Happy Native American Heritage Month #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/CTfxayT2tC
— Joe D. Horse Capture (@NativeCurator) November 7, 2016
Speaking of, Alysa Landry has an excellent article up at ICTMN, about spending the last forty-five weeks writing about all the U.S. presidents, and their impact on Indigenous peoples: Indians Are Invisible: What I Learned Researching US Presidents. Highly recommended reading. The whitewash goes deeper than anyone thought.
Police are responding to an active shooting in Azusa. (KTLA-TV Channel 5).
One person was killed and at least three others were wounded Tuesday in an active shooting near a polling place in Azusa.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Capt. Jeff Scroggin said police were dealing with at least one suspect who was heavily armed.
At least one of the victims was headed to the polling station to vote, a law enforcement source told The Times.
Officers arrived about 2:02 p.m. in the 300 block of North Orange Avenue to find multiple shooting victims and a man with a rifle. The gunman immediately fired at least 20 shots at police, said the source.
Under a hail of gunfire, officers took cover and returned shots at the man, who retreated into a home in the 500 block of Fourth Street, said the source, who requested anonymity because the case was ongoing. No officers were injured in the shooting.
[…]
Azusa Union School District issued a lockdown for Slauson Middle and Mountain View Elementary schools about 2:15 p.m., officials said. A nearby daycare center and preschool was also locked down.
Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan said the shooting was affecting two polling stations at Memorial Park, a preschool, and Dalton Elementary school.
He urged voters to avoid the area and “if necessary, cast a ballot at an alternate polling location.”
Oh, this is so bad. So very bad. My heart to the victims, and the family and loved ones of the person who was killed, for no reason at all. The word at the moment is this person is still at large. If you are in the area, please, please, do whatever you need to do to be safe. This is a bloody nightmare, and we all know who we can thank for this one.
Full story at the LA Times.
Shutterstock.
[…] Already there are militias preparing for “civil unrest in the days following a victory by Democrat Hillary Clinton. They are convinced “the Islamic State, or agents sent by Mrs. Clinton, or both, may soon descend” on them. At Trump rallies, supporters warn of coming riots nationwide and “another Revolutionary war” to remove Clinton from office.
This rhetoric can be dismissed as fantasies stewing in the overheated imagination of reactionaries who envision race wars and their neighborhood going “up in flames” every time a centrist Democrat is elected or Black people march for justice. But there is another grave risk likely to explode after a Clinton victory: right-wing terrorism, particularly mass shootings.
Over the last year, as white male anger congealed around Trump, there has been a lull in mass shootings, about 60 percent of which are carried out by white men. While a causal relationship between his campaign and domestic terrorism can never be proved, there are reasons to think the drop in mass shootings is linked to Trump’s candidacy as well as it is more probable there will be an outburst of right-wing terrorism after a Clinton victory.
The foremost reason is recent history. The day after Obama’s inauguration in 2009, Keith Luke, a 22-year-old neo-Nazi, went on a rampage of murder and rape in Brockton, Massachusetts, saying he was “fighting for a dying race.” Over the next two years there were at least seven other cases of deadly right-wing political terrorism carried out by white men, with targets including a Planned Parenthood clinic, the Holocaust Museum, an IRS building, and massacre in Arizona that nearly claimed the life of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. There were other aborted political terrorist attacks or ones that ended in the death of the gunman only. The common thread was attackers were motivated by anti-government sentiment, often fueled by the likes of Fox News, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.
[…]
The violence is already bubbling up. One examination of the public Facebook pages of more than 240 active militias found a significant spike in recent activity of members vowing insurrection and violence if Clinton wins. These groups also wax and wane according to who is president. Under George W. Bush, the number of Patriot groups, which include many militias, declined by 85 percent from the peak of the Clinton era, to a low of 131 in 2007. Within five years, under Obama, the number of Patriot had grown an astonishing 10-fold.
[…]
If anything, the danger of right-wing terrorism is greater than ever. Much of that aggression has been channeled into Donald Trump’s campaign, which may account for the drop-off in mass shootings. That’s why his defeat is likely to see a rise in attacks. The militias preparing for insurrection are a vector of future terrorism. Shane Bauer’s eye-opening look into these militias found they walk “a delicate line between stoking its members’ paranoid fears and fantasies of rebellion and holding them in check.” Some militia leaders admitted they expelled or even reported members to authorities whom they suspected were planning to kill Muslims or assassinate politicians.
[…]
Trump has convinced millions of heavily armed Americans that if he doesn’t win, then it will be the end of America. And with many followers going around with an itchy finger on the trigger, convinced war is inevitable, how long before some of them start shooting?
Arun Gupta’s full article is well worth reading. Our interesting times are about to get more interesting, and much more terrifying.
We’re at the Red Line. If you can come to Standing Rock, now is the time. Please, if you can make it, please, please come. If you can come, please pledge. We need you.
Our last day. In the 8th photo, you can see the construction equipment, and the lights which are shone down on the camp every night now. The last four shots, going through cop land on the way home. It’s unnerving. Click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Yeah, I know, everyone is tired of cops. So are we, but they aren’t going away. Towards the end, some people drove up with a truck full of wood, and people were busy grabbing pieces and throwing it into the river, if not to build another bridge that day, to block the cops. The last shots are facing towards camp, as a lot of us were returning to rest and recoup. Click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Virginia man outside polling location carrying a handgun_ — Image via Twitter.
A woman in Virginia claims she was stopped by a man wearing a Trump T-shirt and wearing a handgun on his hip, who blocked her path to a voting site on Friday and asked her if she was voting for Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
A local GOP official defended the man, stating, “It’s a free country.”
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Erika Cotti said she was on the was to county’s registrar’s office in Loudon County in order to vote when she was accosted by the man
“I had my 9-year-old son with me. I felt intimidated,” Cotti said. “And I had to explain to my 9-year-old why a man with a 357 magnum is standing outside the polling station.”
[…]
Loudoun County registrar Judy Brown confirmed that the man was outside the office, but was beyond the 40-foot no-canvassing zone so there was nothing she could do about it, with law enforcement saying the man had a right to carry the gun in an open-carry state.
“They said that there’s nothing they could do, that he was well within his rights to be carrying his weapon,” Brown explained.
Informed about that man, a local Republican Party official, stated that the man is a former law enforcement official, and that they asked him to pull his Trump T-shirt over the gun on his hip.
“’We don’t want to startle anyone,’” Republican Committee Chairman Will Estrada told the Huffington Post. “He felt really bad, he pulled his T-shirt over it, and I think everything was fine after that.”
Oh, the wrong. He felt really bad? He didn’t seem to feel bad when he was busy intimidating voters, attempting to force a repub ticket on them, and asking who they were going to vote for. Now we know the magic of making guns everywhere okay – just pull your shirt over them. No one would ever be able to tell you had a gun then, oh no. And of course, no one would feel the least bit intimidated anymore, what with that magical piece of gun neutralizing fabric taking care of everything. FFS.
The problem with this free country business? It’s only a free country for the same people it always has been, colonial white people. Out at Standing Rock, it’s quite clear that it’s not a free country for us Indians. Across the nation, it’s quite clear that it’s not a free country for any persons of colour, and it’s certainly not a free country for those who do not profess Christianity.
Via Raw Story.
Iconic musicians Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt,will perform a benefit concert along with Native performers on November 27 for the Water Protectors on the front line at Standing Rock. Courtesy Photos Jackson Browne / Bonnie Raitt.
Iconic musicians Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt, along with performers Joel Rafael, and Bad Dog, will perform a benefit concert on Sunday, November 27 for the Water Protectors on the front line at Standing Rock. Storyteller Ladonna Brave Bull Allard, founder of the Standing Rock Sioux Camp at Sacred Stone, will speak at the concert. Other performers will be announced as they are confirmed.
The concert will be on Sunday, November 27, 2016 at 6:30 pm at the Prairie Knights Pavilion in Fort Yates, ND, which is seven miles from the Oceti Sakowin Camp. Tickets go on sale to the general public on Saturday at 10 am central; The link to purchase tickets is HERE.
“Just as we give thanks for our good fortune and the bounty of our lives as Americans, let us thank the Native people who are gathered here at Standing Rock to protect the natural world and defend our place in it,” said Jackson Browne in a statement submitted to ICTMN.
Bonnie Raitt also expressed solidarity with Standing Rock in the statement.
The kayakers were able to get in and out quickly, avoiding the cops while dropping supplies to those on the front line, such as bottles of apple cider vinegar, to help counter the near constant clouds of pepper spray. They never stopped spraying, just took a break from it now and then. The irony may have been lost on the cops, but it certainly wasn’t lost on the protectors when cops started carting water down the hill, and it was being passed out among the cops. There were more than a few offers to replace that water with cans of oil. Many of the cops happily took a break, sucking down clean water, chatting, telling jokes, and laughing. Then it was back to gassing and shooting unarmed people. Click for full size.
We’re back home, and safe. As always happens when we’re back to camp, we wish we could simply dig in and stay. In the first two shots, you can see where the fire was set. (That night, the constant air surveillance mysteriously stopped about two hours prior, and no one responded to the numerous 911 calls about the fire.) There are always infiltrators in the camp, you can’t keep them all out, and then there are people like the man in a truck full of weapons, who wanted to put up a confederate flag. Security has tightened up within the camp, and at least one infiltrator was found and being detained as we were on our way to the action on Turtle Island. There were many new semi-permanent structures up, and many more in the process of going up. Lots of yurts popped up all over camp, too.
Back to the beginning. We loaded up with firewood and supplies, and took off. Things were mostly normal for about half the trip, then we started seeing cops everywhere. Right about when we hit the town of Solen, which is still many miles away from camp, we saw cops pull over a large U-haul truck, that was full of supplies and donations for the camps. Cops were pulling them over and making them take everything out of the trucks. When we got to the Cannonball pit stop, there was another large U-haul truck, many more trucks and vans, several large dumpsters, and piles of good all over the place. At the time, we didn’t know what that was all about. We had to pass through several large masses of cops and finally made it to camp. We headed straight for the main kitchen, to offload the firewood, but it was gone. We found a spot to stay in Oglala camp, then wandered off to try and figure out wtf. Calls were going out for the elderly and women with children to get to the Cannonball School across the river. Then there were calls to get out to Turtle Island, for the action there. (In the 5th photo, you can see the cops massing on top of the hill). We took off on the long walk (in the 8th photo, you can see where it starts – all the way to the left, there’s cops on the hill, and in the boat almost directly down). Warriors race by on horseback, going full speed with messages and information. Cars were driving on the small road non-stop, and foot traffic was thick.
A bridge had been built, and subsequently destroyed by cops. On the other side of the hill, DAPL was working, and once again, DA and ETP failed to report finding sacred sites and artifacts. Up on the hill, where the cops are, right by the tree, are the graves Alma Perkin and Matilda Gain. People wanted to protect this area. Cops showed up, in increasing numbers, armed to the teeth, saying they were asked by ACE to keep the land clear. A cop at the top of the hill kept shouting through a megaphone for everyone to take the protest back across the river, then they would leave. Right. You’ve seen some of those photos, there will be more to come. As always, surveillance was constant. There were three planes and two helicopters that day.
Later that day, we made it back into camp, and settled into the council fire area to hear the latest. Rick was working on more walking sticks, and I had the horse quilt with me. 500 ministers had descended, from all over the states, and burnt a copy of the Doctrine of Discovery in an act of ceremony and solidarity. We spoke with one minister, Vicki, from California, who was active in Indigenous affairs and actions local to her, and was still a bit blown away and dazed at being in the camp. There were visitors to the camp representing Amazon Indigenous peoples, and it was very moving, listening to them talk, through translators, about their own troubles with extractive industries, and the importance of unity in the fight to protect our earth. About that time, the wind was whipping up, so I retreated to the van to continue working on the quilt. I could still hear what was going on at council fire. There was an announcement that there would be trucks coming in, including a Veterans for Peace van, with all the stuff from the Cannonball pit stop. When the cops finished destroying the 1851 Treaty Camp, and arresting and/or injuring everyone there, apparently, they tossed everything they could find into four dumpsters and just left them at the pit stop. Volunteers had been out there for a couple of days, going through the dumpsters, and retrieving peoples’ goods, and many sacred items. Everything was being brought into the camp to be sorted, and to start the process of trying to return things to their rightful owners, especially all the sacred items which had been treated so disrespectfully by cops. Head over to the Sacred Stone Blog to read more about the 1851 Treaty Camp and what happened there. ICTMN has more on the police action which took place on Wednesday and Thursday. We’ll be going back out again next week, so things might be very slow on Affinity for a while.
Oh, it has been reported that two cops have turned in their badges over what they have been made to do lately. Here’s hoping more of them find their conscience.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Driving by back home to pick up more firewood. We arrived at camp in time to hear a call for all women with children and the elderly to get to the school across the Cannonball River, word was the camp (Oceti Sakowin) was going to be raided. It wasn’t, but that’s because they were busy a bit to the northeast of camp, what was being called Turtle Island by all those at camp. More on this later, when I have more time. The unnecessary, cowardly actions taken by cops was very ugly to see. Protectors were being gassed and shot by cops who were mere feet away from them. (Rubber bullets, but one young man has already been hospitalized with bleeding from the lungs, thanks to one of those harmless bullets). It was a terrible shock to hear and see one of the cops raise his gun and fire into the protectors. Over one hundred cops were there, including snipers. Okay, off again, back home tomorrow. Click photos for full size.
All photos © C. Ford, all rights reserved.
We’re headed back to Sacred Stone and the No Dapl camps, be back on Friday. Sorry, Affinity will be closed until then. I won’t be live blogging, because we aren’t taking much beside firewood and supplies, and support, of course. I also don’t have a spare computer in case I run into cops, so it will stay safe at home. Will be taking the camera though.
If any pests show up, please ask PZ nicely to deal with them. Thanks. See you all in a few days.
