rampant killing of People of Colour is, an over-reaction. So, no big deal, right? All those people who have had their lives irrevocably changed by the death of a loved one at the hands of police can rest easy now.

“And you know, I have to say if we would teach our children to respect law enforcement officers, they wouldn’t have anything to worry about,” Jeffress concluded. “The Bible says law enforcement officers are nothing to be feared if you do what is right.”

Philando Castile was doing right. He did not do anything wrong, he was cooperating fully. For doing that, he was murdered in front of his girlfriend and her daughter. Cut down as though he were a rabid animal. There’s no right in that, Pastor. There’s no reason in that. There is every reason to fear though. I will not bow down blindly to authority, and I sure as hell am not going to bow down to authority because it’s walking around armed. It’s nice for you, Pastor, that you don’t have to do Yessir Nossir Yessir Master two step in the hopes you’ll survive an encounter with police. It’s not so fucking great for everyone else.

Via Raw Story.