Sleep is for the weak » « If this is Mittwoch, must be Flugzeit

Look at all the white people

Once again, the timer has run out on the ongoing discussion of American racism, so here’s a fresh thread for you all. I thought you might appreciate the magnitude of the Black Problem: black people get gunned down by the police. The police are far less trigger-happy when it’s a mob of hundreds of heavily armed white people shooting each other.

A composite image of handout booking images made available on 19 May 2015 by the McLennan County Sheriff's Department showing scores of men and women arrested and charged with crimes stemming from a large shootout and fight between biker gangs outside the Twin Peaks bar and restaurant at the Central Texas Marketplace in Waco, Texas, USA, 17 May 2015. Reports indicate that nine bikers were shot and killed and 18 other wounded. Police have announced that 192 people face charges of engaging in organized crime. EPA/MCLENNAN COUNTY SHERIFF HANDOUT EDITORIAL USE ONLY

epa04757409 A composite image of handout booking images made available on 19 May 2015 by the McLennan County Sheriff’s Department showing scores of men and women arrested and charged with crimes stemming from a large shootout and fight between biker gangs outside the Twin Peaks bar and restaurant at the Central Texas Marketplace in Waco, Texas, USA, 17 May 2015. Reports indicate that nine bikers were shot and killed and 18 other wounded. Police have announced that 192 people face charges of engaging in organized crime.

I think this suggests an easy solution to the problem of police brutality. Instead of 40 acres and a mule, give every black person in the country a black leather jacket and a shotgun.

Don’t worry, though. The Waco incident was completely thug-free.

Sleep is for the weak » « If this is Mittwoch, must be Flugzeit

Comments

  1. rq says

    Exhibit of Michael Brown’s death scene ‘atrocious’, activists say

    The goal of this exhibition, entitled Confronting Truths: Wake Up!, by New Orleans-based artist Ti-Rock Moore is to start a larger discussion on the violence she sees white privilege produce in America from her perspective as a white female artist.

    However, the exhibition has also been criticised on the grounds that it exploits the tragedy black Americans face for profit through the artist’s own white privilege.

    “I definitely didn’t want to go [at first],” Johnetta “Netta” Elizie, an activist and high profile leader of anti-police violence group We the Protesters told the Guardian after visiting the Chicago gallery. “I felt it would do me no good to go there as far as my spirit is concerned.”

    Elizie had read local reports of the installation at the exhibition that vividly recreates the murder scene of Brown, who was shot dead by police officer Darren Wilson and left for hours in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri.

    But when friends from Ferguson drove to see the exhibition and voice their disdain for something that used the death of Brown as an artwork so soon after the tragedy, she felt she needed to go and support them.

    “The artwork was atrocious,” she said. “The way she is using those images is just disgusting.”
    […]

    “I think what makes this exhibition really unique is that it’s really bold and blunt, and it’s right in your face,” Andre Guichard told the Guardian. “But when you really think about racism, racism can be bold and blunt and right in your face, too.”

    Guichard and his wife say the exhibition is not only timely but also responsible due its depiction of what they think art should engage with: our contemporary moment.

    “When you have people who are trafficking young ladies across the globe and the people speaking up for them aren’t the people being trafficked,” Frances Guichard told the Guardian. “The people [speaking up] are those who care about making sure that it’s just based on humanity and that’s Ti-Rock.

    “She’s not trying to be black or be part of the black experience,” Frances continued when asked if Moore was the art-world equivalent of viral sensation Rachel Dolezal, who identifies as a black woman but was born white. “If she was trying to be black, she would [for example] try to be somebody that infiltrated into sex trafficking and [being] victimized, but she didn’t do that.”
    […]

    “My whiteness carries an unearned advantage in the American system,” Moore said in a 2014 interview before her Brown installation had made its debut. “We’re living in a society of very complicated systems that create advantages for white people and disadvantages for others. That’s what my work is about.”

    Moore did not respond to requests from the Guardian to comment about her work and her latest exhibition at the time of reporting.

    The gallery plans to donate 10% of the money from any artwork sold to a charity aimed at ending police violence. They are currently deciding on the specifics of where that potential gift will go.

    “This [exhibition] is something that needs to stay alive because we need to do what Ti-Rock says and understand what white privilege does to the African American community,” Frances Guichard said.

    Seriously, viral sensation is how they describe Rachel Dolezal?
    Oh, and the gallery says Mike Brown’s mother supports the exhibit:

    Michael Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, was in Chicago last week and attended the opening night of the exhibition. Before arriving, she learned that the piece specifically about her late son was not a photograph, as she had assumed, but an actual recreation of the scene.

    She requested the gallery cover it up while she visited because it would have been too painful for her to witness, which they did.

    The piece is one of the few being shown that isn’t for sale.

    As posted yesterday, his father doesn’t.

    @GalleryGuichard Your response is misleading – Lesley asked to have the exhibit covered when she learned what it was.

    Mike’s mother asked for the life size “body” inspired by her son who laid in the hot son for 4.5 hours on Canfield to be covered up.
    Mike’s father called the “exhibit” disgusting. And yet this man thinks this “art” is acceptable. Nah.

    Study: We love a good personal responsibility message — when the audience is black

    Salter explained in a press release about the results that she was inspired to look into this topic by a 2008 Father’s Day address by Barack Obama that slammed black fathers. (“More than half of all black children live in single-parent households,” he told a predominantly African-American congregation. “Too many fathers are MIA, too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.”)

    Salter suspected that it wasn’t just the general appreciation of the tough-love message about the disproportionate number of absentee black fathers (a framing of statistics that has since been challenged and largely debunked) that made so many people applaud the speech. Instead, she thought it likely had to do with the fact that listeners outside the church appreciated hearing this message of individual blame directed at a group of African Americans.

    “We were interested in whether the individual blame account of missing black fathers gained attention because it was given in front of a black audience,” she said. “We thought it may not be just what President Obama said in his speech, but to whom he said it that mattered.”

    The research confirmed her instincts: People indeed preferred the very same individual blame messages when they were given to black audiences compared with white audiences.

    […]

    In the first two experiments, participants were asked about their impressions of the beliefs of eight groups (black/African Americans, white/European Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, Asian/Asian Americans, Democrats, Republicans, men, and women) about the fairness of society, and about the extent to which different groups wanted or needed to hear messages about individual blame or systemic blame.

    Taken together, the results revealed that participants 1) believed that blacks, more so than other groups, reject the idea that society is fair, and 2) believed that black audiences “need to hear” messages about how individual failings versus systemic issues are to blame for their problems.

    In the third experiment, the researchers asked participants to read and respond to an excerpt from a speech. Some were told it was delivered to a white audience, and some were told it was delivered to a black audience.

    What they read was actually an excerpt from Obama’s 2008 Father’s Day remarks. But while some participants got the original text emphasizing personal blame and responsibility, others got an edited version tweaked to emphasize a systemic account of missing fathers.

    […]

    Study participants were asked to rate their agreement with statements including “How would you rate the speech overall?” “How much do you like the speech?” and “How important is the message of the speech?”

    The results: They consistently preferred the individual blame message when they believed it was given to a black audience versus when it was given to a white audience.

    How… interesting. Treat them as a monolith yet blame them individually, while white people escape the individual blame but are treated as individuals.
    Some more discussion of the results at the link.

    Protests in St. Louis after 16 year old #BrandonClaxton is shot by police, leaving him paralyzed from his waist down.

  2. rq says

    Amandla Stenberg Didn’t Attack Kylie, Leave Our Princess Alone!

    Alas, there has been some immediate lashing out against Stenberg for her comments under an Instagram picture of Jenner rocking cornrows, which was predicable. The remark (“when u appropriate black features and culture but fail to use ur position of power to help black Americans by directing attention towards ur wigs instead of police brutality or racism #whitegirlsdoitbetter”) nodded to a hashtag from a few days ago that was hijacked by Black Twitter and satirized White female privilege and notions of superiority over Black women and girls.

    As the 16-year-old again captures the hearts of feminists across the Internet for wise-beyond-her-years thoughts on cultural appropriation and the Black female image (the first time was with this video just weeks ago), Jenner fans and others who could care less about Black girls have been extremely harsh in responding. The social media trolling is at predictable levels of mercilessness—which would technically make this the second time Stenberg was subject to racist abuse online. Scores of Hunger Games fans who were surprised to learn the “Rue” character was Black infamously took to Twitter to complain when the first film was released in 2012—but a few famous folks have also joined the fray, namely Justin Bieber and Bravo host Andy Cohen.

    The singer chimed in via his own Instagram comment, defending Jenner’s youth because “were [sic] all trying to figure it out” and assuring anyone who may be concerned that his friend is no “racist.” Now, correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t recall Bieber, who’s career was shaped and inspired largely by Black men, ever using his voice for any “bigger picture” issues—not a #BlackLivesMatter tweet, an “I Can’t Breathe” shirt, nothing. But he’s got the cape ready for Miss Kylie because, of course.

    If you want to really feel annoyed, Google “Stenberg attacks Jenner,” because that’s the word a lot of these gossip rags felt the need to use: “attack.” Thoughtful critique from a 16-year-old to a 17-year-old is not an attack. A grown man calling Stenberg a “jackhole,” however, is another story. On Watch What Happens Live, Cohen gave his “Jackhole of the Day” dis to the teen for her criticism of Jenner last night. More disappointing? His guests for the evening, André Leon Talley and Laverne Cox both chose to answer his question “White girls in cornrows, is it ‘okay’ or ‘nay’ ” without taking the host to task for speaking of a little Black girl in such a way.

    If Jenner is in need of protection, I’d say it’s from a 25-year-old paramour who doesn’t seem to recognize the 17-year-old as a little girl, not from a non-bullying comment on an Instagram picture. Has Cohen called her alleged boyfriend Tyga a “jackhole?” What about the writers and editors who treat the two as if they were any celebrity couple, showing scores of teen girls that dating a full-grown man is totally cool? How could any reasonable person think of Amandla Stenberg’s words as threatening, yet ignore the implications of this alleged relationship?

    Earlier this year, an image of another White teen girl wearing braids made its way across the ’net. I expressed my own discomfort with it in what I thought was a nuanced and respectful way (not addressing her directing, stating clearly that there is never a reason to bully or harass a child online) but was subject to a lot of trolling over it. Ironically, most of the folks who complained about my remarks claimed they were doing so because I am an adult and she is a teenager.

    The response to Stenberg from adults proves that to be completely false; no matter who is older or more popular or powerful, there is a pervasive notion that White women and girls are consistently in need of protection from Black ones, that our critiques are “attacks”—even when we’re defending ourselves from what feels like a persistent pillaging of our culture from people who value our bodies, lips and fashion sense (and often our men) but could do without the actual Black female human beings who come with.

    NYPD union head on the city’s ‘obscene’ Eric Garner settlement – oh, these unions!

    I question: where is the justice for New York taxpayers? Where is the consistency in the civil system?

    In our civil courts, which are charged with the important responsibility of assessing liability and imposing damages in these types of cases, families are only awarded damages based on calculable, provable facts, such as indisputable misconduct, past earnings and conscious pain and suffering. Settlements such as this are regulated by legal and judicial professionals to ensure that neither politics nor emotion override common sense.

    In my view, the City has chosen to abandon its fiscal responsibility to all of its citizens and genuflect to the select few who curry favor with the city government.

    This is a repeat of the shameful settlement mandated by City Hall in the “Central Park Five” litigation. Unfortunately, the City remains on a slippery slope in abusing the trust of the hard-working, taxpaying citizens of New York.

    The settlement amount tendered to the Garner family is obscene: it is a stark departure from typical settlements in similar cases and is clearly an attempt by the Mayor’s Office to placate outside political agendas. While the death of Mr. Garner while resisting arrest was unforeseeable, this excessive and exorbitant settlement was not: although Mr. Garner did not provide his family with an abundance of wealth, it was clear from the outset that the Mayor’ s Office would: Mr. Garner’s family should not be rewarded simply because he repeatedly chose to break the law and resist arrest.

    The responsibility of the City in paying damages, if any, to Mr. Garner’s family should be proportionate to its responsibility for Mr. Garner’s death, which was at best, minimal.

    “Minimal”. Fuck you, Mr Police Union.

    A Stroll Through Harper Lee’s (and Watchman’s) Hometown, because tangentially relevant.

    High season for Monroeville is May, when the Monroe County Heritage Museums puts on a stage version of Mockingbird. The event is a morality play of sorts, a migration of pilgrims paying homage to the powerful sermon of the story. “People around here actually quote lines from the book like scripture,” one man told me.

    The homegrown cast stars, among others, a forester, the owner of an air-conditioning company, a firefighter, several teachers, and a few lawyers thrown in for good measure. “We always have a pastor play a role,” said Carol Champion, who sells souvenirs between acts. “The one year we didn’t was the year we got rained out.” (See more black-and-white photos of the Monroe Country Heritage Museums’ play version of To Kill a Mockingbird in Monroeville, Alabama.)

    Carol’s husband, police detective Robert Champion, plays Boo Radley, the neighbor whose reclusiveness captivates Scout and Jem, Atticus’s children. “Boo only has one line, so it’s all played in body language,” he told me. Tall, rangy Dennis Owens, who sells insurance, plays Atticus. “There is no way you can live up to the character of Atticus,” he said, “but I like to think you have a few moments in time when you do.”

    Charles McCorvey, a county commissioner, plays Tom Robinson, the falsely accused black man. “It’s 1935 and survival means ‘yassuh this and that,’ and being mindful and second-class,” says McCorvey. “I had a difficult time with the role until I could leave who I really am and realize I am not in the 21st century.”

    The cast volunteers their time. “We’re not putting on a play,” says director Kathy McCoy, “we’re sending a message of racial tolerance.” The show has traveled to Washington, D.C., Hull, England, and Jerusalem, where the jury, drawn from an Israeli audience, balked at finding Tom Robinson guilty. “We wondered what was taking them so long,” said McCorvey. “It turned out they wanted to acquit. They were arguing with the actor who plays the sheriff, who explained that they had to convict.”

    Though the actor playing the prosecuting attorney once went blank, asked to approach the bench, and was fed his line by the judge, the cast performs like pros. You get the feeling if Broadway called, more than a few would be on their way in a New York minute. They step into character and, sometimes, linger. “I’ve signed checks ‘Boo Radley’ and had them clear,” Champion said.

    The actors appear before sold-out audiences, but the one person in town who has never seen the play is Harper Lee. She abhors anything that trades on the book’s fame. As reported in the Chicago Tribune by Marja Mills, when the Monroe County Heritage Museums began selling Calpurnia’s Cookbook, a compilation of recipes from the cast (“before killing a chicken, be sure to put in coop or small pen and feed well for at least one week,” one entry instructs), Lee demanded it be yanked. (Calpurnia is the Finches’ housekeeper.) The museum dutifully complied.

    D’Army Bailey, 73, Activist Who Founded Museum Where Dr. King Was Shot, Dies

    D’Army Bailey, a lifelong civil rights crusader who successfully campaigned to transform the forlorn motel where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 into a civil rights museum, died on Sunday in Memphis. He was 73.

    The cause was cancer, his brother, Walter L. Bailey Jr., said.

    By 1982, Dr. King’s legacy had been honored in shrines and street signs across the country. But Mr. Bailey considered the derelict Lorraine Motel in Memphis singularly sacred.

    Calling the motel “the site of the crucifixion,” Mr. Bailey said the National Civil Rights Museum would “signal to the world that Memphis has come to grip with the tragedy of Dr. King’s death here, and has drawn from it the tools to mold a unique educational tool.”

    Speaking at the museum’s dedication in 1991, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson said: “To not have this museum in Memphis would be like the Christians celebrating Christmas and never celebrating Easter. Memphis, his last sermon. Memphis, the vision of the mountaintop. Memphis, the last march. Memphis, the last interruption. Memphis, the last breath.”

    […]

    As president of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memphis Memorial Foundation, he managed to buy the motel with $67,000 raised from local citizens, supplemented at the last moment by a $50,000 bank loan and a $25,000 contribution from the national public employees union.

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    The $9.7 million museum opened on July 4, 1991, at a ceremony attended by Rosa Parks, the Montgomery bus boycott pioneer, and Mr. Jackson (who had been present on April 4, 1968, when Dr. King was shot from across the street).

    The two rooms that Dr. King had rented were restored, the bloodstained concrete slab was reset on the balcony and exhibits were installed depicting five centuries of history. Last year, a $27.5 million renovation was completed.

    Mr. Bailey wrote two books, “Mine Eyes Have Seen: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Journey” (1993) and “The Education of a Black Radical: A Southern Civil Rights Activist’s Journey, 1959-1964” (2009). He also appeared in a number of films, including “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” in which Mr. Bailey, who had by then become a judge, played a judge.

    He retired as a Circuit Court judge in 2009 after serving 19 years, but he returned to the bench last year.

    In addition to his brother, he is survived by his wife, the former Adrienne Leslie, and two sons, Justin and Merritt.

    The King family was not involved in the museum and had cautioned Mr. Bailey against referring to Dr. King in its name.

    “I would have loved to have had their involvement at the time, but in retrospect I believe we ended up having a freer hand,” he said in 1995. He also rejected criticism that the location was too mournful.

    “This was a blessed project from the beginning,” Mr. Bailey said. “It’s living history, and I don’t see it as the scene of a defeat or one bit morbid. Everybody dies, and that’s the price we all pay. This is the place where Dr. King paid his price in triumph.”

    This past weekend New Shiloh Christian Center, a black church in Florida, was vandalized & attacked. #WhoIsBurningBlackChurches

    Police Union Chief Calls $5.9 Million Eric Garner Settlement “Obscene”. An opinion on the chief’s opinion.

    Sergeants Benevolent Association head Ed Mullins, meanwhile, had a different take. In an interview with the NY Post (who else?), Mullins described the settlement as “obscene” and “shameful,” asking the tabloid’s readers, “Where is the justice for New York taxpayers? Where is the consistency in the civil system? In my view, the city has chosen to abandon its fiscal responsibility to all of its citizens and genuflect to the select few who curry favor with the city government.” [Translation: AL SHARPTON AL SHARPTON AL SHARPTON.] [Also: AL SHARPTON.]

    “Mr. Garner’s family should not be rewarded simply because he repeatedly chose to break the law and resist arrest,” Mullins concluded. (Police claim Garner had been selling loose cigarettes outside a Staten Island deli when officers approached him.)

    […]

    Stringer’s settlement was considerably higher than some other famous wrongful-death settlements awarded by the city, including the $3.9 million for the family of Ramarley Graham. But it was considerably less than the $8.75 million awarded to Abner Louima, and slightly less than the $6.4 million settlement for David Ranta, who was imprisoned for 23 years after a wrongful-murder conviction. The Garner settlement is just the latest in a string of high-dollar settlements negotiated by Stringer, ostensibly to save taxpayers the high cost of a trial and a potentially higher jury payout. Garner’s estate had sought $75 million.

    Still, some wonder of Stringer’s determination to settle wrongful death lawsuits has “sidelined” the judgment of the city Law Department. “The determination of appropriate damage levels is a complex, nuanced process,” Victor A. Kovner, a former city corporation counsel, told the Times. “The notion that the comptroller, without the benefit of that experience, seeks to make these resolutions on his own is in my experience grandstanding and against the city’s interest.”

  3. says

    Why Direct Action?

    I have been involved in many direct-action protests, disruptions, marches, and other demonstrations before and after Trayvon.

    Direct action has the power to make private grief public and to demand an end to continuous violence.

    And those of us who participate in “in the streets” forms of direct action know that we will be the targets of criticism, emotional and physical violence – that even people who may claim to be “sympathetic” to our cause are the same that are angry about #BlackBrunch.

    We know this.

    Most of us shutting down city council meetings, or interrupting President Obama’s press conferences, or blocking traffic to end incarceration and deportations, know what both the cost and benefits are.

    Direct action is about disruption and courage – it demands that you acknowledge us, even for five minutes.

    The often hostile criticism that activists receive for taking action is often seeped in privilege and indifference to others’ suffering. And the indifference needs to be called out.

    Below are just some of the questions and comments I’ve commonly heard in response to direct action.

    ‘Why Can’t You Peacefully Ask For What You Want?’

    A group of all-Black activists did a Valentine’s Day action in the town of Walnut Creek, a predominantly white and upper-class neighborhood with a history of white supremacist politics and rallies.

    We took over local businesses to call out the names of Black people who had been murdered by the police. We demanded an end to complacency.

    We spent no longer than five minutes in each restaurants surrounded by white folks who refused to look at us – some plugging their ears, others calling out slurs, others mumbling that we “deserve to be shot.”

    None of us carried guns, none of us threatened anyone (aside from our presence as Black), and no one was harmed. That being said, the action was not “peaceful” because it wasn’t intended to be.

    A few days later, amidst allegations that we “bullied and harassed” people, a former peer (and aspiring police officer) sent me a long message expressing his outrage at what we had done.

    He asked me why we could not take a “less Black panther” approach and instead be more “peaceful” – maybe handing out flyers or working directly with the police department. (I wondered if he was talking about the Black Panther party that provided free meals and education to entire communities of Black children, but decided, probably not).

    I responded that, any time a group of Black people go anywhere to do any thing, we are automatically assumed violent or suspect.

    We are not allowed to take up space, and once we do – even if it is to beg that people see us as human and stop killing us – we are infringing upon the privilege and ignorance of those who who wish to remain blissfully unsympathetic.

    I responded that, if we had interrupted people’s brunches to perform a Valentine’s Day song rather than to protest police brutality, we would be entirely welcome. (Because Black people can entertain white people for centuries, but asking to be recognized as human is crossing the line!)

    I responded that we have, in fact, tried all of the “peaceful” tactics he had suggested – only to have our flyers thrown away, our request to view videos of police executions denied, our humanity denied again and again.

    The days of going up to someone with a gun and nicely asking them to sop murdering our people are over. There is nothing “peaceful” about the murders of Black and Brown people – and asking folks to “remain calm and civilize” is nothing but a justification for that violence.

    ‘Protests Are an Inconvenience’

    Those of us who participate in disruptive direct action tactics know that it will cause some level of inconvenience and discomfort. That’s the point of it.

    Direct action in particular arises out of the frustration that nothing else will get the public’s attention.

    The activists who were involved in the 1960s sit-ins were challenging “business as usual,” and were seen as outside agitators, inconveniences. For folks who have been receiving the benefits of white supremacy and racism their entire lives, being called out publicly should be an inconvenience.

    But most of the angry people I come face-to-face with are not upset about police brutality, mass incarceration, or the Charleston Massacre. They are upset that they cannot take their normal route to work or get their caramel macchiatos on time.

    In other words, they are being confronted with a reality they want to ignore.

    These are folks that, when inconvenienced, not only make the extent of their frustration clear – they may also be violent and oppressive in their doing so. They have no other perspective than what their individual needs are in that moment.

    There is a collapse of empathy in the people who spit at, yell at, and physically threaten people who are literally fighting for our right to live.

    Further, there’s also a lot of privilege in the notion of being inconvenienced alone.

    People of color are inconvenienced by white supremacy and institutionalized racism on a daily basis – we are denied equitable access to jobs, education, and healthcare; denied our humanity; constantly told we are less than.

    It’s hard to breathe.

    Being inconvenienced is one minor consequence in the struggle to eradicate oppression in the world. “Pardon the inconvenience: We are trying to change the world.”

    ‘I Don’t Condone Violent Protest’

    Without fail, protests and direct actions (whether they result in property damage or not) are almost always characterized as violent – but only when they involved Black and Brown people.

    While I’ve yet to personally throw a brick through a window during any action, I have felt enraged enough to do so. And the fact that, in the moment I described earlier was among the first times I felt such rage, is a privilege – many of the folks in my community have personally known violence right outside of their doorsteps.

    To condemn protestors (who destroy shit or not) as violent not only shows a lack of connection to their agony; it also shows me that folks don’t understand what violence is or isn’t.

    Violence is the forcible tearing of a people from their homeland and benefiting off their forced labor for centuries. Violence is Dylan Roof. Violence makes murdered Black children suspect and their murderers innocent, or at worst, “troubled.” Violence has been used to colonize, enslave, sexualize, and destroy communities of color and other oppressed people for centuries.

    Asking a people who have long been the targets of violence to “calm down and be peaceful” is oppressive and silencing.

    Violence and property damage are not one in the same.

    Being disheartened at the destruction of a community may be understandable to me, but having no sense of compassion for what may have led people to the point of that destruction is not.

    The vast majority of people in the streets don’t have the sole mission of destroying things – we are here to demand change, to grieve, and to be seen.

    More at the link.

    ****

    I, racist:

    What follows is the text of a “sermon” that I gave as a “congregational reflection” to an all White audience at the Bethel Congregational United Church of Christ on Sunday, June 28th. The sermon was begun with a reading of The Good Samaritan story, and this wonderful quote from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah.

    couple weeks ago, I was debating what I was going to talk about in this sermon. I told Pastor Kelly Ryan I had great reservations talking about the one topic that I think about every single day.

    Then, a terrorist massacred nine innocent people in a church that I went to, in a city that I still think of as home. At that point, I knew that despite any misgivings, I needed to talk about race.

    You see, I don’t talk about race with White people.
    To illustrate why, I’ll tell a story:

    It was probably about 15 years ago when a conversation took place between my aunt, who is White and lives in New York State, and my sister, who is Black and lives in North Carolina. This conversation can be distilled to a single sentence, said by my Black sister:

    “The only difference between people in the North and people in the South
    is that down here, at least people are honest about being racist.”
    There was a lot more to that conversation, obviously, but I suggest that it can be distilled into that one sentence because it has been, by my White aunt. Over a decade later, this sentence is still what she talks about. It has become the single most important aspect of my aunt’s relationship with my Black family. She is still hurt by the suggestion that people in New York, that she, a northerner, a liberal, a good person who has Black family members, is a racist.

    This perfectly illustrates why I don’t talk about race with White people. Even — or rather, especially — my own family.

    love my aunt. She’s actually my favorite aunt, and believe me,
    I have a lot of awesome aunts
    to choose from. But the facts
    are actually quite in my sister’s favor on this one.

    New York State is one of the most segregated states in the country. Buffalo, New York, where my aunt lives, is one of the 10 most segregated school systems in the country. The racial inequality of the area she inhabits is so bad that it has been the subject of reports by the Civil Rights Action Network and the NAACP.

    Those, however, are facts that my aunt does not need to know. She does
    not need to live with the racial segregation and oppression of her home.
    As a white person with upward mobility, she has continued to improve
    her situation. She moved out of the area I grew up in– she moved to an
    area with better schools. She doesn’t have to experience racism, and so
    it is not real to her.

    Nor does it dawn on her that the very fact that she moved away from an increasingly Black neighborhood to live in a White suburb might itself be a aspect of racism. She doesn’t need to realize that “better schools” exclusively means “whiter schools.”

    I don’t talk about race with White people because I have so often seen it go nowhere. When I was younger, I thought it was because all white people are racist. Recently, I’ve begun to understand that it’s more nuanced than that.

    There’s quite a bit more at the link.

  4. rq says

    Why Pan-Africanism is Important for the #BlackLivesMatter Movement

    Although the #BlackLivesMatter movement was birthed after the tragic murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012, the movement itself extends beyond the extrajudicial killings of Black people in the United States and addresses how other structural elements such as racism are embedded in American society. However, the ideological application of Pan-Africanism is essential and crucial to the Black Lives Matter Movement because it serves as a holistic, liberatory mechanism for all Black people in the African Diaspora.

    Just as Andre 3000’s poignant question on his black jumper he wore at Coachella alluded to — “Across cultures, darker peoples suffer. Why?” — the Pan-Africanism perspective must be embraced as a foundational premise to the movement because it speaks to the interconnectedness of the Black struggle, Black triumphs, and Black perseverance and resiliency within a global context. In this same vein, the articulation and reclamation of cultural, artistic and philosophical African legacies that have been continually denied and appropriated must be embraced to extend the movement.

    Examples of this contemporary, cultural Pan-African articulation include the resurgence of embracing natural hair styles, wearing African-inspired fashions and jewelry, enlightenment to African Diasporic literature and teachings, the creations of Pan-African organizations and support groups, and even the reclamation of indigenous, African religions and worship.

    Of course, with any such revolutionary movement, there are schisms present. With Pan-Africanism and its application, many barriers are evident much due to intercontinental divide and lack of cross-cultural understanding. Some of these barriers include stereotypes that African-Americans and Africans have of one another; the lack of understanding of race-relations in the United States; the inexperience of racism due to those who live in homogeneous societies; the way the media portrays African peoples worldwide; and those who are in fact Black but do not identify as a person of African descent.

    Although these divisions are thoroughly embedded in the psyches of many, the Black Lives Matter movement, in conjunction with Pan-Africanism, serves as a catalyst to defy these divisions via the continued mobilization for global, Black solidarity and consolidation.

    Black Girls Code Camps Aim to Build Interest in Computer Science

    The aim of the program, however, is the same for all of the girls: get them started on a path for a career in technology, where women, especially black women, are sorely underrepresented.

    “Women are overwhelmingly underrepresented in the tech space, and especially women of color are overwhelmingly underrepresented. And so we believe the creators of technology should reflect the consumers of technology,” said Reilly Ellis, a program coordinator from Black Girls Code.

    Black Girls Code is hosting more events in Durham this summer. They’ll learn things like HTML, CSS coding, mobile app development, and website design. More importantly, they’ll learn confidence.

    “Girls can do anything, so it’s not just boys and everything like that. So just, like, do your best and you can accomplish anything,” said student Torchea Bumpers.

    Barack Obama Says Prison Rape Jokes Are Never Okay, among several other excellent things on incarceration.

    President Barack Obama condemned the criminal justice system for being “skewed by race and by wealth,” and called for a number of prison reforms in a speech given at the NAACP National Convention in Philadelphia on July 14.

    One of the most striking points he made, however, had to do with how pop culture discusses prisons:

    “We should not be tolerating rape in prison,” he said. “And we should not be making jokes about it in our popular culture. That’s no joke. These things are unacceptable.”

    p[…]

    Obama has been actively pushing to raise awareness on issues plaguing state and federal prisons. Not only will he become the first sitting president to visit a federal prison next week, but he also officially granted clemency to 46 people convicted of nonviolent drug-related charges, bringing his total number of commutations to 89 — more than those of the last four presidents combined.

    “These men and women were not hardened criminals,” he said in a video announcing the commutations. “If they’d been sentenced under today’s laws, all of them would have already served their time.”

    With more on the speech, Obama calls for ‘smart’ criminal justice system.

    President Obama called for an overhaul of the criminal justice system Tuesday, saying it is all too often “skewed by race and by wealth” and often has a disproportionate impact on communities of color.

    “In too many cases, our criminal justice system ends up being a pipeline from underfunded, inadequate schools to overcrowded jails,” Obama told the NAACP convention in Philadelphia.

    The president said the system “is not as smart as it could be,” not as “fair as it should be.” He said African Americans and Latinos received harsher sentences for similar crimes committed by whites, and “about one in every 35 African-American men, and one out of every 88 Latino men, is serving time right now.”

    Obama also said that “in too many places, black boys and black men, Latino boys and Latino men, experience being treated differently under the law.”

    The United States is spending $80 billion a year on incarceration, Obama noted, money that could be spent on any number of more valuable projects.

    The good news is that congressional Democrats and Republicans are working together on improvements, Obama said, and “strange bedfellows” across the political spectrum are coming together to back criminal justice reform.

    “You’ve got the NAACP and the Koch brothers,” Obama joked to NAACP members, referring to the billionaire Republican political donors.

    The president has outlined a variety of general ideas, including an end to mandatory sentencing policies that lead to longer terms for relatively minor offenses. Obama also suggested more alternatives to prison like drug courts and better prison programs to help inmates “make the turn” to lawful behavior.

    While “there are a lot of folks who belong in prison” for murders, rapes, and robberies, Obama said there are also too many people doing hard time for non-violent drug offenses — many of them from poor and minority communities.

    “That is the real reason our prison population is so high,” Obama said in a speech highlighting a week in which he wants to spotlight inequities in the criminal justice system.

    Obama addressed the organization a day after granting commutations to 46 men and women who had been sentenced to long sentences for non-violent drug crimes

    A bit more at the link.
    I hope there’s a transcript of his speech somewhere soon.

    North Charleston community concerned over KKK fliers, extends post-Emanuel dialogue

    Cherri Delesline watched from her front yard as two pickup trucks she didn’t recognize drove down her street in North Charleston’s predominantly black Dorchester Waylyn community.

    “Not to be rude or anything, but they were full of white people,” the 28-year-old woman said. A Confederate battle flag waved in the wind as the trucks passed, she said.

    She approached her vehicle the following day, July 1, and was struck by what she saw: A flier purportedly from the Ku Klux Klan tucked beneath her windshield wiper.

    “Neighborhood Watch. You can sleep tonight knowing the Klan is awake,” the flier said. A sketch of a hooded Klansman with blackened eyes and a finger pointed toward the reader topped the page.

    […]

    The North Charleston fliers were dispersed two weeks after a gunman opened fire, killing nine parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, including the church’s pastor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney. Authorities have described the mass killing as a racially motivated hate crime.

    The shooter intended to jump-start a war among the races, authorities said. Instead, the June 17 attack set off a wave of affirmations to strengthen racial relations. Roughly 15,000 people walked the Ravenel Bridge the Sunday after the killings to support the families and racial unity. Thousands waited in the streets to attend Pinckney’s funeral. And calls to take down the battle flag from the Capitol complex grounds ultimately were successful.

    Delesline hopes to continue the dialogue by holding a meeting 6 p.m. Wednesday at a park on Wye Lane, across the street from the neighborhood, to discuss the Klan’s presence in Dorchester Waylyn, which is off Dorchester Road just west of Interstate 26.

    “I think people need to be aware of everything that’s going on nowadays. This doesn’t need to come as a surprise to anybody,” Delesline said. “You never know what can happen, especially with it coming into our neighborhood. … Everyone needs to come together. What affects one affects all.”

    Delesline took matters into her own hands by passing out her own fliers that read “We say no to the KKK. This community stands together against racism.” Among the words is a single image — Two hands, one white and the other black, gripped in a handshake.

    […]

    Jesse Williams, the neighborhood association’s president, confirmed that residents in the community are concerned.

    “Why would you put a KKK flier in a black neighborhood?” asked Williams, who is of Hawaiian descent.

    He had no immediate estimate on how many residents received the KKK fliers.

    During Wednesday’s meeting, the community will encourage residents to display Delesline’s fliers in their windows, he said.

    Residents are right to be concerned, according to Kerry Taylor, an associate professor of history at The Citadel who has taught on race relations and the civil rights movement.

    “I think we’re seeing the beginning of another wave of mass resistance in response to the removal of the flag from the Statehouse grounds,” he said. “I think we have to take it seriously.”

    Remember, the KKK is holding a pro-flag rally on Friday (I thought it was Saturday, but it turns out to be Friday).

    The Racist Origins of Felon Disenfranchisement. I wonder if Obama has time to do something about this before the election next year?

    The state laws that barred nearly six million people with felony convictions from voting in the midterm elections this month date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Southern lawmakers were working feverishly to neutralize the black electorate.

    Poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and cross burnings were effective weapons in this campaign. But statutes that allowed correctional systems to arbitrarily and permanently strip large numbers of people of the right to vote were a particularly potent tool in the campaign to undercut African-American political power.

    This racially freighted system has normalized disenfranchisement in the United States — at a time when our peers in the democratic world rightly see it as an aberration. It has also stripped one in every 13 black persons of the right to vote — a rate four times that of nonblacks nationally. At the same time, it has allowed disenfranchisement to move beyond that black population — which makes up 38 percent of those denied the vote — into the body politic as a whole. One lesson here is that punishments designed for one pariah group can be easily expanded to include others as well.

    The history of disenfranchisement was laid out in a fascinating 2003 study by Angela Behrens, Christopher Uggen and Jeff Manza. They found that state felony bans exploded in number during the late 1860s and 1870s, particularly in the wake of the Fifteenth Amendment, which ostensibly guaranteed black Americans the right to vote.

    They also found that the larger the state’s black population, the more likely the state was to pass the most stringent laws that permanently denied people convicted of crimes the right to vote.

    These bans were subsequently strengthened as the Jim Crow era began to take hold.

    […]

    The disenfranchisement laws flourished in both Northern and Southern states where large black populations were cast in the role of eternal outsiders, and proposals for allowing former felons to vote were often cast as heralding the end of civilization.

    The debate looks a lot different in Maine and Vermont, states where there are no black populations to speak of and racial demonization does not come into the equation. Both states place no restrictions on voting rights for people convicted of even serious crimes and have steadfastly resisted efforts to revoke a system that allows inmates to vote from prison.

    Maine residents vigorously debated the issue last year, when the Legislature took up — and declined to pass — a bill that would have stripped the vote from some inmates, whose crimes included murder and other major felonies. Families of murder victims argued that the killers had denied their loved ones the right to vote and therefore should suffer the same fate.

    Those who opposed the bill made several arguments: That the franchise is enshrined in the state Constitution and too important to withdraw on a whim; that voting rights keep inmates connected to civic life and make it easier for them to rejoin society; that the notion of restricting rights for people in prison was inconsistent with the values of the state.

    A former United States marshal and police chief argued that revoking inmate voting rights would strip imprisoned people of dignity and make rehabilitation that much more difficult. The editorial page of The Bangor Daily News argued against revocation on the grounds that, “Removing the right of some inmates to exercise their legal responsibility as voters in a civilized society would undermine that civilized society.”

    The fact that most states view people who have served time in prison as beyond the protection of the bedrock, democratic principle of the right to vote shows how terribly short this country has fallen from achieving its ideals.

  5. rq says

    There was a man in Denver named Paul Castaway. Police killed him. Here’s a signal boost.
    @deray @micnews can you please tweet about the Lakota man murdered in Denver by DPD yesterday? There’s a rally for him today #PaulCastaway

    Witnesses, surveillance video provide conflicting information in deadly police shooting

    There is conflicting information regarding an officer-involved shooting Sunday night in Denver between what a family says surveillance video shows and what police say happened.

    Police shot and killed a man they say charged at them with a knife. But witnesses and surveillance video say otherwise.

    The manager of Capital City mobile home park at 4501 W. Kentucky Ave. has the video. He wouldn’t give it to FOX31 Denver, but he did show it to reporter Tammy Vigil.

    It shows Paul Castaway, 35, coming up from behind a white mobile home, through a black iron fence onto the street and around a wooden fence, which is a dead end.

    He then turned back around onto the street with a knife to his neck the whole time, when an officer shoots him. The video seems to not match what police say happened.

    “We will miss him. We’ll miss him,” said Castaway’s cousin, Thomas Morado.

    Castaway’s family came to the street in the middle of the mobile home park where their cousin drew one of his last breaths.

    “He was probably trying to figure out a place to run. And they didn’t let him go. They trapped him like a mouse and they killed him,” cousin Rick Morado said.

    But Denver police said Castaway charged at two officers with a long knife before he was shot and killed. They say he had just threatened his mother with a knife at her nearby apartment at 4545 Morrison Road.

    “Next thing, we heard three shots. I walked outside and I saw two officers handcuffing a man,” said a neighbor, who only gave his first name of Irvin.

    He saw the aftermath and pointed out to police that surveillance cameras had captured everything.

    “Either way, these cameras going to tell,” said Rick Morado, pointing to surveillance cameras positioned outside the management office and laundry room. It’s video that Castaway’s cousins also got to see and now they’re convinced their cousin was murdered.

    “This is really hard for us,” Thomas Morado said.

    They lit sage on the spot where he laid dying. They said it is the proper way to send him home. A growing memorial pays tribute to a man who was a full-blooded rosebud Indian, a father and a man who made mistakes in his life — and paid for it in the ultimate way.

    “We don’t like the fact we lost another brother in the Native American community. It’s really a sad day for us,” Thomas Morado said.

    Police initially said Castaway had stabbed his mother in her neck but later said he had threatened her with the knife, leaving her with a very superficial injury to her neck. But the mom’s neighbor said she doesn’t have any injury whatsoever.

    Police said the surveillance video is a part of their investigation that will help determine who did what.

    I understand his mother herself has come forward to insist that she hasn’t been injured by her son at all.

    According to witnesses, #PaulCastaway’s last words before DPD killed him: “what’s wrong with you guys?” #DefendDenver

    Watch the dance @DenverDAsOffice does with the #policeshooting of #PaulCastaway. #Nationalnews eyes will be on #Denver once again.

    #PaulCastaway family has called for a drum circle tonight at DPDHQ. 13th & Cherokee

    Tense standoff at union station #PaulCastaway #DefendDenver

    Wait. Just yesterday DPD said Paul Castaway “stabbed his mother in the neck.” His uninjured mom Lynn Eagle Feather out here saying DPD LIED.

    A couple more articles lined up.

  6. rq says

    The previous comment is important, though it’s mostly tweets about Paul Castaway in Denver.
    Here’s more:
    Family, witnesses say video shows different version of police shooting

    Witnesses and family members of a man killed by Denver police are disputing early reports of what happened, saying surveillance video from a mobile home park shows a different version of events.

    Police Chief Robert White reported at the scene Sunday that one of his officers shot and killed a man after he came “dangerously close” with a long knife.

    However, family members said they believe the shooting was not justified after the manager at Capital City Mobile Home Park on West Kentucky Avenue showed them surveillance video of the shooting.

    Family members also are disputing police reports that Paul Castaway, 35, had stabbed his mother in the neck before he was killed by police.

    […]

    Castaway, 35, was shot four times and died Sunday evening at Denver Health.

    Gabriel Black Elk, Castaway’s brother, said the video shows his brother holding the knife against his own throat. He had tried to escape from police by running behind a fence, but there was no gate or opening.

    The video shows Castaway turning around and walking toward police, who were several feet away. The knife stays pointed toward his neck the entire time, Black Elk said.

    Thomas Morado, a cousin of Castaway’s, also said he had seen the video. His account matched that of Black Elk’s.

    “There was a different way to go about this,” Morado said. “It didn’t have to end in his death.”

    The mobile home park manager was not at the office, and one of his relatives said he had been told to stop showing the video to people, including the media.

    But a Fox 31 journalist reported that she had seen the video, and she described a similar scenario.

    A 15-year-old boy fainted after witnessing the shooting. His mother, Guadalupe Barrera, did not want his name in the newspaper, but she allowed him to describe what he saw to The Denver Post.

    Earlier, Castaway had run through the mobile home park, screaming in an angry voice at children who were playing, the 15-year-old said. Castaway jogged along a metal fence and turned behind a wooden fence.

    When he realized he was blocked in, Castaway turned toward police, who were responding to the scene.

    “He held the knife to his neck,” the 15-year-old said. “He came close to them, and that’s when they shot him.”

    The boy also said Castaway asked officers, “What’s wrong with you guys?” before he was shot.

    Other children saw the shooting and were still scared by what they saw, Barrera said.

    “All of the kids see,” she said. “I want a doctor to see the kids.”

    Police said they were called after Castaway stabbed his mother in the neck.

    The injuries were not life-threatening, police said.

    Lillian Castaway, the victim’s mother, said her son struggled with alcoholism and schizophrenia. He poked her in the neck with the knife, she said.

    “I called the police for help, not to kill my son,” she said. “They shot him while the knife was still to his own throat.”

    She called the police for help. For help. And they didn’t. Protect and serve.

    PHOTOS: Protest over Paul Castaway police shooting, photos from the protest.

    While on the subject of Colorado, Colorado laws allow rogue officers to stay in law enforcement.

    Colorado’s lenient police discipline system allows rogue officers to jump from department to department despite committing transgressions that would bar them from law enforcement jobs in many states.

    […]

    In Colorado, a police officer can be fired or resign for egregious violations of moral turpitude, such as destruction of evidence, lying under oath or excessive use of force. But so long as there is no conviction of a felony or one of the misdemeanors, the officer is free to seek employment at another agency. Small towns, eager to find officers willing to work for low pay, sometimes will hire them despite their past.

    “You’ve got to remember with smaller jurisdictions, down south or out east (in the state), it’s tough to get cops when you’re paying less than 20 bucks an hour,” said Tony Webb, the former Fowler police chief who hired Jimenez. “Everyone deserves one screw-up.”

    The Denver Post reviewed a decade of state police personnel findings as well as discipline logs at the Denver Police Department and hiring records at select agencies and found officers still working in Colorado despite serious transgressions.

    In some instances, these problem officers went on to commit crimes or cause harm.

    The extent of the problem is unknown. The Colorado attorney general’s office refused to release to The Post a state database that tracks the employment history of officers and would provide only limited information on hundreds of officers the newspaper submitted for review. The database contains information on about 9,000 law enforcement officers actively working at agencies and an additional 6,000 who are certified but are not employed in law enforcement.

    Colorado is one of only a handful of states to have such a high threshold for bringing an end to a career in policing.

    At least 39 states have rules that make it easier to ensure a rogue officer never polices again. At least 18 of those states also require agencies to inform state review panels when an officer is fired or resigns — something Colorado does not do.

    […]

    Roger Goldman, a nationally recognized expert on officer misconduct who has helped write laws establishing state police review panels, said Colorado’s lenient rules allow unfit officers to continue doing harm.

    “A lot of people think, ‘Well, we have a decertification system in place, and we’ve done what we need do,’ and that’s very misleading,” Goldman said. “You have to have a vigorous statewide agency that can protect people because there are these small, underfunded police agencies that are willing to hire these cops who are not fit to be on the streets. If you can just decertify for criminal convictions, that’s worthless. You need to broaden it.”

    Among The Post’s findings:

    • At least six Denver officers who were fired or resigned amid allegations of wrongdoing in the past decade found work at other smaller agencies.

    • Rogue cops can negotiate to keep past transgressions secret. Nadia Gatchell was fired from the Denver police force in 2012 for lies she told superiors during an investigation into abuse of off-duty secondary employment. The officer, who previously had been disciplined in Denver for destroying marijuana evidence, was able to keep the decision to fire her out of her personnel file by agreeing to drop a Civil Service appeal. The city’s safety manager at the time, Alex Martinez, agreed to remove her dismissal letter from her personnel file and have her file reflect that she had resigned.

    Gatchell, who declined to comment, went on to work at the Elizabeth Police Department for about a year after her firing. Now she’s working as a parole officer for the Department of Corrections, her fourth law enforcement job.

    • Officers who have their certificate for police work revoked often are repeat offenders. Of the nearly 280 officers who have been decertified in the past decade in Colorado, at least 29 had past serious personnel issues or arrests. Many more likely are repeat offenders, but how many could not be determined because many agencies in the state won’t release discipline or personnel files for public review.

    • About a third of those 280 decertified for police work in Colorado had worked at more than one police agency. Seven of those officers had shuffled to four or more police agencies before they ended up with a conviction that brought a final end to their careers in law enforcement.

    • The state’s review panel, the Colorado Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training, does not always keep up with those who aren’t employed by a police agency but remain certified for law enforcement work.

    Patrick Strawmatt, who resigned from the Lafayette police force in 1987, was arrested at least 10 times, including one that led to a felony conviction for animal cruelty after he shot a dog to death. It wasn’t until Strawmatt was convicted in 2007 of killing two teenagers while fleeing police in a drunken-driving homicide that the state review panel revoked his certificate for police work, records show.

    More at the link.

    US Judge Narrows Michael Brown Family Suit Against Ferguson

    U.S. District Judge E. Richard Webber on Tuesday dismissed four of the seven counts from the suit and told lawyers for Michael Brown Sr. and Lesley McSpadden that they must make a more persuasive claim for damages on behalf of their late son. Brown’s parents didn’t attend the two-hour hearing in St. Louis.

    The lawsuit raises several constitutional issues.

    Webber says he dismissed two “redundant” counts against former Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson and former Officer Darren Wilson, who were sued individually and as representatives of the city. Both have since resigned.

    The judge said the Brown family could refile those claims later if other parts of the lawsuit that cover the same legal ground were dropped.

    Two of the dismissed claims dealt with state civil rights issues. Brown’s family filed the lawsuit in St. Louis County Circuit Court in April, but it was moved to federal court at the defense’s request. The two Brown family attorneys who appeared in court told Webber they did not oppose the removal of those counts.

    The hearing was held as the anniversary of Brown’s Aug. 9 death approaches. Wilson shot and killed Brown following an altercation. Brown’s death led to sometimes-violent protests in Ferguson and other U.S. cities, spawning a national “Black Lives Matter” movement seeking changes in how police deal with minorities.

    His family’s lawsuit cites a U.S. Department of Justice investigation that cleared Wilson of wrongdoing in Brown’s death but cited a systemic pattern of racial bias in the Ferguson Police Department.

    A DEATH IN WALLER COUNTY TEXAS!

    What happened to Sandra Bland?

    That’s the question that’s floating around Waller County this week.

    This is after Bland was arrested Friday and placed in the Waller County jail.

    Monday she was found hanging in her jail cell according to friends.

    Sources in the community say they spoke with Bland Saturday and she had a $5,000 bond for assaulting a police officer. We’re told she was originally pulled over for failing to signal by a State Trooper.

    Some in the racially charged community say they now suspect foul play. One friend tells the Factor the 28 year old just got a new job and had everything to live for.

    Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis confirms the Texas Rangers have been brought in to conduct the investigation.

    A representative at the Sheriff’s office says they will soon release a press release on the issue.

    In the meantime, some family and friends in the community say they plan to protest to the sheriff’s office until they get answers and justice!

    Cast of ‘The Wire’ reunion set for Artscape, for fans of the show.

  7. rq says

    Mayor renews pitch to sell city garages to fund rec centers

    Speaking Tuesday at the Rita Church Fitness and Wellness Center in Clifton Park, which opened in 2013, the mayor pitched a $136 million multiyear plan for park, pool and rec center improvements around the city.

    Selling four city-owned garages downtown would speed the pace of the renovations, Rawlings-Blake said. The city estimates a sale could raise $60 million.

    “This plan could happen in six years or 26 years,” Rawlings-Blake said. Money from the garages “would significantly help.”

    City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young has refused to allow the mayor’s bill to move forward, saying he wants the recreation plan to include two big new centers, on the east and west sides. Young also questions whether it is a good idea to sell the garages and forgo their revenue, saying the money could gradually pay for recreation improvements.

    […]

    The city operates 40 recreation centers and does not intend to close any of them, administration officials said. Rawlings-Blake came under fire three years ago for closing four centers and turning over 10 to other operators.

    She said Tuesday those “tough choices” put the city in a better financial position to improve other facilities, among them the Rita Church Center, an $8 million renovation of an old pavilion that now includes a fitness center, computer lab, kitchen, game room and multipurpose room. An expansion will open in 2016.

    Rawlings-Blake touted recreation projects already complete or in the works, including the $4.5 million Morrell Park Community Center that opened last summer, the $11.5 million Cherry Hill Fitness and Wellness Center that will open in 2017 and the $12 million Cahill Fitness and Wellness Center that is scheduled to open in 2017.

    The mayor’s plans unveiled Tuesday include rehabilitating or building 11 fitness and wellness centers that would cater to people of all ages at a cost of $84 million.

    Another $20 million would pay for renovating five community centers and $20 million more would go to upgrading four outdoor sports centers. Upgrades to four existing outdoor pools and three “spray pads” would cost roughly $13 million.

    Rawlings-Blake said her recreation plans will help achieve her goal of adding 10,000 new families to the city, both by attracting new families and giving current residents a reason to stay.

    15 Powerful Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Quotes To Make You Want To Read ‘Between The World And Me’. Because you need quotes from Coates in order to make you want to read his book, right?

    Cultural critic and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates has inspired us — and many others –through his writing on the intersection of the race and policy and their application to modern-day realities. He was recognized among this year’s TIME magazine’s list of the 30 most influential people on the Internet, ranking higher than Kim Kardashian and President Obama.

    In his forthcoming memoir, Between the World and Me, due Tuesday, Coates investigates the marginalization of the black community while also reflecting on personal experiences. The book, which is partly addressed to his son, has already earned rave reviews. The cover of the book is branded with praise from Toni Morrison herself, who writes: “This is required reading.”

    We rounded up some of Coates’ most powerful quotes. They intend to serve as a refreshing reminder of the words and intellectual wisdom Coates has shared over the years, across a variety of his pieces and platforms — whether it’s over 10, 000 words detailing “The Case for Reparations” or 140 characters lampooning the ignorance of racism, Coates’ matter-of-fact social commentary deals with the reality of being black in America.

    I’ve also realized that most of the quotes they have selected are rather wordy.

    This is the video Gardena police didn’t want you to see

    In the two years since Gardena police officers fatally shot an unarmed man, city officials fought to keep graphic video of the killing under wraps.

    The grainy videos, captured by cameras mounted in two patrol cars, show three men mistakenly suspected of stealing a bicycle standing in a street under the glare of police lights. With their weapons trained on them, officers scream at the men to keep their hands up.

    […]

    Gardena’s attempts to prevent the public from viewing the shooting met with defeat Tuesday, when a federal judge ordered the release of the recordings.

    In unsealing the videos, U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson said the public had an interest in seeing the recordings, especially after the city settled a lawsuit over the shooting for $4.7 million. Wilson rejected last ditch efforts by Gardena attorneys, who argued the city had paid the settlement money in the belief that the videos would remain under seal.

    The “defendants’ argument backfires here — the fact that they spent the city’s money, presumably derived from taxes, only strengthens the public’s interest in seeing the videos,” Wilson wrote. “Moreover, while the videos are potentially upsetting and disturbing because of the events they depict, they are not overly gory or graphic in a way that would make them a vehicle for improper purposes.”

    The judge’s decision was a response to a request from the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press and Bloomberg, which challenged a blanket protective order that had prevented the release of the videos and other evidence in the court case.

    Wilson’s decision comes as law enforcement agencies nationwide increasingly have embraced the use of cameras worn by officers and placed in patrol cars to record police interactions with civilians. But few agencies have made their videos public, spurring a debate over the need to balance the privacy of those captured on the recordings and transparency in policing.

    After ordering the videos to be released, Wilson denied a request from Gardena attorneys that he set aside his order as they pursued an appeal of his decision. The city then filed an emergency motion with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, asking it to intervene.

    The Times, meanwhile, received copies of the videos from court officials. After The Times published the videos online, 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski issued an order that “the police car camera video footage shall remain under seal pending further order of this court.”

    Gardena Police Chief Ed Medrano released a statement late Tuesday describing the shooting as “tragic for all involved.”

    “We have thoroughly reviewed our response and have initiated new training, including the tactical use of cover techniques to slow down fast-moving events,” he said.

    Huh.

    California’s drought has severe consequences that seem to run along class lines – and racial ones, too, with disparate effects. “For some Californians the drought means brown lawns. For others, it means nothing to drink.”  Welcome to Fairmead, California, Where You Have to Walk a Mile for a Sip of Water

     The tiny, dusty town of Fairmead, California, feels a long way from anywhere. It’s the kind of place where people come to start anew, hoping to silence the ghosts of hard times past. There are the African-Americans whose families migrated out of the segregated Deep South more than half a century ago, looking for farmwork and a place where they could hold their heads high. There are the migrants from Mexico, who came in search of a slightly better life than the one they had left south of the border. There are the Anglo descendants of refugees from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. And there are elderly adventurers looking for something new—for a little land and a lot of quiet in which to live out their fixed-income retirements.

    Fairmead is unincorporated. It used to have a mill, a library, a hotel, and a small store, as well as a handful of restaurants. None of these remain. Located a few miles from the prison town of Chowchilla, Fairmead today has a Last Picture Show feel to it. It boasts a small elementary school, a Head Start program, a couple of churches, and a population of roughly 1,400, spread out along miles of rural back roads. The town’s avenues are numbered instead of named—some of them paved, others simply bumpy lanes of gravel and stone. They stretch out from what passes for the town center—a few neat streets lined by bungalows and ranch houses, with a city well and a recently built water-storage tank at its heart—into the orchards beyond.

    These days, while the almond orchards are kept a perfect green, the surrounding landscape is a dull brown, and the yards in front of most of the houses are little more than dirt and weeds. At least 25 families have seen their wells go dry in recent months. Many others are rationing what little water remains. Those lucky enough to be on the city’s system still have to strictly conserve to keep the town’s only well from going dry.

    Not that they want to use any more of the city’s water than they absolutely have to: The water quality is so bad in Fairmead, where tap water flows a milky white, that even those on the city well prefer to drink bottled water. Mostly low-income, they spend tens or even hundreds of dollars each month on drinking water, and many dollars more on gas to drive their cars out of town to someplace where the water quality is better, so that they can fill up large containers with safe water to use for showering, washing dishes, and watering their gardens.

    […]

    In a normal year, California gets most of its ­freshwater supplies from a handful of big storms in the fall and winter—storms that fill the lowland reservoirs and, more important, dump large amounts of snow on the majestic Sierra Nevada mountain range, where the water waits, frozen, until it is slowly released during the melting season. Those few, precious storms generate enough water to allow California’s tens of millions of residents to drink water as they please, to take showers and flush toilets, to wash cars, water lawns, and fill swimming pools. They allow oil firms to frack, golf courses to remain verdant, and farmers to grow crops. They allow, in short, the miracle of a hydrologic civilization, perched between desert and ocean, to flourish—and to do so with utter abandon.

    Every California resident uses between 150 and 200 gallons of water per day, Lund estimates. That is roughly five times what residents in sun-parched Israel use; it is far more, too, than what Australians, Spaniards, or residents of other hot, dry, sunny countries consume. Californians live on land a few failed storms away from desiccation, but historically they’ve consumed water as if they lived in Vermont or New York or any other saturated East Coast state.

     But these past four years have been far from normal for Californians, as the big rain-and-snow dumps have failed to come through. And while the last seven months did bring considerable rain to much of the northern parts of the state, it hasn’t been enough to compensate for the fact that the vital accumulations of snow high up in the Sierras failed to materialize, or to replenish groundwater systems sucked dry by the arid years. When Governor Jerry Brown visited the mountainous high country in the early spring, just before announcing mandatory 25 percent water-conservation measures for nonagricultural uses, the snowpack was at a dismal 6 percent of where it would normally be at that time of year.

    By then, 52 of California’s 58 counties were experiencing extreme drought conditions (the number has since climbed to 54). And despite the broader economy’s recovery from the 2008 collapse, some two dozen rural counties saw significant increases in joblessness, as agricultural workers and the employees of other local businesses reliant on regular water supplies, from carpet cleaners to car detailers, were laid off because of the lack of water.

    The figures are worrying. California agriculture, worth more than $40 billion in a good year, contracted by roughly $1.5 billion last year, as farmers plowed up crops they could no longer water and focused their efforts on preserving their most profitable harvests. Yet it was the farmhands who planted and picked the crops, trimmed the trees, and packaged fruit who suffered most. In a July 2014 report, researchers from UC Davis estimated that 17,000 seasonal and part-time jobs would be lost that year in California due to the drought. And 2015 promises to be at least as bad.

    […]

     Over the months ahead, California’s water districts will have to come up with extraordinary ways to make residents conserve anywhere from 8 to 36 percent of the amount of water they used in 2013, for a cumulative nonagricultural-water saving of 25 percent. For consumers in wealthy cities, this means a set of inconveniences: strict limits on when lawns can be watered, and for how long; cars buffed to a shiny perfection less often; toilets flushed according to the rules of that corny old jingle, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.” It means the introduction of water meters in cities where residents have long enjoyed cheap, one-size-fits-all rate plans. And it means that some people who flout the rules by overusing water will have irate neighbors inform on them and be forced to pay fines.

    Yet for most cities, the drought doesn’t mean calamity; the great majority of California’s urban hubs have the resources to buy water from elsewhere, and many have already stockpiled sufficient supplies to see them through several more years of drought. “Urban areas were very well prepared,” explains Professor Lund. “After the 1988–92 drought, they invested a lot of money getting ready for the next drought.”

    For less wealthy communities, however, the inconveniences quickly turn into catastrophes. In hundreds of poor rural spots—places too small to qualify as towns, too isolated to be incorporated into larger cities, and oftentimes condemned as “nonviable” by their county’s General Plan—the drought has literally meant the end of water. These settlements have long been at the mercy of ramshackle delivery systems, which pump unsafe water laced with arsenic, uranium, nitrates, and pesticides into family homes; now those wells are dry, too. And despite the passage of the state’s largely aspirational Human Right to Water Act in 2012, the large-scale investments needed to link these communities into the water systems of bigger towns, or to dig wells deep enough to allow them to survive off their own water supplies, haven’t materialized.

    In East Porterville, where the entire city has run dry, hundreds of families now rely on trucked-in water. ­Journalists have poured into town in recent months, lured by the headline of a city without water. But East Porterville is, in fact, only the tip of the iceberg. Smaller, more invisible settlements throughout the great farming valleys of California are in crisis—many from a lack of water, but also from a loss of jobs.

    […]

     Meanwhile, as thousands of California’s poorest residents struggle to survive without water, agribusiness has been rushing to grab what water supplies remain. Throughout the drought, the acreage devoted to water-intensive crops such as almonds has soared. By the end of 2014, according to National Agricultural Statistics Services data, the land used for almond production stood at a little over 1 million acres—an increase of about 200,000 acres since 2008. During the worst drought in California’s recorded history, in other words, the amount of land devoted to one of the state’s most water-intensive crops went up almost 25 percent. The numbers are similar for other water-intensive but profitable crops.

    For small family farms, like the 120-acre plot in Fairmead run by Elaine Moore and her husband, almonds represent relatively easy money. Over the past 50 years, Moore, 67, has planted everything from sweet potatoes to cotton, alfalfa to raisin grapes. For her, small farming is the “mystic side of life,” especially the extraordinary beauty of trees bursting with blossoms in the spring and dripping with gorgeously colored leaves in the fall. When the floor fell out of the price of raisins a few years back, Moore recalls, “it just about broke our backs. We decided to do almonds. It’s our eighth year in almonds—a lot less work.”

    Yet over the last four years, one well after another on the Moores’ small plot has run dry. A well they recently had drilled to nearly 600 feet, at a cost of over $20,000, is still pumping water, but she doesn’t know for how long.

    Meanwhile, huge almond concerns are buying up vast tracts of land, sinking ever-deeper wells at ever-higher costs, and sucking up the reachable water supplies. In Monson, a 41-home settlement in Tulare County, locals talk of a large agribusiness concern near their dry hamlet that has drilled a well, at enormous expense, down to a level of 1,500 feet. There are rumors that some other new wells probe down half a mile.

    […]

     This country has heating-assistance programs to help people who cannot otherwise pay their heating bills; we have food stamps to put meals on the table of those who might otherwise go hungry. But we have no national plans in place to give water-purchasing grants to the poor in parched regions of the country. Nor do we have any easy-to-access, state-funded programs whereby individuals like Flossie Ford-Hedrington or Caroline Rosiles can obtain grants or zero-interest loans to make it possible for them to drill deep wells on their land. These are all partial fixes that would be affordable and immediate in their impact, and they would make existing, but small-bore, federal and state programs more effective.

    The US Department of Agriculture, for instance, does provide Emergency Community Water Assistance Grants, which, in conjunction with state-sponsored emergency grants, fund roughly 20 projects in California. But the department caps its grants at $500,000 per project—far shy of what many small communities need to beef up their water infrastructure. And while California recently moved toward mandating that water districts come up with long-term sustainability plans, these limits—once proposed—won’t kick in for decades. In the meantime, there are no restrictions on how much water big agricultural combines can monopolize during a drought.

    For the state’s forgotten inhabitants, like Irma Rod- riguez, 43, a nurse who lives with her husband and six children in Orange Center, the options are limited. Since her own well ran dry, Rodriguez drives to and from her mother’s house each day to collect water, making sure it’s correctly divided into separate pots for flushing toilets, cooking, drinking, and showers. The circuit takes up to three hours, she estimates, but what other choice does she have? “People who live here don’t have the money to put in a down payment and move to an apartment or home downtown. This is their lives; their friends are here.”

    Rodriguez pauses, pondering her predicament. “We need water to live, to survive,” she says. “You can’t just ignore these rural communities.”

  8. rq says

    Is Abortion an African-American Genocide? The Problem with Conservatives Citing Margaret Sanger, via Libby Anne.

    Conservatives want to have it both ways. They argue that progressive support of welfare and affirmative action is racist in that it assumes that blacks need these things to succeed. Welfare and affirmative action take away from black agency and get in the way of black progress, they say, and are based in the racist assumption that African Americans are by nature dependent. Conservatives are, they say, all about restoring black agency and removing the chains of dependency—except, of course, when it comes to abortion. When it comes to abortion, African Americans’ agency and ability to make their own choices goes out the window as conservatives paint women of color as dupes participating in their own genocide.

    […]

    But you know what? No one forces women of color to have abortions. In fact, Planned Parenthood personnel are required to make sure that women who come to their facility for abortions are doing so through their own free will. When conservatives argue abortion is a plan dreamed up by Margaret Sanger to carry out genocide against African Americans, and that that is why higher rates of African American women have abortions, they are suggesting that black women should not have the ability to freely make their own reproductive choices.

    Who is trying to invalidate African Americans’ agency now?

    Let’s imagine for a moment that Margaret Sanger is everything conservatives claim she is. Let’s imagine that she pioneered abortion in an effort to decrease the nation’s African American population with a view toward eventual elimination. Even if that were true, it would have no relevance to the form abortion takes today. No one forces African American women to have abortions. There is no coercion. Indeed, African American women have on average more children than white women, which suggests that Sanger’s (imagined) plan is working out very badly.

    To the extent that there is any coercion—i.e. to the extent that women feel that they have no other option than abortion—it is conservative policies that are to blame. Conservatives favor cutting welfare and oppose government subsidies for childcare. Conservatives oppose better maternity leave policies and oppose raising the minimum wage. Conservatives are against providing effective birth control free of charge and against comprehensive sex education. The net result of these policies is that poor women, and especially women of color, will find themselves both unintentionally pregnant and unable to financially afford raising another child. To the extent that coercion exists vis a vis abortion today, this is what it looks like.

    More information at the link.

    Confederate flags filmed being stolen, destroyed in new social media challenge. I’m likin’ this one.

    This game of “capture the flag” is proving to know no rules or boundaries.

    A risky social media challenge of stealing and destroying Confederate battle flags has resulted in people filming themselves pulling off the brazen stunts while using the hashtags #DestroyConfederateFlag and #NoFlagginChallenge.

    In one video a man is seen tearing down a flag waving outside a home before jumping into an awaiting car and speeding away.

    In another video a man rips off flags attached to a pickup truck while it’s stopped at a traffic light.

    In yet another clip, a man is filmed pulling off what appears to be a magnetic flag from the back of a tractor-trailer while it’s stopped in traffic.

    “Snatch & run LMAO f–k the flag,” Jamari Williams posted on Facebook Saturday with the video of the theft seen outside a house.

    It’s not clear if Williams, who lists himself as being from Sarasota, Fla., is the source of the video.

    Sarasota police say they’re actively investigating the video but say no one in their jurisdiction has reported a theft.

    As of Tuesday afternoon the controversial video has received more than 4.5 million views, 14,000 likes, 63,000 shares and 43,000 comments.

    Most of the comments appear to criticize the culprits, some with threats.

    Zimbabwe Is Proposing to Return a Select Number of Farms to White Landowners

    A decade and a half after the Zimbabwean government seized large swaths of land from white farmers in the country, President Robert Mugabe has tentatively declared that he will return certain properties to their original owners.

    Under the suggested policy, the leaders of the country’s 10 provinces will draft a list of farms in their respective districts that they deem to be “of strategic economic importance,” the Zimbabwe Mail reports. The government will also establish a European Union–backed commission to evaluate the landgrab practices commenced in 2000, which were frequently violent.

    The property-seizure policy, which sent the country into economic crisis and left a number of civilian landowners dead, was both an exercise in kleptocracy and an attempt to wrest the country from its fraught colonial legacy. Many of the 4,000 white-owned farms taken by Mugabe’s government had been operated by the same families for decades — families that had come to the British colony of Rhodesia to make their fortunes in a system built on racial hierarchy.

    At present, only 300 white farmers remain on their original properties; meanwhile, a number of the farms seized in the past 15 years have ceased operations, requiring Zimbabwe — the erstwhile “Breadbasket of Africa” — to import food to stave off a hunger crisis.

    In spite of his government’s failure to sustain agricultural success on the reclaimed lands, Mugabe obstinately continues to defend his original decision.

    “Don’t be too kind to white farmers,” Mugabe said at a recent meeting of the Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front, the country’s ruling nationalist party, the Mail reports. “They can own industries and companies or stay in apartments in our towns, but they cannot own land. They must leave the land to blacks.”

    ICE releases hundreds of women, children from detention

    Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has released some 200 Central Americans, mostly women and children, from family-detention centers since last Friday. The move is part of a sweeping series of changes the agency has made in recent months to when and for how long families seeking asylum are being detained.

    The releases follow a long campaign by human-rights groups, since last year’s spike in migration from Central America, to end the Department of Homeland Security’s policy of detaining families as a way to discourage migration.

    On voter disenfranchisement: 23 percent of black voters can’t legally vote in Florida. Obama wants that to change.

    President Barack Obama on Tuesday called for an end to laws that prohibit people from voting after they serve their prison sentences.

    Obama, who briefly made the comment in his speech in front of the NAACP’s 2015 national convention, was referencing felon disenfranchisement laws. Only two states — Maine and Vermont — allow everyone to vote regardless of criminal record. Most states don’t let people in prison, on parole, or on probation vote, and 10 limit at least some felons from voting after they’ve completed their sentences, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

    As a result, more than 5.8 million Americans weren’t legally allowed to vote due to their criminal records in 2012, according to data analyzed by the Sentencing Project. Several states prohibited 6 to 11 percent of their electorate from voting. And since black Americans are likelier to go to prison, this had a disproportionate impact on the African-American electorate: While the overall disenfranchisement rate didn’t break 11 percent for any state, the black disenfranchisement rate topped 20 percent in Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia.

    This is one of the various collateral effects of prison. Other examples include restrictions on employment and bans on receiving welfare benefits, accessing public housing, or qualifying for student loans for higher education.

    So not only does prison deprive people of their freedoms while they’re incarcerated, but the punishment can follow people for the rest of their lives. This extended punishment can sometimes make it much more difficult for ex-inmates to get benefits that would allow them to get a job or an education, which might leave them with few options but crime to make ends meet. And since black people are more likely to be affected, these collateral effects can help perpetuate crime in African-American communities.

    Those are huge numbers of voters.

    Vandals Trash Fla. Church, Write ‘Charleston 2’ on Bishop’s Car – though it looks more like ‘Charleston[squared]’ to me.

  9. says

    Aversive racial bias in guilt and sentencing: Don’t treat racism, just belief:

    As of posting time, seven African-American churches have burned down since the racially motivated murders in Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina two weeks ago. One of those fires may have been caused by lightning, but there’s a concern that others may have been caused by a belief – namely, racism toward African-Americans. But that understanding of racism as a conscious and pointed belief can limit our understanding of the full spectrum of the bias. Those who say that racism is mostly a thing of the past, for example, might just be thinking of those who hold beliefs in racial inferiority and act in support of those beliefs, via discrimination or worse. Most of us honestly believe we would never treat anyone differently due to race, and in the perceived absence of expressed bigotry from others, we’re tempted to believe that for most people in most circumstances, racism is a previous generation’s problem, not ours.

    Social scientists, however, know better. They understand that racism can’t be placed into that neat box of overt animus. Sure, racism can be expressed in conscious beliefs and actions, but it also can be expressed through unconscious bias. For example, millions have taken the Implicit Association Test developed by researchers at Yale University and the University of Washington and most have been surprised at the extent to which the test can reveal subtle associations and preferences. The test documents a common form of racism that extends beyond the beliefs and attitudes that we’re aware of. Under the heading of “aversive racism,” current research is looking at the kinds of subconscious bias that can be exhibited by those who believe they have no racial bias at all. The Orange County Register features an article focusing on research by Cal State Fullerton psychologist Russ Espinoza who found that mock jurors are motivated to find reasons other than race in order to justify greater punitiveness toward minority defendants. This finding, as well as the broader view of racial bias that it suggests, bears not only on the criminal defendants they study, but also on the biases we anticipate and search for in cases generally.

    The Research: Aversive Racial Bias in Guilt and Sentencing
    The study that Russ Espinoza discusses in the newspaper article (Espinoza et al., 2015) was conducted in a Santa Ana, California courthouse using 320 Caucasian jurors called for jury duty. After they were dismissed, volunteers read through fictionalized trial transcripts that randomly varied the defendants’ ethnicity (Mexican or Canadian), immigration status (documented or undocumented), and socio-economic status (low or high). Not surprisingly, the team found effects for all three, independently and in combination: Low socio-economic undocumented Mexican defendants were more likely to be found guilty, and less likely to receive a recommendation of parole.

    Espinoza explains these results in terms of aversive racism, or the view that, “racial prejudice is subtle and exists even for persons who believe they are egalitarian.” That prejudice operated, in Espinoza’s view, when jurors relied on the non-race-related factors of socio-economic or immigration status more than on ethnicity. “When jurors can find other reasons besides race to place blame, such as low socioeconomic status,” he says, “they will tend to be more punitive toward minority defendants and feel that they are not being prejudicial.”

    Voir Dire for Racism
    In some cases, parties will need to do their best in order to uncover and strike potential jurors who harbor a racial bias. Here are a few clear implications from the implicit bias and aversion research.

    Don’t Rely on Questions that Are Variations on ‘Are You Racist?’
    Our conventional voir dire process is premised on the mistaken belief that potential jurors are generally aware of their biases. You might ask panelists, for instance, whether they harbor any animosities toward particular groups, or whether they would be unable to fairly judge people like your client. That might work to ferret out a few – those who are willing to voice an unpopular opinion, probably as a way of getting out of jury duty. But the rest will say, and genuinely believe, that they would not discriminate. The problem is that there is no reason to trust that self-diagnosis.

    Instead, Look for Aversion
    Nonverbal cues coming from the jury box aren’t always reliable either. But one cue I would look for is apparent aversion, because aversion is likely to be more reliable than expressed opinions. When a potential juror either studiously avoids eye contact with a party or attorney, or – on the other end of the spectrum – engages in a sustained glaring kind of eye contact, there is a good chance they are showing aversion toward you or your client. Asking about aversion is a little harder (see above), but might still be possible. Inquiring into experience, for example, can be better than asking about attitudes. Asking how regularly the panelist has interacted with members of a minority group, for example, might be a window into aversive behavior.

    And Aim for Diversity in the Seated Jury
    Even with good questioning though, it is probably impossible to eliminate implicit or aversive racial bias from your jury panel. Beyond the proper goal of minimizing it, attorneys also should conduct voir dire with an eye toward the diversity of the resulting panel. Diverse groups are less likely to fall sway to unexamined bias or groupthink, and more likely to engage in complete deliberations. So even if some end up on the panel with dangerous biases, diversity within the panel as a whole will serve as an important check against those biases playing too strong a role during deliberations.

    The bottom line for trial lawyers is not to confuse biases with beliefs. Powerful biases can be unexpressed and even unknown to those who bear them. And that goes not just for racial biases, but for all of them.

  10. says

    Zadie Smith makes her screenwriting debut with sci-fi film:

    Author Zadie Smith, best known for her novels such as White Teeth, On Beauty, and NW, will make her debut as a screenwriter on an upcoming science fiction film by famed director Claire Denis. It is the director’s first English language film.

    According to Screen Daily, the film takes place beyond the solar system in “a future that seems like the present”.
    Smith’s work as a novelist has been adapted for the screen before, with 2000’s White Teeth being made into a four part drama for the UK’s Channel 4, and a feature version of 2005’s On Beauty in the works from Film4.

    Smith can now add screenwriting to her list of many writing accomplishments, including receiving tenure as a Creative Writing professor at NYU, the Orange Prize for Fiction, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.

  11. says

    Dever police caught telling key lies about their fatal shooting of Native American Paul Castaway:

    On this past Sunday, Paul Castaway, a 35 year old Native American, was brutally shot and killed by Denver Police. This much we know.

    Castaway’s mother, Lynn Eagle Feather, says she called the police for help on Sunday after her son threatened her with a knife, telling cops he was mentally ill. Police allege Castaway charged at them with the knife, but according to witnesses and a surveillance video seen by a local reporter, Castaway was holding the knife to his own neck when he was shot four times.
    Speaking to Indian Country Today, Eagle Feather said the police shooting was racially motivated.

    “I want justice for my son. I want those cops to be reprimanded. These Denver cops love to kill Natives. They love to kill people of color here,” she told the network.

    Immediately after the shooting, though, police began telling key lies about what happened that have already been proven not to be true.
    First off, we have this.

    Pretty nefarious, right? It never happened.

    Below is a photo of Paul’s mother, who wasn’t stabbed at all, at a protest rally for him 24 hours later.

    No lie, though, is more nefarious than why police said they had to kill Paul. They said that he charged at them with a knife, but according to reporters who’ve seen the video of what happened, this is a lie as well.

    The manager of Capital City mobile home park at 4501 W. Kentucky Ave. has the video. He wouldn’t give it to FOX31 Denver, but he did show it to reporter Tammy Vigil.
    It shows Paul Castaway, 35, coming up from behind a white mobile home, through a black iron fence onto the street and around a wooden fence, which is a dead end.

    He then turned back around onto the street with a knife to his neck the whole time, when an officer shoots him. The video seems to not match what police say happened.

  12. rq says

    “This is our heritage,” Confederate flag supporters protest ahead of Obama’s Oklahoma arrival. It is your heritage. Your horribly hateful, racist heritage. I’m so glad you can be proud of that. :P A group of Confederate flag supporters were out in force near Durant on Wednesday before the president arrived in town.

    The group was visible from the interstate as they flew several Confederate flags from their trucks and vehicles.

    “We’re not gonna stand down from our heritage. You know, this flag’s not racist. And I know a lot of people think it is, but it’s really not,” said Trey Johnson, who drove three hours from Texas to join the protest. “It’s just a southern thing, that’s it.”

    “I believe that it is a flag that should not come down. It is about history. It’s not about racism at all because both black men, as well as white men stood side by side. They fought together for the beliefs that they believed in. And this is our heritage,” said Stephanie.

    Alyssa, a supporter of the group, said the group’s protest has nothing to do with the president, but rather a culmination of the events that have occurred in recent weeks.
    “Nothing to do with the president”. I have a hard time believing that.

    “Confederate lives matter”: Flag wavers to greet President Obama in Oklahoma

    President Barack Obama is visiting Oklahoma today to promote his initiative to expand high-speed Internet access to low-income and rural Americans and later to make a historic visit to a federal prison, but he will first be greeted by a rally of Confederate flag supporters, The Tulsa Frontier reports.

    Just what he needs!!!!

    They Are Greeting President Obama with Confederate Flags in Durant, OK

    President Obama will be in Durant, Oklahoma today to announce the ConnectHome program, which promises to bring high-speed internet access to low-income communities across America, particularly those in rural areas. Indeed, the White House plans for this pilot program to reach 275,000 households and 200,000 children who have no access to high-speed broadband.

    However, some a handful of citizens in Durant are lining the streets not to give Obama the honored welcome he deserves, but to shower him with images of hatred.

    Those three previous links via Lynna.

    NAACP Calls for Removal of Confederate Flag From Ala. State Troopers’ Cruisers, Uniforms

    Huntsville, Ala.’s NAACP is calling for the removal of the Confederate flag from the state’s Highway Patrol vehicles. Currently it is plastered on every state trooper vehicle, as well as on a patch that every uniformed officer wears, WAFF reports.

    n keeping with the recent national shunning of all symbols of the Confederacy, the local NAACP chapter said that it is high time that the uniform and vehicles were altered.

    “The time is right, and I just think it needs to be,” the Rev. Robert L. Shanklin of the NAACP told the news station. “We need to do a clean sweep. The state and local government, anywhere that that’s located.”

    According to the news station, troopers know about the controversy surrounding their gear but said that any changes would have to happen on the state level.

    Video of police shooting released after AP wins court decision. That’s again on the 2013 shooting in L.A.

    Judge Stephen V. Wilson unsealed the video so the public could see what led the city of Gardena to pay $4.7 million to settle a lawsuit with Diaz-Zeferino’s family and another man wounded in the shooting that followed a botched report of a bicycle theft early the morning of June 2, 2013.

    “The fact that they spent the city’s money, presumably derived from taxes, only strengthens the public’s interest in seeing the videos,” Wilson wrote in a 13-page decision. “Moreover, defendants cannot assert a valid compelling interest in sealing the videos to cover up any wrongdoing on their part or to shield themselves from embarrassment.”

    Against a backdrop of intense public scrutiny of police shootings nationwide, a lawyer for The Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg argued the videos should be unsealed under a First Amendment right to access court documents.

    “The Associated Press, joining with other news organizations, believes it’s important that the public has access to videos like this to better understand the actions of their police officers,” spokesman Paul Colford said.

    The ruling comes amid public debates over what footage should be made public as police officers and cruisers are increasingly equipped with cameras to capture evidence that can be used against criminals or to hold officers accountable for their own behavior.

    Michael Overing, a lawyer and journalism professor at the University of Southern California, said that in addition to being cited in future court arguments the ruling could help provide guidance as lawmakers grapple with those issues.

    “Right now video is being suppressed,” Overing said. “This is going to help open the floodgates so the public can see it … and see if actions are justified.”

    Gardena was joined by police chiefs and officer groups around the state in arguing that making such videos public would dissuade cities from employing the technology.

    Wilson said that was a political consideration and not for him to judge.

    Bill Clinton: I Made Criminal Justice ‘Worse’. Wow, at least he admits to it.

    Bill Clinton said at a NAACP meeting in Philadelphia on Wednesday that he made a mistake by signing the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act that lengthened federal sentences for many crimes. “I signed a bill that made the problem worse. And I want to admit it,” he said. Clinton sounded a lot different when he signed the bill: “Gangs and drugs have taken over our streets and undermined our schools. Every day, we read about somebody else who has literally gotten away with murder.” The act, co-written by Joe Biden, promised greater federal funding for states if they enacted stricter sentencing laws for violent offenses. In addition, it provided money for extra prisons, funding for 100,000 police, cut higher education assistance for inmates, and created 60 new death penalty offenses. Finally, the bill created the Violence Against Women Act and banned the sale of assault weapons.

    Somehow, stricter sentencing for non-violent offenses also occurred. Funny, that.

  13. rq says

    Borked the quote after the first link.
    Obama to be greeted on Oklahoma visit by Confederate flags, the Tulsa Frontier on that.

    Riverside County to pay $500,000 to family of man fatally shot while handcuffed

    Riverside County agreed to pay $500,000 to the family of an 18-year-old man fatally shot in the back by a Moreno Valley deputy while handcuffed face-down on the ground, his family’s attorney said.

    The agreement was reached in June to award Jewell Allen, the mother of Lamon Khiry Haslip, after she filed a federal wrongful-death lawsuit against the county and the deputy.

    Allen’s attorney, Brian Dunn, said the shooting represents “an abuse of power.”

    “It’s one of the worst I’ve seen,” he said Wednesday.

    It’s also a shooting that occurred in 2012. Justice seems to be slow – even when it’s incomplete justice.

    StL Metro PD’s 2015 homicide clearance rate with black victims is 26% (23/87) and with white victims is 88% (7/8). There’s probably a multitude of factors contributing to that, incl. a distrust within the black community of police officers, even when they’re doing their jobs properly. But you know what? That’s still no excuse for such a huge disparity. And they (the cops) probably don’t even realize that they might be prioritizing some victims over others – not consciously, anyway. That’s the saddest part of all.

    Protesters Fly Confederate Flags To Greet Obama In Oklahoma, Huffington Post Black Voices.

    And here, the @ColoradoFOP offers insight re: Baltimore and the influence of the unions. FOP to FOP. See attached tweets.
    More: And the @ColoradoFOP, the police union, reminds us of “the American way.” Suing the police, the American Way.

  14. rq says

    Looks like StL Metro PD has cleared 6/7 (86%) homicide cases w/ white victims this yr. StL’s overall homicide clearance rate roughly 35%.

    Some Airway Heights residents concerned by mayor’s Facebook post Oh? What did the Mayor say?

    The mayor of Airway Heights, Patrick Rushing, doesn’t hold back his political views when it comes to his Facebook page. KHQ got a message from one of his followers who was extremely offended by a comment Mayor Rushing posted about President Obama and the First Lady.

    Normally this is not something we would ever repeat on air or in text, but since the person who contacted us found it so disturbing we felt we had to contact the mayor as to why he would post such a thing.

    The comment in full that was found on Patrick Rushing’s Facebook page read: “Gorilla face Michelle, can’t disagree with that. The woman is not attractive except to monkey man Barack. Check out them ears. LOL.”

    I showed Rushing the statement, and he confirmed he had posted it, so I asked him why he would write something like that.

    “It’s just playful back and forth banter that my friends and I do,” said Rushing.

    I also showed the statement to some people I spoke to in Airway Heights. Neither of them found it amusing at all.

    “Because I’m black, it’s offensive to me because many times blacks have been compared to a gorilla, a monkey. Some type of animal,” says Tommy Gilbert. “I’m a joking and jovial person but I know when something is acceptable or not and that is not acceptable under any circumstances.”

    Mike Larkins shared Gilbert’s opinion. “It’s just a terrible thing to say,” says Larkins. “Being compared to a monkey is offensive because we’re all human beings.”

    The update reads:

    On Monday, following Airway Heights mayor Patrick Rushing’s controversial comments on his Facebook page, all members of Airway Heights City Council asked Rushing to step down.

    Mayor Rushing didn’t agree with council members’ recommendations.

    “I will not step down. But I will do everything I can to turn the tide around.”

    Council members have directed the city attorney to draft a resolution outlining the dissatisfaction of the council, their concerns and possible sanctions. That resolution will be presented at the Council’s next meeting on Monday.

    Which sounds a lot like some kind of non-action.

    Stats wiz Nate Silver: For black Americans, US is about as dangerous as Rwanda. It’s a whole different country for them. There was that vignette by… I forget who, years ago, about two random aliens describing their home planets to each other via radio, describing two completely different worlds (one idealistic, the other downtrodden) – in the end, it turns out they’re both from Earth.

    For black and white americans, the difference between life and death is literally worlds apart. Although we may know this on some level, Nate Silver, the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight, has the startling statistics that demonstrate this reality.

    As he explained to me on the latest episode of The Katie Halper Show, “If you’re a white person your chance of being murdered every year is 2.5 out of 10,000… If you’re a black person it’s 19.4, so almost eight times higher.”
    ADVERTISEMENT

    To put this into context, Silver explained, the murder rate for white Americans is similar to the murder rate for people living in Finland, Chile or Israel. The murder rate for black Americans, on the other hand, is similar to the rate found “in developing countries that are war zones even, like Myanmar, or Rwanda, Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, places that have vast disorder. To me that stat was so striking that I thought this was a case where even if you kinda zoomed out, that was a data point that helped to inform the discussion.”

    Silver also discussed police brutality.

    So I’m an editor now as well as a writer so we think when a story occurs is this a quote unquote “random act of violence” or is this representative of some broader trend and I think these stories about police brutality, it’s uncovering things that have been going on for a long time and that are very common experiences…

    Now that we do have video cameras everywhere it’s not a coincidence that all of a sudden now that we have means to record these things all of a sudden these things crop up all the time.

    Listen to the whole interview with Silver below, as well as interviews with Chris Cobb, who helped get New York City to acknowledge the site of a former slave market on Wall Street and mark it with a plaque, Desiree Burch, the black solo performer from California, who now lives in England, where she feels way safer walking around and or encountering the sees police, and political comedian Ted Alexandro, who talks about police brutality in his standup, and said, to Silver, “you said [the murder rate for black Americans is] more in keeping with places that have ‘vast disorder.’ Maybe vast disorder is the right term for the experience of black folks living here in the United States. That is their reality. So, when you said those words it kind of struck me.”

    Audio at the link.

    PETITION: The firing of Anthony Batts was a step in the right direction. Start to repair relations with the community, and bring Joe Crystal back to Baltimore. Crystal was the whistle-blowing cop who got pushed out of the force due to harassment and intimidation tactics from fellow employees. (Does he even want his job back?)

    Former Det Joseph Crystal was a rising star in the department, and he took his job seriously. That all changed the day he witnessed a handcuffed drug suspect beaten and his ankle broken by a fellow officer. When he reported it to his superiors, his nightmare began. Det. Crystal, testified against two officers who were involved, and helped secure convictions. Soon afterwards, he was labeled a rat, and he eventually found a dead rodent placed on the windshield of his car. Crystal was not only harassed by his ‘brothers in blue’, he was ostracized, and denied several promotions. Crystal became so overwhelmed with the harassment at the hands of his peers, it subsequently lead to his resignation in 2014. We applaud Crystal for coming forward and reporting misconduct. Baltimore is in desperate need of officers with strong integrity, such as Crystal to police our streets. We strongly urge the Baltimore Police Department to reverse Mr. Crystal’s resignation, so he can continue to serve the people. The City of Baltimore needs Joe Crystal.

    Black Children and Poverty

    Poverty has fallen for kids in White, Hispanic and Asian families in the last five years, but not for Black children, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center.

    About 38% of Black children are still living below the poverty line, according to Pew‘s study of Census data, and Black kids are still about four times as likely as White or Asian kids to grow up poor. And for the first time since 1974, there are more poor Black kids (4.2 million) than poor White kids (4.1 million), even though there are three times as many White children in America.

    IntelGroupNY Sits Down With Erica Garner…(Part 2)

    By now most of you either know or have heard about Eric Garner. His murder at the hands of the the NYPD sparked outrage across the nation. “I can’t breathe ” has become synonymous with the entire black lives matter movement. After Eric’s tragic death his daughter Erica took to the streets in search of the ever elusive justice for her father. Along with huge support from both local and national activists the fight continues to this day.

    Recently the NYPD has reached a settlement with the Garner family. In exchange for the 5.9 million dollars the NYPD awarded the Garners , the city avoids admitting any wrong doing and any further legal actions. At first the Garners were suing for 75 million dollars in a “wrongful death” suit.

    Not only do I believe the city got off light in this situation , but the fact that they don’t have to admit any wrong doing is another example of what’s wrong with the system today …

    Today we get to sit down with Erica and get to talk about some of these things and discuss the future…As some of you may recall Erica was our first guest back when we launched AnonIntelGroup.

    […]

    What does your family plan to do with the settlement?
    I can only speak for my self. Any money that would be given to me , I will use to provide for my 5 year old daughter. The money will help with things I want to see accomplished at the garnerwayfoundation toward the movement to insure this doesn’t happen again. Also the money will help me in the hiring of a criminal lawyer because all the lawyers we have at the moment are civil right attorney’s.

    Has the NYPD ever even remotely apologized to you or your family ?

    No… And that’s what I was hoping for throughout this whole ordeal. I was advised that if we agreed to the settlement , the city would not come out and say “we fucked up” . In other words they would rather pay us then to show liablity. But to me its just about being sorry . I mean my father was a human being , show some remorse for what his family is going thru . We are all hopeful in the justice department. They have other investigations that are being conducted but which are on hold until the justice department finally give my family and the world the answers we have all been desperately waiting for.

    What can the city do to really make progress when it comes to police brutality?
    Straight up and down …hold police officers accountable when they kill someone at anytime on duty or off duty. When cops learn that they aren’t above the law or when they learn that badge doesn’t give them the license to kill. We also need to stop the corruption and cover ups because its been a year since they killed my father and things have only gotten worse over the past months after seeing the cops basically get away with killing my father. After the grand jury failed to indict any of the officers involved in my dads killing. The city is protecting the release of Officer Panteleo conduct complaints filed against him…that right there screams cover up to me .. its sad …and I feel if the federal government would’ve done something sooner it would’ve made other officers across the nation take notice and maybe people like Walter Scott and Freddie Grey would still be alive today. Body cameras are a joke because now cops can simply just shut the camera off and state that it ‘Malfunctioned’ .

    More at the link.

  15. rq says

    He’s the (Famous) DJ, I’m the Son

    I had a very different childhood than most Black boys from Southwest Philadelphia in the early ’90s. My mother worked as an elementary school teacher at Philadelphia’s oldest African-American-owned and -operated private school. And my father was a musician, who was also an actor. My father could be seen every Monday on primetime TV with his best friend.

    My father is “DJ Jazzy Jeff” Townes.

    Growing up in Philly as my father and Will ascended to new heights with their musical and (later acting) careers had its ups, downs and all-arounds. My parents weren’t together, and for a long while, even wandering into my teenage years, I never understood why. But they tried their hardest and did a great job of making things work for me.

    Good grades in school pending, my Christmas tree would be stocked. I never had a need, but I was groomed to work for my wants. My mother never let me get into child acting (thank you, Ma). If I wanted to try hockey and football, let’s do it. If karate was next, sign Cory up. (Although I thought there was a fast track between novice and 3 Ninjas and was quickly humbled.)

    But it came with a cost. I rarely saw my father and I never could understand why, no matter how many times it was “explained.” What was even more confusing was, as many times as I would ask my mother where he was or why I couldn’t see him, there he was: every Monday night, just like clockwork, making the people laugh and having jokes. Every Tuesday, kids in school would tell me how funny he was the night before, would tell me how much they wished they were me.

    And to a kid who always wanted the simple things, a game of hoops with my father meant more to me than the latest Sega video games or the envy of classmates. I remember a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode where my father got married to his on-show girlfriend, and I completely lost it. I can laugh at it now and I imagine my mother got her chuckles in while trying to console me, but in my childhood anger, I never felt so betrayed.

    In my eyes, Dad was on TV with his new wife, new kids and new family, and was going to forget all about me. I was livid, man. But after having so many talks of understanding, I learned to separate Jeff Townes (or Pops as I’ve called him for as long as I can remember) from the character Jazz. I remember going to the Fresh Prince set as a child and meeting the cast. The late James Avery’s billowing presence and famously deep voice turned to sheer terror as he channeled his inner Shredder from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon (one of the best shows of all time). I remember meeting Daphne Maxwell Reid, and how nice she was, doing The Carlton with Alfonso Ribeiro, and the first time I met Tatyana Ali. Man. At age 9, I learned about the willingness and dedication of “risking it all.”

    But as I grew up, the desire of having a father around clashed more with the understanding of putting food on the table and providing for me. By middle school and high school, my mother had a new boyfriend (and later husband), and I had a baby sister on the way. Tensions built between me and my stepfather, as I irrationally saw him trying to replace the father who wasn’t there, but was still there in my eyes.

    Focusing more on music after the show’s ending in ’96, my father helped create some of the biggest musical acts of the early 2000s with his patented A Touch of Jazz sound. And while it was a crazy experience to be around artists who would later strike big in their early stages, I just wanted to hang with my dad. Whenever my mother told me I’d be going to see him, I was excited to just be in his presence. I saw myself in Jeff Townes, his calm demeanor, his captivating presence when he was talking or telling a story, the way he’d phrase things, his hand motions. He was my biggest idol and I looked up to him. But it was frustrating and saddening to have to be canceled on when work came up, or if he had to bail out on seeing me, or if he had to work with someone during the precious times we had together. I became resentful. Angry. Cold.

    I’d never disassociate with my father, I’d never shy away from being his son. If someone asked, I’d say yes and be prepared to answer the same 32,000 questions that would normally follow. Even if there were times I hadn’t seen or spoken to my father in months, I’d act like everything was okay, as I was always taught, “family business isn’t for anyone else to know.”

    But that anger caused me to rift with both him and my step-father. I failed to understand then that he was trying to come into a situation of raising another man’s son in a city and time period rare for that. Slowly but surely,I started to give my stepfather a chance and let him into my life to become the mentor he is today. But issues with my father were left un-settled. This is the first time I’ve ever written about this, and as fingers hit computer keys, I realize I’ve carried this anger around by myself for a long, long time. “When you get older, you’ll understand.” That was a phrase I’ve heard many times from my father as a kid. I always wondered when that time would come, when I’d finally understand how and why our relationship wasn’t the perfect story I always wanted. After some of the darkest moments of our relationship throughout my college years, we’d all but given up on each other. We didn’t talk, check in with each other, anything. I’d check in on social media every once in a while to see what he’s up to and where he is in the world. (And knowing him now as I do, he probably did the same.) But that was the extent of our communication.

    More at the link.

    Confederate Street Names painted over in Jacksonville, Florida.
    “Black Lives Matter” written on a Confederate Memorial on the UNC campus.
    SHAME written across a Confederate Memorial to Robert. E. Lee in Dallas, TX

    Profiling Bill Creates ‘Accountability’ For Oregon Police

    The bill defines “profiling” as when a law enforcement agency or officer stops an person for questioning because of factors like age, race, ethnicity or gender identity.

    The ban also mandates a statewide complaint system for individuals to use if they feel they’ve been profiled — as well as to ensure all agencies have an in-house complaint policy. The state plans to give $250,000 to Portland State University’s Criminal Justice Policy Research Institute, where the complaints will be collected and analyzed.

    Rep. Lew Frederick, D-Portland, a victim of profiling himself and one of the only two African Americans in the state Senate, co-sponsored the bill. He shared his own history of being stopped by police almost every year in Oregon since he moved in 1974.

    “I have had a number of situations that have taken place in Oregon that have not been pleasant,” Frederick said. “I have been stopped in front of my house three times by a police officer asking if I was lost.”

    The Portland Police Bureau and other agencies — like the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office — already have in-house directives that prohibit profiling.

    “I take [profiling] very seriously and have zero tolerance,” said Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton. “We have a section in our policies with regards to appropriate action required, and also racial discrimination. It is very extensive in the policies which govern racial profiling.”

    Yes, but apparently those policies aren’t working.

    Road trip for suburban woman ends in jailhouse death

    Newly obtained video shows the arrest of 28-year-old Sandra Bland, a Naperville woman whose death at a Texas jail is being angrily questioned by her friends and relatives.

    Sandra Bland was found dead in a Waller County, Texas, jail cell on Monday at 9 a.m. after being arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer during a routine traffic stop, the I-Team has learned. Authorities say her death appears to be suicide.

    In numerous emails and phone calls to the ABC7 I-Team, her friends and relatives say they do not believe the official version of what happened and say this is a case of foul play in a county with a history racial intolerance.

    Now, the I-Team has obtained video of Bland’s arrest. The video shows police on top of Bland, who is on the ground with several officers restraining her as she questions why they are being so rough. The video was shot by a bystander Friday morning, three days before she died in police custody.

    Bland was pulled over Friday for improper signaling a lane change, according to Waller County Sheriff’s Department officials. They say she was charged with “Assault on a Public Servant” and taken into custody by a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper.

    “After he pulled her out of the car, forced her and tossed her to the ground, knee to the neck, and arrested her,” says her friend Malcom Jackson.

    Bland’s friends say she had been with her family in suburban Chicago over the July 4th holiday, and drove to Texas for a job interview at her alma mater, Texas Prairie View A & M. Family members say she got the position and was to begin working in student outreach today.

    In the video of the arrest, an officer is heard telling the bystander taking the video to leave.

    In the video he shot, Bland is heard saying, “You just slammed my head into the ground. Do you not even care about that? I can’t even hear!”

    Then, as she is taken into custody, she repeats, “You slammed me into the ground and everything.”

    Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith says Bland “had been combative on the side of the road.”

    Combative? Or just mouthing off?

  16. rq says

    Anybody tired of hearing from Ta-Nehisi Coates yet? No? Good!!! Making Peace With the Chaos: An Interview With Ta-Nehisi Coates

    Ta-Nehisi Coates is running late. As a national correspondent for The Atlantic and author of the new book, Between the World and Me, everyone, it seems, wants a piece of the 39-year-old Baltimore native. His book—which Toni Morrison christened “required reading” and which the New York Times hailed a “profoundly moving account”—is a deeply personal examination of the ways in which American violence and racism have wreaked havoc on its black citizenry. “[T]he question of how one should live within a black body, within a country lost in the Dream,” Coates writes in the beginning portion of the book, “is the question of my life.”

    By the time we meet, on a late Tuesday afternoon in Midtown, he is gracious and candid as ever, despite having just come from another interview. “I feel freed,” he will later tell me, a wide smile cutting across his face. Over the course of the next half-hour, we discussed Coates’ early days at Howard University, traveling abroad, obligation, publishing’s lack of diverse gatekeepers, and what, if anything, it means to understand the fullness of history.

    An edited version of our conversation appears below.

    Interview at the link!

    ‘Between the World and Me’ Is for All of Us, Even if It Is Not About All of Us

    Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new book, Between the World and Me, is as beautiful as it is sobering. A letter from father to son about the visceral experience of being Black in America, the book is neither a call to action nor a plea for hope, but instead is a detailed cartography of the ways American racism has robbed, claimed, and destroyed Black people in this country. It is not a story of potential or redemption but a deeply rooted narrative of the ways hatred and entitlement have molded and shattered the Black body in America.

    The book made me think of my own father, a man who is also trying to parent Black children in a world hell-bent on their destruction. Not so long ago I was 15, and my father was telling me similar things, truths about the world I did not believe but have now confirmed.

    Unlike Coates, my father raised Black daughters. However, in a strange turn of events he has recently gained a surrogate son. Patrick and I became friends in eighth grade and managed to stay close even as the chasm between us widened: I left home for college and he cycled through arrests, rehabs, and court dates; I was starting law school when he was sentenced to prison. I was studying in the library when he called from jail to say he was getting out, and did I know of anyone who would pick him up? My dad agreed to give him a ride, which turned into giving him a place to stay for a few days, which, four years later, has turned into becoming a surrogate parent for him.

    I thought I knew my father as a parent. He raised me, after all, and between my sister and me we had surely pushed him to his limits. I was confident I had seen the whole spectrum of his pride, hope, disappointment.

    But I was wrong. He is parenting a Black man now, and that means something different.

    My dad is king of the worst-case scenario. He is always warning us of something as we walk out the door or hang up the phone, warning us of what lurks just beyond the nearest run to the grocery store or a casual dinner date with friends.

    When Patrick grabs the keys to go out my father fears for his body. He warns him of the police, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And when I’m the one walking out, he tells me to be careful too. He is less worried about the police and more concerned about the potential destruction of my body in other equally sinister ways.

    […]

    This trauma and fear is undoubtedly real. And yet—there is a still a disconnect for me in how Coates formulates the racist destruction of the individual. Yes, I recognize such physical destruction. I see remnants of it on the faces of the Black men around me; I hear it in their throats. I deeply understand the violence Coates identifies, but it does not quite fit in my personal paradigm. It is not that I am not susceptible to racial violence; it is not that I do not fear it. But my violence is of a different hue. My fear exists, but not in the exact ways Coates describes.

    That, of course, is because Coates is not writing about me. Not really. His story of the Black individual is, likely subconsciously, almost entirely a story about the Black male individual. In a BuzzFeed article, Shani Hilton noted that this is a tradition that has persisted in many of the greatest Black writers, including James Baldwin, the writer to which Coates is most often compared. Hilton laments adroitly that “the black male experience is still used as a stand in for the black experience.” Black women are still missing from the Black male story, serving as supernumeraries instead of co-stars.

    Days after finishing the book I am still grappling with a door that Coates left ajar, for which I am most grateful. Early in the book he says, “[R]ace is the child of racism, not the father.” White people are “a modern invention,” he says, and “their new name has no real meaning divorced from the machinery of criminal power.” I had not yet arrived at the realization that racism was constructed before race. Such a structure clarifies my perspective of not only the past and the present but the bleakness of the future. That this country has invented categories from our hatred, rather than derived hatred from already invented categories, is a reminder that humans will develop whatever caste systems necessary to oppress and violate.

    Yet, the physical violation that I have been threatened with or subject to is only partly due to the invention of racism and race. I believe in my core that racial violence has been a persistent cancer on this nation, and yet I know intimately that race is not my only physical liability. Perhaps it is not even my biggest one.

    That I am Black only tells part of the story. I am a Black woman. And while my race has “never been a matter of…physiognomy,” as Coates puts it, my sex and gender have. These two words are different and nuanced and spectrumized and complicated. But they are both real. And while race may be a modern invention, gender is not. The plunder and pillage of women’s bodies has existed for longer than my brain can comprehend. The persistence of patriarchy means that the subjugation of women is not only societal, but statutory. Across the nation, state legislatures have codified laws preventing me from making decisions about my own body. They tell me again that my body is not mine.

    The history of my body as up for public debate or consumption is not just an American tradition, but a tradition of our species. Like racism, I expect it will exist forever.

    I do not mean to imply that the effects of American racism on the Black woman are worse than they are on the Black man. I only mean to say that they are different in crucial ways. I wish Coates—one of the most amazing thinkers of our generation—had explored that more.

    […]

    Is this book for all of us? Yes. It is a deeply important work that everyone—and I mean everyone—should be forced to read and read again. Coates has fit so many experiences into fewer than 200 pages. I thought it was wonderful.

    But, this book is not about all of us. It does not include all of our stories.

    Perhaps that is too much to ask. Coates is a man writing a letter to his son. This is a man-to-man talk: a conversation about race and also about the way Black men are forced to navigate this world without ending up dead, jailed, or silenced. This is undoubtedly an important conversation. But, as Hilton noted, “The problem is that [t]his book about black male life is one that many readers will use to define blackness.”

    Would Coates write this book to his daughter? Would he feel like he had the right to that—to address her experience as a man? And if he did, what would it say? Would he map racial destruction of the body with the same confidence?

    ***

    It does not matter which of the three of us is walking out the door, my father reminds us to be safe. His fear is equally palpable with each of us, yet he is concerned about different things. A Black woman, after all, faces different villains.

    Whew.

    Marvel Salutes Hip-Hop w/ 50 Variant Covers Paying Homage to Classic Albums Covers, which are fun to look at.

    Marvel is having fun with a new series of more than 50 variant covers that are all homages to classic hip-hop album covers.

    “For years, Marvel Comics and hip-hop culture have been engaged in an ongoing dialogue,” Marvel EIC Axel Alonso said in a press release. “Beginning this October, we will shine a spotlight on the seamless relationship between those two unique forces.”

    Apparently, I just haven’t been paying attention folks, or it could be because I’m not a comic book reader, so help me out; what’s this ongoing dialogue between Marvel Comics and hip-hop culture that he’s referring to? Enlighten me.

    While I may not know comic books, I do know hip-hop – at least, the hip-hop I grew up with in the late 1980s/early 1990s, so I was able to immediately identify what classic album covers these Marvel interpretations are paying homage to. What about you?

    The move is part of the comic book giant’s plans to reissue some of its classic titles, which will happen this fall. This is just an early peek at what’s to come.

    And here’s a response to it: Can you explain why Marvel thinks that doing hip hop variants is a good idea, when absolutely no announced writers or artists on the new Marvel titles, as of now, are black? Wouldn’t correcting the latter be a much better idea than the former?

    Hi Tom! I hope you see this before it goes viral and you tune out the replies. I may be too late.

    The short version is here, in Whit Taylor’s “The Fabric of Appropriation.” The long version:

    Killer Mike, a rapper I grew up listening to and who Marvel recently paid homage to with the Run the Jewels variant covers, once said, “Closest I’ve ever come to seeing or feeling God is listening to rap music. Rap music is my religion.”

    I can relate. A few years ago, I found myself in Tokyo for work. I don’t speak Japanese, but that didn’t stop me and my friends from running wild over the city for a few days. One of my favorite experiences—a cherished experience—was when I ended up in Shibuya looking at shops. I found a streetwear spot that was down some stairs and around the corner. It didn’t look like a streetwear shop from the outside, but the signage and windows had a vibe, so I stepped in.

    Inside were a couple customers and two shop workers. I was the only black guy in the room, and it was small, so I shopped quickly and went to check out. The clerks didn’t speak English, but they definitely spoke hip-hop. They saw my shirt, a riff on Nas’s “Illmatic” cover, and we bonded over one of the greatest rap albums of all time, kicking favorite lines back and forth. I paid and left, richer for the experience. We connected because we’re part of the same culture.

    I say this not to brag, but to emphasize this: I’m squarely in the target audience for the rap covers you’re homaging, and I know first-hand how incredible rap music actually is.

    Rap is worldwide, but rap is black, too. There’s white in there, and where would rap music be without our latin brothers and sisters, but in terms of perception, coding, impact, and legacy: it’s a black art form. Undeniable, like saying “Midnight Marauders is the best A Tribe Called Quest album.” (That’s a rap joke, too.)

    One issue with Marvel publishing hip-hop-themed covers in the wake of not hiring black creators is that…a dialogue goes two ways. Axel Alonso said Marvel has been in a long dialogue with rap music, but that isn’t true. It’s a long monologue, from rap to Marvel, with Marvel never really giving back like it should or could. Break the Chain was decades ago, you know? (I did appreciate the Aesop Rock shout-outs in Zeb Wells & Skottie Young’s fantastic New Warriors from way back, however!)

    One has to do with the other because of optics. If you don’t employ black creators, and then you purport to celebrate a black art form for profit (and props on hiring a few ferociously talented black artists for the gig!), people are going to ask why that aspect of black culture is worth celebrating but black creatives aren’t worth hiring. I know how many black writers Marvel has hired and allowed to script more than two consecutive issues of a Marvel comic. Do you? Do you know how many black women have gotten to write for Marvel?

    Or, more directly: Storm is the highest profile black character in comics. Which is great! But…she’s mostly been written by white men, and a very small fraternity of black men, throughout the decades. Imagine what a black woman could bring to the character. Shouldn’t a black lady get a chance at bat? I grew up on Alison Sealy-Smith, and I’ve got a soft spot for Halle, but there’s a gap there.

    Back to optics: you can’t celebrate and profit off something without also including the group that you’re profiting off the back of. Marvel has made a lot of money off brown faces. A portion of X-Men’s juice is from the struggle for civil rights, and we all know what the phrase “black Spider-Man” has done for the perception of your company. (He’s Puerto Rican too, tho.) So to see Marvel continue to profit off something very dear to black people without actually giving black people a seat at the table…I was going to say it “stings,” but in actuality it sucks. It makes Marvel look clueless and it makes black people wonder why they bother with your comics.

    Whit Taylor’s “The Fabric of Appropriation” went up this week. It’s a measured look at cultural appropriation, both why it happens and how. Her last point (which I’m going to spoil, forgive me) is that “maybe it’s not so much about who has control over a design, but whether the people it originates from feel in control of their identities.”

    With these hip-hop covers? You’re in our house. (“Whose house?”) These albums changed lives, provided the soundtrack to our youth, or maybe just sounded really nice with the bass cranked and the treble at half on the EQ. To claim you’re paying homage (for profit, with no-doubt rare variant covers to be sold at a mark-up to an audience that often does not include the people these albums were created by) while simultaneously not being willing to hire the people who could bring those concepts to your comics in an authentic fashion…the optics are bad, man.

    Jay-Z once said, “I came back and it’s plain, y’all niggas ain’t rappin the same. Fuck the flow, y’all jackin our slang. I seen the same shit happen to Kane.” He was talking about biters, aka shark biters, aka culture vultures, aka cultural appropriators.

    If you’re going to homage hip-hop, do it in the best way possible: keep it real and put some people of color behind the pages in addition to on them.

    “Protons Electrons Always Cause Explosions.” Thus spake the RZA, whose favorite Marvel superhero is the Silver Surfer.

    Peace.

    Charles Darwin Would Be Ashamed of ‘Social Darwinism’

    Charles Robert Darwin (1809 – 1882) was an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to evolutionary theory. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and introduced the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. In modified form, Darwin’s scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.

    More than any other person in history, Darwin shaped our fundamental view of life. Species diversification through natural selection is the principle through which we understand the great diversity of life on our planet, as well as the genesis of our own species.

    But the forces at work in nature, as Darwin observed them, are sometimes misapplied to human society under the term of Social Darwinism. In its mildest form, Social Darwinism describes how companies rise and fall in a free-market system. But history is littered with prejudiced ideas that use Darwin to claim legitimacy.

    Darwin himself cautioned that the strong logic of evolution should not come at the cost of human sympathy. He foresaw a time when slavery would be justified through naturalistic explanations, but Darwin refused to submit to them.

    I’m of mixed feelings about this article. Mostly because it also links to Karen Armstrong. But there it is. I wonder, though, if Darwin would see systemic racism, and if he did, would he fight against it? Write a really long book against it?

    2 Confederate memorials defaced in Charlotte – among all the others.

    Two Confederate war memorials in Charlotte were found defaced on Wednesday, including one that was the center of debate last week between Mecklenburg County commissioners and the public.

    Vandals apparently smeared liquid cement across both sides of an obscure monument unveiled in 1929 during the 39th reunion of the United Confederate Veterans, county officials said. The monument stands perched on a hill between the Grady Cole Center and American Memorial Stadium on North Kings Drive.

    Someone also spray painted “Racist” on the memorial on the grounds of Old City Hall on Trade Street. The Confederate Memorial Association of Charlotte erected the monument in 1977.

    Police are investigating both incidents. The crimes come as the nation debates the appropriateness of the Confederate battle flag and Confederate monuments.

    State lawmakers are expected to soon vote on a bill that would reclassify monuments and memorials on public property as “objects of remembrance” that can only be removed or altered with a state law. On Wednesday, the House Homeland Security Committee passed the measure, which could go for a full House vote by the end of the week.

    “The emotion behind it was clearly one of anger, frustration, darkness,” Dan Morrill, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, said of the incidents. “It was not what you would call a very magnanimous or positive act.”

    Did I read that right? They took the flag down, but they’re going to make all other confederate memorials subject to state law only? What?

  17. rq says

    Unarmed Mississippi man died after 20-minute police chokehold, witnesses say – the Grauniad.

    State medical examiners provisionally found Jonathan Sanders died through homicide by manual asphyxiation, according to attorneys Chokwe Lumumba and CJ Lawrence.

    Sanders, who was 39, repeatedly told Stonewall police officer Kevin Herrington “I can’t breathe”, according to one witness.

    According to the attorneys, one witness alleged that Herrington said he was “going to get that n*gg*r” seconds before confronting Sanders in Stonewall on the night of 8 July, and several said the officer was the aggressor. Police have described the encounter as “a fight”.

    “We believe there is probable cause for a prosecution,” the attorney Lawrence said in an interview on Wednesday. “A determination should now be made by a jury at an open trial as to whether officer Herrington had any justification for choking Jonathan Sanders to death.”

    The attorneys are requesting that a special prosecutor take over the case, citing remarks at a town hall meeting on Tuesday by Clarke County’s district attorney, Bilbo Mitchell, that he had handled 15 cases of killings by police during his career and none had resulted in an officer being indicted.

    Warren Strain, a spokesman for the Mississippi department of public safety, did not respond to a request to confirm the preliminary conclusions of the medical examiner’s autopsy. Stonewall police chief Michael Street did not respond to a message requesting comment.

    Sanders’ attorneys said they were present this week while three witnesses, whom they declined to identify due to safety concerns, separately gave matching accounts of what happened to investigators from the Mississippi bureau of investigation (MBI) during filmed interviews.

    The Police Killing of a Black Man in Mississippi Just Took Another Disturbing Turn, Mic on Sanders.

    Jonathan Sanders was unarmed when Mississippi police Officer Kevin Herrington allegedly placed him in a fatal chokehold on July 8.

    And while the officer didn’t need to call Sanders a “nigger” for his death to fit a nationwide pattern of anti-black police violence, that’s exactly what happened, according to attorneys representing the victim’s family.

    The Huffington Post reports that 39-year-old Sanders crossed paths with Herrington at a gas station around 10 p.m., when he saw the officer arguing with a white man Sanders knew . Sanders told Herrington to leave the man alone and departed. According to the report, however, once Sanders had left, Herrington allegedly said, “I’m gonna get that n*gg*r.”

    Shortly after, Herrington got in his car. A civilian woman was reportedly with him.

    The Jackson Free Press reports that Sanders trained horses and was riding a horse-drawn buggy at the time, so it didn’t take long for Herrington to catch up. Herrington allegedly flashed his blue police lights at the last moment, startling Sanders’ horse into a bolt. Sanders allegedly fell from his buggy and started running to catch his horse.

    Herrington followed. What happened next — as described to the Huffington Post by Sanders’ family’s attorneys, C.J. Lawrence and Chokwe Lumumba — was seen by three eyewitnesses related to Sanders by marriage, one of whom works as a corrections officer:

    Herrington allegedly grabbed a headlight tied around Sanders’ head, pulling it down to his neck and yanking him to the ground. Sanders’ body was slumped down in a “praying position” as Herrington allegedly wrapped his arms around the man’s neck, placing him a chokehold, Lawrence said.
    The three witnesses in the home told the attorneys the officer would not release his grip. At the time, the witnesses said, they were not aware that the man in the officer’s grip was Sanders, their relative. One of the witnesses, who works as a correctional officer in Stonewall, came out to confront Herrington, allegedly asking the officer to let Sanders go. Herrington told the correctional officer that Sanders had reached for his gun, according to the attorneys.

    Herrington allegedly kept Sanders in the chokehold for up to 30 minutes before finally releasing him, the Jackson Free Press reported. By the time paramedics had arrived, Sanders was dead.

    St. Louis County Still May Charge Journalists Arrested While Covering Ferguson Protests. Remember that, when they arrested journalists?

    St. Louis County prosecutors will soon decide whether to bring trespassing charges against two journalists arrested while covering demonstrations last summer in Ferguson, Missouri.

    The Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly and The Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery recently learned that there are open investigations related to their Aug. 13, 2014, arrests and that the cases have been referred to the county counselor’s office, which primarily handles local ordinance violations. The St. Louis County Police Department filed incident reports in late April of this year describing the reporters as trespassing when they were seized at a McDonald’s restaurant.

    Prosecutors have until Aug. 13 to bring charges of trespassing, or another offense, before the one-year statute of limitations expires. A conviction on trespassing in St. Louis County can result in a jail sentence of up to one year, a fine up to $1,000, or both.

    Trespassing in a McDonald’s. Sounds legit.

    Surveillance Video Proves Cops Murdered Native American Man and Lied To Cover It Up – Countercurrent News, hence the aggressive headline.

    His dying words were “what’s wrong with you guys?” Thomas Morado was an eye-witness to the police execution of Paul Castaway, 35-year-old full-blooded rosebud Native American man.

    Police initially tried to cover their tracks, saying that Castaway had “stabbed” his mother, and “charged” at officers with a knife.

    “He didn’t stab me in the neck. He was drunk,” Lynn Eagle Feather explained.

    “I told the cops he was mentally ill. He was schizophrenic. I called for help. I didn’t call for them to kill him,” Paul’s mother added.

    Now couple her testimony that says the cops lied and she was never stabbed with the fact that she was never medically treated for a stab wound.

    Now here’s the real game-changer: there is s surveillance video that shows the police were lying through their teeth. The only thing is, the manager of Capital City mobile home park has the video, but so far he will only let media and family watch it, though police say he made them a copy that is “part of an on-going investigation.”

    He doesn’t trust the police enough to turn it over to them, as he knows it will somehow conveniently “disappear” if he gives it to them.

    Those who have seen it say that it “shows Paul Castaway, 35, coming up from behind a white mobile home, through a black iron fence onto the street and around a wooden fence, which is a dead end,” according to local Fox 31 Denver.

    The officer shoots Paul, on the video, while Castaway has only threatened himself. No police, no family, no anyone else was threatened besides himself.

    The police lied. They lied to cover up an execution.

    There’s more at the link.

    This is the @ColoradoFOP dismissive attitude on citizen life while LYING & MURDERING #PaulCastaway #StayWoke “We are more concerned about the officer. Suspect decided his own fate.”

    .@denverpolice kill #PaulCastaway, @ColoradoFOP mocks the family. Calls them a ‘gaggle of clowns’. ‘Expressing meaningless ignorance at the expense of law abiding citizens’.

  18. rq says

    Unarmed Mississippi man died after 20-minute police chokehold, witnesses say – the Grauniad.

    State medical examiners provisionally found Jonathan Sanders died through homicide by manual asphyxiation, according to attorneys Chokwe Lumumba and CJ Lawrence.

    Sanders, who was 39, repeatedly told Stonewall police officer Kevin Herrington “I can’t breathe”, according to one witness.

    According to the attorneys, one witness alleged that Herrington said he was “going to get that n*gg*r” seconds before confronting Sanders in Stonewall on the night of 8 July, and several said the officer was the aggressor. Police have described the encounter as “a fight”.

    “We believe there is probable cause for a prosecution,” the attorney Lawrence said in an interview on Wednesday. “A determination should now be made by a jury at an open trial as to whether officer Herrington had any justification for choking Jonathan Sanders to death.”

    The attorneys are requesting that a special prosecutor take over the case, citing remarks at a town hall meeting on Tuesday by Clarke County’s district attorney, Bilbo Mitchell, that he had handled 15 cases of killings by police during his career and none had resulted in an officer being indicted.

    Warren Strain, a spokesman for the Mississippi department of public safety, did not respond to a request to confirm the preliminary conclusions of the medical examiner’s autopsy. Stonewall police chief Michael Street did not respond to a message requesting comment.

    Sanders’ attorneys said they were present this week while three witnesses, whom they declined to identify due to safety concerns, separately gave matching accounts of what happened to investigators from the Mississippi bureau of investigation (MBI) during filmed interviews.

    The Police Killing of a Black Man in Mississippi Just Took Another Disturbing Turn, Mic on Sanders.

    Jonathan Sanders was unarmed when Mississippi police Officer Kevin Herrington allegedly placed him in a fatal chokehold on July 8.

    And while the officer didn’t need to call Sanders a “n*gg*r” for his death to fit a nationwide pattern of anti-black police violence, that’s exactly what happened, according to attorneys representing the victim’s family.

    The Huffington Post reports that 39-year-old Sanders crossed paths with Herrington at a gas station around 10 p.m., when he saw the officer arguing with a white man Sanders knew . Sanders told Herrington to leave the man alone and departed. According to the report, however, once Sanders had left, Herrington allegedly said, “I’m gonna get that n*gg*r.”

    Shortly after, Herrington got in his car. A civilian woman was reportedly with him.

    The Jackson Free Press reports that Sanders trained horses and was riding a horse-drawn buggy at the time, so it didn’t take long for Herrington to catch up. Herrington allegedly flashed his blue police lights at the last moment, startling Sanders’ horse into a bolt. Sanders allegedly fell from his buggy and started running to catch his horse.

    Herrington followed. What happened next — as described to the Huffington Post by Sanders’ family’s attorneys, C.J. Lawrence and Chokwe Lumumba — was seen by three eyewitnesses related to Sanders by marriage, one of whom works as a corrections officer:

    Herrington allegedly grabbed a headlight tied around Sanders’ head, pulling it down to his neck and yanking him to the ground. Sanders’ body was slumped down in a “praying position” as Herrington allegedly wrapped his arms around the man’s neck, placing him a chokehold, Lawrence said.
    The three witnesses in the home told the attorneys the officer would not release his grip. At the time, the witnesses said, they were not aware that the man in the officer’s grip was Sanders, their relative. One of the witnesses, who works as a correctional officer in Stonewall, came out to confront Herrington, allegedly asking the officer to let Sanders go. Herrington told the correctional officer that Sanders had reached for his gun, according to the attorneys.

    Herrington allegedly kept Sanders in the chokehold for up to 30 minutes before finally releasing him, the Jackson Free Press reported. By the time paramedics had arrived, Sanders was dead.

    St. Louis County Still May Charge Journalists Arrested While Covering Ferguson Protests. Remember that, when they arrested journalists?

    St. Louis County prosecutors will soon decide whether to bring trespassing charges against two journalists arrested while covering demonstrations last summer in Ferguson, Missouri.

    The Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly and The Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery recently learned that there are open investigations related to their Aug. 13, 2014, arrests and that the cases have been referred to the county counselor’s office, which primarily handles local ordinance violations. The St. Louis County Police Department filed incident reports in late April of this year describing the reporters as trespassing when they were seized at a McDonald’s restaurant.

    Prosecutors have until Aug. 13 to bring charges of trespassing, or another offense, before the one-year statute of limitations expires. A conviction on trespassing in St. Louis County can result in a jail sentence of up to one year, a fine up to $1,000, or both.

    Trespassing in a McDonald’s. Sounds legit.

    Surveillance Video Proves Cops Murdered Native American Man and Lied To Cover It Up – Countercurrent News, hence the aggressive headline.

    His dying words were “what’s wrong with you guys?” Thomas Morado was an eye-witness to the police execution of Paul Castaway, 35-year-old full-blooded rosebud Native American man.

    Police initially tried to cover their tracks, saying that Castaway had “stabbed” his mother, and “charged” at officers with a knife.

    “He didn’t stab me in the neck. He was drunk,” Lynn Eagle Feather explained.

    “I told the cops he was mentally ill. He was schizophrenic. I called for help. I didn’t call for them to kill him,” Paul’s mother added.

    Now couple her testimony that says the cops lied and she was never stabbed with the fact that she was never medically treated for a stab wound.

    Now here’s the real game-changer: there is s surveillance video that shows the police were lying through their teeth. The only thing is, the manager of Capital City mobile home park has the video, but so far he will only let media and family watch it, though police say he made them a copy that is “part of an on-going investigation.”

    He doesn’t trust the police enough to turn it over to them, as he knows it will somehow conveniently “disappear” if he gives it to them.

    Those who have seen it say that it “shows Paul Castaway, 35, coming up from behind a white mobile home, through a black iron fence onto the street and around a wooden fence, which is a dead end,” according to local Fox 31 Denver.

    The officer shoots Paul, on the video, while Castaway has only threatened himself. No police, no family, no anyone else was threatened besides himself.

    The police lied. They lied to cover up an execution.

    There’s more at the link.

    This is the @ColoradoFOP dismissive attitude on citizen life while LYING & MURDERING #PaulCastaway #StayWoke “We are more concerned about the officer. Suspect decided his own fate.”

    .@denverpolice kill #PaulCastaway, @ColoradoFOP mocks the family. Calls them a ‘gaggle of clowns’. ‘Expressing meaningless ignorance at the expense of law abiding citizens’.

  19. rq says

    The 35-Year-Old Georgia Mother Who Was Shot and Killed by Police

    This has been a long year already regarding the phenomenon of how police come to kill the people they are sworn to serve. The places are established and iconic—Ferguson, Baltimore, the first bad scene in Charleston. On Tuesday, the family of Eric Garner, who was choked to death for the crime of selling loose cigarettes, came to a settlement with the city of New York. In all of these cases, of course, race acted as what the arson-squad people call an accelerant to the largely justified outrage that followed the killings. But the problem of cops killing citizens is more vast than that, as an outbreak of actual journalism down in Atlanta has proven.

    Working with a local television station, Brad Schrade of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution examines the extremely aromatic five-year old case of Caroline Small, a 35-year-old mother of two who was shot and killed by two police officers in Glynn County, a warren of small towns along the Georgia coast. It is a perfect case study of the problems with police culture in this country—most notably, the near impossibility of getting the justice system to deal with police who kill people. It is a true American horror story.

    “If she moves the car, I’m going to shoot her,” an officer yelled. Small pulled forward. Eight bullets tore through the windshield, striking her in the head and the face. The shooting was captured on police dash cam video. So was what the two Glynn County officers said afterward. They compared their marksmanship. One told a witness how he saw Small’s head explode. Their words were as callous as Small’s death unnecessary. “This is the worst one I’ve ever investigated,” said Mike McDaniel, a retired GBI agent who supervised the 2010 criminal investigation into the officers’ actions. “I don’t think it’s a good shoot. I don’t think it’s justified.”

    The story has it all. A really bad shoot. Cops refusing to call EMTs after the shooting despite the fact that their victim was still alive and would live for another week. Cops making up a bullshit story to cover their own asses. Cops tampering with the crime scene evidence, also to cover their own asses. An ambitious local prosecutor so far in the tank to the police department that she won’t dry off until 2024. Attempts by outside law-enforcement to bring justice in the case that run into a stonewall so thick and high that open bureaucratic warfare breaks out between Glynn County law-enforcement and the detectives from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation tasked to look into the shooting. A grand-jury proceeding that is an embarrassment to 500 years of jurisprudence, so thoroughly rigged to no-bill the tewo officers that one of its members openly expresses his remorse for having been so completely hoodwinked. And, ultimately, no charges against the two officers and a quick-and-dirty dismissal of a civil suit brought by Caroline Small’s family. The temptation just to block-quote the whole story is strong, but here is one sample of how things went so badly wrong in this case.

    [Riding DA Jackie] Johnson waited a year to present the Small case to a grand jury. In the interim, she asked a mentor to review the evidence. Rick Currie, the DA in neighboring Waycross, had worked with Johnson when she was fresh out of law school. Currie told Johnson he thought the officers should be charged with felony murder, Currie told the AJC and Channel 2. Instead, Johnson undertook a highly unusual set of maneuvers. She cut a deal with the two officers, asking them to waive their right to a 15-day advance notice of any indictment. In return, she agreed not to offer an indictment for grand jurors to consider — unless they asked for one. Almost unheard of in grand jury proceedings, Johnson also shared the state’s case and evidence with the officers’ attorneys two months before the grand jury met, according to court records.

    Jack McCoy wept.

    We have two big problems in this country and this story brings them both into sharp relief. First, we have developed at almost every level a police culture that is thoroughly militarized both in its equipment and in the mentality it instills in too many of its officers. And, second, the institutions of civil justice are either completely incapable, or resolutely unwilling, to cope with the first problem. These problems are not exclusive to big cities or, as this story illustrates, to small towns. Caroline Small was the victim of a crime when she was alive, and the victim of several other crimes after she was dead. Like the kidz say, read the whole thing. When the president talks about criminal-justice reform, he should talk about this, too.

    Ironically, I quoted that entire article, because I didn’t know where to stop.

    The Black Church: Under Attack and Guilty of Assault

    Nine innocent Black lives were taken during the Charleston massacre, and “Prophet” Brian Carn has blamed them for their deaths (as seen in the ridiculous video below). Twenty-plus Black women pastors have been threatened with letters from a Black man saying they ought not preach. 60% of Black women and girls report having been raped before the age of 18, according to Black Women’s Blueprint. SCOTUS has ruled that marriage equality is legal, and faux social media theologians have posted more theologically irresponsible statuses than I can count. Studies show that suicide and depression have traumatically increased among queer and trans Black youth. Six Black churches have been burned to the ground throughout the nation. Domestic violence in the Black church remains under discussed. Stigma around HIV and other STDs fosters a culture of unsafe sexual practices. Pastors and preachers continue to preach, “Love the sinner, hate the sin,” when loving the “sinner” rightly means not calling people’s truth, “sin.”

    In short, our Black churches are simultaneously under attack and are guilty of assault. All of these issues have distinct nuances, but they are all interconnected by White supremacy.

    In this moment, as a follower of Christ, I am convinced that the church has let the gates of hell prevail against it. And no, the massacre that occurred in the Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church is no indication of this, for certainly, the only wrong those beautiful souls did was be Black. However, it is the pervasiveness of the sins of patriarchy, sexism, homo- and transphobia, elitism, and anti-Black religious rhetoric, that signal that hell is in our midst. Hell is in our pews, in pastors’ studies and pulpits, and the prophets who expose “our hell” are beaten like Jesus.

    Our communities are on fire and blessed oil applied maliciously, wrinkled Bible pages turned violently, and hateful religious incantations said in tongues can only further set us ablaze.

    In the words of Jesus, “If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.” We can’t unite against white supremacy and deny the very real implications of gendered and sexualized terrorism in our churches. The gospel has always been holistic, the “rock” of the Christian faith is love, and Christ’s love “bears all things.”

    And another with a religious tilt, What I Talk About When I Talk About Black Jesus: A Lyric Essay

    Ever since black people came to this country we have needed a Moses. There has always been so much water that needs parting. It seems like all black children, from the time we are born, come into the world in the midst of a rushing current that threatens to swallow us whole if we don’t heed the many, many warnings we are told to heed. We come into the world as alchemists of the water, bending it, willing it to bear us safe passage and cleanse us along the way, to teach us to move with joy and purpose and to never, ever stop flowing forward into something grand waiting at the other end of the delta. We’re a people forever in exodus.

    Before Moses there was Abraham, and ever since black people came to this country we have needed an Abraham. We have always been sending each other away—for our own good, don’t you know it—and calling each other back, finding kinship where a well springs from tears. We are masters of the art of sacrifice; no one is more skilled at laying their greatest beloveds on the altar and feeling certainty even as we feel sorrow. And when we see the ram, we know how to act fast, and prosper, even as the stone knife warms in our hands.

    And before Abraham there was Eve, my own namesake. The first black woman who ever lived. She was the first person on this strange sunlit planet to know anything at all, though she paid for it with terrible cramps.

    But that’s the Old Testament. Back to Black Jesus.

    Denver Police caught telling key lies about their fatal shooting of Native American Paul Castaway, Shau King from DailyKos on that.

    The scene as President Obama’s motorcade arrived at his hotel in Oklahoma City tonight. Photo by @dougmillsnyt

    Remember how the LA Times hired a correspondent to correspond with Black Twitter? Here’s the first article. When ‘Black Twitter’ sounds like ‘White Twitter’

    Tyga was a trending topic on Twitter for most of the week, and anyone following it would see a flurry of homophobic and transphobic slurs. One popular tweeter wrote that Tyga didn’t know the difference “between a tranny and an [actual] woman.”

    As transgender rights activist Janet Mock explained in a video essay, Tyga is being shamed for allegedly loving an “unnatural” woman and Isabella is being shamed for existing. Not everyone doing this was black. But it was Black Twitter, the active community on the platform that is most in tune with hip-hop music culture, that led the charge.

    That’s not the face of Black Twitter the media fawns over in articles with headlines like “Black Twitter Flexing Muscles On and Offline.” The phrase “Black Twitter” itself is a little strange because the community has plenty of non-black participants, but we insist on calling it black. And according to Pew Research Center, 61% of Twitter users are white – but we never call that segment “White Twitter.” The label seems to have stuck, though, and most reporting on Black Twitter shows the community being one of two things: funny or progressive (sometimes both). But there seems to be a disconnect between that coverage and Black Twitter’s negative (if brief) fixation on Tyga.

    […]

    Black Twitter, like every other online community, is a diverse and tangled mess of opinions. We would be doing the community an injustice if we pretended otherwise. In other words, Black Twitter looks an awful lot like White Twitter.

    And just like White Twitter, Black Twitter does have a vocal minority that actively pushes back against all kinds of bias. On Sunday, Robert Jones Jr., who tweets as @SonofBaldwin, wrote a series of angry tweets about Black Twitter members who “support” Bill Cosby, despite the release of a 2005 deposition in which Cosby admitted to obtaining drugs to give to women he wanted to have sex with.

    This is exactly what Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, has been fighting for the last two years. Last year, she wrote that many people only seem to pay attention to certain “charismatic black men,” leaving “sisters, queer, trans, and disabled [black] folk [to] take up roles in the background.”

    Both of these activists are knee-deep in a discussion that has plagued social justice movements for decades: the question of who, if anyone, should be “first in line” for equal rights. On Black Twitter – as in mainstream America – straight men usually come first. When the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide nearly three weeks ago, some Black Twitter users asked when it would be legal to be black. Some people meant this as a tongue-in-cheek joke. For others, it was an accusation: that rights for white gay people come at the expense of all black people.

    But on the other hand, plenty of Black Twitter users reject the idea that gay rights and black rights are mutually exclusive. Black Twitter rarely agrees with itself, which is only fair, because we don’t expect White Twitter to make up its mind about anything either. So if we’re going to praise Black Twitter as a community that pushes us forward, then we have to also recognize when it takes a step back.

    I see people being called out on Black Twitter. I’m not sure what the point of this article is.

  20. rq says

    High School softball coach calls black students’ hair “nappy and nasty’

    Questions have risen over where Richland High School and the Birdville school district of Texas stand on racial remarks made against black students. Softball coach Brenda Jacobson is accused of making negative remarks about various black students’ hair, skin and culture.

    Star-Telegram reports that Jacobson told player Kenzie Wilson that she wouldn’t do a drill “because there is water on the ground and black people don’t like water.” In April, Jacobson reportedly called a player’s hair ‘nappy and nasty.’ Other comments included telling black players that “the sun is more attracted to you because you’re black” and “See, everyone is white on the inside” after a player cut her leg sliding into base.

    The Richland coach was reprimanded for racially-insensitive remarks; however, questions over the severity have risen. In fact, the school’s principal didn’t acknowledge the claims as fact, arguing that the coach “may have made inappropriate comments to students based on race or skin color.” Jacobson was not suspended or fired and was only instructed to “adhere to professional communication.”

    The allegations against Jacobson have lead to further discussion of deeply-rooted racism within the high school. Richland High School’s current mascot, “the Rebels” is a gesture to Confederate soldiers during the civil war. Over the weekend, more than 100 community members held a rally in support for the Richland High School’s mascot, created a Facebook support page and partnered with the Johnny Reb’s and Dixie Belle student groups. Unfortunately, support has only grown after the softball allegations hit news waves.

    The racial comments and newfound support for negativity has proven to be too much for many black students. “I felt like it was enough and I shouldn’t be treated like that anymore, “ says student Kenzie WIlson in a WFAA interview. “There’s a difference in getting on a kid to get them to perform and just belittling the kid because of what their nationality is,” said her father Kenneth Wilson. “There is no way you say what you did to my daughter with witnesses, and you keep your job.”

    Clearly unsatisfied with the district’s response to the racial comments, the Wilsons have moved out of the school district and don’t plan to return. Many parents and school officials have reached out to the superintendent and are expected to present a petition at an upcoming school board meeting.

    First Look: See Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter as a Young Barack and Michelle Obama in Southside with You. I wonder if theyll get as many movies as Will and Kate did?

    Your young Barack and Michelle Obama are here!

    After a movie based on the president and the First Lady’s early romance was announced last year, the first photos of Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter as the young couple have been released – and the resemblance is uncanny.

    Looking relaxed and casual in the shots, the stars perfectly capture the classic style of the president and the First Lady.

    Sawyers is wearing a crisp blue button-down shirt with khaki pants while Sumpter wears a bright orange shirt and beige skirt.

    Opening the #ESPYS: sweet. Winning Best Breakout Athlete: even sweeter. #MoneDavis @espnW @ESPYS @ESPN

    One Year After the Death of Eric Garner, Reform Deferred – what else is new?

    “The world saw an African-American man in Staten Island die and people are confused, disgruntled, and angry,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared in his inaugural remarks on New Year’s Day, after being sworn in for his second term. “Today, sadly, too many people are questioning if the blindfold is still intact or does the justice system now see black and white or black and blue or rich and poor.”

    Weeks later, during the State of the State address delivered at Empire State Plaza Convention Center, Cuomo pledged various reforms intended to bolster police accountability and mend relations with constituents. Legislation included a statewide commission on police and community relations, appropriations for body cameras, and a ban on chokeholds. “The community has to trust and respect the police and the police have to respect and trust the community,” Cuomo said. “And we have to work to restore that trust and that respect.”

    But one year after Eric Garner drew his last breath on Staten Island, little has changed in New York: of the police reforms introduced in the State Assembly and Senate, none have become law. In the State Assembly, the body camera pilot program remains stuck in committee, as does a bill requiring a “refresher course” in “tactical communications and cultural and community awareness” for all police officers. A measure that would have banned police chokeholds went untouched. Legislation banning racial profiling and establishing a special office to investigate police involvement in civilian deaths, both proposed by prominent Democratic assemblyman Keith Wright, seem likely to die in the Republican-controlled Senate, which has focused primarily on issues of police safety. A bill to allow the attorney general to investigate and prosecute police misconduct went down in flames in a Senate committee. Meanwhile, a proposed civilian review board continues to languish in committee. While, just a few weeks ago, Cuomo finally appointed Attorney General Eric Schneiderman special prosecutor to handle civilian deaths at the hands of police, prior legislation designed to implement a more permanent prosecutor were blocked by the Senate. Even the measly $100,000 appropriation for Cuomo’s vaunted commission lingers in—no surprise here—committee.

    Americans may be rallying in the streets, but when it comes to substantive changes to the relationship between police and the communities they serve, lawmakers simply can’t be bothered to take action to stem the tide of civilian deaths at the hands of police officers.

    ***

    It might be easy to chalk this up to legislative jousting in Albany, but the problem is nationwide. In Missouri, the state legislature ended its session in May after passing just one bill out of hundreds of Ferguson-related pieces of legislation, which would have covered everything from body cameras to racial profiling to cultural awareness training. “We don’t have one piece of legislation that anyone here in this body can go home and say, ‘Hey, we did this for Ferguson,'” Missouri Representative Clem Smith told the Associated Press. “As it was this summer … it still is today. Nothing has changed.” This, despite the fact that a recent YouGov/Economist poll revealed that a vast majority of Americans support outfitting police officers with body cameras (88 percent) and outside investigations in instances of police misconduct (74 percent). Outrage over police brutality against (primarily black) Americans simply doesn’t seem to translate into legislative action.

    Regarding the ‘regaining the trust’ part, it was also said in response to Obama’s recent speech: you can’t regain what hasn’t ever been there; new ground needs to be broken, and that trust needs to be built in the first place.

    “What’s Wrong With You Guys?” #Anonymous Takes Down Denver Police Union Website for #PaulCastaway. Word is getting out.

    How for-profit prisons have become the biggest lobby no one is talking about. I shudder to think at the millions involved.

    Several industries have become notorious for the millions they spend on influencing legislation and getting friendly candidates into office: Big Oil, Big Pharma and the gun lobby among them. But one has managed to quickly build influence with comparatively little scrutiny: Private prisons. The two largest for-profit prison companies in the United States – GEO and Corrections Corporation of America – and their associates have funneled more than $10 million to candidates since 1989 and have spent nearly $25 million on lobbying efforts. Meanwhile, these private companies have seen their revenue and market share soar. They now rake in a combined $3.3 billion in annual revenue and the private federal prison population more than doubled between 2000 and 2010, according to a report by the Justice Policy Institute. Private companies house nearly half of the nation’s immigrant detainees, compared to about 25 percent a decade ago, a Huffington Post report found. In total, there are now about 130 private prisons in the country with about 157,000 beds.

    Marco Rubio is one of the best examples of the private prison industry’s growing political influence, a connection that deserves far more attention now that he’s officially launched a presidential bid. The U.S. senator has a history of close ties to the nation’s second-largest for-profit prison company, GEO Group, stretching back to his days as speaker of the Florida House of Representatives. While Rubio was leading the House, GEO was awarded a state government contract for a $110 million prison soon after Rubio hired an economic consultant who had been a trustee for a GEO real estate trust. Over his career, Rubio has received nearly $40,000 in campaign donations from GEO, making him the Senate’s top career recipient of contributions from the company. (Rubio’s office did not respond to requests for comment.)

    The Justice Policy Institute identified the private-prison industry’s three-pronged approach to increase profits through political influence: lobbying, direct campaign contributions, and building relationships and networks. On its website, CCA states that the company doesn’t lobby on policies that affect “the basis for or duration of an individual’s incarceration or detention.” Still, several reports have documented instances when private-prison companies have indirectly supported policies that put more Americans and immigrants behind bars – such as California’s three-strikes rule and Arizona’s highly controversial anti-illegal immigration law – by donating to politicians who support them, attending meetings with officials who back them, and lobbying for funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Showing just how important these policies are to the private prison industry, both GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America have warned shareholders that changes in these policies would hurt their bottom lines.

    When prisons are a business, it’s hard to enact any useful change, because of the money involved. This is silly.

  21. rq says

    Tamir Rice: Cleveland Police supervisors disciplined in hiring of Officer Timothy Loehmann. But Loehmann himself will most likely not be disciplined.

    Two Cleveland Police supervisors have been disciplined in connection with the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

    Lt. Gail Bindel and Sgt. Edwin Santiago were found guilty in a police department disciplinary hearing for “failing to adequately supervise an applicant’s background investigation.”

    The applicant is Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann who was hired by Cleveland despite being found unfit for duty by a suburban police department as well as handgun performance that was judged dismal.

    Lt. Bindel was given a two-day suspension and Sgt. Santiago received a written reprimand.

    Both supervisors received a disciplinary notice last week.

    The following two articles supposedly need an app download or something. Maybe someone can find more direct access.
    http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Audio-Missing-on-Police-Shooting-Video-315614491.html?akmobile=o&nms=y
    http://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/City-Emails-Refer-to-Complications-In-Police-Version-of-How-Teen-Was-Shot-313075231.html?akmobile=o&nms=y

    Sandra Bland: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

    The family of an Illinois woman found dead in a Texas jail cell after she was arrested during a traffic stop is raising questions about how she died.

    Sandra Bland, 28, was found dead in Waller County, Texas, on Monday, the Chicago Tribune reports. Local authorities in Texas say Bland killed herself, but her family and friends don’t believe that is the case, and suspects that the true cause of her death is being covered up.

    Five main points of information at the link.

    Obama Doing Black-On-Black Racism To Bill Cosby, All Because Of A Few Measly Rapes, via Wonkette.

    Probably, the president is trying, just like CNN, to destroy Cosby, for being the kind of Strong Black Man who speaks truth to power (when he’s not raping all the ladies). The kind of truth that white conservatives love to hear, about how black people need to stop being so damned black if they wanna not be treated like they are black. Obama IS the real racist!

    Eric Garner’s unmarked grave in New Jersey cemetery goes largely unnoticed and unvisited

    Eric Garner’s grave, much like his family’s struggle for justice, is incomplete.

    Garner’s resting place is an unmarked grave in Linden, N.J. — a dozen miles from the Staten Island block where he took his last breath nearly a year ago.

    His remains lay amid several other unnamed burial sites on a kidney-shaped pasture in Rosedale Cemetery known as Elmlawn. The only thing distinguishing it from the rest of the plots is the thick, unkempt grass covering his coffin.

    It’s a deeper shade of green.

    […]

    A young black man visiting Rosedale with his family to buy a plot for a deceased loved one immediately recognized Garner’s name, but had no idea he was interred in New Jersey.

    “I thought he was still in the city,” said the visitor, who only identified himself as Shadrack. “Not that it matters. Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s gotten better or worse. Everything’s the same.”

    Cemetery Vice President Ed Faulkner said more reporters stand by Garner’s grave than grieving family members.

    Still, everyone who comes into the office looking for his plot is given a once-over.

    “We just check for vandals,” Faulkner said. “It’s always a little work to have someone who’s made news here.”

    Gwen Carr, Garner’s mother, said that the family was putting together the $3,000 needed for a bronze grave marker, which should be in place by the end of the month.

  22. rq says

    The Root on #SandraBland: Sandra Bland Drove to Texas to Start a New Job, So How Did She End Up Dead In Jail?

    On July 9, 28-year-old Sandra Bland of Naperville, Ill., drove to Texas to start a new job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M. On July 10, police stopped Bland just outside the campus for allegedly failing to signal while changing lanes. Police claim that during the stop she became combative, was thrown to the ground, arrested and charged with “assault on a public servant.”

    On July 13, around 9 a.m., before her family could bail her out, Bland was found dead inside a Waller County, Texas, jail cell. Police claim she died from “self-inflicted asphyxiation.” Her family and friends say that is impossible; that the woman they know, who fought strongly against police brutality and had just gotten a new job, would never have committed suicide.

    “I do suspect foul play,” a friend, Cheryl Nanton, told ABC 7. “I believe that we are all 100 percent in belief that she did not do harm to herself.”

    Video obtained by ABC 7 of Bland’s arrest doesn’t appear to show Bland being combative with officers, but does show two officers on top of Bland, who can be heard questioning the officers’ methods of restraint.

    […]

    The news station reports that Smith said “jailers saw Bland at 7 a.m. Monday when they gave her breakfast and again at 8 a.m. when they spoke with her over the jail intercom. Smith says she was found dead an hour later.”

    In a press release from the sheriff’s department viewed by ABC 7, authorities claim that CPR was performed shortly after Bland was found unresponsive in her cell and that she was pronounced dead moments later.

    “I do not have any information that would make me think it was anything other than just a suicide,” Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis told ABC 7.

    Bland’s friends told the news station that the woman they know was excited about starting her new job on Wednesday, July 15, and that she would never have taken her own life.

    “The Waller County Jail is trying to rule her death a suicide, and Sandy would not have taken her own life,” LaNitra Dean told ABC 7. “Sandy was strong. Strong mentally and spiritually.”

    On Wednesday, several of Bland’s friends protested outside the Waller County Jail, which is 50 miles south of Houston. Family members told ABC 7 that Bland’s body will be brought back to Illinois for burial as soon as authorities release it.

    According to ABC 7, Texas state rangers are investigating Bland’s death and have not commented on the video obtained by the news station.

    Until the investigation is complete, Bland’s friends and family will continue to speak out about the tragic loss they believe is highly suspicious.

    “We’re very suspicious and we’re a very tight community and we’re very upset that this has happened and it seems like there’s nothing really being done about it,” Bland’s friend LaVaughn Mosley told the news station.

    PZ’s post So True It Hurts. Basically a recap of “I, Racist” from somewhere around comment 480-something previous page. And Tony on this page.

    At Point Lookout in Southern Maryland, Confederate flag still flies

    While the Confederate battle flag is coming down from the State House grounds in South Carolina and around the nation, it continues to fly here in St. Mary’s County, at the center of a privately owned monument next to the largest burial site of rebel soldiers in Maryland.

    Clinton Cole took pictures of the private monument last week and shook his head.

    “That flag stands for nothing but hate,” said the 49-year-old Longview Beach man, who is black. “This is 2015, and we’re still dealing with this?”

    But Jim Dunbar, who heads the group that built the monument, says the flag stands for his heritage.

    “It’s a symbol of the whole defiance against the federal government,” Dunbar said. “They were rebelling for the same reason their grandfathers fought in the Revolutionary War — freedom from a strong centralized government.”
    […]

    The flag, and others representing Maryland, prisoners of war and the Southern states, are clearly visible to visitors headed to the beaches of Point Lookout State Park. Below the nearly two dozen fluttering flags, a bronze statue of a bearded southern soldier stands on a raised platform, and small plaques and a garden pay tribute to the buried prisoners of war.

    “It’s probably the biggest memorial to veterans, period, in Maryland, outside of Washington,” Dunbar said.

    He noted that Confederate troops could be freed from Union captivity if they swore allegiance to the U.S. “They would rather starve to death in a prison camp than go against what they believed in,” he said. “That’s why we feel so strongly about it.”

    The long-controversial battle flag, flown by the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War and adopted by white supremacists in the 20th century, came under new criticism after nine black people were shot to death in a Charleston, S.C., church last month. The man accused in the killings had posed for pictures with the flag and had a history of activity on white supremacy websites.

    Public and private organizations denounced the flag as an emblem of racism and hatred. Supporters such as Dunbar disagree, arguing it represents Southern heritage.

    The South Carolina Legislature voted last week to remove the flag from a Confederate memorial on the State House grounds. The National Parks Service pulled “stand-alone depictions” of the flag from gift shop shelves at Antietam National Battlefield and other Civil War sites. Amazon, Wal-Mart, eBay and other retailers stopped selling merchandise bearing Confederate flags.

    Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz asked Baltimore City for permission to change the name of Robert E. Lee Park to Lake Roland Park. The park is owned by the city and operated by the county.

    No Confederate flag is flown on any state-owned property, and Gov. Larry Hogan moved last month to stop the Motor Vehicle Administration from issuing license plates bearing the image.

    But the Republican declined to review other Civil War-related symbols, and rejected a call to remove a statue of U.S. Chief Justice Roger Taney from the State House grounds in Annapolis. Taney presided over the Dred Scott decision, in which the court declared that “only white persons” could be U.S. citizens.

    “It’s political correctness run amok,” Hogan said. “They’re both part of our history.”

    Yep, political correctness running amok, when you care about the emotional well-being of your fellow citizens.

    A big part of the war on drugs is based on a huge myth, with video.

    One of the major reasons the war on drugs was escalated in the 1980s was a big lie: the “crack babies” myth.

    The pervasive myth, explained by the New York Times in the video above, is that children born to mothers who used crack during their pregnancy would have birth defects and stunted development. Politicians, scientists, and journalists touted one of the earliest studies on this issue, conducted in the 1980s, to warn of the dangers of crack. But the study looked at just 23 babies — a sample size too small to be meaningful. And it only included infants rather than adults who had been exposed to cocaine as infants, so it couldn’t measure long-term effects. As a result, its findings generally proved to be wrong through further research, including a huge longitudinal study that found poverty and the ills attached to it were likely the real cause of some babies’ issues.

    But the study helped fuel widespread hysteria about drugs, with the media constantly warning people of crack babies in the 1980s. And it was one of the reasons the federal government passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which greatly elevated prison sentences for crack and other drugs — in a way that disproportionately hurt African Americans.

    The myth should become a learning moment for lawmakers: Maybe sometimes it’s better to let the science settle before jumping to conclusions about what government needs to do.

    And Ebony: WHAT HAPPENED TO SANDRA BLAND?

    “Online county jail records show that Bland was arrested Friday and released Monday on $5,000 bond.

    Bland was found Monday morning by a female jailer who had gone to Bland’s cell to see if she wanted some recreation time, [Walker County Sheriff Glenn] Smith said.”
    If Bland was to have been released on Monday, why was she being offered “recreation time?”

    A spokeswoman for the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences in Houston told the Tribune that per an autopsy on Tuesday, Bland’s death “has been classified as a suicide, with the cause of death (listed as) hanging” and Walker Country police have suggested Bland simply committed suicide. After getting a new job. And getting arrested for a minor traffic violation. And being prepared to bond out and go home.

    Friends, family and Bland’s Sigma Gamma Rho sorority sisters have started a social media campaign to raise awareness about the case. Bland’s name began trending on Twitter last night, as users hope to force mainstream news outlets to begin coverage.

    While we can’t rule out the possibility that Bland actually did commit suicide, those close to her have stated that there was no indication that she was feeling anything but good at this point in her life. Mental illness and depression are complicated beasts, but so is the American system of policing. When it comes to the death of a Black person in police custody or during an encounter with officers, what reason do we have to believe “official” accounts of what happened, when videos and witnesses have made liars of officers over, and over, and over again? When people of other races are routinely stopped, questioned, arrested (or NOT stopped, NOT questioned, NOT arrested) and somehow manage to live to see another day?

    We need to know what happened to Sandra Bland but what clarity can we expect to get from the same people who arrested and jailed her? Police departments investigate themselves and return with an emphatic “nothing to see here, folks, the system is working!”

  23. says

    Autopsy finds Mississippi black man in buggy was strangled by white cop, attorney says:

    Chokwe Antar Lumumba told The Associated Press on Thursday that he was present when multiple law enforcement agencies briefed family members of Jonathan Sanders on Tuesday, telling them that he died from “manual asphyxiation,” and that the death was a homicide and not an accident.

    The finding is based on a preliminary autopsy report, according to the Jackson Free Press.

    Sanders died July 8 following a physical encounter with Stonewall Police Officer Kevin Herrington. Sanders was driving a horse and buggy in the town before Herrington stopped him in a residential neighborhood. Lumumba said relatives believe Herrington is at fault in Sanders’ death.

    Herrington’s lawyer, Bill Ready Jr., told the AP later Thursday that the 25-year-old officer stopped Sanders on suspicion that he had drugs and that Sanders resisted arrest in a physical struggle.

    “There’s always another version of what truly happened,” Ready said. “I think we need to all wait until MBI finishes its investigation.”

    Mississippi Bureau of Investigation spokesman Warren Strain has described the encounter as a physical “altercation.”

    Lumumba wouldn’t say what agencies briefed the family, but MBI has been leading the inquiry, assisted by the FBI.

    “All we can say at this point is the policy of the Department of Public Safety is that we don’t discuss ongoing investigations,” Strain wrote in a text to the AP.

    Jason Pack, supervisory special agent with the FBI’s Jackson office, also could not confirm the finding.

    “As in any case where additional resources might be needed, we’ve offered the FBI’s investigative and forensic capabilities to our partners at the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, who is the lead in this case,” Pack wrote in an email.

    Clarke County Coroner Greg Fairchild did not return a call seeking comment. Stonewall Police Chief Michael Street said Thursday that he was unaware of the finding.

    Authorities have confirmed that there are multiple witnesses, including Herrington’s wife, who was in the patrol car, and Rachel Williams, a resident who works as a jail guard in neighboring Lauderdale County. Lumumba’s law partner, C.J. Lawrence, is representing Williams.

    The autopsy finding doesn’t necessarily mean Herrington committed a crime, and he hasn’t been charged. Lumumba said he believes that there is enough evidence to show that Herrington committed a crime, and urged that Herrington be indicted. However, he said that he has not yet asked for authorities to conduct a probable cause hearing, required before police officers and some other public employees can be arrested in Mississippi.

    Clarke County District Attorney Bilbo Mitchell has said the case, like other deaths where a police officer is involved, will be presented to a grand jury. The next grand jury in Clarke County is scheduled to begin Aug. 31, Mitchell has said, although he said it might be possible to recall grand jurors who met in February. Mitchell could not be reached for comment Thursday.

  24. says

    rq:
    From your link @20-
    http://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/City-Emails-Refer-to-Complications-In-Police-Version-of-How-Teen-Was-Shot-313075231.html?akmobile=o&nms=y

    Emails released by the city’s Law Department, following a Freedom of Information Act request, refer to complications in the Chicago Police Department’s story of how 17-year-old LaQuan McDonald was shot and killed.
    At 4:27 on the morning of Feb. 11 and again at 5:28 a.m., Ralph Price, an attorney for the Chicago Police Department, emailed Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton using the description in the link about the McDonald shooting posted on the website Slate: “A recently obtained autopsy report on the dead teen complicates the Chicago Police Department’s story.”
    McDonald was shot 16 times on the night of October 20, 2014 after being stopped by Chicago police who responded to a call of a man with a knife.
    According to attorneys for the estate of McDonald, a single officer fired the 16 shots, nine of which struck him in the back.
    The attorneys say an unreleased video from a camera in a police vehicle show McDonald was on the ground and in a fetal position when some of the shots were fired.
    On the scene the night of the shooting a spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police said McDonald lunged at officers and the shots were fired in self-defense.
    On Feb. 10, at 8:07 p.m. the website Slate posted a story titled “Sixteen Shots” by independent journalist Jamie Kalven. The story detailed how a witness said McDonald was moving away from police, not lunging at them as the FOP spokesman originally said.
    Kalven also first outlined details from the Medical Examiner’s autopsy, writing: “The autopsy raises questions not only about how [McDonald] died, but about how the Chicago Police Department has handled the case since.”
    Minutes later at 8:23 p.m., Adam Collins, a Deputy Press Secretary in the mayor’s office, according to emails provided by the city, sent a link of the article to the Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Chief of Staff and two mayoral assistants, as well as to Steve Patton, the city’s Corporation Counsel.
    Early the next morning on Feb. 11, Ralph Price, an attorney for the Chicago police department, sent his email forwarding a link to Kalven’s story to the city’s top lawyer with what the city says was a Slate provided subject line: “A recently obtained autopsy report on the dead teen complicates the Chicago Police Department’s story.”
    Price included a link to Kalven’s story. Patton replied in a return email at 6:46 a.m.: “Thanks.”
    A city Law Department spokesman said the Price e-mail did not reflect the city’s viewpoint.
    The emails suggest officials in both the Corporation Counsel’s office and the mayor’s office were closely monitoring what was being reported with Chicago’s mayoral election, at the time, less than two weeks away.
    LaQuan McDonald was shot less than three months after Michael Brown was shot and killed by an officer in Ferguson, Missouri, prompting national attention on the police department in the St. Louis, Missouri suburbs.
    On March 6 attorney Jeff Neslund, who along with Michael Robbins represents the McDonald family, wrote to the Corporation Counsel’s office.
    The letter was released as part of the FOIA request and included the following: “This case will undoubtedly bring a microscope of national attention to the shooting itself as well as the city’s pattern, practice and procedures in rubber- stamping fatal police shootings of African Americans as ‘justified’ …. I submit this particular shooting can be fairly characterized as a gratuitous execution and as well as a hate crime.”
    The following month, the city announced it was offering a $5 million settlement in the case, although no lawsuit had been filed.
    On April 9 Collins, in an email sent to Patton, as well as one of his top assistants and an assistant to the mayor, wrote in the subject line: “Possible inquires: CPD/McDonald shooting” and noted the following Monday, April 13 the City Council Finance Committee would hear of the proposed settlement agreement.
    Two days later without debate the full city council approved the McDonald settlement.
    The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office, as well as the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office have said they are investigating the McDonald shooting.

    And your other one-
    http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Audio-Missing-on-Police-Shooting-Video-315614491.html?akmobile=o&nms=y

    Video captured by an in-camera squad car on the night a Chicago Police officer shot and killed 17-year-old LaQuan McDonald does not contain audio, according to attorneys for the McDonald family, who have viewed the tape.
    On the night of October 20, 2014 McDonald was surrounded by approximately 10 Chicago Police Officers responding to a call of a man with a knife.
    City Emails Refer to Complications In Police Version of How Teen Was Shot
    McDonald died as a result of 16 gunshots fired by one officer, according to autopsy results and the city Corporation Counsel.
    The officer said he feared for his life, though attorneys for the McDonald family say the video clearly shows McDonald was moving away from the officer when the deadly shots were fired.
    Six Chicago Officers Named in Settlement Agreement
    In a March 6 letter to the city released through a Freedom of Information Act request, attorney Jeff Neslund, who along with Michael Robbins represents the McDonald family, wrote: “The dash cam video from unit 813R…captured what took place on Pulaski, including the fatal shooting.”
    “There are 5 Tahoe’s on the scene and none of the audio works as far as we know,” said Neslund in an interview. The video has not been made public.
    Missing Minutes From Security Video Raises Questions
    In 2007 then Police Superintendent Phil Cline told officers that after a successful pilot program, in-car cameras would become a standard part of policing in Chicago.
    “I’d like to take a few minutes to bring you up to date on a technology initiative that is part of the Department’s commitment to use state of the art technology,” Cline said in a DVD released through a Freedom of Information Act request.
    CPD Failed to Properly Probe Death of Teen Shot by Cop: Suit
    According to the Chicago Police Department currently “almost 800 vehicles are equipped with in-car camera systems.”
    Vehicles used in police districts were outfitted with a camera mounted on the windshield providing both front and back views and two wireless microphones, according to a video by Coban Technologies, which supplies the cameras.
    Chicago Council Approves $5M Settlement in Police Shooting
    According to the video, there are three ways to start recording: by turning on the roof lights, hitting a red recorder button or a large button on the microphone. But only one way to stop it: “By touching the square on the screen both video and audio recording will stop,” according to the company video.
    But while there was video the night McDonald was shot, the absence of audio remains a mystery.
    Feds Probe Death of Teen Shot 16 Times by Cop
    “There’s no audio so we can’t hear the number of shots,” Neslund said. “My understanding is that there are two audio microphones in every CPD Tahoe that are supposed to be charged up, in fact the officers are supposed to be wearing them clipped to their uniform. But there is no audio from any of these vehicles as far as we know.”
    Asked if they had received an explanation from the police department on the lack of audio, the McDonald attorneys said they did not.
    The Chicago Police Department responded to a NBC5 request for an interview and a specific question as to why there is no audio with the following e-mailed statement which reads in its entirety:
    “The Department remains committed to technological investments that improve officer and public safety, promote transparency and strengthen accountability. In-car cameras are vital in our efforts to gather relevant evidence and assist in the investigation and resolution of officer-involved incidents. Today, almost eight hundred vehicles are equipped with in-car camera systems. Chicago has one of the largest such deployments in the United States. The Department will continue to evaluate new technology and national best practices as it determines the possible expansion of camera systems.”
    Three months after the city announced a settlement with the McDonald family of $5 million, without a lawsuit being filed, questions remain as to why there is no audio from the shooting that October night.

  25. rq says

    Obama greeted by Confederate flags in Oklahoma

    A few protesters waving large Confederate battle flags greeted President Obama as he arrived at his hotel in Oklahoma City on Wednesday.

    Local media reported that Confederate flag supporters also staged an event at an earlier Obama stop in Durant, Okla.

    Obama has criticized the flag as a symbol of hate, and applauded South Carolina’s decision to remove it from the State House ground after the killings of nine African-Americans at a church in Charleston.

    With video.

    Y’all still managed to put a white person in this tweet. Which tweet? The one about this article: #GrowingUpBlack and other hashtags explore race – note very white hands holding phone in descriptive picture.

    Racial commentary in 140 characters or less isn’t always easy, but social media is pulling it off.

    Hashtags like #WhiteGirlsDoItBetter and the latest that’s trending, #GrowingUpBlack, often poke fun at, skewer and sometimes downright nail race and culture in the United States. Add in a dash of memes and it can be hilarious.

    These aren’t the serious, “Let’s talk about it and come up with solutions” hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter. These are the ones more likely to elicit guffaws than essays.

    Here are just a few examples:

    #GrowingUpBlack

    This one sparked some nostalgia as folks shared parts of the black experience which included having to dress like your sibling even if you weren’t twins and hearing “Go wash up; You smell like outside.”

    #WhiteGirlsDoItBetter

    This hashtag emerged shortly after Serena Williams defeated Maria Sharapova in the semi-finals of Wimbledon. It apparently gathered steam as a response to the sense that Williams doesn’t get her due as a champion because she’s black.

    #BlackCelebsBeLike

    African-American stars got raked over the coals a few months ago with the #BlackCelebsBeLike hashtag. Names weren’t named, but it was usually easy enough to figure out who people were talking about.

    Cost of Police-Misconduct Cases Soars in Big U.S. Cities, but I don’t have a subscription.

    Happy birthday to Assata Olugbala Shakur #AssataTaughtMe

  26. rq says

    Fearless Journalist And All-Round Badass Ida B. Wells Honored With Google Doodle

    When Ida B. Wells was 22, she was asked by a conductor of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company to give up her seat on the train to a white man. She refused, and the conductor attempted to forcibly drag her out of her seat.

    Wells wouldn’t budge.

    “The moment he caught hold of my arm I fastened my teeth in the back of his hand,” she wrote in her autobiography. “I had braced my feet against the seat in front and was holding to the back, and as he had already been badly bitten he didn’t try it again by himself. He went forward and got the baggageman and another man to help him and of course they succeeded in dragging me out.”

    The year was 1884 — about 70 years before Rosa Parks would refuse to give up her seat on an Alabama bus.

    Wells’ life was full of such moments of courage and principle. Born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862, Wells was a vocal civil rights activist, suffragist and journalist who dedicated her life to fighting inequality.

    On July 16, Wells’ 153rd birthday, Google honored the “fearless and uncompromising” woman with a Doodle of her typing away on typewriter, a piece of luggage by her side.

    “She was a fierce opponent of segregation and wrote prolifically on the civil injustices that beleaguered her world. By twenty-five she was editor of the Memphis-based Free Speech and Headlight, and continued to publicly decry inequality even after her printing press was destroyed by a mob of locals who opposed her message,” Google wrote in tribute of Wells.

    The journalist would go on to work for Chicago’s Daily Inter Ocean and the Chicago Conservator, one of the oldest African-American newspapers in the country. As Google notes, she “also travelled and lectured widely, bringing her fiery and impassioned rhetoric all over the world.”

    Wells married Chicago attorney Ferdinand Barrett in 1895. She insisted on keeping her own name, becoming Ida Wells-Barnett — a radical move for the time. The couple had four children.

    Wells died in Chicago of kidney failure in 1931. She was 68.

    Every year around her birthday, Holly Springs celebrates Wells’ life with a weekend festival. Mayor Kelvin Buck said at this year’s event that people often overlook “the historic significance of Ida B. Wells in the history of the civil rights struggle in the United States,” per the South Reporter.

    10 Black Actresses Receive 2015 Emmy Nominations

    The 2015 Primetime Emmy Award nominations were announced this morning, and 10 Black actresses received nominations!

    Viola Davis and Taraji P. Henson have made history by being the first two black women to receive Emmy nominations in the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series category in the same year .
    Kerry Washington was nominated for this award in 2013 and 2014. Before Washington’s 2013 nomination, the last black woman to be nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series was Cicely Tyson in 1995. Unfortunately, a black woman has never won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama.

    Maybe it’s time one did!!!

    Alright, so. Sandra Bland. The sheriff there. More on him in article form, but here’s some of his background via twitter / internetz. The sheriff (R Glenn Smith) of Waller County, where #SandraBland died, was fired from his chief of police position in Hempstead, TX in 2008.
    In 2013, TX ACLU questioned Sheriff Smith about racial disparity in marijuana arrests by his officers. #SandraBland
    From a message board in 2008 when R. Glenn Smith was running for Sheriff of Waller County, TX. #SandraBland
    More from a message board in 2008 when R. Glenn Smith was running for Sheriff of Waller County, TX. #SandraBland
    I know message boards aren’t definitive.

  27. rq says

    PETITION: Take Over The Investigation Into The Death of Sandra Bland From The Waller County, Texas Police Department.

    On Monday July 13th 2015 Sandra Bland, a 28 year-old Black woman from the suburbs of Chicago was found dead in a Waller County, Texas jail cell. The circumstances surrounding her death are at best unclear and given known facts, very disturbing.

    Sandra Bland, a Prairie View A&M graduate, had recently arrived in Texas to start new employment in the state and was residing with her uncle. On Friday July 10th 2015, Ms. Bland was pulled over by local Waller County Sheriffs for failing to signal before changing lanes.

    What we know of what happens after that is unsettling.

    Local press affiliates were able to obtain a nearly 2-minute long video of her arrest. We see Ms. Bland lying face down in a grassy marsh immediately abutting a public sidewalk. There is a male police officer with both knees pressed down on top of her back. Her arms are being sharply pulled behind her back and Ms. Bland is screaming and crying. We can clearly hear her say, “I can’t feel my arms!” “I can’t hear!” “You slammed my head into the ground! I’m a female. Don’t you care that you slammed my head into the ground!?”

    Significantly – one of the other two police officers notices the unidentified pedestrian who was taking the footage and ON CAMERA immediately attempts to intimidate him and make him STOP FILMING. As you know, The Supreme Court just recently upheld the RIGHT of any United States citizen to FILM POLICE on public property (and even in some private properties). The SCOTUS judgment also specifically prohibited police from doing exactly what this police officer was shown on camera to do: attempt to intimidate & stop a private citizen from filming an arrest on public property.

    The next thing we (the general public) know for sure is that on Monday, July 13th 2015 at 9AM – local police said they found Sandra Bland dead. They said she was found “hanged” and are indicating that it was a suicide.

    Based on a number of factors:

    a) Sandra Bland had just RELOCATED from Chicago, Illinois to Texas to begin a brand new job.

    b) Evidence that she took this new employment seriously and enthusiastically is indicated by the fact that she relocated across the country to start that job.

    c) Per all family, friends and peers who have spoken publicly on this matter – Ms. Bland was a very bright, vital and happy person with absolutely NO indications of depression or suicidal tendency whatsoever!

    d) Ms. Bland is clearly seen and heard on video screaming that she had been very seriously physically assaulted and damaged. She cites lack of feeling in her arms. That her head had been bashed into the ground. and as significantly – that she couldn’t hear.

    All three concerns are extremely disturbing (and relevant) in light of what we know happened (her being found lifeless 2 days later) in that all three would be consistent with the onset of cerebral hemorrhaging.

    WE NEED AN OFFICIAL AUTOPSY PERFORMED OUTSIDE THE PURVIEW OF THE WALLER COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPT.

    And for that matter outside any local or state authority.

    The circumstances of this young woman’s death is highly suspect and it is in the interest of justice for an outside, disinterested party with the proper legal authority to assume jurisdiction over this investigation…to avoid any appearance of impropriety or concealment.

    The Department of Justice has to conduct an independent autopsy to determine the cause of death.

    Was there hemorrhaging due to her head being slammed to the ground (as she exclaimed twice)?

    It is in the public’s interest…and in the interest of justice that we find out

    WHAT HAPPENED TO SANDRA BLAND!

    A bit more at the link.

    Woman from Chicago area found dead in Texas jail cell, from the Chicago Tribune.

    Woman Dies In Jail After Being Roughed Up During Traffic Stop. Police Say It Was Suicide. ThinkProgress.
    I’m glad it’s getting out in the media.

    ‘Racism is a physical experience’, Chris Hayes and Ta-Nehisi Coates in video.

    Freedom on Rikers Island: Library Brings Books to Inmates. I don’t have much to say about this, except… it left me feeling slightly annoyed. I understand libraries are important, as is reading… but… somehow… could have been something more than a voyeuristic self-pat on the back for bringing enlightenment to the people trapped in the horrible conditions of Rikers? Maybe that was just me.

    The black president some worried about has arrived

    In the past four weeks, we’ve seen President Obama take up residence in a place that sits somewhere in-between.

    He’s spoken off the cuff about race relations on a widely circulated podcast (even using the n-word) and then eloquently followed that with what can only be described as a sermon on race relations in America before breaking into song. He’s challenged America to go deeper in its support of equality than retiring symbols of slavery (such as the Confederate flag) and impolitic words (such as the n-word).

    While eulogizing a slain minister and state lawmaker allegedly killed by a white supremacist in Charleston, S.C., he outlined a whole raft of ways in which discrimination remains and inequality continues to grow. And now, in the span of two weeks, he has announced two major reform packages — housing last week and criminal justice on Tuesday — that could, if ultimately implemented, be of particular benefit to people of color in the United States.

    Here’s the thing: This Obama might look or sound “brand new” to some Americans. He might even sound a little something like the black president some white Americans across the political spectrum feared (or hoped for). But to people who watch the White House closely, this is the President Obama who has been developing for some time.

    On Tuesday, Obama addressed the 106th national convention of the NAACP, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. It’s worth noting here that the NAACP was founded by a cross-racial group of civil rights warriors ultimately responsible for some of the most sweeping legal reforms of the 20th century. But the NAACP isn’t as highly regarded these days as it once was. In the 1990s, the NAACP saw a sharp decline in membership and was itself focused on issues such as retiring the n-word, before rebuilding its membership by expanding its activism to include things like anti-death penalty work and school-funding reform.

    Still, in the eyes of some Americans, the NAACP is a partisan organization. Some on the right have even called it a “hate group.”

    But Obama came to the NAACP convention and laid out a criminal-justice reform agenda that included everything from calls for a close and hard look at what sends people to jail, which crimes and which defendants get the longest sentences, the use of solitary confinement and the loss of voting rights after release. That agenda, Obama said, also has to include resolving the massive disparities in school quality and discipline that federal data tells us begin in pre-kindergarten classrooms.

    When combined with a whole host of other inequities Obama mentioned — who graduates from high school and college, who is employed, who lives in the safest and best-equipped communities and how police view their responsibilities to different neighborhoods — these produce exceedingly elevated arrest, conviction and incarceration rates for black and Latino men. That in turn splinters families and concentrates long-term joblessness, poverty and a rather logical but dangerous degree of hopelessness in those same communities. You can read more about the specifics of the criminal justice reforms Obama called for here, here and here.

    […]

    Back in 2012, when Obama had just been reelected, the leaders of some of the country’s biggest civil rights groups often talked privately about the fact that Obama had made public commitments and taken concrete steps to advance the interests of environmentalists, immigrants and gay Americans. That same president, these leaders often said privately and sometimes publicly, could hardly be counted on to mention the word race, much less aggressively push ideas that might address racial inequality.

    But lots of reporters who watch the White House for a living say the Obama administration was stung by the 2010 midterm elections and Democrats’ staggering defeat, despite years of what they saw as pragmatic compromise. So the administration went big with executive orders and administrative actions on the environment, immigration, trade and other issues. There have also been some defeats — in court and in the court of public opinion — but then, there have also been some legal and social victories in the past eight weeks.

    And there have stunning moments — in Sanford, Fla.; in New York; in Ferguson, Mo.; in North Charleston, S.C.; in Baltimore and in Charleston, S.C. — that have made the continued significance of race harder for the White House and larger swaths of America to ignore. Combine that with the waning months of Obama’s presidency, and the timing makes sense.

    And there was something else that happened in that podcast with comedian Marc Maron. There was something Obama said long after that n-word exchange that should not be ignored.

    “I know what I am doing, and I’m fearless,” Obama said.

  28. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    This has made me sad and angry. On the bright side (?), attorneys have publicly stated there is probable cause for prosecuting the officer. So maybe they’ll actually be punished this time? Who knows.

  29. rq says

    A Georgia artist wants to add Outkast to the Confederate version of Mount Rushmore, which would be hilarious as hell.

    The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) wants to remove a carving of Confederate generals from Georgia’s Stone Mountain monument. But a local artist has a different idea.

    Mack Williams is proposing to add Atlanta-based rap duo Outkast, some of Georgia’s most-loved native sons, to the monument. Outkast’s Big Boi and Andre 3000—preferably in a Cadillac—would be featured alongside Confederate heroes Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis, who are all shown on horseback.

    Williams sent Quartz an image of his proposed monument addition.

    The carving’s current depiction of Confederate leaders “is upholding the white supremacy on which the Confederacy was founded and the war was fought,” said NAACP chapter president Richard Rose at a press conference this week. He told local media they could be sand-blasted off, or removed and sold at an auction.

    Rose added that a compromise would be to add other figures to Stone Mountain, some who have been “instrumental in bringing peace between the races” and in “elevating Georgia beyond the Civil War and Jim Crow eras.” Outkast could conceivably qualify—although the group was embroiled in a long-running legal feud with civil rights icon Rosa Parks over their song which bears her name and urges everyone to “move to the back of the bus.”

    There’s a link to a petition about this at the link.

    Ida B. Wells used data journalism to fight lynching

    Ida B. Wells, who would have turned 153 today, is usually called something along the lines of a “crusading journalist” or a “journalist and advocate.” Those are accurate descriptions — her journalism was in the service of ending lynching in the United States and promoting the civil rights of African Americans. But they’re also loaded phrases. At best, they imply that the journalism being done is based in emotion and rhetoric rather than facts: a particularly deeply felt hot take. At worst, they imply that the journalist in question is outright twisting the facts to shape her bias.

    Wells was an advocate, and she wrote plenty of editorial commentary attacking lynching at the turn of the 20th century. But she was also a rigorous journalist. In fact, today we would probably call some of her work “data journalism.”

    In 1895, Wells published The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States, 1892-1894. She continued to use quantitative work on lynching throughout her career (including statistics compiled by her hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune). She used statistics not just to make her point, but to shape the terms of the debate — to force other critics of lynching, as well as defenders, to reckon with the facts about why white mobs lynched (mostly black) victims.

    Check out an article she wrote called “Lynching and the Excuse For It,” which was published in a magazine called the Independent in 1901 as a response to an essay by fellow Chicago justice pioneer Jane Addams. Addams was against lynching, but tried to give its participants the benefit of the doubt: that they “honestly believe that that is the only successful method of dealing with a certain class of crimes.”

    More of Wells’ response at the link.

    Online Campaign Questions Account of Black Woman’s Death in Custody – yep, the New York Times on Sandra Bland. The story is getting around. Good.

    Sandra Bland, 28, was arrested last Friday in Waller County by an officer with the Texas Department of Public Safety on a charge of assaulting a public servant. Her encounter with the police reportedly began when she was pulled over for changing lanes without signaling.

    A statement from the Waller County Sheriff’s office said that authorities tried to perform CPR on Ms. Bland after she was found not breathing in a cell on Monday morning, and that state authorities were immediately asked to begin investigating her death.

    The statement said that the cause of her death appeared to be from self-inflicted asphixtiation. An autopsy on Tuesday classified her death as suicide by hanging, according to The Chicago Tribune.

    Friends, family and supporters of Ms. Bland are not satisfied with the autopsy results, and are calling for federal authorities to look into her death. Since Tuesday, more than 31,000 people have tweeted using the hashtag #SandraBland, according to Topsy, a social media measurement tool. An online petition calling for the Justice Department to take over the investigation has been started.

    So #SandraBland hanged hrself in a TX jail on Mon. & 18 year old #KindraChapman hanged herself in an AL jail on Tues, 1hr after arrest? FOH!

    Repost, but well worth it: These 15 Black Women Were Killed During Police Encounters. Their Lives Matter, Too.

  30. rq says

    The Toronto Police Services Board meeting is being shut down by Black LIves Matter protesters. Hopefully pictures/articles will be available soon.

    Attorney: Police brutality against teen shown in video

    A video published by the Colorado Springs Independent Thursday allegedly shows a Colorado Springs Police officer taking down a teen.

    According to KOAA, police say the unnamed 18-year-old was intoxicated and kicked an officer in the groin after he shoved her. The teen was handcuffed and suffered trauma to the face when she was then lifted up and slammed to the ground.

    The Independent says the woman’s attorney has filed a Notice of Claim with the City of Colorado Springs for the the incident, which happened in 2013. This measure is usually a precursor to a lawsuit.

    KOAA reached out to the Colorado Springs Police Department but no statement was given due to the ongoing nature of the case.

    How your local jail became hell: An investigation, not just on incarceration rates, but conditions within jails. Which often sound like something only mildly better than the Middle Ages.

    You might think that Zurn’s story, while unfortunate, is relatively uncommon. You would be wrong. The modern American jail — which is distinct from prison, the place where those convicted of crimes go — primarily houses the legally innocent. There are 731,200 people inside American jails — substantially more than the population of Washington, D.C. — and three out of five of those inmates have not been convicted of anything at all.

    The American jail is a support apparatus that serves the needs of the rest of the criminal justice system. That vast network of institutions — the police, the courts, state and federal prisons, parole boards, and so on — rests on this foundation. Before anyone goes to an arraignment, a trial, or state or federal prison, they go to jail.

    Jails are locally administered. They are usually fairly small. And there are a lot of them. There are over 3,200 jails in the U.S., a vast archipelago spread across the nation. All but the smallest counties have at least one, and many municipalities have them as well.

    Technically, only dangerous criminals or flight risks are supposed to be detained before trial (which is an important service, to be sure). But the titanic machinery of the War on Crime, combined with sweeping cuts to public services, particularly in areas of mental health, have changed American jails into “massive warehouses primarily for those too poor to post even low bail or too sick for existing community resources to manage,” according to a comprehensive new report from the Vera Institute of Justice.

    Of course, not being convicted of a crime does little to change the character of time spent in jail. And because jails attract almost no media attention, because they are often run by corrupt or incompetent local officials, and because skinflint local governments often refuse to provide the money for decent conditions, in many cases jail time can be as unjust or brutal as that spent in state or federal prison — if not more so.

    How jails abandoned “innocent until proven guilty”

    The incarceration machine — or what scholars call the “carceral state” — started with Nixon’s war on crime and drugs, which drastically increased the harshness of American sentencing practices, particularly for nonviolent offenses. Reagan got even tougher in 1984 with the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, which included the Sentencing Reform Act. The law created a commission to recommend uniform federal sentencing guidelines, ironically championed by Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts as a way to promote fairness and good government. But Reagan stacked the commission with hardliners, who drafted draconian rules strictly mandating harsh sentences with little room for nuance or mercy.

    While those guidelines were softened by a Supreme Court decision in 2005 that made them largely advisory, for more than a generation district judges were straitjacketed into handing down extremely harsh sentences, regardless of mitigating factors.

    As a result, the incarceration rate more than quadrupled from 166 per 100,000 Americans back in 1970 to 716 today, the highest in the world, save for tiny Seychelles. (Compare that to Great Britain’s rate of 147, or Norway’s 72.)

    Jails were sharply affected by this development, according to Temple University’s Melanie Newport, who studies the jail system. Jails were the first contact with a new flood of people being arrested, charged, and tried, and so were forced to increase capacity. “The number of jails doubled after World War II,” she says. (It has technically been fairly stable since the 1970s, as smaller jails were consolidated into larger ones.)

    State prisons form the biggest part of the American incarceration system, housing 1,362,000 inmates, according to a 2014 study by the Prison Policy Initiative. But jails are the second-biggest, with almost three-quarters of a million people incarcerated, more than triple the 209,000 convicts inside federal prisons.

    The average jail term is quite short, which means that there is colossal churn in and out of the system — vastly increasing the number of people ground through the incarceration machine. There are 688,000 people released from all prisons annually, but nearly 12 million jail admissions each year.

    Many of those people are mentally ill. The “deinstitutionalization” movement of the 1960s decimated state psychiatric hospitals by the mid-1980s. While this was a benefit to many people with minor mental problems or disabilities, very many of the seriously mentally ill were simply left without treatment.

    A huge fraction of those people end up in jails or prisons. More than 40 percent of people with a serious mental illness have been arrested at some point. A 2006 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 64 percent of jail inmates have some kind of mental illness. Roughly 20 percent have a serious mental illness, like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression. That makes almost 150,000 such people in jail, more than four times as many as in state hospitals.

    Jails and prisons are now the major American institutions for handling the mentally ill — which often means locking people like Zurn in solitary confinement for being a nuisance.

    Imagine being considered a ‘nuisance’ due to your mental illness, and not receiving the medication or support that you actually need. (I know, that’s kind of how it works right now, right?)
    More at the link.

    #SandraBland had degrees. Belonged to a Black Greek Organization. Was employed. She was all the things you tell us to be. And she’s dead. < THIS.
    ^ THAT.

    Texas sheriff involved in the death of Sandra Bland fired from previous post for racism. Previously I only posted screenshots from a discussion forum. Here’s more on the sheriff and his background:

    The first red flag is that Bland was officially arrested on Friday for assaulting a police officer. What we see from a bystander video is her telling the officers she is in pain and cannot hear after her head was slammed on the ground by the male arresting officer. The video is below.

    We have now learned that Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith, who made the first public comments about Bland’s in-custody death, was suspended for documented cases of racism when he was chief of police in Hempstead, Texas, in 2007. After serving his suspension, more complaints of racism came in, and Smith was actually fired as chief of police in Hempstead:

    Council members are reviewing video of four arrests and detentions over the past month. The officers and police chief, who are the targets of the complaints, are white. Some residents are calling for a third of the city’s 15 person police force to be suspended, disciplined, or fired.

    Allegations of racism have led to the Hempstead police chief being suspended and ordered to take anger management classes.

    The Hempstead city council has been reviewing the case since last week and finally came to a decision at around 2am Tuesday. A number of residents have come forward with claims of racism by at least four white police officers.

    The council reviewed the complaints, along with videotapes before making their decision to punish Chief Glen Smith. Some say it wasn’t enough. The chief says he respects the decision.

    “My action during the arrest did not meet professionalism as it should with language and I’m not above policy and procedure, no more than any officer of this city,” said Chief Smith.

    It would seem that once a law enforcement officer—a chief of police no less—is suspended and then fired for racism and abuse, his ability to serve in law enforcement would cease.

    That’d be too much like right, though.

    Hell, it made Glenn Smith popular in Waller County, where he then ran for the elected position of sheriff and won against—you guessed it—an African-American candidate, Jeron Barnett, who would’ve been the first black sheriff ever in Waller County.

    Woman Arrested After Traffic Violation Found Dead In Texas Jail Three Days Later, BuzzFeed.

  32. rq says

    This South Dakota Town Refuses To Take The Confederate Flag Off Its Police Uniform – nope, not the one in Alabama mentioned yesterday. Another one!

    The police chief and mayor of Gettysburg, South Dakota, aren’t backing down after criticism of a Confederate flag patch on the local police department’s uniform. Rather than remove the offending symbol, the town is embracing it even more.

    “If it had anything to do with racism we’d take it down and change it,” Mayor Bill Wuttke told The Huffington Post. “It has nothing to do with racism.”

    The patch gained local media attention after Lynn Hart, a black resident of a different town, learned of the emblem and publicly denounced it. The criticism was part of the national debate over displaying the Confederate flag that has followed the massacre of nine people at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina. After the attack — allegedly committed by a suspected white supremacist who had posed for photos with Confederate flags — the South Carolina legislature voted to remove a Confederate flag from outside the state’s Capitol building in Columbia.

    The Gettysburg Police Department defended itself against Hart’s criticism, and even announced on Monday that it had changed its Facebook profile picture to an image of the patch.

    Assholes much? Did their local FOP tell them to do that?

    https://twitter.com/bravenewvoices/status/621682210312208384
    Random thought.

    Where Brooklyn At? The Rise of Gentrification and the Fall of Hip-Hop

    The image of modern-day Brooklyn is often viewed as a haven for hipsters and the middle and upper middle class, with boutique shops, gyms, a giant arena, cafes, and structured parks. Brooklyn has become a face of gentrification in the U.S., but despite its vast economic growth and seemingly integrated neighborhoods, its history as a diverse hub for immigrants, African-Americans, and Latinos has not yet been forgotten.1 The original characteristics of the borough were produced from struggle, hard work, and the hope for a better life in the heart of the city.

    ‘Culture’ and ‘character’ are important, yet difficult-to-define concepts related deeply to gentrification. One major component of urban culture, and especially in New York City and Brooklyn, is hip-hop music. Rap music has been known for its ability to provide insight into the socioeconomic conditions of blacks and Latinos in the U.S. Born from the streets of the Bronx, hip-hop is deeply-rooted in the streets of urban centers. Scholar and cultural critic Tricia Rose states, “Rap music, more than any other contemporary form of black cultural expression, articulates the chasm between black urban lived experience and dominant, ‘legitimate’ ideologies regarding equal opportunity and racial inequality.”2

    Brooklyn, especially, is home to some of the most notorious MCs, who hold tight to their hometowns, representing and paying homage to the borough and its various neighborhoods in song. Artists like Jay-Z and Notorious B.I.G. gave audiences an explicit look into the daily life and culture in Brooklyn’s streets. Gentrification3 is at odds with the concepts of authenticity and history embedded in the roots of hip-hop, and Brooklyn appears far different than the lyrics heard in “Brooklyn” by Mos Def or the visual image portrayed in films like Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.” The familiar faces of the working class and the comfort of local businesses have been driven out by the increase in property value, and Brooklyn’s founding culture has gone along with them. Through song lyrics, historical events, and opinions from rappers themselves, explaining the relationship between hip-hop and gentrification is made clear, and unveils how gentrification continues to damage the culture of hip-hop’s Mecca.

    […]

    Hip-hop was born in the streets of the Bronx, around the same time as the major demographic shifts in Brooklyn. In the mid 1950s, urban planner Robert Mosley developed the Cross Bronx Expressway (CBE); a six-lane highway that cut through several Bronx neighborhoods, displacing 60,000 people and resulting in the loss of nearly 600,000 jobs. “Few roads in America have histories as tortured as the Cross Bronx Expressway. The master builder Robert Moses gouged the highway through crowded neighborhoods, displacing tens of thousands of people and, critics say, helping set the stage for the arson and crime that ravaged the borough for a generation.” This itself is an early example of development-based displacement common to gentrification. However, the turmoil created by the development of the CBE sparked inspiration in young people to find solitude amidst despair. In the early 1970s, hip-hop emerged from the depths of this chaos.

    Bronx natives (many of whom were West-Indian immigrants) used lampposts to plug in their sound systems and experiment with turntables. Clive Campbell, commonly known as DJ Kool Herc, was the first of many popular hip-hop DJs to test sounds and energize the Bronx at public gatherings during the nascence of hip-hop. “Working two turntables, he switched between duplicate vinyl to keep the instrumental breaks playing and the dancing going indefinitely, and break dancers, shout-outs, MCs, and DJ rivalries all became part of the Kool Herc legacy.”5 The popularity of hip-hop gained momentum as it began to spread throughout the borough. Hip-hop’s beginnings started off as a community art form. It was a way in which local neighborhoods could come together and relieve themselves of the pressure of daily life.

    […]

    While Brooklyn had a great deal of issues with crime and poverty, hip-hop provided a platform for artists to discuss the problems their neighborhoods and families faced on a larger scale. Mainstream music and the rising popularity of hip-hop allowed for these important discussions about race and class to be broadcast. For example, the Brownesville neighborhood in East New York had a reputation for delinquency. In songs like “Welcome to Brownesville” rap duo, M.O.P publicized their experience living in the crime-ridden Brooklyn neighborhood. These lyrics were important for the outside world to hear, not for criminalizing blacks, but in shedding light on problems that plagued urban communities. But was the message received? The instinct now seems to be to remove the negative images that native rappers like M.O.P discussed in their music—by removing the people afflicted by them.

    Gentrification is a system that transforms the disposition of an urban space, generally towards one of white-dominated middle or upper-class-ness. Sharon Zukin, an urban sociologist, describes gentrification in a similar manner stating, “the conversion of socially marginal and working class areas of the central city to middle [and elite] residential use.”6 Gentrification affects numerous aspects of a neighborhood, some that are easily repaired and some that are not. Rent prices rise significantly as the value of living in gentrified neighborhoods increase, driving out low-income residents who can no longer afford the cost of living. Brooklyn has a unique energy that is heavily inspired by art and multiculturalism. However, gentrification uproots the minorities, artists, local business owners and groups of people that contributed to the making of an authentic urban space and community.

    Hip-hop is an integral part of urban culture and an indicator of the changes in it, including gentrification. This change in community disposition when outwardly disregarding a neighborhood’s current residents is harmful. Sensitivity to a city or neighborhood’s culture is important to its history and future, and hip-hop music is a large contributor to Brooklyn’s organic spirit. And if there’s one thing that is very clear about hip-hop, origin and history, where you’re from, they matter.

    […]

    When gentrification meets with a long-standing urban structure like hip-hop, there necessarily comes with it a great deal of change; from the refurbishment of the neighborhoods and street corners where Brooklyn rappers grew up, to the transformation of styles and sounds people associate with their music. One example is the friction over the creation of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, a project in which fellow rapper and Brooklyn native Jay Z played a huge role. Rapper Mos Def expressed his concerns over the development of the Barclays Center in a poem titled “On.center.stadium.status”:

    In an interview with Vulture, Mos Def expounded. “My concern is, none of those people who built that stadium know what it’s like to grow up in the projects. And the people in the neighborhood don’t yet benefit from the stadium’s presence in the community. I would love for Barclays and the NBA and whoever else to prove me wrong, by engaging in the community, not just on some [surface] level for the photo op. But to really be concerned with enriching the lives of people in that community.”

    Hip-hop culture was bred from the streets of the Bronx, but has played an instrumental role in global culture; inspiring artists, fans, and subgenres across the world. The Golden Age of the late 80s and early 90s was filled with distinct beats, varying soul and jazz samples, West Indian-inspired sounds and renowned DJs and MCs, spawning a larger cultural wave that spread widely. Brooklyn rappers at the fore of mainstream hip-hop were key contributors to this era. Brooklyn’s sound was most known for its dark and gritty beats, with samples from various genres, from jazz to country and rock n’ roll. The drop of a drum loop is synonymous with golden age hip-hop, a beat so distinguishable that today’s generation of hip-hop listeners could easily associate the sound with the era; the hallmarks were songs like the 1992 single, “Who Got The Props?” by Black Moon or the 1994 single “Crooklyn” by the Crooklyn Dodgers. Smif-N-Wessun’s “Sound Bwoy Bureill” and Notorious B.I.G.’s “Respect” were examples of the West Indian influence in Brooklyn hip-hop.

    […]

    Gentrification began killing one of hip-hop’s most vibrant and formative eras, the bedrock of modern rap, as it also uprooted the bedrock of the borough. It effectively dismantled a borough by taking those very people who were immersed in hip-hop culture, and displacing them, destroying the culture they managed to build from scraps. There’s the famous Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and Jay Z’s home in the Marcy Housing projects. One of his more recent mentions was in his song, “Empire State of Mind” featuring Alicia Keys, in which he shouts out 560 State Street in the Boerum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. In 2012, he surprised a young Jewish couple who now reside in his old apartment. The couple wrote about the encounter, explaining that Jay Z said 560 State Street was where, “[H]e started to gain real momentum in hip-hop . . . where he realized that he needed to cut out all the sh-t in his life and focus on his passion. While we waited, he spoke about how much 560 State had changed over the years–‘these trees weren’t here,’ he said. None of this was. He pointed to the impressive Viking grills that now lined the back wall of the courtyard, and joked about the make-shift grills he and his boys used to set up for cookouts.” Jay Z’s old apartment is just one example of a hip-hop landmark that has been gentrified in Brooklyn.

    […]

    As a result of gentrification, Brooklyn’s live music scene, part of the Golden Age’s lifeblood, has suffered as well. Southpaw, a popular music venue in the Park Slope neighborhood, was well-known for bringing a variety of musical acts, especially hip-hop artists, from Big Daddy Kane to Slick Rick to underground DJs and up and coming MCs. The venue was in business from 2002-2012, and was bought out by a New York Kids Club. Owner Matt Roff, explained the buy-out. “It would have been very difficult emotionally to see folks take control of the space if using it in the same capacity as we did. So after much deliberation with a few potential businesses we felt that the children’s business would use the space wisely and that the growing neighborhood around the club would eventually get great use from the kids club and hopefully appreciate the fact that its there and that we didn’t give it to Banana Republic or Starbucks.”

    […]

    Hip-hop is a sonic record of the black experience. Its lyrics are representative of many of the oppressions and tribulations black people face in America, with special regard to urban poverty. Many Brooklyn artists during the ‘80s and ‘90s made mention of the struggles and issues facing their neighborhoods and communities, but also to the borough’s positive attributes that helped bring them up and shape their world view. “Rap music, more than any other contemporary form of black cultural expression, articulates the chasm between black urban lived experience and dominant, ‘legitimate’ ideologies regarding equal opportunity and racial inequality.”3 However, with the displacement of blacks and Latinos, and the heavy influx of white and middle to upper class residents, characteristics of their beloved street corners and favorite spots cease to exist.

    Before Brooklyn rapper Talib Kweli’s career took off, he worked in the oldest African-American bookstore in Brooklyn, Nkiru Books in Park Slope. The bookstore’s purpose was to serve youth, and emphasize work by black authors. Kweli credits the store for influencing his artistry and encouraging him to further pursue his rap career. “I was already into hip-hop real heavy . . . my style was already based in positivity and spirituality because that’s the type of hip-hop I grew up on, but working at Nkiru gave me facts and history, [and] information to back up some of the things I was rapping about. So my rhyme style became more factual, more informed when I started working at the bookstore.” In 1998, Kweli and Mos Def bought the bookstore from the owner’s daughter. They transformed it into an education center for the neighborhood. In addition to selling books, they hosted open mics, spoken word events, workshops, and lectures. However, due to financial stresses, competition from larger bookstores, and the rise of gentrification in Park Slope, the bookstore was shut down in 2000. Its old location is now Penny House Café.

    Places like Nkiru were important because they promoted affirmative Blackness for the community. Nkiru provided young people a strong foundation and the resources to pursue the arts and stimulate their minds through knowledge and creativity. It promoted black authors and artists. The downfall of Nkiru and similar places hammers home the point that gentrification marginalizes both the physical and cultural aspects of Blackness.

    […]

    At its core, gentrification is modern, urban colonialism; a continuation of systemic racial and economic inequality. It privatizes public space that previously bred art, and has been an effective eraser of Black spaces, places, and cultural structures. However, Blackness is in part resilience, and no art embodies that more than hip-hop. Hip-hop has proven that it is a flexible culture, as people across the world have adopted it, whether they live in the streets or in the suburbs, though its indigenous culture buries some of its roots in New York City. No matter where gentrification strikes, its former inhabitants are capable of creating a new art form, refashioning the destroyed eras behind them; rising above the surface like a flower from the concrete. It’s the Brooklyn Way.

    I skipped a lot of Brooklyn history from the article, but it’s well worth a read.

    Alabama Guv Sued For Removing Confederate Flag From Capitol Grounds

    Melvin Hasting, an attorney based in Cullman, Alabama, filed suit Tuesday in Montgomery County Circuit Court against Bentley, the Alabama Historical Commission, and that agency’s acting director, Lisa Jones, with the aim of returning the Confederate flags to the war memorial from which they were taken.

    The suit alleged Bentley “overstepped his authority” in ordering the flags’ removal from the war monument, according to the report. Hasting’s suit also alleged that the Alabama Historical Commission abandoned its duty to “promote and increase knowledge and understanding of the history of this State,” per state code.

    Bentley had told reporters at the time that removing the flags was “the right thing to do,” adding that the issue “had the potential to become a major distraction” during budget negotiations. The governor also assured reporters that he made sure there was nothing in state law that prevented him from ordering the flags’ removal.

    You go on and win, governor of Alabama.

    Teen inmate hangs herself in Homewood City Jail, authorities say – no, not Sandra Bland. The other one. Kindra Darnell Chapman.

    An 18-year-old girl hanged herself in the Homewood City Jail Tuesday night.

    The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office identified the inmate as Kindra Darnell Chapman. Chapman was booked in the jail at 6:22 p.m., on a first-degree robbery charge. Homewood police said she robbed another person of a cell phone in the 1600 block of Lakeshore Court.

    Jailers last saw her alive at 6:30 p.m. She was found unresponsive at 7:50 p.m. Authorities said she used a bed sheet to hang herself.

    Chapman was taken to Brookwood Medical Center where she was pronounced dead.

    This story will be updated as more information becomes available.

    L.A. files few charges in Ferguson police shooting protests despite mass arrests

    There was no widespread violence, no burning stores or looting, but L.A. made national headlines for another reason: LAPD officers swept up hundreds of protesters in mass arrests. The numbers surpassed those in other cities such as Oakland, St. Louis and Ferguson, Mo., that experienced rioting and other violence.

    Eight months later, Los Angeles city prosecutors told The Times they had rejected filing criminal charges against the majority of the people detained by the LAPD during those demonstrations. The city attorney’s office has filed charges against only 27 of the 323 protesters arrested — fewer than 9% — and has formally rejected charges against 181.

    Most of the remaining cases were referred to informal hearings, where officials “make sure that everyone understands the law and consequences if this happens again,” a spokesman for the city attorney’s office said.

    Los Angeles Police Department officials said they stood by the arrests, despite the small number of charges filed. They noted police have a lower legal threshold — probable cause — for making an arrest than prosecutors do for proving a case.

    Capt. Jeff Bert, who oversaw the on-the-ground response to the demonstrations, said the LAPD’s primary objective was to allow protesters to exercise their 1st Amendment rights. But he said that when concerns arose about public safety — such as when protesters ran onto the freeway or blocked traffic — the department needed to take action.

    “There comes a point where enough is enough, when we are balancing the needs of the rest of Los Angelenos with the needs of a very small, relatively speaking, group of protesters who are no longer engaging in lawful activity,” he said. “Our actions, while not popular, were actions designed to protect and keep the city safe.”

    Larry Rosenthal, a former deputy city attorney in Chicago and law professor at Chapman University, said that it’s not uncommon to see only a few charges filed after a large demonstration resulting in mass arrests. In such chaotic situations, he said, police officers don’t always have the time to adequately record the alleged offenses.

    “There’s great tension between getting control of the scene and being able to document what’s been done in a way that will hold up in court,” Rosenthal said.

    But critics of the LAPD’s tactics said the city attorney’s decision bolstered their complaints that police went too far by arresting so many people.

  33. rq says

    The NAACP And Black Lives Matter Are Talking Past Each Other

    Black Lives Matter, the social media driven movement focused on police violence and ending white supremacy, was not far from anyone’s mind — not even the leader of the free world — at the NAACP convention this week.

    Whether it was in the likenesses of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown on display outside the main convention hall, or the eyeballs on the few young people who wore t-shirts emblazoned with “Black Lives Matter” or “I love my blackness. And yours,” the protest movement that sprang to life over the last year was hard to miss.

    Also hard to miss was the underlying tension as the old-guard of a movement that had once championed an anti-lynching bill through Congress nearly a century ago confronted a new, digital-focused generation of protesters.

    The activists say the NAACP is beholden to the mainstream corporations; the NAACP seems perplexed by the decentralized relevance of Black Lives Matter. They are not fighting. They both agree there is a crisis. But their crossing paths in Philadelphia underscored how both movements differ on the grassroots moment the country is in, and which steps are the right ones to bring about change.

    […]

    Attendees also took their cue from Roslyn Brock, chairwoman of the NAACP’s board of directors, who said the shooting of unarmed blacks at the hands of blacks placed an indelible impression on the psyche of blacks in America and indeed that of the NAACP. “We will never forget their faces,” she said.

    “However,” she asked, “how do we explain” the murders of young people in Milwaukee, Philadelphia and 55 people who were wounded in Chicago? “How do we give life to the narrative that Black Lives Matter when we are doing the killing?”

    “Let me be crystal clear: Black-on-black crime must end in our community as we imbue new life and meaning into the often quoted hashtag Black Lives Matter,” she said.

    Activists working on police violence against unarmed civilians and, they say, combating white supremacy have something of a running joke (that has gotten stale): They can always tell when someone is about to say, “Well, what about black-on-black crime?”

    Race-on-race crime, the activists say, is not unique to black people. The question also provokes skepticism with Black Lives Matter activists: Why do some leaders attempt to police members of their own community, the activists argue, and want to talk about anything other than white supremacy?

    Activists often refer to this “policing” as engagement in the politics of respectability, or a preference by blacks to critique and to lay blame with black people, rather than address white supremacy “head on,” as one activist said. In an informal poll, principal movement activists said they were not invited to the convention — but had been drawn to Obama’s speech Tuesday.

    “I think we are highly supportive of Black Lives Matter, but I do think what we also are focusing on is the number of black-on-black crimes in our community as well,” said Brendien Mitchell, the 21-year-old Howard University student who sits on the NAACP board and spoke at the convention briefly before Obama told BuzzFeed News. “The need for us to say that black lives matter as it relates to black lives being taken non-people of color” is important, he said. “But I also do believe that we do kill ourselves in our communities.”

    […]

    David Johns, the executive director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, praised the movement but exhorted young people at a luncheon to do more than just engage with a hashtag on social media.

    That message stood out for Gaskins. He said for all of the talk about the movement over the course of the convention there was a sense that people did not know a whole lot about how it works, what it wants — and wondered if perhaps some of that responsibility could fall on Black Lives Matter.

    Gaskins wouldn’t really have a way to know what Black Lives Matter was doing. “Unless they like, looked it up on Google or something, you really don’t know anything about it other than the hashtag. It’s hard. Especially for the elders.”

    Ferguson mayor to begin listening tour with residents who backed his recall – I’m sure they’re thrilled about it. I suppose it’s not a bad idea, generally speaking…

    Weeks after Ferguson, Mo., activists fell 27 signatures short of forcing Mayor James Knowles to face a recall, the mayor says he is launching a door-to-door effort to touch base with city residents who considered his potential ouster.

    Knowles told USA TODAY that he and campaign volunteers have sifted through the petition signatures and that he will soon begin his outreach effort, perhaps as early as next week.

    The mayor faced ridicule from activists when he said in a television interview that his community had no racial divide shortly after unrest broke out in the St. Louis suburb last year following the shooting death of a black teenager by a white police officer.

    Backers of the recall also criticized Knowles for overseeing a city government that activists say was hostile to black residents long before the shooting death of Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager who was fatally shot after a confrontation with police officer Darren Wilson.

    “I’m hoping we can bridge some gaps, because right now we got to focus on how to bring people together,” Knowles said in a telephone interview.

    The group Ground Level Support gathered 1,787 valid signatures from registered voters in the city who backed the petition calling for the recall and 1,549 more that were thrown out by the St. Louis County Board of Election Commissioners for a variety of reasons. The group needed 1,814 valid signatures, or 15% of registered voters to trigger the recall.

    The activists earlier this month filed a lawsuit calling for a judge to order that the recall be placed on the ballot. The plaintiffs claim that more than 28 signatures were invalidated because the election board found that they had “no signature” or a “wrong signature” when they were in fact valid.

    I said before, I think 28 signatures should be perfectly easy (or at least doable) to verify – esp. if these are signatures from old folks.

    How railroads, highways and other man-made lines racially divide America’s cities. Washington Post takes another look at segregation via city planning.

    Like many metaphors, “the other side of the tracks” was originally a literal epithet. Blacks were often historically restricted to neighborhoods separated from whites by railroads, turning the tracks into iron barriers of race and class.

    In many cities, these dividing lines persist to this day — a reflection of decades of discriminatory policies and racism, but also of the power of infrastructure itself to segregate.

    Look at racial maps of many American cities, and stark boundaries between neighboring black and white communities frequently denote an impassable railroad or highway, or a historically uncrossable avenue. Infrastructure has long played this role: reinforcing unspoken divides, walling off communities, containing their expansion, physically isolating them from schools or parks or neighbors nearby.

    Research, in fact, suggests that American cities that were subdivided by railroads in the 19th century into physically discrete neighborhoods became much more segregated decades later following the Great Migration of blacks out of the rural South.

    You can see echoes of that pattern in Pittsburgh today on this map drawn using the racial dot map created by Dustin Cable at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. Railroads there have historically amplified neighborhood divisions created by the city’s hilly topography:
    […]

    Segregation, in effect, has been built into the physical environment of many American cities, making it that much harder to undo.

    A century after many of those railroads were built, the pattern was repeated in a modern form: through the construction of even more imposing highways (many of which both destroyed and separated minority neighborhoods).

    A slew of maps and descriptions at the link.

    Mayor in Wash. State Calls Michelle Obama ‘Gorilla Face,’ Refuses to Step Down: Report, via The Root.

    Video shows that African-American woman who died in custody did not assault an officer as police claimed, Salon takes a closer look at the video of Sandra Bland’s arrest.

    Bland’s friends are not buying the official explanation as to her death. “I do suspect foul play,” Cheryl Nanton told ABC7. “I believe we are all 100 percent of the belief that she did not do harm to herself.”

    LaVaughn Mosley agreed, saying “we’re very suspicious and we’re a very tight community and we’re very upset that this has happened and it seems like there’s nothing really being done about it.”

    As did another close friend, LaNitra Dean, who said that “the Waller County Jail is trying to rule her death a suicide and Sandy would not have taken her own life. Sandy was strong. Strong mentally and spiritually.”

    In a statement, Sheriff Smith said that “any loss of life is tragic,” and that “[w]hile the investigation is being conducted by outside agencies, the Waller County Sheriff’s Office will continue to observe the daily operations of the jail to always look for improvements and/or prevention of these incidents.”

    The Texas State Rangers have taken over the investigation into Bland’s death, but have not commented on the video of her arrest at this time.

    Former Mississippi governor says it’s time to change state flag

    Former Mississippi Gov. William Winter said he believes that it’s time for a change.

    Winter helped design the 2001 statewide referendum on the state flag. By a two-to-one margin, voters said they wanted to keep the flag design with the Confederate battle emblem. Gov. Phil Bryant said the issue could come before voters again, but Winter said it should not be left up to voters.

    “It was obviously not the time then. We were not ready. We were not ready to take that step. I think we are now. The people are ready to make that step now and I hope that we will not go back to all the hullabaloo of a referendum. I hope the Legislature will step up and do it, and I think everybody will be glad to put it behind us,” Winter said.

    Winter said the 2001 vote was not legally binding.

    “It was an expression of opinion,” Winter said. “The Legislature has to enact the law. That was not a referendum in that it became actionable at that time.”

    “The Legislature never acted on it?” 16 WAPT’s Scott Simmons asked.

    “They never acted on it,” Winter said.

    Bryant said he will not call a special session on the issue, so the earliest it could be discussed by lawmakers is in January.

    State Sen. Dean Kirby, of Rankin County, said he believes the issue should be decided by at the polls.

    “If the people want to make changes, they can do so through initiative of referendum,” Kirby said.

    I think they should just take it down.

  34. rq says

    #WhiteGirlsDoItBetter: Why White Women Remain One of Racism’s Most Slept On Weapons.

    Christopher Emanuel is a 25-year-old Black South Carolinian. Syracuse law professor, Kevin Noble Maillard, crafted a brilliant report on the gauntlet of legal obstacles Emanuel overcame to be recognized as the father and sole custodian of his daughter, Skylar. Emanuel was deliberately excluded from his child’s birth, falsely branded a shiftless sperm-donor disinterested in and ill-equipped for fatherhood, and nearly stripped of his paternal rights.

    This Black dad’s nemesis wasn’t his state’s recently banished Confederate flag. It was his daughter’s white mother and white grandmother, who ultimately lost their parental rights while a South Carolina judge condemned their campaign of treachery and racism to steal a Black child.

    This is not our conventional notion of white supremacy. The enemy of Black people is habitually reduced to “the man.”

    However, there would be no racist white man, without a racist white woman.

    From Jim Crow legislation, to Black castration, editor and journalist, Chloe Angyal, correctly acknowledged that blubbering white women have prompted untold incidents of white terror. But her assessment is incomplete. White women are equally proficient as weeping victims of alleged “negro” mischief or aggressive, violent ambassadors of white power. Contrary to the rubric of white patriarchy, white women are equal co-conspirators in the devaluation of Black life.

    […]

    Few white women brandish police shields, but all white females and males are expected to enforce white supremacy, monitor and abuse Black people.

    Decades of feminism have not extinguished white women’s antagonism towards Black females. White females routinely malign entertainment mogul Shonda Rhimes and FLOTUS Michelle Obama as “angry Black women.” So imagine what white female teachers think of Black girls?

    If white women are underrepresented in the field of law enforcement, they compensate with overrepresentation in the early stages of the school-to-prison pipeline. It’s estimated that white women comprise 63 percent of K-12 teachers in the United States. So when the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles documents that “African-American students are three times more likely to be suspended than whites,” that’s not “the man.”

    The accusatory white woman who incited lynch mobs and genital mutilation is not extinct. She now flings allegations and suspensions in the classroom. Sabotaging the academic genius of Black students is an act of genocide. Educational psychologist Dr. Jamilia Blake documents teachers’ debilitating perception of Black girls and boys as threatening, unsophisticated and defiant. In Unsettling Whiteness, Dr. Lucy Michael writes that white women are central to the criminalization of Black students because they are “not blind to their own cultural practices, but deeply committed to them.”

    “Deeply committed” white women of McKinney, Texas instigated the racial melee that introduced the nation to CNN’s “Best Place to Live.” Officer Eric Casebolt, who has since resigned, assaulted and violated a 15-year-old Black girl in a bikini. But a white female duo was the root of the conflict.

    Eyewitnesses confirmed a pair of white women “made racist comments” and violently double-teamed a black female child prior to Casebolt’s appearance. These women weren’t arrested or charged, nor did they require white manhood to launch a terrorist attack. Days later, Andrew Guilford and his Black male comrades were bamboozled by an equally devastating claims by a woman. Guilford and other three black men were tossed to the ground and shackled by McKinney’s finest. No arrests were made, no weapons were found, but officers justified their detainment because a white “woman called claiming one of the [Black] men was going to shoot her and police.”

    […]

    Cliché assessments of white women’s purported inclination towards frailty and vulnerability impair our understanding of and defense against the maliciousness of Elberson, and other racist white women.

    Former Florida State Seminole quarterback De’Andre Johnson’s collegiate playing career was sacked by an altercation with a 21-year-old white woman. Johnson consoled his distraught Black mother, Pamela Jones, as he apologized for striking the woman and acknowledged that he should have walked away. He’s facing misdemeanor battery charges. Yet even Sean Hannity of FOX News was compelled to remind prosecuting attorney William Meggs that the footage reveals the White woman struck first. Additionally, she’s accused of spewing racial insults and striking Johnson in the groin before his retaliatory response. Her record and reputation remain, unblemished and white.

    Tears or talons, they’re lethally proficient.

    North Carolina’s unresolved deaths of Jonathan Ferrell and Lenon Lacy have the fingerprints of a racist woman. Lacy, 17, was found hanging from a swing set in the summer of 2014. His death was ruled a suicide, but Nick Fagge reported that Lacy’s 31-year-old “white girlfriend… says she believes their relationship led to his murder.” She had been warned not to date Black males in “Crackertown.”

    Ferrell crashed his vehicle on a late summer evening in the summer of 2013. Unfortunately, he asked a white woman for help. She reported a prowler, and one of the responding officers, Randall Kerrick, needed a dozens bullets to suppress Ferrell. Kerrick’s manslaughter trial begins July 20.

    Family wary after Naperville woman’s death in Texas jail; grand jury to inquire, which is a good thing.

    Banner drop on the High Line right now for one year since the murder of #EricGarner. #StillCantBreathe ([camera emoji]: @AshAgony)

    And here’s more on Sandra Bland: Black Activist’s Death in Texas Jail Similar to 2012 Suicide

    Last week Sandra Bland drove to Texas from Naperville, Illinois, for a job interview. After arriving on Friday, she posted a series of photos on her Facebook account under the title, “The Official Welcome Back.”

    The official welcome back took a deadly turn, however, as the 28-year-old Bland was dead by Monday morning after an encounter with the Waller County Sheriff’s Office. Bland was apparently pulled over for changing lanes without a signal; she was arrested and charged with assault of a public servant.

    On July 14, the sheriff’s office posted a statement that said, in part: “On Monday, July 13th, at approximately 09:00 am, a female inmate [Sandra Bland] was found in her cell not breathing from what appears to be self-inflicted asphyxiation.”

    According to the press release, attempts by authorities to perform CPR on Bland were unsuccessful. The office further claimed that Bland was booked in county jail after she assaulted a police officer during a traffic stop on Friday.

    “Jailers saw Bland at 7 a.m. Monday when they gave her breakfast and again at 8 a.m. when they spoke with her over the jail intercom,” Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith told ABC 7 Chicago. “Smith says she was found dead an hour later,” the station reported.

    Smith was suspended in 2007, when he was chief of the Hempstead Police Department, after allegations of racism were leveled against him and several other white officers. “The predominantly black Hempstead City Council voted to suspend Smith for two weeks without pay after viewing videotapes and hearing allegations of racism from local residents against him and the other four officers,” reported the Houston Chronicle’s Helen Eriksen. The city council also placed Smith on probation for six months and ordered him to take anger management classes. The Daily Kos reported that Smith was fired in 2008. Dana Lewis, a spokesperson for the Waller County Sheriff’s Office, declined to comment on the 2007 allegations of racial bias.

    […]

    Bland’s demise is similar to the 2012 death of another Waller County Jail inmate named James Harper Howell IV. The Houston Chronicle reported at the time that Howell, like Bland, was arrested for assaulting a police officer.

    “On the day he was found hanging,” the paper reported, “he had been sitting in the day room by himself watching television. Jailers had routinely checked on him. He spoke with jailers and gave no indication he would engage in suicidal behavior.” In Howell’s mugshot, he can be seen with what appear to be bruises to his face. That death, which was ruled a suicide, was also investigated by the Texas Rangers.

    Meanwhile, Bland’s family and friends reject the theory that she committed suicide. Alana Taylor, one of Bland’s sisters, told the black Greek life news site Watch The Yard that “Suicide would be the LAST thing on her mind as she was on the brink of starting a new chapter of life: a new job, a strong cause to fight for and a thick network of support.”

    Indeed, Bland’s Facebook profile indicates she was an outspoken critic of police violence and brutality. Her Facebook cover photo is a cartoon drawing that shows a handcuffed black man, bloodied and beaten, in the back of a police cruiser seated next to white supremacist Dylann Roof, who is eating a hamburger. And her profile picture is one sentence: “Now Legalize Being Black in America.”

    New York Woman Says She Was Called “Dyke” And Attacked By Police – and I believe her.

    Stephanie Dorceant was on her way home from a concert in Brooklyn Saturday morning with her girlfriend, when she encountered the off-duty police officer. Dorceant, 29, was arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer, the public information officer at the Brooklyn 63rd Precinct Police confirmed.

    A spokesperson for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office told BuzzFeed News that they are aware of Dorceant’s hate crime allegation and “are in the process of investigating it in its entirety.”

    […]

    Allman, who was also present at the news conference, said that as Dorceant was being beaten by Aquino, she could see their taxi driver, who had dropped them off in the parking lot of the Brooklyn 63rd Precinct just minutes before, standing there staring.

    “He was yelling, ‘Call the cops,’” Allman said. It was then, after Aquino had been beating Dorceant and fighting off Allman, that he finally told them he was a police officer.

    “When other police officers showed up I thought we were saved,” Dorceant said in her statement. “That was not the case….Instead of helping me and my girlfriend and arresting our attacker, more officers piled on top of me, slamming me onto the pavement and putting their knees on my neck.”

    The officers then put both of the women into handcuffs and into a precinct holding cell. Allman said she was released after 20 minutes, while Dorceant says that, after being briefly treated at a nearby hospital, she was moved to Rikers Island jail complex and held for nearly three days, her lawyers said in a statement.

    “I didn’t know what time it was; I barely knew what day it was,” Dorceant said of her night in Rikers. “I was stuck into a room with 50 other women. It was honestly like being in a concentration camp. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

    After her $1,000 bail had been posted by her girlfriend, Dorceant learned she was charged with two felonies for attempted assault and assault of a police officer.
    […]

    Dorceant’s case has been put on a felony dismissal calendar, Moore said, which means that the case will be dismissed in January if nothing else occurs that would need to be taken into consideration by the court.

    Another attorney representing Dorceant said investigators told them that none of the surveillance cameras in the area appear to have captured the alleged attack.

    However, Moore said he’s confident the case will be dismissed earlier, as it is obvious the charges “make no sense.”

    Moore added that Dorceant will likely seek damages from the New York Police Department after the case is dismissed.

    Benjamin Zeman, another lawyer representing Dorceant, said she had not filed a formal complaint against the officer, as she has been advised by the DA’s office not to speak to any members of the NYPD. Womble added that an internal investigation is occurring within the NYPD per protocol, but they are not relying on it for any valuable information.

    “We’re at a tipping point here with the NYPD in this city,” Womble told the press. “We can put a [Civilian Complaint Review] behind the CCRB and another behind them, but all we really need is cops to stop being bullies.”

    Homophobia on top of racism – or, I guess, first the homophobia, then the racism on top, in this case. I’m glad the couple is (mostly) okay. What I would really like to see is charges against that horrible excuse of a police officer, though.

    How Racist Is Solitary Confinement? Do I really want to know?

    It hardly bears repeating that people of color like Cruz, who is Black Hispanic, are incarcerated in staggering numbers. But a new study authored by health officials with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) shows that racial disparities in jail run far deeper: black and Hispanic inmates are vastly more likely to be punished with solitary confinement than their white counterparts, and less likely to receive diagnoses of mental illness. The study, which is based on the records of 45,000 first-time inmates in the New York City jail system between 2011 and 2013, found that black people were 2.52 times more likely than whites to be put in solitary, where inmates spend 22 to 24 hours a day alone in a cell. Hispanics were 1.65 times more likely to enter solitary. And while blacks and Hispanics represented 40 and 46 percent of the study population, respectively, they comprised a much smaller portion of those admitted to the jail system’s mental health service: 16 and 13 percent. Twenty-two percent of mental health patients were white, though they made up just 9 percent of the study.

    The federal government does not keep track of the racial composition of the roughly 80,000 people in solitary in America, though the study findings fall in line with data from a handful of states suggesting that people of color in other jurisdictions are locked in extreme isolation at similarly disproportionate rates.

    “Jail is a microcosm of society,” said Dr. Daniel Selling, who ran mental health services at Rikers until mid-2014. “A lot of society thinks that black and brown people are criminals.” Diagnosing mental disorders is a very subjective process, he added. “You’re using objective criteria, but three different people could come up with three different diagnoses.” Racial bias creeps in. White inmates, the study found, are more likely to be diagnosed with mental problems that are generally thought to be more “legitimate,” disorders like anxiety or depression — afflictions that respond well to medication. White patients are also more likely to be diagnosed with “serious mental illnesses” like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, both of which exempt prisoners from solitary in New York state, can help them secure benefits when they’re released, and tend to elicit more sympathy. Whites are also more often diagnosed within seven days of being incarcerated.

    Although jail medical staff are less likely to give black and Hispanic patients a mental health diagnosis, when they do they will more often assign these inmates mood, adjustment or antisocial personality disorders. The latter can be “pejorative,” Selling said, meaning the diagnosis is more of a reflection of a negative interaction between the patient and the clinician, “where maybe somebody was a dick because they were angry or they were frustrated.”

    “It’s like a scarlet letter,” Selling adds. Clinicians who see the patient down the line will expect “someone who is going to be manipulative, who is going to be gaming the system, who is going to be aggressive.”

    According to the study, a black or Hispanic inmate is more likely than a white inmate to be diagnosed with a mental illness in conjunction with solitary, and later in his jail stay — meaning he’s more likely to receive a diagnosis either because he has already been psychologically damaged by solitary, or because he’s acting out to avoid the box, lighting a fire in his cell, say, or banging his head on the wall, or cutting himself. Among those with a late mental health diagnosis included in the study, close to 40 percent of blacks and 26 percent of Hispanics experienced solitary during their incarceration, while only about nine percent of whites did.

    […]

    “Racism is a blunt thing” in jail, said Five Mualimm-ak, the director of Incarcerated Nation, a group pushing to end the use of solitary confinement, who himself spent five years in isolated confinement in the New York state prison system. “You start talking to people and they’ll say, well, I was put in here because a guard said, ‘I don’t like black people.’ Like, literally. They’re like, “Hey, n*****, you’re going to the box.”

    Inmates can be disciplined for something as petty as refusing an order, or not returning a food tray, or talking back to an officer. Or for attempting suicide. And jail staff have broad discretion in sending someone to the box. Inmates have no right to counsel at disciplinary hearings, and lately at Rikers there have been “a lot of due process violations,” said Barbara Hamilton, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society who represents New York City inmates appealing disciplinary tickets. She said that inmates prevail in about 10 percent of appeals.

    “When you have very little oversight and little controls on systems of extreme punishment, what you see is discrimination and animus works its way in,” said Amy Fettig, the senior staff counsel for the ACLU’s National Prison Project. “It’s an epidemic in nearly every place of correction in this country.”

    There’s more at the link.

  35. rq says

    Family of black Alabama teenager who died in police cell still waiting for answers

    The family of an 18-year-old black woman who died in police custody in Alabama are demanding to see video footage taken inside the jail cell where she was held for several hours before she was discovered lifeless.

    Sheneque Proctor, the mother of an infant boy, died in a holding cell at Bessemer city jail on 2 November. She had been arrested the previous afternoon for alleged disorderly conduct and resisting arrest outside a private party she was attending with friends.

    In their first media interview, members of the Proctor family told the Guardian that questions over Sheneque’s death have gone largely unanswered by city and state officials. They suspect neglect on the part of her jailers, and see her passing as the latest example of unequal treatment of African Americans in the hands of US law enforcement.

    The dead woman’s mother, Scherita Proctor, said that in her opinion the jail had failed to give her daughter medical help at a critical – and ultimately fatal – moment. “I don’t think she was treated fairly. She may have acted out, but that doesn’t mean you refuse to help her.”

    She also complained of the lack of information coming from official sources. “I don’t feel I’ve been given any respect, considering I lost my child. They should have at least have come to me and told me something.”

    The family’s lawyer, Hank Sherrod, who has experience of cases of death in police custody, said that the city police department had promised to release the video to the family by the New Year but had so far failed to honour the pledge. “This young woman was denied medical treatment while being recorded on videotape right before police eyes. The fact that they won’t hand the film over makes us wonder what they have to hide.”

    A rally is being organised on Saturday morning by the Alabama branch of the NAACP outside Bessemer city jail. A petition has also been launched on change.org that calls for a federal investigation into Proctor’s death.

    It’s almost like a theme or something.

    #SandraBland encouraged us in this video to use our voice to create change. Will you #SayHerName & demand answers?

    Today @johnlegend visited a prison in Portugal learning how they decriminalized all drugs to reduce prisons & crime.

    Here’s some stats on suicide, by race, which have been brought up in light of Sandra Bland’s prison suicide: from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

    Suicide Rates by Race/Ethnicity

    White males accounted for 70% of all suicides in 2013.

    In 2013, the highest U.S. suicide rate (14.2) was among Whites and the second highest rate (11.7) was among American Indians and Alaska Natives (Figure 5). Much lower and roughly similar rates were found among Asians and Pacific Islanders (5.8), Blacks (5.4) and Hispanics (5.7).

    Note that the CDC records Hispanic origin separately from the primary racial or ethnic groups of White, Black, American Indian or Alaskan Native, and Asian or Pacific Islander, since individuals in all of these groups may also be Hispanic.

    Mayor called Obamas “monkey man” and “gorilla face”, but “I’m not a racist”, via BoingBoing.

    Officer who pepper-sprayed student placed on leave

    A Waller police officer videotaped pepper spraying a student, seemingly unprovoked, has been placed on leave.

    Officer Adolphus Cannon is on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation by the Waller Police Department. The Texas Rangers and Waller County District Attorney’s Office are assisting.

    The incident happened early Monday morning, October 6, outside the Meadows Apartments near Prairie View. Police responded to a large disturbance and Bobby Hall, A Prairie View A&M senior, grabbed his camera and started recording.

    “Yeah, it’s what I do. I’m a mass communication major here at our school,” Hall told Eyewitness News.

    The video shows a Waller Police Department officer using pepper spray on Hall. The department identified him as Cannon.

    From October 2014; that’s the same department where Sandra Bland was found hanged.

  36. rq says

    Back out for the 2nd day in a row. We want answers. #WhatHappenedToSandraBland #SandraBland #BlackLivesMatter
    A local resident just walked up and said this is the 3rd time. #WhatHappenedToSandraBland

    Another Fatal Police Shooting Caught on Video—and More Questions About a Dispatcher’s Role

    According to the Los Angeles Times, there may have been a miscommunication by the police dispatcher:

    The shooting occurred about 2:30 a.m. on June 2, 2013, after a bicycle was stolen from outside a CVS Pharmacy on Western Avenue. A police dispatcher mistakenly told officers that the crime was a robbery, which usually involves a theft using weapons or force, and officers headed to the area in search of two suspects.

    Gardena police Sgt. Christopher Cuff saw two men riding bicycles east on Redondo Beach Boulevard. The men were friends of the bike theft victim and were searching for the missing bicycle. Mistaking them for the thieves, Cuff ordered the men to stop and put their hands up, according to a district attorney’s memo written by a prosecutor who reviewed the police videos.

    The Gardena killing is the latest in a string of high-profile police shootings captured on video, which have brought scrutiny on police tactics and procedures. With the Tamir Rice shooting in Cleveland, evidence emerged that the dispatcher who relayed the 911 call did not include potentially key details about the suspect, as Mother Jones previously reported. And according to a recent Washington Post data investigation of police shootings of mentally ill suspects, “officers are routinely dispatched with information that is incomplete or wrong.”

    Meanwhile at the Zuiderpark, the old flowers have been removed and only the candles for #MitchHenriquez remain.

    President Obama Heads to Prison in Pursuit of Criminal Justice Reform

    During an historic visit to a federal prison in Oklahoma Thursday, President Barack Obama said that young people are prone to making mistakes and that the criminal justice system needs to determine how to better deal with and reform them.

    Obama made the comments at El Reno federal prison in Oklahoma, where he met with six inmates and prison officials as part of a VICE special to be aired this fall on HBO.

    The visit was the first by any sitting president to a federal corrections facility, and came amid a week of actions and events highlighting the inequities of a system that he said disproportionately affects minority communities and is costing taxpayers too much, while rehabilitation rates for prisoners remain too low.

    At the medium-security prison for nonviolent male offenders, Obama met with six inmates. He said the men’s stories and the mistakes they made were not dissimilar to those the president made in his own youth, when he admittedly smoked pot and took cocaine.

    “When they describe their youth and their childhood, these are young people who made mistakes that aren’t that different from the mistakes I made and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made,” Obama told reporters after the meeting. “The difference is, they did not have the kind of support structures, the second chances, the resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes.”

    America needs to distinguish between violent criminals and people “doing stupid things,” Obama said, adding that many young people who end up in prison for nonviolent drug crimes grew up in environments where drug trafficking is prevalent. Giving those people decades-long sentences is what is contributing to the country’s overcrowded prison system, and more resources should be directed to education, support and rehabilitation, he said.

    After his private meeting with inmates, the president was taken to survey the inside of an unoccupied prison cell.

    “Three full-grown men in a 9-by-10 cell,” he said, as he looked at the cell’s meager furnishings, among them a toilet, sink, bunk bed and a third bed placed against a wall. “Overcrowding like that is something that has to be addressed.”

    El Reno currently houses approximately 1,300 inmates out of a broader national prison population of roughly 2.2 million.

    On Tuesday, the president had taken his push for reform to Philadelphia, where he addressed leaders and members of the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights group. There, at the 106th annual NAACP convention, Obama outlined wide-ranging proposals to reform communities, courtrooms, and cellblocks in an effort to rebalance a system historically “skewed by race and wealth.”

    A bit more at the link.

    #JusticeForSandra and #SandraBland trending on Twitter as answers are demanded of Texas police who allowed her to die The death of Sandra Bland attracted little attention until today, and that’s probably how authorities in Waller County, Texas would have preferred it — but after video of her not assaulting an officer, as police had claimed, came to light, they have little choice.

    Even Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis is questioning the sheriff’s department’s official story that she died “from what appears to be self-inflicted asphyxiation.”

    “I will admit it is strange someone who had everything going for her would have taken her own life,” Mathis said of the young woman who had just moved back to Texas to take a position at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University. “That’s why it’s very important a thorough investigation is done and that we get a good picture of what Ms. Bland was going through the last four or five days of her life.”

    “If there was something nefarious, or if there was some foul play involved, we’ll get to the bottom of that,” he added — and if the reaction on Twitter today was any indication, the Internet will hold him to his word

  37. rq says

    Borkquote sighting there – all text following the last link should be quoted!

    Sandra Bland’s death sparks online demand for answers, via the BBC.

    Police Shoot, Kill Mentally Ill Native American Man; Family Demands Justice, another article on Paul Castaway.

    As many as 100 people marched through the streets of Denver on Tuesday to protest the death of a mentally ill Native American man who was shot multiple times by police late Sunday.

    A Denver police officer, whose name has not been released, shot Paul Castaway, 35, four times in the torso after officers said Castaway had gotten “dangerously close” with a knife, The Denver Post reported.

    Castaway’s mother, Lynn Eagle Feather, who is Sicangu Lakota, told ICTMN that she had called the police on Sunday because her son, who suffered from schizophrenia, was experiencing an episode that evening, and that she sought help getting him back under control. Eagle Feather said she told the 9-1-1 operator that her son was mentally ill.

    According to police, Castaway had charged at them with a long knife, but security video at nearby Capital City Mobile Home Park tells a different story.

    Eagle Feather said she was able to watch the video, which shows her son holding the knife to his neck when police opened fire. A Denver Fox News affiliate KDVR reporter also viewed the video and confirmed that Castaway did not charge police with the knife while aiming it at them.

    Eagle Feather said she was on her porch across the street when she heard gun shots. “It was rapid fire – boom, boom, boom, boom. I didn’t hear no warning,” she said. Eagle Feather told KDVR that she regrets calling the police for help.

    Tuesday’s march was preceded by a rally outside the Denver Police Department headquarters where members of the American Indian Movement Colorado chapter and supporters shouted, “Justice for Paul!” Supporters arrived wearing T-shirts reading, “What’s wrong with you guys?” – which, according to witnesses, were Castaway’s last dying words.

    Cops laughed at our protest of their ongoing violence and pushed #PaulCastaway’s grieving mother. #NativeLivesMatter

    OFFICIAL STATEMENT FROM ACLU-MS ON CHOKING DEATH OF JONATHAN SANDERS

    JACKSON, Miss – The ACLU-MS would like to extend our thoughts and condolences to the family and friends of Jonathan Sanders. Unfortunately this case is not an isolated incident. Far too many Black men die every year in police encounters, and many more are seriously injured. People of color are disproportionately affected by excessive use of force at the hands of the police.

    At this time we join the community in Stonewall, Mississippi in noting the importance of increased training for police on excessive use of force and transparency in police practices, especially in regards to interactions with communities of color.

    We support the Sanders family and call for complete police transparency and a thorough independent investigation into the death of Johnathan Sanders. We expect that in the aftermath of this horrible injustice, local law enforcement will fully respect the rights of the community to engage in peaceful assembly, prayer, and protest as they mourn this loss.

    Hey Mr @POTUS sorry about the confederate flag thing earlier..OK ranks 48th/50 in education. We literally have no idea what were doing.

  38. says

    Off-grid Rambo plotted to spark violence against Ferguson protesters by gluing gun to black mans hand:

    David Michael Hagler intended to kill police and then glue a gun to a black man’s hand in an attempt to get him shot and set off additional violence in the city where protests have continued for nearly a year since the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen by a white cop, reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

    Federal prosecutors say the 53-year-old Hagler made racist statements as he discussed his plans with two confidential informants, which led to a March raid of his St. Louis home that investigators say turned up more than 20 guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

    Hagler was charged with possession of a machine gun, making false statements during the purchase of a gun, possession of firearms after having been convicted of a domestic assault, and possession of firearms by a marijuana user, the newspaper reported.

    But his attorney argues that some of the evidence should be tossed out, arguing that the confidential informants made false statements to St. Louis police and the FBI.

    Defense attorney Matthew Radefeld concedes his client made racist and prejudice statements against blacks, but he argued that federal prosecutors had no evidence that he intended to carry out his plot.

    Hagler lived an “off-the-grid” lifestyle within city limits and had grown increasingly angry toward his ex-wife, events in nearby Ferguson, and fears that he would lose his property over unpaid taxes, one of the informants told federal investigators.

    One of the informants compared Hagler to the vigilante “Rambo” character played by Sylvester Stallone in several movies.

    ****
    #IfIDieInPoliceCustody Trends As People Look For Answers in the Death of Sandra Bland

    People are looking for answers when it comes to the death of Sandra Bland. Bland, a 28-year-old Illinois native, was road tripping to Texas to start her new job at Prairie View A&M University. But she never made it. Bland was allegedly pulled over for failing to use a signal to switch lanes. It was that traffic stop where the cop alleged she became combative and was arrested and charged with “assault on a public servant.”

    A day later, Bland was found dead in her jail cell. Authorities allege that Bland hung herself, but Bland’s family and friends aren’t buying that story. And neither is social media.

    Bland’s name has been a trending hashtag for the last two days. And on Thursday night, people on Twitter started echoing their own sentiments when it comes to the possibility of being killed while in police custody. #IfIDieInPoliceCustody is a sad sentiment about how people feel about those who were sworn to protect and serve.
    […]
    #IfIDieInCustody is reminiscent of #IfTheyGunnedMeDown that trended after the murder of Mike Brown, that took place almost a year ago in Ferguson, Mo. Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen countless black people die at the hands of law enforcement. And in the majority of those cases, the police officers got off scot-free.

    No one knows what happened to Bland. Her family deserves answers. Her friends deserves answers. And no one deserves to live in fear of law enforcement. But unfortunately this is a harsh reality we deal with.

    As an aside, I found one of the Tweets highly amusing:

    Do not let Don Lemon within 10 feet of whatever State I died in. Do not let him utter my name.

  39. rq says

    Two Republican Congressmen Scold Confederate Flag Wavers For Insulting President Obama

    You would think that Oklahomans might be excited to host the president, but upon his arrival in both Oklahoma City and Durant, protesters greeted his entourage by waving Confederate flags while shouting insults at the commander-in-chief.

    Since Oklahoma was not even a state during the Civil War, the president might have been astounded by the reception he received. Then again, Oklahoma being one of the reddest of the red Obama-hating states, he probably wasn’t surprised at all.

    The Confederate flag wavers however, did shock the sensibilities of at least two unlikely Oklahomans. Congressman Tom Cole, and Congressman Frank Lucas, both conservative Republicans, were so disgusted by the display they publicly chastised the protesters, electoral consequences be damned.

    In an interview with reporters Thursday, Rep. Lucas, (photo right) who is in line for a spot in leadership, took the extraordinary step of chastising the flag wavers:

    “Free speech is an amazing thing.” Rep. Lucas said. “Unfortunately this was an inappropriate use of it.”

    Rep. Cole (photo below right) went even farther, releasing this statement that would qualify as a heartfelt apology if he had just included the word “sorry.”

    “I was shocked and disappointed by those who showed up to wave Confederate flags soon after President Obama arrived in Oklahoma.

    “Their actions were not only disappointing but incredibly disrespectful, insensitive and embarrassing to the entire state. The unacceptable behavior displayed by these individuals certainly does not reflect the values and views of the vast majority of Oklahomans. No president should ever be confronted by such behavior, especially when the purpose of the visit was meant to celebrate and recognize some of our state’s greatest achievements.

    “The office of President of the United States is deserving of the respect of all Americans, regardless of how deeply we may disagree on issues or policies. Political differences are never a justification to insult the president, and I believe that such action shows disrespect for the office itself.

    “In this circumstance, I consider it to be particularly insensitive given the president’s personal graciousness when Oklahomans in Moore were devastated by tornadoes in May 2013.

    “Like me, I’m certain that the vast majority of people across our state are embarrassed and disappointed to see other Oklahomans engage in this sort of activity. Given the president’s purpose for visiting, all Oklahomans should have been proud to have him in the state and shown him the same hospitality that we routinely extend to those who visit our state.”

    It is a rare moment indeed for a conservative politician to split with his constituents to defend the president – especially this president. We advise our readers to keep one eye on the sky in case of flying pigs.

    Prosecutor investigating Sandra Bland’s death has troubling history of racial bias — just like the sheriff. Just proves that it’s the system, not the individuals (who contribute, but it’s the system that lets such individuals operate in the first place).

    Mathis, the prosecutor who is investigating the case, has a troubling history that suggests bias against blacks, reported blogger Shaun King of Daily Kos.

    Last year, the Rev. Walter Pendleton asked Mathis to provide documentation on prosecution rates by ethnicity in Waller County.

    Pendleton said the prosecutor responded to his public request with a string of abusive texts, telling the pastor he was “too stupid” to understand the term “selective prosecution” and apparently threatening to send law enforcement after his critic.

    “My hounds ain’t even started yet dumb ass,” Mathis wrote. “Keep talking. When I talk people will listen. Keep talking and I will sue your ass for slander. It works both ways. ‘Dr.’ Take your fake Dr. Ass and jump off a high cliff.”

    Pendleton, pastor of Pendleton Chapel Baptist Church, said he feared for his life because the prosecutor used a racially charged metaphor to threaten him.

    “What do hounds do? They hunt,” Pendleton said.

    Mathis admitted sending the texts, but he said he was simply attacking the pastor’s character.

    “Those statements were made by me in anger, but I stand behind them,” Mathis said.

    Good to know.

    Inside the Ku Klux Klan, via Reuters.

    A Klan group plans to hold a pro-Confederate flag rally at South Carolina’s capitol on July 18, where a statue of a former state governor who championed white supremacy was vandalised last month amid scrutiny of symbols associated with slavery.

    The Civil War-era flag and related monuments have become flashpoints after nine black men and women were gunned down at a historic church in Charleston, South Carolina.

    The suspected shooter, Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white man, had posed with a Confederate battle flag in photos posted on a website that displayed a racist manifesto attributed to him.

    South Carolina removed the Confederate battle flag from the state capitol grounds on July 10, relegating a divisive symbol of the South’s pro-slavery legacy to a museum.

    The Loyal White Knights chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, based in Pelham, North Carolina, said it will rally at the South Carolina State House on July 18.

    “We’re standing up for the Confederacy,” James Spears, the chapter’s “great titan,” said on June 30.

    He said speakers would address slavery, then the Klan will hold a cross-lighting, or cross-burning, ceremony on private property.

    The Ku Klux Klan, which had about 6 million members in the 1920s, now has some 2,000 to 3,000 members nationally in about 72 chapters, or klaverns, according to the Southern Poverty Law Centre, an organisation that monitors extremist groups.

    The Klan is known for its history of violence toward African-Americans.

    The issue of race relations has risen to the forefront of American society in the past few years – and even more so in the past month.

    After the horrific church shooting last month in Charleston, South Carolina, my attention was drawn to a group of images I recently reviewed by freelance photojournalist Johnny Milano.

    His photographs of white supremacists in candid settings provide an intimate and behind-the-scenes look at a culture that – 150 years after the end of the Civil War – still exists on the margins in America today.

    As part of a yearlong photojournalism and documentary program in 2012, Milano started a long-term documentary project on white supremacists in the United States.

    To take his project further, Milano started to research white power groups and the rise of their ranks, particularly after the terrorist attacks in New York on Sept. 11, 2001.

    To pursue his goals he reached out to the regional head of the National Socialist Movement, a white supremacist group. After gaining access, Milano was invited to photograph meetings and events where he came to encounter Ku Klux Klan members.

    Months into his project, Milano travelled by a car from state to state to cover rallies and “cross lighting” ceremonies, which have come to symbolise the Ku Klux Klan.

    “The KKK is still a hard organisation to make more intimate photographs of,” he said.

    While photographing the gatherings Milano said he wasn’t scared but describes a recent incident where a Klansman said he would “break my neck” if Milano photographed him or any of his members. In the end, no altercation took place.

    The 26-year-old photographer said he plans to carry on documenting white supremacists. In doing so, Milano would like to “remind them (you) that history doesn’t go away so easily.”

    The Texas Sheriff Where Sandra Bland Died Was Previously Suspended for Racism, Mic on the sheriff.

    African American Suicide Fact Sheet, pdf. For reference purposes.

    When French Beauty Means White Beauty

    When we talk about French beauty, we’re often discussing a few select traits that reflect a monolithic and colourless idealization. The usual idols are brought up as universal representations of the epitome: Brigitte Bardot, Anna Karina, and Françoise Hardy to recent celebrities including Marion Cotillard and Audrey Tatou. These women represent an effortless, carefree femininity that involves perfectly rumpled bed-head, big eyes magnified by the steady flick of black eyeliner, and the allure of unbothered glamour captured by a simple yet timeless wardrobe. They are beautiful but their beauty is exclusive, meant to be replicated but impossible to genuinely duplicate. The aesthetics that define French beauty are unattainable for the average woman not born with the seemingly innate ability to roll out of bed and look like a sleepy-lidded sex kitten. The term French beauty acts as coded classification, referring to a type of aspirational and not inspirational beauty that rejects women who do not fit the mould, even women who are by all means French, but do not have pale, porcelain skin. French beauty is inherently associated with whiteness in the same way that “All-American” is connected to blue eyes and Farrah-Fawcett-blonde hair. For many people, the whiteness of French beauty is a prime example of why representation matters.

    […]

    As Americans, we subscribe to the belief that French culture is somehow a far-removed fountain of youth, a sophisticated slice of European je ne sais quoi that cannot compare to rough-hewn edges of its American counterpart. When Nathalie Dolivo, a writer for French ELLE, wrote a blog post about black fashion, she observed that the renewed interest in fashion among the black community was a cultural enlightenment triggered by Michelle Obama, an indication that the “black-geoisie” had adopted “white codes of fashion”. She noted that the black community had only known streetwear, thus implying that through the adoption of “dressing white,” black fashionistas had expanded their couture horizons. Dolivo seemed to deduce that fashion was overwhelmingly determined by race and that black French citizens needed the aid of their white peers to teach them how to be chic.

    […]

    When we speak of French beauty, not only are we admiring a laissez-faire attitude, but we are upholding a Eurocentric standard that places whiteness at the centre. Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that Europe is free of racism and/or colourism, or that such institutions do not shape cultural standards. In a recent French study, it was revealed that “racism is on the rise in France, with half of the French population admitting that they have a racial prejudice”. The superficial world of beauty may seem unrelated to the macro problems of cultural racism and discrimination, but these beauty ideals are unmistakably connected to larger cultural practices. People want to see an accurate reflection of themselves in the media that they knowingly consume. This certainly can apply to fashion, as evident by the vocalization of needing diversity on catwalks and in the overall modelling industry. This isn’t to say that the beauty and fashion industries in France are completely shuttered to non-white beauty. The Cut, frequent indulgers of the French school of beauty, spoke to Lili Barbery-Coulon, who is in charge of beauty at M magazine and is also a blogger.

    […]

    In January of 2014, African-French model Cindy Bruna appeared in a Prada campaign, making her the third black woman ever to do so. But the fact that Bruna is one of the few to join such ranks attests to the necessity of diversifying French beauty.

    The beauty and fashion industries may be built upon the notion that exclusivity equals a heightened consumer desire, but that does not mean both should champion the unquestioned worship of one rigid definition at the expense of the unrepresented and underrepresented. When we move away from such schools of thought, we speak to the multidimensional and multi-ethnic resonance of fashion and style.

    […]

    The current model of French beauty requires that women who do not conform to this look must seek out other forms, other expressions of physicality that have otherwise been ignored or devalued. The root of the problem is not so much the adoration or appreciation of French beauty, but the rules that dictate who can own such beauty.

    Meet the Radical Brownies. Dedicated to providing young girls of color relevant life experiences.

  40. rq says

    New York, New York.
    Cops used banned chokehold on ex-Marine after accusing him of trespassing at his own Brooklyn home: suit

    Cops assaulted and used a banned chokehold on a former Marine after accusing him of burglarizing and trespassing — at his own Brooklyn home, according to a new lawsuit.

    Rodric Small, 29, was outside his three-family Prospect Lefferts Gardens house last Dec. 14, inspecting the vacant first-floor apartment to make sure an actual intruder wasn’t there, when officers spotted him and mistakenly believed he didn’t belong, the Brooklyn Supreme Court suit said.

    “I was doing my usual tour of the house for the night, to make sure my family is safe,” said Small, whose family has lived at the Winthrop St. home for 15 years.

    “I had my flashlight and saw a light at the front, the person said he was a cop and waved for me to come to the front door,” Small told the Daily News.

    […]

    Small went to the porch to call for his mother’s or father’s attention and asked the officer if he could go upstairs to grab his ID.

    The officer agreed, but as Small tried to close the door, the officer put his foot in the threshold preventing it from closing, according to the suit, which was filed Wednesday.

    […]

    “He said he couldn’t allow me to close the door because he wanted to do an investigation without a warrant,” Small said.

    They argued about the grounds for a search when the officer grabbed Small — who served three years in the Marines before getting discharged — and pinned him against the wall of the cramped vestibule.

    Two more cops showed up and Small was “viciously punched” and a “chokehold was employed,” according to the lawsuit.

    “My father was at the stairs begging them not to choke me and my mother was screaming ‘What are you doing to my son?’” he said.

    Small’s parents continued to plead with the officers that their son lived there and wasn’t trespassing.

    “They were forcing me into the unmarked car and I still didn’t know why I was arrested. I kept asking and the sergeant said I’ll know when I get the precinct,” Small said.

    Small was charged with resisting arrest, trespassing, burglary and obstruction of government administration.

    “The police officers here illegally entered Mr. Small’s home and arrested him for no lawful reason. We seek to hold these officers accountable so as to prevent such unlawful uses of force and arrest,” said Small’s lawyer, Aymen Aboushi.

    At the arraignment, prosecutors offered him a plea deal that he quickly turned down.

    At the next court appearance, Aboushi presented evidence that Small actually lived at the building, including his driver’s license.

    The judge immediately asked prosecutors to drop the charges after seeing that his identification matched the location of the alleged trespassing, Aboushi said.

    “The judge apologized to me for what happened,” Small said.

    Small is seeking an unspecified amount for excessive force, false arrest and other charges.

    Confederate flag demand has Alabama company ‘absolutely swamped’. Sadly.

    When the controversy over the Confederate flag erupted last month, the owner of a Huntsville flag company said her business would make the flags even if no one else would.

    And that’s apparently what’s happened.

    “I’m not aware of another company in the United States making these flags,” said Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag & Banner, in an interview Thursday with AL.com.

    So now you know why the website for the Governors Drive business near downtown Huntsville cautions visitors that all Confederate flag orders will take two to three weeks to be filled.

    “We are getting absolutely swamped,” Kennedy said. “It’s let up a little but what we’re finding is that people are still wanting the really pretty sewn, the ones that are more like a piece of art with the sewn stripes and the applique stars. Those are really labor intensive and it takes a long time. We’re still being flooded with orders for those. We’re getting tons of overseas orders. We’re going as fast as we can.”

    Kennedy hasn’t flinched in her stance regarding the confederate flag — which she has described as a historic flag and not a hateful flag. When flag protests began after the man charged in the South Carolina church shooting last month held the stars-and-stripes in a social media photo, Kennedy maintained her business would continue to sell it.

    And if necessary, make their own flags to sell.

    It’s about history. Yes, have you looked into that history?

    Along with the influx in confederate flags in this area, I’ve also seen several Gadsden flags flying from trucks.

    Sandra Bland Tried to Post Bail Before Allegedly Committing Suicide – I understand she was to be released??

    Before she was found dead of apparent suicide in a Texas jail cell, Sandra Bland called a bail bondsman hoping to get out.

    “I talked to her when she first went to jail,” Joe Booker of Hempstead told The Daily Beast on Thursday. “I called her mother for her.”

    Booker then hung up and didn’t respond to further requests for comment. It would have cost friends or family $500 to bail out Bland, Captain Brian Cantrell of the Waller County Sheriff’s Office said.

    Why she would take her own life after apparently working with Booker to secure her freedom is one of many questions surrounding her death.

    “Based on the Sandy I know, that’s unfathomable to me,” Bland’s sister Sharon said at a press conference.

    Bland did, however, say in March that she was dealing with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

    “I gotta be honest with you guys,” she told people in a Facebook video, “I’ve been dealing with something that some of you all may be dealing with now. It’s a little bit of depression as well as PTSD.”

    Bland also expressed her faith in God, who “blocked that depressing moment in my mind.” Bland closed the video with an apology for her lack of posts, saying, “Depression and post-traumatic stress disorder are things that affect everyone—black, white, it does not matter.”

    […]

    Bland spoke out against police, the deaths of blacks at the hands of law enforcement, and other issues affecting the African-American community on her Facebook page. She called the video dispatches “Sandy Speaks.” In one, she took on the subject of the Black Lives Matter movement.

    “What I need you guys to understand is that being a black person in America is very, very hard,” she recently said.

    I skipped the part where they go into her (very short) criminal record. Is that really necessary? Like, at all?

    The Texas County Where Sandra Bland Died Is Fraught With Racial Tensions.

    Whether or not it was suicide, Bland’s death comes amid an ongoing national conversation about race and criminal justice in America, and casts a spotlight on a county apparently rife with racial tensions. In 2007, Waller County Sheriff R. Glenn Smith was suspended—and eventually fired by city council members—while serving as police chief in Hempstead, a city in Waller County, following accusations of racism by community members. Less than a year after his firing, Smith was elected county sheriff. When asked about the accusations on Thursday, Smith said his firing in 2007 was “political,” and denied that he was a racist.

    The history of Waller County’s racial tensions doesn’t end there. In 2003, the Houston Chronicle reported that two prominent black county officials, DeWayne Charleston and Keith Woods, claimed they were the target of an investigation by the county’s chief prosecutor because of their race. Charleston had been accused of keeping erratic hours and falsifying an employee time-sheet record, according to the Houston Chronicle. Charleston and Woods claimed the Concerned Citizens of Waller County was behind those accusations, and said that the group was conducting a Ku Klux Klan-like campaign against black officials:

    Charleston, the county’s first black judge, said a county grand jury has interviewed him, although he declined to elaborate. And Woods, the four-term mayor of Brookshire, is facing questions about his role in the last city election.

    “I do believe race plays a big part in what DeWayne and I are facing,” Woods said. “I feel that way because we’re the ones obviously not being given the benefit of the doubt (when) we face contrary decisions by the district attorney.”

    Kitzman, 69, a retired state district judge, denies any racist implications in his interest in the two men. He says he’s simply doing his job by looking into complaints brought to him by residents.

    Houston Chronicle reporter Leah Binkovitz also pointed out that a disproportionately high number of lynchings have been recorded in Waller County. According to the advocacy group Equal Justice Initiative, the county saw 15 lynchings of African Americans between 1877 and 1950.

    Bland’s death has also raised questions about conditions at the Waller County jail, where in 2012, a 29-year-old white inmate named James Harper Howell IV, hung himself with the bed sheets in his cell. When asked about the 2012 death on Thursday, Smith responded that his staff had been monitoring inmates but that “these incidents occur in jails.”

    Ah, reddit, you have fixed nothing. ‘Coontown’: A noxious, racist corner of Reddit survives recent purge. THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS EXAMPLES OF HUMANS BEING RACIST SHITHEADS OF THE WORST KIND.

    Last week, Reddit interim chief executive Ellen Pao, who sought to remove some of the freewheeling, bulletin-board style Web site’s more objectionable content, resigned after a petition questioned her commitment to free speech.

    In damage-control mode after her exit, Huffman — who replaced Pao as chief executive and whose handle on the site is “spez” — laid out what content would no longer be acceptable on the site, including spam, child pornography, publishing confidential information and “anything that incites harm or violence against an individual or group of people.” Further explaining this last category of inciting harm or violence, Huffman wrote, “It’s ok to say ‘I don’t like this group of people.’ It’s not ok to say, ‘I’m going to kill this group of people.’”

    “We’ve spent the last few days here discussing and agree that an approach like this allows us as a company to repudiate content we don’t want to associate with the business, but gives individuals freedom to consume it if they choose,” Huffman wrote in one of Reddit’s “Ask Me Anything” sessions Thursday. “This is what we will try, and if the hateful users continue to spill out into mainstream reddit, we will try more aggressive approaches. Freedom of expression is important to us, but it’s more important to us that we at reddit be true to our mission.”

    Yet, despite Huffman’s comments, “r/CoonTown” lives on.

    CoonTown, as its loathsome name might suggest, is a subreddit for racists. CoonTown offers a buffet of crude jokes and racial slurs; complaints about the liberal media; links to news stories that highlight black-on-white crime or Confederate pride; and discussions of “black people appropriating white culture.”

    […]

    CoonTown might seem the perfect target for Huffman’s spiel against “anything that incites harm or violence against an individual or group of people.” Even before his comments, subreddits such as “r/FatPeopleHate” and “r/S—tN—rsSay” were bounced from Reddit.

    CoonTown persisted. Why? Huffman tried to explain, making quite the legalistic distinction.

    “We’ll consider banning subreddits that clearly violate the guidelines in my post — the ones that are illegal or cause harm to others,” he wrote. “There are many subreddits whose contents I and many others find offensive, but that alone is not justification for banning. /r/rapingwomen will be banned. They are encouraging people to rape. /r/coontown will be reclassified. The content there is offensive to many, but does not violate our current rules for banning.”

    CoonTown’s surprise at its survival didn’t prevent celebration.

    “It was a rare double-loss for n—ers today,” read one thread. “First they found out /r/Coontown would remain. Second, they found /r/RapingWomen was to be removed.”

    Reddit’s decision to reclassify Coontown as “NSFW” and to require an opt-in to view the discussion thread came on the same day that Pao weighed in on forces that have always been competing with one another on the Internet.

    “Balancing free expression with privacy and the protection of participants has always been a challenge for open-content platforms on the Internet,” she wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post Thursday. “But that balancing act is getting harder. The trolls are winning.”

  41. Saad says

    Nearly 40,000 people have signed a petition to remove a black memorial monument in South Carolina because it offends whites

    “The African American Monument depicts slave ships, mistreatment and words such as ‘segregation’ and ‘Jim Crow,’” the petition states. “This being the case, it is undeniable that this monument can and does serve to invoke in the white community feelings of shame, humiliation and offense, serving as a constant reminder of the dark history of slavery.”

    The petition had gathered more than 39,300 signatures by Friday afternoon, with a goal set for 50,000 signatures asking for the state legislature to remove the monument.

    Harmon said he hoped both monuments would remain on the statehouse grounds, but he said the African-American Monument should go if the Confederate flag came down — as it did July 10.

  42. rq says

    Okay so there’s a backlog on the work computer. Excuse, but here’s some overdue stuff:
    Larry Wilmore on Bill O’Reilly, via Mano Singham.
    Black Atheists Condemn White Terrorist Massacre at Charleston Black Church, via Black Skeptics (Black Skeptics Los Angeles, to be specific).
    Not Yours, Not Ever, via Stephanie Zvan.
    No more compliments, thank you very much, via PZ, though I may have posted this one already, I can’t remember.

    The confederate flag starts coming down, via Mano Singham.
    Civil asset forfeiture abuses curtailed, via Mano Singham.

  43. rq says

    Thanks, Saad!

    +++

    Clearing the old tabs continues.
    12 top moments at the BET Awards, because black artists (CBC),
    Who or what is burning black churches in the U.S.? Arsonists or accidents? (CBC)
    Fires at black churches in several U.S. states under investigation (CBC)
    KKK chapter to hold Confederate flag rally at South Carolina State House – I’ve been a bit confused about the dates, but yes, that will be tomorrow, not today (CBC).

    Barack Obama’s string of political successes starts the legacy talk again (CBC)
    Confederate flag comes down at South Carolina capitol.

    Couple more comments to go…

  44. rq says

    Warner Bros. to stop licensing Dukes of Hazzard goods with Confederate flag (CBC)
    Charleston church shooting: Confederate flag belongs only in museum (CBC)
    NYC subway mosaics prompt debate on Confederate symbols (lots of fancy-footed excuse-giving in this one) (CBC)
    Right-wing extremism a greater threat in North America (Toronto Star)

    And two audio shows that might be of interest, via the CBC:
    With/On Ta-Nehisi Coates and racism as a physical experience;
    On Sandra Bland’s mysterious hanging.

    Enough tabs for one more comment, but these will at least be recent!

  45. rq says

    First, three more from the Toronto Star:
    Friends say death of young woman in Texas police custody suspicious (on Sandra Bland);
    Saunders’ comments belong in a police state: Keenan (on the Toronto police);
    Burlington care centre comes under fire for ad specifying ‘Caucasian’ applicants (on discriminatory hiring practices).

    And last three from the CBC:
    New Reddit policies leave ‘racist’ forums up and running;
    Sandra Bland, found hanged in Texas jail, cited depression in her Facebook posts;
    Sandra Bland’s death in Texas jail questioned by family.

    The second CBC link gives a bit more detail into how she hanged herself, as well as other details, like how she was in distress, felt that her arm may have been fractured and was therefore in pain, etc. So while no police officer or employee may have put their hands on her directly, the sheer attitude of negligence and carelessness and a lack of compassion (not to mention the baseless arrest in the first place) are mostly direct, contributing factors to her death.
    At home I left a link where Sandra Bland declares that she will change the world.
    Sadly, she just might.

  46. rq says

    Rolly: Reining in the rednecks at Red Butte

    One significant result from this week’s Hank Williams Jr. concert is that Red Butte Garden’s executive director will now carefully review any potential controversial acts before his booking agents sign a deal.

    Director Greg Lee says he was taken by surprise the day of the concert when he learned that one of the concession stands would be selling Confederate battle flags with Williams’ logo stamped in the middle.

    Lee said he asked the concessionaire to refrain from selling the flags, but he refused. Contractually, bands that perform at the garden, like at most venues, bring their own concessions and have control over what is sold. Once the deal is signed, the venue cannot refuse the concessions unless the products are illegal.

    […]

    But some audience members were offended by the flaunting of that flag so soon after the South Carolina Legislature voted to remove it from that state’s Capitol grounds in the wake of a racially motivated mass murder at a black church in Charleston.

    One disconcerting fact: Under Utah law, the flag wavers could also have been carrying guns at the venue as long as they had a concealed-weapon permit.

    Several concertgoers left early, ill at ease over the atmosphere.

    Lee said Red Butte has been trying to diversify its shows, noting his booking agent is unfamiliar with the country genre and wasn’t aware of past controversies with Williams, who was fired from ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” show after comments he made on “Fox and Friends” comparing President Barack Obama to Hitler.

    Clanton police say someone drove thru predominantly black neighborhood w confederate flag, yelling racial slurs.

    Jonathan Sanders: Unarmed Mississippi man died after 20-minute police chokehold, witnesses say

    State medical examiners provisionally found Jonathan Sanders died through homicide by manual asphyxiation, according to attorneys Chokwe Lumumba and CJ Lawrence.

    Sanders, who was 39, repeatedly told Stonewall police officer Kevin Herrington “I can’t breathe”, according to one witness.

    According to the attorneys, one witness alleged that Herrington said he was “going to get that nigger” seconds before confronting Sanders in Stonewall on the night of 8 July, and several said the officer was the aggressor. Police have described the encounter as “a fight”.

    “We believe there is probable cause for a prosecution,” the attorney Lawrence said in an interview on Wednesday. “A determination should now be made by a jury at an open trial as to whether officer Herrington had any justification for choking Jonathan Sanders to death.”

    […]

    Sanders’ attorneys said they were present this week while three witnesses, whom they declined to identify due to safety concerns, separately gave matching accounts of what happened to investigators from the Mississippi bureau of investigation (MBI) during filmed interviews.

    According to the attorneys, the three witnesses are related to Sanders by marriage and one has 10 years of experience working in law enforcement. They said this witness told Herrington he was trained in CPR and had his own mask for use on a patient but was repeatedly prevented by the officer from using it on Sanders.

    The version of events given by witnesses, they said, is that Sanders was riding by a gas station on a horse-drawn buggy at about 10.30pm when he made a comment to Herrington, who had pulled over a driver. The attorneys said this driver had told them he was drunk and his registration tags had expired.

    The driver said his stop was abandoned when Sanders asked Herrington “Why don’t you leave that man alone?” or similar, said Lumumba. “According to the driver, once the officer saw Jonathan, his attention was piqued and he said: ‘I’m going to get that nigger.’”

    The attorneys said investigators from the MBI had informed them they were aware of the alleged racist remark and were in communication with the driver.

    Lumumba said a person they call Witness 1 was standing at the window of a nearby home seeking signal for a cellphone when he or she saw Sanders approaching on his buggy, wearing a light on a headband similar to those used by climbers.
    Advertisement

    “Then, Witness 1 saw officer Herrington’s blue lights come on,” said Lumumba. “Jonathan’s horse reared up, startled, and knocked Jonathan off his horse. His light slipped around his neck. Jonathan ran to get the horse and Officer Herrington came from behind him, yanked him down to the ground in front of the house with the light strap and placed him in a chokehold. Jonathan didn’t even see him.”
    […]

    The witnesses said Herrington was shouting to them that Sanders was reaching for his gun, despite the 39-year-old being unable to reach the weapon. The officer initially asked Witness 3 to help remove the gun from his belt, before changing his mind and asking for a woman who had been travelling with him in his patrol car to come out and remove the gun with Witness 3’s guidance.

    “The chokehold had been going on the entire time,” said Lumumba, who noted that Eric Garner died in about three minutes when placed in a chokehold by a police officer in New York City last year, prompting months of protests.

    “Witness 3 was saying ‘Let him up, let him up, he’s not breathing, let me do CPR’,” said Lumumba. “He is trained in CPR and had a mask in his home. But Herrington said ‘No, stand back’.”

    The witnesses said that after being instructed by the officer, Herrington’s companion attempted to call for backup but could not operate his radio system, according to the attorneys. Witness 3 again stepped in to help, and officers were dispatched, but they travelled to the wrong location and had to be redirected.

    “This time frame, according to Witness 3, is that Jonathan was in a chokehold for more than 20 minutes, close to 30 minutes,” said Lumumba, who said that when a support officer identified as “Officer Derek” arrived, Herrington told his colleague: “I think I put him to sleep.”

    Medics were called and used Witness 3’s mask, according to Lumumba, but they did not appear to competently administer CPR. After they sat Sanders upright, “blood starts rushing out of his mouth, and they are never able to get a pulse”, said the attorney. Sanders was put in an ambulance and taken to hospital, although the family’s attorneys say he was dead at the scene.

    The fuck the medics would sit him upright if he’s (most likely) unresponsive? That is piece-of-shit first aid, because if someone is lying on the ground and not responding (even if they’re faking) the last thing you should do is try and sit them up. Like hOLY SHIT.
    And that phrase, “Put him to sleep”. That’s what you say to your kids about your pet dog. Fuck.

    And all 3 witnesses have the exact same story. The prosecutor there reminds me a lot of Bob McCulloch in STL. #JonathanSanders

    Will protestors be blamed? Will the man be a part of the movement? All 4 suspects in custody in connection with shooting of police officer Tuesday morning.

    Everything We Know About Sandra Bland

    As questions and suspicions begin to grow about what exactly happened to Sandra Bland, here’s what we can tell you for certain about the bright young woman who was supposed to be driving toward a new beginning but ended up dead:

    1. She was stopped for failing to signal while changing lanes.

    Bland was reportedly pulled over during a routine traffic stop for not signaling a lane change. Police claim that during the stop she became combative and was then arrested and charged with “assault on a public servant.”

    However, video released of the incident doesn’t seem to show a combative Bland. Instead, officers can be seen restraining Bland who argued with them about the methods used to detain her. “You just slammed my head into the ground,” Bland is heard saying on the video.

    2. Bland was in Texas for a new job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University.

    Bland attended Prairie View A&M on a band scholarship and graduated in 2008 before going back home to Illinois. She was a member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, which issued a statement Thursday (pdf) in response to her death. Early in July, she drove to Texas for a job interview at the university. She got the job and was to begin working in student outreach. Her death was two days before her start date.

    3. Waller County, Texas, where Bland was arrested, has a bleak history of racial intolerance.

    The small, rural county has a complicated and dark racial history.

    In 2008 the Houston Chronicl detailed how local cemeteries were still segregated. There were black cemeteries and white cemeteries and those were the rules. When one Waller County justice of the peace, DeWayne Charleston, attempted to bury the body of a brutally slain white woman in a black cemetery, his plea was overturned by Waller County Judge Owen Ralston. Ralston said it cost too much, saving taxpayers more than $400. The Jane Doe, whose body was never claimed after a year, was eventually buried in a privately owned and operated white cemetery.

    According to the Chronicle, a county resident of Hempstead sued the city for failing to maintain its black cemeteries. That lawsuit was successful. In 2007 the city of Hempstead’s police chief, Glenn Smith, was suspended after being accused of racism.

    4. Bland was outspoken against police violence, posting often on her social media sites in segments she called “Sandy Speaks.”

    Bland’s Facebook page posts include videos of her candidly speaking about race and racism in the nation in “Sandy Speaks.” “Black people are truly, we’re doing as much as we can … and we can’t help but get pissed off when we see situations when it’s clear that black lives didn’t matter,” she said in one video, addressing white people specifically.

    5. Sandra Bland’s life matters.

    It is unnerving that after Bland spoke out so publicly about black lives, her name is now added to the growing list of those who have suffered or died while in the custody of officers or a jail. Several hashtags—including the currently trending #JusticeForSandy and #WhatHappenedToSandyBland—have surfaced on Twitter in her honor, demanding answers and justice in her stead.

  47. rq says

    Rolly: Reining in the rednecks at Red Butte

    One significant result from this week’s Hank Williams Jr. concert is that Red Butte Garden’s executive director will now carefully review any potential controversial acts before his booking agents sign a deal.

    Director Greg Lee says he was taken by surprise the day of the concert when he learned that one of the concession stands would be selling Confederate battle flags with Williams’ logo stamped in the middle.

    Lee said he asked the concessionaire to refrain from selling the flags, but he refused. Contractually, bands that perform at the garden, like at most venues, bring their own concessions and have control over what is sold. Once the deal is signed, the venue cannot refuse the concessions unless the products are illegal.

    […]

    But some audience members were offended by the flaunting of that flag so soon after the South Carolina Legislature voted to remove it from that state’s Capitol grounds in the wake of a racially motivated mass murder at a black church in Charleston.

    One disconcerting fact: Under Utah law, the flag wavers could also have been carrying guns at the venue as long as they had a concealed-weapon permit.

    Several concertgoers left early, ill at ease over the atmosphere.

    Lee said Red Butte has been trying to diversify its shows, noting his booking agent is unfamiliar with the country genre and wasn’t aware of past controversies with Williams, who was fired from ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” show after comments he made on “Fox and Friends” comparing President Barack Obama to Hitler.

    Clanton police say someone drove thru predominantly black neighborhood w confederate flag, yelling racial slurs.

    Jonathan Sanders: Unarmed Mississippi man died after 20-minute police chokehold, witnesses say

    State medical examiners provisionally found Jonathan Sanders died through homicide by manual asphyxiation, according to attorneys Chokwe Lumumba and CJ Lawrence.

    Sanders, who was 39, repeatedly told Stonewall police officer Kevin Herrington “I can’t breathe”, according to one witness.

    According to the attorneys, one witness alleged that Herrington said he was “going to get that n*gg*r” seconds before confronting Sanders in Stonewall on the night of 8 July, and several said the officer was the aggressor. Police have described the encounter as “a fight”.

    “We believe there is probable cause for a prosecution,” the attorney Lawrence said in an interview on Wednesday. “A determination should now be made by a jury at an open trial as to whether officer Herrington had any justification for choking Jonathan Sanders to death.”

    […]

    Sanders’ attorneys said they were present this week while three witnesses, whom they declined to identify due to safety concerns, separately gave matching accounts of what happened to investigators from the Mississippi bureau of investigation (MBI) during filmed interviews.

    According to the attorneys, the three witnesses are related to Sanders by marriage and one has 10 years of experience working in law enforcement. They said this witness told Herrington he was trained in CPR and had his own mask for use on a patient but was repeatedly prevented by the officer from using it on Sanders.

    The version of events given by witnesses, they said, is that Sanders was riding by a gas station on a horse-drawn buggy at about 10.30pm when he made a comment to Herrington, who had pulled over a driver. The attorneys said this driver had told them he was drunk and his registration tags had expired.

    The driver said his stop was abandoned when Sanders asked Herrington “Why don’t you leave that man alone?” or similar, said Lumumba. “According to the driver, once the officer saw Jonathan, his attention was piqued and he said: ‘I’m going to get that nigger.’”

    The attorneys said investigators from the MBI had informed them they were aware of the alleged racist remark and were in communication with the driver.

    Lumumba said a person they call Witness 1 was standing at the window of a nearby home seeking signal for a cellphone when he or she saw Sanders approaching on his buggy, wearing a light on a headband similar to those used by climbers.
    Advertisement

    “Then, Witness 1 saw officer Herrington’s blue lights come on,” said Lumumba. “Jonathan’s horse reared up, startled, and knocked Jonathan off his horse. His light slipped around his neck. Jonathan ran to get the horse and Officer Herrington came from behind him, yanked him down to the ground in front of the house with the light strap and placed him in a chokehold. Jonathan didn’t even see him.”
    […]

    The witnesses said Herrington was shouting to them that Sanders was reaching for his gun, despite the 39-year-old being unable to reach the weapon. The officer initially asked Witness 3 to help remove the gun from his belt, before changing his mind and asking for a woman who had been travelling with him in his patrol car to come out and remove the gun with Witness 3’s guidance.

    “The chokehold had been going on the entire time,” said Lumumba, who noted that Eric Garner died in about three minutes when placed in a chokehold by a police officer in New York City last year, prompting months of protests.

    “Witness 3 was saying ‘Let him up, let him up, he’s not breathing, let me do CPR’,” said Lumumba. “He is trained in CPR and had a mask in his home. But Herrington said ‘No, stand back’.”

    The witnesses said that after being instructed by the officer, Herrington’s companion attempted to call for backup but could not operate his radio system, according to the attorneys. Witness 3 again stepped in to help, and officers were dispatched, but they travelled to the wrong location and had to be redirected.

    “This time frame, according to Witness 3, is that Jonathan was in a chokehold for more than 20 minutes, close to 30 minutes,” said Lumumba, who said that when a support officer identified as “Officer Derek” arrived, Herrington told his colleague: “I think I put him to sleep.”

    Medics were called and used Witness 3’s mask, according to Lumumba, but they did not appear to competently administer CPR. After they sat Sanders upright, “blood starts rushing out of his mouth, and they are never able to get a pulse”, said the attorney. Sanders was put in an ambulance and taken to hospital, although the family’s attorneys say he was dead at the scene.

    The fuck the medics would sit him upright if he’s (most likely) unresponsive? That is piece-of-shit first aid, because if someone is lying on the ground and not responding (even if they’re faking) the last thing you should do is try and sit them up. Like hOLY SHIT.
    And that phrase, “Put him to sleep”. That’s what you say to your kids about your pet dog. Fuck.

    And all 3 witnesses have the exact same story. The prosecutor there reminds me a lot of Bob McCulloch in STL. #JonathanSanders

    Will protestors be blamed? Will the man be a part of the movement? All 4 suspects in custody in connection with shooting of police officer Tuesday morning.

    Everything We Know About Sandra Bland

    As questions and suspicions begin to grow about what exactly happened to Sandra Bland, here’s what we can tell you for certain about the bright young woman who was supposed to be driving toward a new beginning but ended up dead:

    1. She was stopped for failing to signal while changing lanes.

    Bland was reportedly pulled over during a routine traffic stop for not signaling a lane change. Police claim that during the stop she became combative and was then arrested and charged with “assault on a public servant.”

    However, video released of the incident doesn’t seem to show a combative Bland. Instead, officers can be seen restraining Bland who argued with them about the methods used to detain her. “You just slammed my head into the ground,” Bland is heard saying on the video.

    2. Bland was in Texas for a new job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University.

    Bland attended Prairie View A&M on a band scholarship and graduated in 2008 before going back home to Illinois. She was a member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, which issued a statement Thursday (pdf) in response to her death. Early in July, she drove to Texas for a job interview at the university. She got the job and was to begin working in student outreach. Her death was two days before her start date.

    3. Waller County, Texas, where Bland was arrested, has a bleak history of racial intolerance.

    The small, rural county has a complicated and dark racial history.

    In 2008 the Houston Chronicl detailed how local cemeteries were still segregated. There were black cemeteries and white cemeteries and those were the rules. When one Waller County justice of the peace, DeWayne Charleston, attempted to bury the body of a brutally slain white woman in a black cemetery, his plea was overturned by Waller County Judge Owen Ralston. Ralston said it cost too much, saving taxpayers more than $400. The Jane Doe, whose body was never claimed after a year, was eventually buried in a privately owned and operated white cemetery.

    According to the Chronicle, a county resident of Hempstead sued the city for failing to maintain its black cemeteries. That lawsuit was successful. In 2007 the city of Hempstead’s police chief, Glenn Smith, was suspended after being accused of racism.

    4. Bland was outspoken against police violence, posting often on her social media sites in segments she called “Sandy Speaks.”

    Bland’s Facebook page posts include videos of her candidly speaking about race and racism in the nation in “Sandy Speaks.” “Black people are truly, we’re doing as much as we can … and we can’t help but get pissed off when we see situations when it’s clear that black lives didn’t matter,” she said in one video, addressing white people specifically.

    5. Sandra Bland’s life matters.

    It is unnerving that after Bland spoke out so publicly about black lives, her name is now added to the growing list of those who have suffered or died while in the custody of officers or a jail. Several hashtags—including the currently trending #JusticeForSandy and #WhatHappenedToSandyBland—have surfaced on Twitter in her honor, demanding answers and justice in her stead.

  48. rq says

    Rolly: Reining in the rednecks at Red Butte

    One significant result from this week’s Hank Williams Jr. concert is that Red Butte Garden’s executive director will now carefully review any potential controversial acts before his booking agents sign a deal.

    Director Greg Lee says he was taken by surprise the day of the concert when he learned that one of the concession stands would be selling Confederate battle flags with Williams’ logo stamped in the middle.

    Lee said he asked the concessionaire to refrain from selling the flags, but he refused. Contractually, bands that perform at the garden, like at most venues, bring their own concessions and have control over what is sold. Once the deal is signed, the venue cannot refuse the concessions unless the products are illegal.

    […]

    But some audience members were offended by the flaunting of that flag so soon after the South Carolina Legislature voted to remove it from that state’s Capitol grounds in the wake of a racially motivated mass murder at a black church in Charleston.

    One disconcerting fact: Under Utah law, the flag wavers could also have been carrying guns at the venue as long as they had a concealed-weapon permit.

    Several concertgoers left early, ill at ease over the atmosphere.

    Lee said Red Butte has been trying to diversify its shows, noting his booking agent is unfamiliar with the country genre and wasn’t aware of past controversies with Williams, who was fired from ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” show after comments he made on “Fox and Friends” comparing President Barack Obama to Hitler.

    Clanton police say someone drove thru predominantly black neighborhood w confederate flag, yelling racial slurs.

    Jonathan Sanders: Unarmed Mississippi man died after 20-minute police chokehold, witnesses say

    State medical examiners provisionally found Jonathan Sanders died through homicide by manual asphyxiation, according to attorneys Chokwe Lumumba and CJ Lawrence.

    Sanders, who was 39, repeatedly told Stonewall police officer Kevin Herrington “I can’t breathe”, according to one witness.

    According to the attorneys, one witness alleged that Herrington said he was “going to get that n*gg*r” seconds before confronting Sanders in Stonewall on the night of 8 July, and several said the officer was the aggressor. Police have described the encounter as “a fight”.

    “We believe there is probable cause for a prosecution,” the attorney Lawrence said in an interview on Wednesday. “A determination should now be made by a jury at an open trial as to whether officer Herrington had any justification for choking Jonathan Sanders to death.”

    […]

    Sanders’ attorneys said they were present this week while three witnesses, whom they declined to identify due to safety concerns, separately gave matching accounts of what happened to investigators from the Mississippi bureau of investigation (MBI) during filmed interviews.

    According to the attorneys, the three witnesses are related to Sanders by marriage and one has 10 years of experience working in law enforcement. They said this witness told Herrington he was trained in CPR and had his own mask for use on a patient but was repeatedly prevented by the officer from using it on Sanders.

    The version of events given by witnesses, they said, is that Sanders was riding by a gas station on a horse-drawn buggy at about 10.30pm when he made a comment to Herrington, who had pulled over a driver. The attorneys said this driver had told them he was drunk and his registration tags had expired.

    The driver said his stop was abandoned when Sanders asked Herrington “Why don’t you leave that man alone?” or similar, said Lumumba. “According to the driver, once the officer saw Jonathan, his attention was piqued and he said: ‘I’m going to get that n*gg*r.’”

    The attorneys said investigators from the MBI had informed them they were aware of the alleged racist remark and were in communication with the driver.

    Lumumba said a person they call Witness 1 was standing at the window of a nearby home seeking signal for a cellphone when he or she saw Sanders approaching on his buggy, wearing a light on a headband similar to those used by climbers.
    Advertisement

    “Then, Witness 1 saw officer Herrington’s blue lights come on,” said Lumumba. “Jonathan’s horse reared up, startled, and knocked Jonathan off his horse. His light slipped around his neck. Jonathan ran to get the horse and Officer Herrington came from behind him, yanked him down to the ground in front of the house with the light strap and placed him in a chokehold. Jonathan didn’t even see him.”
    […]

    The witnesses said Herrington was shouting to them that Sanders was reaching for his gun, despite the 39-year-old being unable to reach the weapon. The officer initially asked Witness 3 to help remove the gun from his belt, before changing his mind and asking for a woman who had been travelling with him in his patrol car to come out and remove the gun with Witness 3’s guidance.

    “The chokehold had been going on the entire time,” said Lumumba, who noted that Eric Garner died in about three minutes when placed in a chokehold by a police officer in New York City last year, prompting months of protests.

    “Witness 3 was saying ‘Let him up, let him up, he’s not breathing, let me do CPR’,” said Lumumba. “He is trained in CPR and had a mask in his home. But Herrington said ‘No, stand back’.”

    The witnesses said that after being instructed by the officer, Herrington’s companion attempted to call for backup but could not operate his radio system, according to the attorneys. Witness 3 again stepped in to help, and officers were dispatched, but they travelled to the wrong location and had to be redirected.

    “This time frame, according to Witness 3, is that Jonathan was in a chokehold for more than 20 minutes, close to 30 minutes,” said Lumumba, who said that when a support officer identified as “Officer Derek” arrived, Herrington told his colleague: “I think I put him to sleep.”

    Medics were called and used Witness 3’s mask, according to Lumumba, but they did not appear to competently administer CPR. After they sat Sanders upright, “blood starts rushing out of his mouth, and they are never able to get a pulse”, said the attorney. Sanders was put in an ambulance and taken to hospital, although the family’s attorneys say he was dead at the scene.

    The fuck the medics would sit him upright if he’s (most likely) unresponsive? That is piece-of-shit first aid, because if someone is lying on the ground and not responding (even if they’re faking) the last thing you should do is try and sit them up. Like hOLY SHIT.
    And that phrase, “Put him to sleep”. That’s what you say to your kids about your pet dog. Fuck.

    And all 3 witnesses have the exact same story. The prosecutor there reminds me a lot of Bob McCulloch in STL. #JonathanSanders

    Will protestors be blamed? Will the man be a part of the movement? All 4 suspects in custody in connection with shooting of police officer Tuesday morning.

    Everything We Know About Sandra Bland

    As questions and suspicions begin to grow about what exactly happened to Sandra Bland, here’s what we can tell you for certain about the bright young woman who was supposed to be driving toward a new beginning but ended up dead:

    1. She was stopped for failing to signal while changing lanes.

    Bland was reportedly pulled over during a routine traffic stop for not signaling a lane change. Police claim that during the stop she became combative and was then arrested and charged with “assault on a public servant.”

    However, video released of the incident doesn’t seem to show a combative Bland. Instead, officers can be seen restraining Bland who argued with them about the methods used to detain her. “You just slammed my head into the ground,” Bland is heard saying on the video.

    2. Bland was in Texas for a new job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University.

    Bland attended Prairie View A&M on a band scholarship and graduated in 2008 before going back home to Illinois. She was a member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, which issued a statement Thursday (pdf) in response to her death. Early in July, she drove to Texas for a job interview at the university. She got the job and was to begin working in student outreach. Her death was two days before her start date.

    3. Waller County, Texas, where Bland was arrested, has a bleak history of racial intolerance.

    The small, rural county has a complicated and dark racial history.

    In 2008 the Houston Chronicl detailed how local cemeteries were still segregated. There were black cemeteries and white cemeteries and those were the rules. When one Waller County justice of the peace, DeWayne Charleston, attempted to bury the body of a brutally slain white woman in a black cemetery, his plea was overturned by Waller County Judge Owen Ralston. Ralston said it cost too much, saving taxpayers more than $400. The Jane Doe, whose body was never claimed after a year, was eventually buried in a privately owned and operated white cemetery.

    According to the Chronicle, a county resident of Hempstead sued the city for failing to maintain its black cemeteries. That lawsuit was successful. In 2007 the city of Hempstead’s police chief, Glenn Smith, was suspended after being accused of racism.

    4. Bland was outspoken against police violence, posting often on her social media sites in segments she called “Sandy Speaks.”

    Bland’s Facebook page posts include videos of her candidly speaking about race and racism in the nation in “Sandy Speaks.” “Black people are truly, we’re doing as much as we can … and we can’t help but get pissed off when we see situations when it’s clear that black lives didn’t matter,” she said in one video, addressing white people specifically.

    5. Sandra Bland’s life matters.

    It is unnerving that after Bland spoke out so publicly about black lives, her name is now added to the growing list of those who have suffered or died while in the custody of officers or a jail. Several hashtags—including the currently trending #JusticeForSandy and #WhatHappenedToSandyBland—have surfaced on Twitter in her honor, demanding answers and justice in her stead.

  49. rq says

    FBI’s warning of white supremacists infiltrating law enforcement nearly forgotten

    Because of intensifying civil strife over the recent killings of unarmed black men and boys, many Americans are wondering, “What’s wrong with our police?” Remarkably, one of the most compelling but unexplored explanations may rest with a FBI warning of October 2006, which reported that “White supremacist infiltration of law enforcement” represented a significant national threat.

    Several key events preceded the report. A federal court found that members of a Los Angeles sheriffs department formed a Neo Nazi gang and habitually terrorized the black community. Later, the Chicago police department fired Jon Burge, a detective with reputed ties to the Ku Klux Klan, after discovering he tortured over 100 black male suspects. Thereafter, the Mayor of Cleveland discovered that many of the city police locker rooms were infested with “White Power” graffiti. Years later, a Texas sheriff department discovered that two of its deputies were recruiters for the Klan.

    In near prophetic fashion, after the FBI’s warning, white supremacy extremism in the U.S. increased, exponentially. From 2008 to 2014, the number of white supremacist groups, reportedly, grew from 149 to nearly a thousand, with no apparent abatement in their infiltration of law enforcement.

    This year, alone, at least seven San Francisco law enforcement officers were suspended after an investigation revealed they exchanged numerous “White Power” communications laden with remarks about “lynching African-Americans and burning crosses.” Three reputed Klan members that served as correction officers were arrested for conspiring to murder a black inmate. At least four Fort Lauderdale police officers were fired after an investigation found that the officers fantasized about killing black suspects.

    The United States doesn’t publicly track white supremacists, so the full range of their objectives remains murky. Although black and Jewish-Americans are believed to be the foremost targets of white supremacists, recent attacks in Nevada, Wisconsin, Arizona, Kansas and North Carolina, demonstrate that other non-whites, and religious and social minorities, are also vulnerable. Perhaps more alarmingly, in the last several years alone, white supremacists have reportedly murdered law enforcement officers in Arkansas, Nevada and Wisconsin.
    .[…]

    The white supremacist threat brings to light a dark feature of the American experience that some believed extinct. It rouses ingrained notions of distrusts between police and communities of color while bringing to bear the vital interest citizens of good will share in the complete abolishment of race as a judgmental factor.

    As the nation struggles to resolve the perplexities of police brutality, the white supremacist threat should inform all Americans that today’s civil discord is not borne out of a robust animosity towards law enforcement, most of whom are professional. Rather, it’s more representative of a centuries-old ideological clash, which has ignited in citizens of good will a desire to affirm notions of racial equality so that the moral ethos of American culture is a reality for all.

    Why is the same agency that arrested Sandra Bland investigating her death, too? And didn’t the media make a big show of saying how it would be an independent investigation?

    Captain Ian Cantrell at the Waller County Sheriff’s office told Fusion that all arrests made by Texas State troopers get funneled to local county jails.

    The distinction is important: Waller County police did not arrest Sandra Bland. State troopers arrested Sandra Bland. Which is why there’s a conflict of interest here.

    According to Captain Cantrell, the investigation into the death of Bland, who would have begun her first day of work on Wednesday at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University, is being conducted by the Texas Rangers, a statewide law enforcement agency tasked with investigations into unsolved crimes, public corruption, and officer-involved shootings, among other things.

    The Texas Rangers are also comprised entirely of former Texas state troopers, the Texas Department Public Safety told Fusion, and are part of the same agency that oversees the state troopers who arrested Sandra Bland. In order to even qualify to become a ranger, candidates must have previously been troopers, according to the rangers website. Ranger applicants must also be currently employed with the Texas Department of Public Safety.

    This is a significant conflict of interest in the investigation into the death of Sandra Bland.

    More at the link, with a closer look at the investigation of Eric Garner’s death and the conflicts of interest present there.

    Colorado cop slams handcuffed teen to hospital floor, knocks her teeth out (VIDEO)

    A newly-published video shows a Colorado Springs police officer going to extremes during a November 2013 arrest, slamming a handcuffed 18-year-old woman face-down into the ground, knocking out her teeth while she was in hospital.

    The shocking video will be part of a lawsuit that is being prepared on behalf of Alexis Acker against the department. The footage was obtained by the Colorado Springs Independent daily.

    City Cop “Intentionally and Violently Grabbed and Pulled” Man’s Genitalia, Suit Says. Just going to leave that there as an example of cops behaving badly. And the attitude of entitlement and arrogance and disregard for others that seems to come with the uniform for many officers.

    Second Memorial for Paul Castaway Tonight at Shooting Scene

    Justice 4 Paul Castaway has announced there will be a second protest of his shooting death at the hands of Denver police, tonight at 8pm local time. This demonstration will take place at the shooting site, the Capitol City Mobile Home Park.

    I’m sorry, I missed announcing that yesterday.

    State Jail Commission Cites Waller County Officials After Investigating Sandra Bland’s Death

    In the wake of a woman’s in-custody death that has gained national attention and suspicion, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards on Thursday cited the Waller County Jail for sub-standard training in how to handle potentially suicidal and mentally disabled inmates.

    The jail was also cited for failure to personally observe an inmate at least once an hour, according to the Commission’s executive director, Brandon Wood. The jail was previously cited for violating the 60-minute observation standard in 2012, after an inmate hanged himself with a bed sheet.

    Wood said he could not elaborate on the notices of non-compliance, which were issued to Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith and Waller County Judge Carbett “Trey” Duhon III.

    State standards require jails to check inmates against a Department of State Health Services database to “determine if the inmate has previously received state mental healthcare,” and to assign mentally disabled and/or potentially suicidal inmates to “appropriate houses,” among other steps.

    And now everyone’s citing her facebook posts on depression and ptsd as incontrovertible evidence that she definitively committed suicide.

  50. says

    The real Lone Ranger was an African-American lawman who lived with Native American Indians.
    The title seems slightly misleading to me. To be more precise, he served as the inspiration for the Lone Ranger. Or is that just me splitting hairs?

    The real “Lone Ranger,” it turns out, was an African American man named Bass Reeves, who the legend was based upon. Perhaps not surprisingly, many aspects of his life were written out of the story, including his ethnicity. The basics remained the same: a lawman hunting bad guys, accompanied by a Native American, riding on a white horse, and with a silver trademark.

    Historians of the American West have also, until recently, ignored the fact that this man was African American, a free black man who headed West to find himself less subject to the racist structure of the established Eastern and Southern states.

    While historians have largely overlooked Reeves, there have been a few notable works on him. Vaunda Michaux Nelson’s book, Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal, won the 2010 Coretta Scott King Award for best author. Arthur Burton released an overview of the man’s life a few years ago. Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves recounts that Reeves was born into a life of slavery in 1838. His slave-keeper brought him along as another personal servant when he went off to fight with the Confederate Army, during the Civil War.

    Reeves took the chaos that ensued during the war to escape for freedom, after beating his “master” within an inch of his life, or according to some sources, to death. Perhaps the most intruiging thing about this escape was that Reeves only beat his enslaver after the latter lost sorely at a game of cards with Reeves and attacked him.

    After successfully defending himself from this attack, he knew that there was no way he would be allowed to live if he stuck around.

    Reeves fled to the then Indian Territory of today’s Oklahoma and lived harmoniously among the Seminole and Creek Nations of Native American Indians.

    After the Civil War finally concluded, he married and eventually fathered ten children, making his living as a Deputy U.S. Marshall in Arkansas and the Indian Territory. If this surprises you, it should, as Reeves was the first African American to ever hold such a position.

    Burton explains that it was at this point that the Lone Ranger story comes in to play. Reeves was described as a “master of disguises”. He used these disguises to track down wanted criminals, even adopting similar ways of dressing and mannerisms to meet and fit in with the fugitives, in order to identify them.

    Reeves kept and gave out silver coins as a personal trademark of sorts, just like the Lone Ranger’s silver bullets. Of course, the recent Disney adaptation of the Lone Ranger devised a clever and meaningful explanation for the silver bullets in the classic tales. For the new Lone Ranger, the purposes was to not wantonly expend ammunition and in so doing devalue human life. But in the original series, there was never an explanation given, as this was simply something originally adapted from Reeves’ personal life and trademarking of himself. For Reeves, it had a very different meaning, he would give out the valuable coins to ingratiate himself to the people wherever he found himself working, collecting bounties. In this way, a visit from the real “Lone Ranger” meant only good fortune for the town: a criminal off the street and perhaps a lucky silver coin.

    Like the Lone Ranger, Reeves was also expert crack shot with a gun. According to legend, shooting competitions had an informal ban on allowing him to enter. Like the Lone Ranger, Reeves rode a white horse throughout almost all of his career, at one point riding a light grey one as well.

    Like the famed Lone Ranger legend Reeves had his own close friend like Tonto. Reeves’ companion was a Native American posse man and tracker who he often rode with, when he was out capturing bad guys. In all, there were close to 3000 of such criminals they apprehended, making them a legendary duo in many regions.

    The final proof that this legend of Bass Reeves directly inspired into the story of the Lone Ranger can be found in the fact that a large number of those criminals were sent to federal prison in Detroit. The Lone Ranger radio show originated and was broadcast to the public in 1933 on WXYZ in Detroit where the legend of Reeves was famous only two years earlier.

  51. rq says

    Point of fact, a horse is never white, it’s always grey. A very light grey, but never actually white, unless it’s albino. :) So I find it funny that the Lone Ranger rode a white horse, and at one point, a light grey one. In horse language, that’s saying pretty much the same thing.

    +++

    Osheaga’s headdress ban shows festival’s zero tolerance for cultural appropriation

    On the website for Montreal’s Osheaga Music and Arts Festival, beneath the customary rules and regulations and frequently asked questions, there is a comprehensive list of items banned from the festival premises, including laser pointers, fireworks, drones and selfie sticks. This year the list boasts a surprising addition: traditional First Nations headdresses.

    The rule is clear and ironclad. Any attendee who shows up wearing a headdress will have it confiscated upon entry or be asked to leave and return without it.

    The First Nations headdress was much-discussed last week when a young white woman donned one at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. (She also sported a bit of vaguely aboriginal face paint, as if to double down on the offence.) A few surreptitious snapshots circulated on social media, arousing a maelstrom of outrage and indignation and within hours, the festival had issued a statement denouncing such gestures of cultural appropriation and insisting that the organisers consider banning headdresses from future events. They ultimately decided against an outright ban but said they would “certainly be asking patrons not to wear headdresses” in future.

    The incident has effected more substantive change elsewhere, as music festivals across Canada continue to speak out against appropriation and impose hardline bans. The Edmonton Folk Festival revealed on Facebook earlier this week that at “this time of greater awareness” it would like its attendees “to respect First Nations cultures and to not wear any type of First Nations headdresses during the festival”, adding that these items would in fact “be confiscated by festival security” should anyone opt to bring one anyway. The Calgary Folk Festival, following Winnipeg’s precedent, has publicly implored its patrons to leave headdresses at home but won’t officially forbid them.

    Osheaga, which attracts upwards of 40,000 people to its grounds each day, is the highest-profile music festival to ban headdresses in order to “respect and honour” the First Nations people. The Facebook announcement got more than 12,000 likes in only three days – and provoked serious conversation online and in the media about what can be done about cultural appropriation. The comments lurking under the post, of course, are rife with the expected discontent and hand-wringing about political correctness. But for the most part the reaction from indigenous people and non-indigenous people alike has been thankful, even celebratory.

    Everyone Should Be Reading These Intense #IfIDieInPoliceCustody Tweets Right Now – may be a repost, sorry, feeling lazy, so worst case, you get it twice.

    The tragic and widely debated circumstances around Sandra Bland’s death on Monday have sparked the Twitter hashtag #IfIDieInPoliceCustody.

    Its conceit is sobering: Black users across the social media platform — in part prompted by the suspicion that 28-year-old Bland did not, in fact, die by suicide in a Waller County, Texas, jail, but rather by more dubious means — are advising their readers what to do if they die under similar circumstances.

    The posts amount to a series of unofficial advance directives. That they feel necessary is both troubling and heartbreaking. But considering the long list of black women and men who have died or been killed while held by law enforcement in recent years — including Freddie Gray in Baltimore, whose death sparked days of unrest in April — it’s hard to imagine many alternatives.

    24 fine and tragic examples at the link.

    New report highlights cases of police brutality inside middle and high schools. It’s not just adult sthat get terrorized.

    In a new report written by Jaeah Lee of Mother Jones titled “Chokeholds, Brain Injuries, Beatings: When School Cops Go Bad,” at least 28 cases of extreme police brutality in American middle and high schools are highlighted, including one death.

    With the United States now averaging four people killed by our police per day, more time and attention is being given to the cause of police brutality than ever before.

    Yet, another disturbing police problem has drawn far less attention: Use of force by cops in schools. According to news reports and data collected by advocacy groups, over the past five years at least 28 students have been seriously injured, and in one case shot to death, by so-called school resource officers—sworn, uniformed police assigned to provide security on K-12 campuses.

    Indeed, it was only a matter of time until police officers who were violent outside of schools began imposing their violence on students inside of schools. In Lee’s report, she details incredibly disturbing cases of middle school students being choked unconscious by officers, students who were breaking up fights receiving traumatic brain injuries after being Tasered, and even a student being shot by an officer who claimed to fear for his life while pursuing a student who had been in a fight earlier that school day.

    While these reports are disturbing, they aren’t surprising. This past week in Troy, New York, two elementary school-aged boys were put handcuffs when police thought they matched the description for someone they were looking for in a robbery—only to let them go later.

    Profiling starts young.

    Should be a powerful weekend! Join us in #STL Aug 7-10 for the 1-yr remembrance of #MikeBrown #Ferguson #FightBack365

    The Witness, on Ramsey Orta

    amsey Orta’s footage of Eric Garner’s final moments—a seemingly routine confrontation with police that in a flash turned deadly–ricocheted around the world, turning a local tragedy into a seminal moment in what became the Black Lives Matter movement. But Orta has virtually nothing to do with the protests and social justice organizations that have sprung up since. And today, one year after Garner’s death on July 17, 2014, he occasionally wishes he hadn’t been a part of it all.

    “Sometimes I regret just not minding my business,” Orta tells TIME. “Because it just put me in a messed-up predicament.”

    Orta no longer resides in Staten Island. Instead, he lives in a small, narrow apartment with his mother and brother in the New York City area and has asked that more detailed information about the location not be published because of what he claims is a pattern of harassment by police since the Garner video was published. The doorknob on the building’s main entrance is broken. Its halls smell of urine. Inside, Orta sleeps on a mattress on the floor. When he’s not in court fighting a series of drugs and weapons charges, Orta’s usually here, watching TV or on his phone. Sometimes he pays attention to the latest high-profile incident involving police and unarmed black men. Sometimes he tunes them out.

    It’s likely that no one outside of Staten Island would ever know the name of Eric Garner without Orta’s video, which became the first in a wave of recordings of African-Americans in violent confrontations with white police officers to command national attention. A month later came Ferguson and Michael Brown, then Cleveland and Tamir Rice, Baltimore and Freddie Gray, North Charleston and Walter Scott, McKinney, Texas, and the pool party. At least a dozen incidents, some recorded, some not, have made national headlines since Garner’s death. And the phrase “I can’t breathe,” which Garner can be heard repeating in Orta’s video as police held him down, has been adopted as a primary rallying cry of the movement.

    But a year later, Orta says he would at the very least rethink his decision to pull out his camera. In two separate interviews with TIME, Orta expressed ambivalence and even outright regret over getting involved. And if he had to do it over again, he says he would release the video anonymously.

    Video at the link.

    DPS: ‘Violations’ of Department Procedure in Stop of Sandra Bland. That’s great. Now bring Sandra Bland back.

    Investigations are underway by multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Texas Rangers and the FBI, into both the traffic stop and the death of Bland.

    DPS says the employee involved in the traffic stop is now on desk duty as its investigation continues.

    Additional details on the violations were not released.

    “The District Attorney and DPS have also requested that the FBI conduct a forensic analysis of the videos related to this case,” a DPS statement Friday read. “The video footage will be shared with the public as soon as possible.

    “The Department of Public Safety (DPS) values and strives to demonstrate our commitment to protecting the public through our actions based on fairness, respect and courteously serving those we contact.,” the statement adds.

  52. rq says

    Via Tony, here’s something encouraging:
    NYC Swim Team Breaking Records and Busting Myths

    And while these young people are making waves on the competitive stage, they’re also breaking stereotypes about African Americans and swimming, and setting an example that could go a long way to saving lives.

    According to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black children ages 5-19 drown in swimming pools more than five times the rate of white children. Their lack of swimming skills ends, all too often, in tragedy.

    […]

    Samuels, 33, understands many of the challenges his team faces. He learned to swim in high school and fell in love with the sport. Some of his friends tried to discourage his passion for swimming and suggested other sports that are more traditional for black athletes. But he ignored them and competed successfully at the state level.

    He admits that the Piranhas face some disadvantages. For one thing, most of them started competitive swimming later than their competitors did. And other teams have facilities to be able to practice year-round, while the Piranhas have to give up their pool to summer campers.

    However, Samuels levels the playing field by instilling commitment and hard work in his team. During the YMCA’s offseason, they practice “dry land” swimming, stretching and weight training to improve their speed.

    He also addresses the pink elephant in the room: race. Most of the other teams—and the spectators—are predominantly white. That could create a tremendous amount of pressure on his team.

    His pep talk goes something like this: “Look, the other kids have been swimming for a long time. But you’ve put in a lot of hard work, and we’re here for a purpose.” Despite the disadvantages, the Piranhas finish at the top.

    The disparity is rooted in this country’s racial history. During segregation, African Americans had few options if they wanted to learn how to swim. At the same time, erroneous academic studies said black people lacked the buoyancy whites have. That myth, says a diversity specialist with USA Swimming, continues to fuel the misperception that black folks can’t swim.

    More at the link.

    A lot of disappointment was expressed: Chief Dotson joins faith leaders, police at Mt. Carmel in N. #STL for prayer to stop the killing. @kmoxnews
    Faith leaders in North City lay hands on Chief Dotson, pray for peace, end of murder epidemic. #STL @kmoxnews

    Sheriff: Law enforcement taking NAACP threats, KKK fliers seriously

    Local, state and federal law enforcement agencies are working together to investigate Ku Klux Klan fliers that turned up in an area neighborhood and recent threats made against the NAACP.

    Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen, Assistant North Charleston Police Chief Reggie Burgess, Mount Pleasant Police Chief Carl Ritchie, and representatives from the State Law Enforcement Division and the FBI joined Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon during a news conference Friday at the Sheriff’s Office.

    “I just felt it was important that we reassure the community out there,” Cannon said. “We are on the job.”

    Klan fliers with the traditional hooded figure were left on car windows in the Dorchester Waylyn neighborhood in North Charleston earlier this month.

    Someone also called the Charleston chapter of the NAACP several times over the past two weeks and threatened their lives, President Dot Scott said.

    “We get threats all the time, but when you get direct threats that, ‘We’re going to blow your head off,’ we need to be serious about that. … Never before have we been threatened that they’re going to kill us,” Scott said.

    Scott acknowledged that the Klan has a right to pass out fliers, “but when we know that it’s being specifically placed in black neighborhoods, they’re not recruiting — they’re terrorizing.”

    Asked how many threats her office has received, Scott responded, “so much so that we had to stop answering the phone.”

    She thanked the law enforcement agencies for not turning a blind eye to the situation.

    Post-racial America, everyone. And no, the Klan ain’t a hate group, nuh-uh!

    Black Twitter users respond to jail deaths with heartbreaking #IfIDieInPoliceCustody hashtag, with some different examples than the previous link. But maybe the same as Tony’s.

    22 Times Amandla Stenberg Was The Ultimate Carefree Black Girl, for something fun.

  53. rq says

    Fists up for #EricGarner in #NYC! He was killed 1yr ago today. #StillCantBreathe #BlackLivesMatter
    LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device/”Sound Cannon”) at peaceful #EricGarner demo. #StillCantBreathe ([camera emoji] @JamesFTInternet)

    Prayer circle for the roughly 50 protestors outside the jail. #SandraBland
    While we were in the prayer, this truck drove past. #SandraBland #WhatHappenedToSandraBland – but the confederate flag is not about racist hate, nuh-uh!

    A letter to Baltimore’s interim police commissioner from Bealefeld and Bernstein

    Beginning in 2008, the number of homicides and shootings in Baltimore began to steadily decline, culminating with a homicide rate below 200 in 2011, which had not occurred since 1977 (nor been repeated since). The strategies we employed to achieve these remarkable results have been adopted in cities across the country. They are not complicated or novel; indeed, it is public safety 101. A few are discussed below, which you might consider as you take on the important and difficult role of police commissioner:

    Target the most violent offenders. In the last few years, this has become just a catch-phrase, while the nuts and bolts to effectively target and prosecute those individuals who are committing most of the violent crime in the city have been abandoned. “Bad Guys with Guns” was a multi-layered approach to first stem the wave of violence and then hold the perpetrators accountable. We accomplished this by getting the right people in the room (patrol officers, detectives, energetic and smart prosecutors, parole and probation officers, federal agents) to identify who the trouble-makers were in communities long plagued by violence and then go after them relentlessly. We showed how making fewer arrests could actually lower violent crime rates if you focused on the few who were the drivers of the violence.

    We did not do it alone. Federal prosecutors stepped forward and became a critical component in the crime fight. State prosecutors began using more comprehensive prosecution strategies to build cases against networks of violent offenders, resulting in more convictions and substantially increased sentences. Parole and Probation and the Department of Juvenile Services were crucial in helping to locate potential shooters and their intended victims to get them out of harm’s way. We required convicted gun offenders to register, and then dedicated and committed police officers visited them at home to monitor their activities and prevent violence before it happened. And Comstat, Gunstat and Policestat provided the data to tell us what was — and was not — working, holding us accountable.

    Engage the Community. In order to interact with the community, cops need to get out of their cars, which is a challenge with a 21st century work force that is wedded to technology but often lacks the personal skills and confidence necessary in police service work. Work stations in patrol cars are great tools, but smart phones clipped to their duty belts facilitate officers’ leaving their cars and working face to face with the people they serve. And you will need to invest in training to give your officers the confidence they need to get out of their comfort zones and engage with the people in the community. Many of your officers are more fearful than you might imagine, and that fear manifests itself in aggression and inaction. Remember that policing isn’t something the community wants done to them, or for them, rather they want policing done with them.

    You will have to make a significant personal investment in time and energy in getting to know the people of Baltimore. Accept the fact that you are not from here and get busy learning the history of neighborhoods and the people who live there. They will be eager to embrace you but will quickly perceive if you aren’t authentic.

    That’s a former police commissioners and a state attorney giving advice. There’s more at the link.

    ‘Wire’ actors to deliver lines from real-life Baltimoreans, but will this mean people will actually listen and hear what is being said?

    When the national media converged on Baltimore this spring, they told stories of the protests and violence following the death of Freddie Gray. But those portrayals didn’t ring true to the residents of the neighborhoods torn apart by unrest.

    Stepping into the fray now is the cast of “The Wire,” the acclaimed HBO series that ended seven years ago yet remains inextricably linked with Baltimore. They will reunite this week in the city to depict the truth as seen by those who lived through the turmoil. And they’ll do so as part of Artscape, the city’s signature arts event — and one of the largest public arts gatherings in the nation.

    Hmm. My guess is, it will all be considered interesting art, and those who should be listening will just pass it off as nothing worthy of note.

  54. rq says

    This was a part of a series of tweets in response to the #IfIDieInPoliceCustody hashtag. I only pulled these three, but I am horrified of a reality where this sort of precaution and preparation is necessary – where even thinking it is a reality.
    I hope that every Black person has had a discussion with friends & family about what to do if you are arrested. Is there a phone tree?
    Does someone in your life have access to your social media passwords? Can they take down your FB, Instagram, Twitter accounts?
    Who are your approved media spokespeople? Do you want your random ‘friend’ or ‘cousin’ who you actually despise speaking on your behalf?
    What kind of a world is this?

    Obama to wish Jon Stewart a fond farewell this Tuesday , a bit of fun.

    Interlude: Music! 50 Cent’s Business Sense

    In an interview a few weeks ago, rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson was candid about the usefulness of his tough-guy persona. “It prevents people from playing,” he said.

    Mr. Jackson grew up in a rough neighborhood of the New York City borough of Queens, sold crack cocaine at age 12, and was shot nine times in front of his grandmother’s house at 24. Three years later, in 2003, his first major-label album, “Get Rich or Die Tryin’,” made its debut at No. 1 on the Billboard charts. It went on to sell nearly 28 million copies. “I got really cool, real fast,” he said.

    Since then, Mr. Jackson’s career has expanded into acting, boxing and movie producing, to say nothing of products like cologne, clothing and audio equipment. And that, he told me, was just the beginning of his planned business ventures.

    Activist Johnetta Elzie Talks Ferguson & Black Lives Matter

    During the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the murder of Michael Brown by Police Officer Darren Wilson, a few activists rose from the fray. Johnetta Elzie, 25, was one of those people along with her partner DeRay Mckesson, and as a St. Louis local, she was on the scene shortly after Brown was killed and police left his corpse on the ground for hours. That fateful day of racial terrorism affected Johnetta, known as @nettaaaaaaaa on Twitter, and pushed her to become an activist, bolstering the Black Lives Matter movement with We The Protesters, Mapping Police Violence and Stay Woke, all of which have grown beyond her own expectations.

    During this year’s Essence Music Festival, I met Johnetta outside of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and made plans to catch up later. In the shadow of Sandra Bland, Mike Brown, Eric Garner and the removal of South Carolina’s Confederate flag, here is our recent conversation, edited for clarity.

    […]

    Tell me about Mapping Police Violence and exactly what you and DeRay do.

    Before we created Mapping Police Violence, we had the Ferguson Protestor Newsletter and then it evolved to be called the Protestor Newsletter because we started covering more than just St. Louis. We didn’t think it would last as long as it did or that there would be so much news about black death. It was an informative tool for people who didn’t know where certain stories started and gave updates to other deaths and their corresponding cases. It was also a good way to keep events scheduled and people’s calendars organized. From there we made We The Protesters, a tool kit center with the list of demands that we’d gotten from different cities, policy think tanks and chants. If people needed chants to set the mood of their protest, we had a list of over 50 and vine clips of people showing the rhythms of how they were supposed to go.

    Then we made Mapping Police Violence which is special to me, I love it. It chronicles all of the unarmed black people who were killed in 2014 and if we could get their pictures, it’s there along with their age and story of how they died. The site makes sure we’re telling the truth of everyone’s story. It also has an interactive map with a red dot showing everyone who was killed in 2014, which is a lot to even see and know that they all died due to police violence.

    From there, we also created Stay Woke, a survey where people can input their skill set and how they want to help and plug into the movement. So far over 5,000 people have signed up and so we’re just working on the backend to catalogue everything and hand it to the people that are doing the work in their cities and states where people have volunteered.

    All of the things you mentioned sound like a full-time job, but do you also have a paying full-time gig?

    Yes! I’ve been working at Amnesty International as a field organizer for about the last seven months.

    Are they open to all you do?

    Working here has let me know that I’m more passionate about what I do with DeRay and the rest of our team. It’s hard to care or even pretend to care about the things that Amnesty focuses on. But Amnesty does have interesting pushes coming up like a new campaign about police accountability that just launched through a report that was released about the laws surrounding the use of deadly force. It was interesting to read and learn which states even have something on the books.

    You’ve called yourself a “modern day freedom rider,” what does that mean to you in this day and age of social media, which people like Rep. John Lewis didn’t have?

    Those are really big shoes to fill. What was done in the Civil Rights movement was very important and a legitimate life-long commitment because you knew that you could be killed at any moment for doing what you think is right. It’s similar to what’s happening now, for example there was a shooting at a protest and the protesters weren’t the people shooting. It’s frightening to know that you can die for just protesting though it’s your first amendment right. It makes me very numb knowing that that could happen at any moment but you have to come to terms with it. You can’t focus on anything else but doing the work and know that if death were to happen, the movement would continue.

    You’ve said the focus of your work is to change the awareness of Americans and those on social media so they can see that the violence happening to black people is routine rather than a horrible one-off news stories about just one or two dead people of color.

    It’s a legitimate problem and it’s all about changing hearts and minds. I see the changes personally when I’m talking to my grandparents because they’re of the Civil Rights era but something happened with their age group where respectability politics really got a hold of many of them. It can be frustrating to talk to someone of that age group and say “This is what the victim did but they didn’t deserve to die.” There’s something in respectability politics that will make those people say, “Well, they shouldn’t have done this or that” but it’s like “No, you know for a fact, and have lived through it, that you don’t have to do anything for a police officer or a white vigilante to kill you and get away with it. You know it doesn’t have to be anything other than the color of your skin.” It is unlearning that internal oppression.

    There’s more at the link. I also recommend following her on twitter.

  55. rq says

    “What happened in that jail?”: Everything you need to know about the tragic & mysterious death of Sandra Bland, Salon with video.

    Waller Cnty judge: “Social media distributes inaccuracies. Only listen to our office.” Sounds like Bob McCulloch’s GJ presser. #SandraBland

    Tuscaloosa Police Department asks FBI to investigate fatal arrest of Anthony Ware, the man who died after being pepper sprayed.

    The Tuscaloosa Police Department has asked the FBI to conduct an independent investigation of the fatal arrest of Anthony Ware, the department’s chief said Friday afternoon.

    Chief Steven Anderson said TPD and the county sheriff’s office, whose deputies are conducting their own review of the death, believe this is the next logical step in the investigation process.

    Anderson also said he hopes the move will demonstrate the department’s commitment to transparency and accountability following Ware’s death.

    “We also believe this will further demonstrate to the public our willingness to be open and honest regarding the case,” Anderson said.

    Police brutality protesters now have a Twitter bot to handle their haters, a much-needed tool.

    Arguing and engaging with even a few people on Twitter can easily turn into a full-time job for activists such as DeRay Mckesson, Johnetta Elzie and others members and friends of the nonprofit group We the Protesters, an organization that aims to draw attention to police killings of black people in America.

    Enter StayWokeBot, a new automated Twitter account that will do some of the arguing for them.

    “It’s for activists or people who deal with a lot of — I would say — people who expect to be given a free education,” Courtney Stanton, co-founder of Feel Train, the coding studio that designed StayWokeBot, told Mashable. “It allows you to distribute the same information over and over again very quickly.”

    For now, StayWokeBot will mostly tweet out little rewards for anyone who follows it. Much like the Hogwarts sorting hat bot, StayWokeBot sends messages that compare new followers to icons — including author James Baldwin, rapper Nas and Oprah Winfrey — by saying things like, “You are the bearer of our tradition, you hold it in your pen. Tell the truth and nothing less, because you embody James Baldwin.” It even has one for Riley Curry.

    Soon, however, StayWokeBot will work like this:

    Say an activist tweets about police brutality, and a Twitter user responds by saying, “What about black on black crime?” He or she is arguing that black people should be more focused on the crimes black people commit against each other rather than on crimes committed by police. There are plenty of problems with the logic of that argument. But instead of tweeting at this person several times with an explanation, activists can reply by looping in StayWokeBot, and asking it to tell this person “about black-on-black crime.”

    The bot recognizes whatever phrase comes after the word “about,” its designers told Mashable. StayWokeBot will then tweet a brief response to the user, followed by a link that explains the activist’s argument in greater detail.

    “I had never even thought about a bot for that, but I thought this could be really dope,” Mckesson told Mashable. “Twitter’s space is still relatively new, you know? There’s so much to explore in it, and to explore with a purpose.”

    StayWokeBot is powered by a Google doc, which functions as its brain. Anyone with access to the doc can plug in a brief argument (e.g. why the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism) and link. Once both are inside the doc, the bot will be able to tweet them out.

    That’s actually kind of neat…! Wow.

    The family of #PaulCastaway, Native American man murdered by @DenverPolice, needs help paying for his funeral https://fundly.com/justice-for-paul-castaway …

  56. rq says

    Most of Canada’s prisoners have never been convicted of anything. Why are they in jail? So no, it’s not just a USAmerican problem.

    On any given day in Canada, there are more innocent people in prison than guilty ones.

    By “innocent people,” we mean those who have been accused of a crime and are being held on remand, awaiting a bail hearing or a trial. Across the country, 55 per cent of prisoners in provincial and territorial jails are not behind bars because of a conviction.

    It wasn’t always that way. In 2001, the majority of Canada’s prisoners had been tried and convicted, and were serving a sentence. But steady declines in the crime rate and in the number of convicted offenders in prison, coupled with an ever-tightening bottleneck in bail courts, has put the country in this absurd situation.

    This isn’t exactly news, by the way. In 2013, the John Howard Society of Ontario reported that the number of accused held on remand doubled from 2001-2010, and called for reforms to the bail system. The minister of justice of the day, Peter MacKay, said it was something that “we intend to look into.”

    Unfortunately, he made the comment just before heading into a meeting with victims’ rights advocates, which said everything. The Harper government has made “victims’ rights” the cornerstone of its legal outlook. Reforming the conditions under which people charged with crimes are allowed to remain in society is not something the Conservatives have shown much interest in pursuing.

    But it’s not just the Conservatives. No federal or provincial politician of any stripe with an instinct for self-preservation would take on the cause of the accused person in this country. They would risk being branded as “soft on crime,” with Prime Minister Stephen Harper likely leading the chorus.

    We are thus at a stalemate. The people elected to lead are ignoring a crisis that needs immediate attention. But the only response from governments to date has been the construction of larger remand centres, in Toronto and Edmonton, to hold the growing hordes of legally innocent people trapped in the system. The politicians run for cover while the crisis feeds on itself.

    More at the link.

    If you want some victim-blaming of Sandra Bland, you can go ahead and read this: Suburban Woman Found Dead in Jail Had Previous Encounters With Police. As someone on twitter mentioned, they once asked an officer where they were allowed to park. That’s an encounter with the police. Also on twitter, people were wondering why a black person having interactions with the police is making news. I mean, starting September, I will have daily encounters with the police. Why does this need to be news?

    The angry Black woman narrative is used to rationalize & legitimize direct & structural violence against Black Women. #SandraBland

    Sandra Bland And The Invisible Plight Of Black Women In The Justice System

    In McKinney, Texas, 15-year-old Dajerria Becton was tackled to the ground, kneed in the neck, and handcuffed by a police officer while she was wearing a bikini. In Cleveland, Tanisha Anderson, a schizophrenic and bipolar woman, was allegedly slammed to the ground in front of her family, before dying in police custody. In Chicago, 22-year-old Rekia Boyd was accidentally shot in the head by an officer who opened fire on a group gathered in an alley.

    And in Waller County, Texas, days before she was scheduled to start a new job at her alma mater, Sandra Bland died in police custody. Officers contend she hung herself, but family and friends suspect foul play — especially since video shows officers slamming her head to the ground three days earlier.

    Due in large part to social media, Bland’s death has received a lot of attention since the video of her arrest was circulated. And the FBI has already joined the investigation into her death.

    In general, though, it is rare for black women brutalized by police to receive this much attention.

    Across the U.S., countless black women are killed and targeted by law enforcement — a trend that the #BlackWomenMatter and #SayHerName protests called attention to in April. Yet public figures — including President Barack Obama — continue to overlook them.

    “The bottom line is that in too many places, black boys and black men, Latino boys and Latino men experience being treated differently under the law,” Obama said at the NAACP Annual Convention on Tuesday. “And one of the consequences of this is, around one million fathers are behind bars. Around one in nine African American kids has a parent in prison.” While he did discuss African Americans more broadly, he only said “woman” one time — and it wasn’t in the context of black women who experience discrimination in the criminal justice system.

    Today, one in six black men is incarcerated. But the number of black women behind bars has also skyrocketed. The number of incarcerated women has increased by 800 percent in three decades, and black women comprise 30 percent of people under state and federal jurisdiction. Currently, one in every 100 black women is behind bars, and black women are three times more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts.

    But presidential hopefuls have ignored them as well.

    […]

    Police brutality against black women comes in many forms. In addition to being killed outright, the sexual assault of black women by law enforcement is another prevalent issue. For instance, one Oklahoma City police officer will stand trial in October for reportedly sexually assaulting seven black women while on-duty. Allegations against him include stalking and rape. Indeed, patterns of sexual assault by cops leave many black women afraid to call law enforcement for help, out of fear of being re-traumatized by sexual violence.

    And patterns of sexual harassment and abuse extends to women and girls behind bars as well. A scathing report on the juvenile justice system found that sexual abuse is rampant in juvenile facilities, and young girls of color — including African American girls — are disproportionately incarcerated in those facilities. Many of those girls are detained and imprisoned for sex offenses, even though they were sexually trafficked. A significant number of girls experienced sexual abuse before entering the juvenile justice system, and are suffering from untreated trauma.

    ”Prevailing narratives around Black violability and anti-Black racial violence pivot around Black men and boys,” Dr. Treva B. Lindsey, assistant professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies told DAME. “Both historically and contemporarily, when many people working towards racial justice around the issue of racial violence, the presumptive victim is a Black male. From lynching to police brutality, the presumed victim is a Black male. Therefore, Black women and girls are viewed as exceptional victims as opposed to perpetual victims of anti-Black racial violence.”

    In front Waller County Courthouse for #SandraBland Crowd is chanting: “We want answers” (pictures from this protest in reverse chronology)

    Sandra Bland Tried to Bail Herself Out Just Before Her Death in Police Custody: Bondsman, Mic on that aspect of the story.

  57. rq says

    Two Charts Show How the Drug War Drives US Domestic Spying. While there’s no data on race, guess who is (most likely) disproportionately affected?

    Vandalism Wave Continues as Anti-Klan Demonstration Looms

    Attacks on Confederate statues, cemeteries, flags, and monuments continues throughout the South. This weekend in Columbia, South Carolina, people will rally and attempt to shut down a KKK demonstration supporting the Confederate flag.

    In Oklahoma City, a Confederate graveyard was vandalized with red paint. A report reads: “Workers at Oklahoma City’s Fairlawn Cemetery discovered Thursday that a Confederate veterans monument there had been vandalized with red paint. The monument honors 23 Confederate soldiers who are buried in the cemetery.”

    On Wednesday, two Confederate sites in Charlotte, North Carolina were defaced. A online story reads: “Police were called to the monument near Old City Hall around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday. The monument had the word “Racist” scrawled across it in spray paint. Around 2 p.m. Wednesday, police received a report that the Confederate monument near Memorial Stadium was vandalized. Concrete was smeared across text and symbols on both sides of the monument.”

    Social media is buzzing with the trending hashtag of #NoFlagginChallenge, in which people record themselves taking down Confederate flags in public. Be safe folks! Cover your faces!

    As states across the South continued to bow to pressure to take down the Confederate flag, those on the right continued to mobilize to preserve them. Pro-Confederate protests took place in Raleigh, Oklahoma City, and with more planned. The KKK continues to openly recruit throughout the South through flyers and a planned demonstration on Saturday in Columbia, North Carolina.

    A counter-protest has been called to “Run the Klan Out of Town!” A call-out reads: “We call upon all those willing and able —#BlackLivesMatter activists, community organizers, anti-racists, anarchists and other radicals, and anyone else furious with racism and the police—to converge on Columbia, confront the Klan, and defy their message of white supremacy. History has shown—from the armed standoff against a lynch mob in Columbia, TN in 1946 to the 1958 Battle of Hayes Pond, from the Deacons for Defense to the armed defiance of Monroe, NC’s NAACP chapter, from the 1979 Greensboro Massacre to the 1997 confrontation with the Klan in downtown Asheville, NC—that we must oppose white supremacist organizing actively and physically, in our streets and neighborhoods.”

    Going to be catching up on twitter in a few moments, should be interesting.

    Crowd continues to grow. The plan is to march to the courthouse from the police station in Hempstead for #SandraBland (still from yesterday)

    Dylann Roof’s Past Reveals Trouble at Home and School – not going to cite, but feel free to compare and contrast this to the NBC piece on Bland’s previous encounters with police above. I dare you.

    Texas DA Intimates Sandra Bland’s ‘Mental Illness’ Caused Her Suicide. See? It’s all too convenient for them, if she was mentally ill, they cannot possibly be at fault for anything, not her distress, not her actions, nothing nothing nothing.

    The assertion that Bland killed herself due to mental health issues is suspicious to Bland’s family, who say she would have never committed suicide. Bland had just relocated to Texas to begin a new job at Prairie View A&M University, her alma mater, and was very excited. To boot, her sister Shante Needham told press that she was pulling together bail money for Sandy, as her friends and family called her, after Sandy had reportedly been injured during her rough arrest by Waller County police.

    “She informed me she had been arrested. She said they couldn’t tell her what she had been arrested for until an hour before she had called. She then proceeded to say the officer had put his knees in her back and that she thought her shoulder was broken,” said Needham. “She said her bond was $515. And I told her that I would work on getting her out.”

    Texas Rangers are now leading the investigation into Bland’s death. However Sandy’s family, and many others online, don’t believe she took her own life, especially when her story dovetails with Kindra Chapman, another of a black woman who reportedly committed suicide behind bars after she was arrested for theft of a cell phone in Alabama. Here we go again.

    Discriminatory auto loans bring Honda Buyers $24M restitution. Post-racial America. So much discrimination randomly appearing everywhere for no reason at all, just out of the blue.

    Just this week, Honda Finance Corporation (HFC) agreed to pay $24 million in restitution to borrowers of color as a part of a settlement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Department of Justice (DOJ), after investigators discovered HFC’s policy to allow dealers to mark up the interest rate resulted in borrowers of color paying more in interest than white borrowers.

    Unfortunately, Honda’s discriminatory auto practices are not an isolated incident.

    An earlier settlement that CFPB and DOJ’ reached with Ally Bank, in which Ally agreed to pay $98 million in civil penalties and restitution, to settle claims of discrimination. Black, Latino and Asian-American car buyers who financed with Ally paid more in interest on their loans than similarly-situated white borrowers due to car dealer interest rate markups.

    In September of last year, CFPB revealed that several lenders agreed to pay more than $50 million in fines and restitution due to supervisory examinations that revealed issues of discrimination. And, a recent settlement between the DOJ and Evergreen Bank found similar disparities in Evergreen’s motorcycle lending portfolio, also due to dealer interest rate markups.

    Consumer advocates welcomed the enforcement actions but cautioned that more work still needs to be done.

    “We continue to believe,” said Chris Kukla, CRL Senior Vice President, “that the only effective way to completely eliminate the discriminatory impact and the unfairness of hidden dealer interest rate markups is to end the practice altogether.”

    “This is a step in the right direction and we urge the CFPB and DOJ to continue pursuing the remaining cases,” Kukla continued. “However dealer interest rate markups remain an unfair and hidden practice with continued potential for discrimination. CFPB and DOJ must vigilantly monitor the data for discriminatory or unfair impact and act swiftly if and when that impact occurs.”

    For the moment, however, Richard Cordray, CFPB’s Director will mark the progress made as the journey towards fair lending continues. “Honda’s proactive decision to move to a new pricing and compensation system demonstrates industry leadership and represents a significant step towards protecting consumers from discrimination,” observed Cordray.

    More on the practice and how it works at the link.

  58. rq says

    Some stuff on books. Specifically two books, and I bet you can guess which ones.
    First, PZ’s post on Brooks: The ear of David Brooks, within whose comments (via AndrewD – thanks ever so much!) one finds Listening While Ashkenazi, from Mike the Mad Biologist.

    So why is it so difficult to believe that the ancestors of slaves–who lived in a government-sanctioned and -protected multi-generational labor camp where torture and terror were finely calibrated to maximize slave productivity–might view the American experience in a fundamentally different light than Ashkenazi Jews, who as you rightly note, have thrived in the U.S. This is not simply a matter of redistributing the pie better, though that is also a factor, but a fundamental question of whether African-Americans will ever, based on previous history, be considered ‘real Americans’ with all of the benefits and opportunities that entails, or if they will remain the Constant Other, against which other ethnic groups, including ours, can integrate.

    I don’t know if I share Coates pessimism, but our ancestors’ experience does not invalidate his experience or that of his forefathers. And it is a brutal experience, one that has become less brutal, but for too many African-Americans is still brutal and is still based on them existing as the Constant Other. Nor is it simply based on the evil in our hearts: it is a deep, structural Othering, one formulated and entrenched in local, state, and federal law–and the application of that law.

    Someone who is fortunate enough to teach at Yale should be able to understand how different groups (and individuals) can have vastly different perspectives because they have had very different experiences–ones based on structural and institutional phenomena.

    And a third point-of-view, one which compares and contrasts the worldviews expressed in Coates’ Between the World and Me, and Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman. I loved this entire essay, and I would make it required reading, because interestingly, as much as we went over To Kill a Mockingbird in high school, never once have I heard an opinion from a black person on it. Until now, and let me tell you, it makes you think (if you’re an ignorant white person like me, that is). Anyway. That’s an intro.
    Between the Words and Me: Reading Coates and Lee

    In eighth grade I was introduced to the Spartan goodness of a Mr. Atticus Finch, a figure transformed from fiction to some semblance of real by Gregory Peck’s booming baritone and bookish, horn-rimmed glasses. There was also the rambunctious Scout and the constellation of White characters flitting in and out to form the story interstitium between the two. On the absolutely periphery was the curiosity of the anguish of Tom Robinson, a character for whom “busting up a chiffarobe” is the only dialogue I have ever remembered.

    That same eighth grade year, one day my father, freshly victorious over his doctoral dissertation in African-American history at Howard University, took me to the book store. It was a joy we shared from my earliest memories. Whenever I wanted a book, he took me to buy it, although I suspect that by the size of his current library that he was the main exploiter of that dynamic. For every fiction work I read from a White author, his rule was that I always select a matching nonfiction title or a work by a Black author. On this particular day I chose Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, perhaps under the guise of fooling my father and believing it had some connection to the Wells story of the same name.

    By day I read and absorbed–in a classroom in which I was one of two students of color–To Kill a Mockingbird, a story of the war between the vicious fury of violent supremacy and the deafening sound of white pity in the South. Atticus Finch may have represented a great many things, and I believe I did admire him once, but never did he represent that most critical and democratic thing–agency. In fact, as a lawyer acting as the figurative and literary mouthpiece for an oppressed person he represented the exact opposite.

    By night I read and absorbed Invisible Man once, twice, three times in the same span. I researched all of the referenced and tried to emulate all of its coolness. I devoured it. My life was lightbulbs and paint cans and jazz. From there it was not too much of a jump to Baldwin and Wright and Hansberry. In particular, I dug into The Fire Next Time with gusto, and it stoked within me the beginnings of my righteous rage and echoed my own burgeoning struggle with my faith. These books, this canon, represented the exact opposite of what To Kill a Mockingbird meant. They were freedom. They were agency. They were encouragements to find my voice and use it.
    […]

    These experiences form a rather long preamble for the events of the week: the release of Harper Lee’s follow-up, Go Set a Watchman and of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, a Baldwinesque address to a teenage son by a man identified as the heir apparent to Baldwin by one Toni Morrison. In devouring these releases without sleep as quickly as I could possibly consume them, I awakened that deep sense of conflict and hunger that first disturbed me in the eighth grade.

    First there was Lee’s novel. A much-questioned volume, it details a perceived reversal in Atticus’s character, one that puzzled Scout (now, Jean Louise) seemingly as much as it did critics. Atticus is revealed as a staunch segregationist and a legalist, a set of beliefs that somehow allow space for both his defense of Tom Robinson in the first book and his disdain for the NAACP in the second. Jean Louise acts as the audience surrogate, expressing shock and anger at his bubbling racism and culminating in her berating him from a position of power. For some, this is a confusing and illogical turn of events. For some, it is a crucial reversal on the first book’s idyllic view of race, in portraying characters who could fight for some Black characters on some grounds but still be driven by White supremacy to defend segregation. But truthfully, the book is neither.

    Above all things, Go Set a Watchman is a case study in and a continuation of the very lack of Black agency and voice displayed in To Kill a Mockingbird. The Black characters exist in a nebula of silent parts, zipping in and out of a morality play in which the sole centers of gravity are Jean Louise and Atticus. Characters like Calpurnia are lost between Jean Louise’s self-righteous indignation and absent-minded journey to discover her true self and Atticus’s blooming bigotry, as Tom Robinson was lost between Atticus’s sternness and the near-comical racism of the mob in the first book. Nowhere is there space for Blackness to breathe, to grow, to voice itself. Perhaps this issue is a manifestation of the central problem of the book: that it was released under dubious conditions of agency by parties secondary to its authorship.

    On the other hand and as loathe as I am to say it, lest it dampens my ambition to be the best, Coates has been the major inspiration of the past three years of my writing life and was the major reason I decided to dabble in the hectic life of an essayist. He has been both an aspiration and an unreachable horizon, an easy person to defer to and one who somehow always expressed the words that were in my heart but could never quite translate via the coursing veins of my ink pen. Between the World and Me is a summation of that course. It is not perfect, and as my colleague Josie Duffy points out, it misses a good deal of the mark with respect to the disrespect of Black women’s bodies in particular. This is a vital and salient concern, and while no work can encompass the whole of Blackness, a piece that misses something approximating half of that struggle is rightly criticized. Perhaps this is a domain in which the book’s well-noted brevity is limiting, and a key caveat to any point I make about agency and voice. However, Between the World and Me does manage to manifest much of what has percolated in the back of my (admittedly heteronormative and male) mind about the leviathan of race in America. Its format-a paternal epistolary that manages to remain compelling despite a slight tendency towards recursiveness-also brings me to all of those interactions with my own father and gives me the sight beyond sight to inhabit his fear for me and the future fear for my own.

    “And I felt in this a cosmic injustice, a profound cruelty, which infused an abiding, irrepressible desire to unshackle my body and achieve the velocity of escape[,]” writes Coates in the book’s gripping and elegant first act. This feeling of the need to escape has always been the primary motivation behind my desire to write, and a reason why I gravitated towards the fantastic, first emulating Butler and Delaney before I chose to try on Baldwin. It was my yearning.

    The kernel at the core of Coates’s book is of that yearning to express. It is agency in book form, and in his choice to abandon many of the arguments and standards Black intellectual works are usually reduced to repeating, of the obligation to hope and assuage White guilt and of the obligation to endeavor to fix the hole at the center of White supremacy, there is freedom. There’s a reason why Coates’s work inspires so many writers of color to write; because his work represents a sort of freedom that we all yearn to inhabit. The endeavor to find the answers eventually answers itself.

    And I had to laugh at this line:

    [White consumers] will inhabit a world in which lawyers who took up law because of Atticus Finch will anguish, while those who took up law because of Tom Robinson will not, because they do not exist.

    Because it’s probably the most fucking saddest, most distressing line in that entire essay. Once you really think about it.

    Unarmed black man allegedly strangled to death by Mississippi police officer, Mashable finds the Jonathan Sanders story.

    Emmy Noms Set Record With 64% Gain For African-American Actors – here’s to hoping that they all win in their categories!!! (And that there aren’t too many cancelling each other out.)

    You should publish all of the names that signed the petition so we can all see who racists are. This links to a link to the article posted above by Saad about the removal of a memorial for the slave-ships, due to causing offense to white people. Apparently they’ve gathered about 40 000 signatures. Sad.

  59. rq says

    And apparently Ta-Nehisi Coates has received criticism for not being diverse enough in his new book, which I find a kind of silly argument considering it’s a personal account of personal experiences as a black man…
    But here’s someone else who says it better:
    This critique of .@tanehisicoates of him not including women is grounded in the fact that we black folks are an underfed community.
    Because we’re only allowed “one” literary voice at a time, The One is forced to include The All, even if they can’t speak for All.
    If there were a broader, diverse set of black literary voices ordained to the masses, we wouldn’t ask .@tanehisicoates to write *everything*
    I didn’t expect .@tanehisicoates to write about my lived experience as a black woman. That’s not his area of expertise. We read who he is.
    And .@tanehisicoates being a “chosen” voice by mainstream media ain’t his fault. Don’t blame him for what white supremacy limits us to.
    A singular narrative is dangerous. But that doesn’t mean one person writes multiple narratives. That means *we* uplift multiple voices.

    I posted previously an article from a black woman reviewing his book, and yes, she mentions his lack of speaking about black women. But she also wrote how she understood that. The link to Seven Scribes also does mention this critique. It is valid, but at the same time, which opinion also appeared, it’s not his burden, not his story. And if he tried, he would be criticized for speaking on behalf of black women. So the answer is, of course, to signal-boost a variety of black voices. To make them available and heard, to cover as many experiences as possible.

  60. rq says

    The Quiet Racism of Instagram Filters, which seems like something silly to worry about, but… it really isn’t.

    People often think of technology as inherently unbiased, but photography has a history of racism. In Technologies of Seeing: Photography, Cinematography and Television, British academic Brian Winston writes, “Colour photography is not bound to be ‘faithful’ to the natural world. Choices are made in the development and production of photographic materials.” In other words, what you see in a photo is never pure reality—it’s the world as someone has chosen to depict it. And for the first hundred or so years of filmmaking, camera technology chose to ignore people of color entirely, leaving photographers’ tools with built-in biases.

    The way that racism operates aesthetically is to neglect or, in extreme cases, erase whoever is not white. In the 1950s, for example, Kodak measured and calibrated skin tones in still photography using a reference card featuring “Shirley,” a white model dressed in high-contrast clothing. Ultimately, Shirley ended up being the standard for image processing in North American photography labs. It didn’t matter if the photo in question contained entirely black people; Shirley’s complexion was still treated as the ideal.

    Kodak’s film was so bad at capturing the different hues and saturations of black skin that when director Jean Luc Godard was sent on an assignment to Mozambique in 1977, he flat-out refused to use Kodak on the grounds that its stock was “racist.” Only when the candy and furniture industries began complaining that they couldn’t accurately shoot dark chocolate and brown wood furniture did Kodak start to improve its technology.

    What was the problem, exactly? London-based artist Adam Broomberg, who co-produced a 2013 show of photos taken with old Polaroid film, explained to The Guaridan that black skin absorbs 42% more light than white skin. Picture a photograph with two women, one black and one white. If the photographer adjusts the light so that the black woman doesn’t resemble a dark blob with white teeth, the white woman, as a result, will become so light that her intensity will perhaps be blinding.

    Except, of course, that black people come in a variety of skin tones, so this argument is… kind of silly, even if true for a segment of the population. Anyway, more at the link, including examples of instagram filters.

    Sources: Tulsa Deputy In Eric Harris Video Must Attend Training Class. Shoot a man by accident, take some extra courses.

    Deputies Joseph Byars and Michael Huckeby are still working for the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office after disciplinary hearings Friday morning.
    The two deputies were shown on video holding suspect Eric Harris down after Reserve Deputy Bob Bates shot Harris in April.

    A source tells News On 6 Byars got no punishment.

    The source says the Huckaby has to re-attend a “custody and control” training class, in which deputies learn how to properly arrest and get control of someone who might be fighting deputies.

    Oh, the others. Same difference. How about some diversity training? Or something on unconscious biases? No?

    Cleveland police supervisors disciplined in hiring of officer who shot Tamir Rice (document) – still waiting to see what they’re going to do about Loehmann himself.

    Lt. Gail Bindel and Sgt. Edwin Santiago “failed to adequately supervise and review an applicant’s background investigation” and were found guilty of administrative charges including neglect of duty, according to documents.

    Bindel was suspended for two days, and Santiago received a written reprimand, according to the letters dated July 9.

    Loehmann was hired in 2014, after he resigned from the Independence Police Department on his first day. The police academy supervisor there wrote that Loehmann’s performance during handgun training was “dismal,” and that Loehmann had trouble following orders.

    Investigative documents released by the Cuyahoga County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office earlier this year said that Loehmann was rejected by at least five different area police agencies before landing a job at a patrolman in the Cleveland department.

    Police acknowledged that background investigators never checked Loehmann’s personnel file from Independence during their background investigation.

    Well, that is, to say the least, irresponsible. And probably a dereliction of duty of some kind. Geez.

    Mosby says she learned from mistakes of family members in law enforcement

    “As a child, I personally observed their sacrifice and commitment to protecting my community. I learned at a very early age that everyone makes mistakes,” Mosby said Wednesday in a statement. “I also learned about the importance of taking responsibility for the choices and mistakes that we make.”

    Since being thrust into the national spotlight, Mosby has repeatedly referred to generations of police officers in her family, many of whom worked for the department in Boston where she grew up. She has rarely discussed the troubles that dogged their careers.

    “Everyone deserves a second chance at redemption, a chance to become a better person,” Mosby said in her statement. “These are the values that I learned growing up, and these are the values I have brought to my work as a prosecutor when applying justice fairly and equally.”

    Several other members of Mosby’s family waged legal battles against their law enforcement agencies. Her grandfather, a founder of a minority law enforcement association, alleged racial discrimination in a lawsuit against the Boston Police Department and lost. Another uncle sued the Massachusetts State Police, alleging discrimination, and was awarded $212,000 for back pay.

    […]

    David Jaros, a former defense attorney who teaches law at the University of Baltimore, said issues with Mosby’s relatives do not make her “incapable” of leading the prosecution of the six officers. Many prosecutors have dealt with family problems, he said, adding that those life experiences make prosecutors better.

    “Every person brings their own experiences,” Jaros said. “We ask them everyday to put aside their experiences and follow the law. ”

    The Fraternal Order of Police declined to comment. One attorney for the six officers declined to comment; the others did not respond.
    […]

    In the 1998 high school yearbook, the 93 members of the senior class were asked to predict where they would be in the future. It said Mosby would be “the next Malcolm X, MLK and Farrakhan all wrapped into one, with dreads, and preaching so the whole world can hear.”

    Robinson chuckled when reminded last month about the yearbook quote. “I was extremely proud of her,” Robinson said. “She’s been on this trajectory since she was 10. She made me proud to be a black woman.”

    Rochelle Ritchie, Mosby’s spokeswoman, said Robinson wrote the yearbook quote and put it next to Mosby’s name. Ritchie said that Mosby’s critics would unfairly seize on the reference to Louis Farrakhan, the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam.

    Mosby and her office declined to comment further.

    She still needs the dreads, but otherwise, not bad. For starters.

    Local photographer gives Baltimore a close-up, like the Humans of New York but for Baltimore.

    Rubino said the project was inspired by the popular photography blog Humans of New York for which photo-blogger Brandon Stanton posts pictures and personal stories from people he meets on the street. Since starting HONY in 2010, Stanton, a former bond trader, has grown a loyal social media following of millions and parlayed the brand into three books.

    Rubino said Baltimore’s need for a HONY spin-off became apparent after the city erupted with riots and violence after the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old who died in police custody in April. According to Rubino, city residents were misrepresented in the news and the city was portrayed as “a caricature of urban desolation.”

    “We needed to change the narrative about Baltimore,” he said. “We thought the best way to do that would be to talk to people who contribute to the rich life in the city and give a different a view than the one represented by the national media.”

    Rubino said he has already interviewed about 100 people in about a dozen neighborhoods — including Mondawmin, Hampden and Patterson Park — and that “90 percent” of people he has approached have been happy to participate.

    “What I’ve noticed, once you start talking to them, they’ll just keep talking and they really open up,” he said.

    Rubino said asking strangers for photos “doesn’t come naturally” to him, but that the responses he has gotten encourage him.

    “When this project came up, I wasn’t sure I could do it,” he said, but “the first couple days were tremendously exhilarating. My whole consciousness shifted from ‘How am I going to deal with the rejections?’ to ‘Isn’t this amazing?'”

    Good luck wit hthe project!!

    Orders rise for Sons of Confederate Veterans license plates as several states discuss banning them. Not sure why anyone would really want to be proud of that and wear that badge with such pride.

    In North Carolina, where the governor wants to stop issuing SCV plates, a spike in requests for the license tags sold out the state’s supply. In South Carolina, where there’s no plan to eliminate SCV plates, there was also a jump in orders in June, which increased the number of active SCV plates statewide by about 5 percent.

    “We can’t run out because they are printed as they are requested,” said Beth Parks, spokeswoman for the S.C. Department of Motor Vehicles.

    Despite the surge in orders for the specialty plates, which help fund the Sons of Confederate Veterans, they are not very popular amid the many license tag options offered by South Carolina. More people have specialty plates supporting amateur radio or highway beautification.

    In Charleston County, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired, just 62 of the more than 330,000 vehicles in the county had SCV license plates in 2014, when The Post and Courier obtained the county’s motor vehicle tax records. More drivers had Boykin Spaniel Foundation tags.

    The license plates, however, have proved controversial outside of South Carolina as part of a larger debate over Confederate flags, statues, street and school names, and merchandise, including children’s toys.

    Okay, and the plates actually fund the Sons of Confederate Veterans? Seriously???

  61. rq says

    Police accused in Freddie Gray’s death say they gave statements under duress

    Three of six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray argued in court filings this week that they provided statements to police investigators under duress because they feared losing their jobs.

    Two of the officers said that when investigators asked them to provide statements about the circumstances surrounding Gray’s arrest, they were led to believe they were doing so as witnesses — not as suspects.

    Another said she provided a statement without being advised of her Miranda rights, then was ordered to return five days later to be read her rights and provide another statement.

    Now those statements are key evidence in the case. Defense attorneys for Lt. Brian W. Rice, Officer William G. Porter and Sgt. Alicia D. White — all charged with manslaughter — have asked that those statements be suppressed, which would prevent prosecutors from using them in court.

    It is unclear what information the officers provided in the statements that Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby turned over to defense attorneys as part of discovery.

    Attorneys for Rice, Porter and White argued that their clients were not properly advised of their rights during their interrogations. Two other defendants, Officer Garrett E. Miller and Officer Edward M. Nero, made the same argument in earlier filings.

    “Because the defendants subjectively felt that any refusal to cooperate in the investigation would result in their termination, and such belief was objectively reasonable, and because they were asked to waive their Fifth Amendment rights, their statements” should be suppressed, attorneys for Rice and Porter argued in a motion.

    Mosby’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

    A response: See, it’s likely that the @BaltimorePolice who “interrogated” the six officers who killed #FreddieGray violated procedures, intentionally.
    Actually, I can see them legitimately not expecting to be charged at all, therefore willing to make statements as witnesses. Not sure where the ‘duress’ part happens (is this a legal thing?), but I can believe that they gave statements freely because, well, nothing ever happens to the officers. Right?

    Nikki Haley in South Carolina Statement regarding the out of state KKK rally at the statehouse on Saturday

    The strength and grace the people of South Carolina have shown over the last three weeks have inspired our family, our neighbors and the entire world. Our family hopes the people of South Carolina will join us in staying away from the disruptive, hateful spectacle members of the Ku Klux Klan hope to create over the weekend and instead focus on what brings us together. We want to make the Statehouse a lonely place for them. In doing so, we’ll honor those we have lost and continue to make our state stronger.
    ‪#‎OneSC‬

    (That’s the extent of her statement.)
    If ISIS showed up in front of anyone’s statehouse, nobody would be talking about any amendments. A response to people saying it’s a first-amendment issue.

    @deray the fact that we even have to type the words Klan Rally without the numbers 1955 behind them is mind boggling. #nothingschanged

    CNN video: Obama: Inmates made ‘mistakes’ like I did.

  62. rq says

    Confederate flags fly high at Faster Horses festival – Detroit, Michigan. Whee! Isn’t that, like, the non-racist North?

    The raging debate over the Confederate flag and its meaning has done nothing to dull the flag’s presence at the three-day Faster Horses country music festival at Michigan International Speedway this weekend.

    While American flags could be seen on items ranging from pickup beds to barbecue grills, one didn’t have to look far to see the Dixie flag, some on display with “redneck” scrawled across the bottom, in the camping areas, especially in the infield.

    “I really don’t have a problem with it,” said Brandon Wascha, 23, of Swartz Creek. “We’re all Americans; we’re all free to do what we want. I do what I want to do, and I’m not going to tell someone else what they can do.”

    The “come as you are” attitude that Faster Horses attendees adopt extend to the use of the Confederate flag. Dereck Lehman wore it like a cape through the festival grounds Friday. He said reaction was mixed; some engaged with him, others thought the flag was in poor taste.

    “I’m doing it because I believe in what I’m doing,” said Lehman, explaining that the flag represents a personal freedom to do what you want and believe what you believe, free of the pressures from outside influences.

    “I take pride in what I do, and I don’t worry how others judge me.”

    So fucking free, they all are.
    Which I guess it’s true. But also free from compassion, and free from a proper education.

    The Destruction of a Black Suburb, on segregation and city planning and biases within the process – pretty overt, not really subtle.

    African Americans started coming to Cincinnati more than a century ago, fleeing the violence and economic constraints of the South for jobs and homes.

    But redlining and other restrictive zoning laws prohibited black families from buying homes in many of the city’s neighborhoods. So when developers started selling off lots of unincorporated land north of Cincinnati to black buyers, it seemed like a good opportunity, one of the few paths to homeownership in the segregated North.

    The land had no paved roads and no streetlights. Few homes had running water and there was no police or fire protection. Carl Westmoreland, who grew up in this village in the 1940s, remembers watching black men rush over a hill toward a burning home with a small fire cart they’d bought. They didn’t save it in time, but the neighborhood banded together and rebuilt the house together. He refers to the community at the time as “America’s Soweto” for the primitive living conditions there.

    When it incorporated in 1947, this village, called Lincoln Heights, was the first primarily black self-governing community north of the Mason-Dixon line. (Today, the city has one of the highest concentrations of African American residents in the state of Ohio—according to the Census, 95.5 percent.) Lincoln Heights thrived for a while, producing poet Nikki Giovanni, songwriters the Isley Brothers (who wrote “Twist and Shout”), and scholar Carl Westmoreland, who now helps run the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Hundreds of residents worked at the nearby Wright Aeronautical Plant, manufacturing the B-29 bomber, and at a chemical plant a few blocks away, putting away money to improve their homes and secure their places in the black middle class. So successful was Lincoln Heights in its early days that New York’s governor, Thomas E. Dewey, invited prominent officials to New York City for a ticker-tape parade to honor the village as one of the only self-governing African American communities in the nation, according to Lincoln Heights, by Carolyn F. Smith.

    “It really was a situation where people made something out of nothing,” Westmoreland said about the suburb.

    But today, Lincoln Heights is struggling. Its median household income of $25,568 is less than half that of Blue Ash, a nearby majority-white suburb. About 16 percent of residents are unemployed, and one-third of families earn below the poverty level. The schools are bad—parents of about 40 percent of students send them to other schools in the area. The town’s police and fire departments shut down in October 2014 after an insurance company pulled the village’s insurance after balking at the number of lawsuits filed over civil-rights violations, wrongful terminations, and wage disputes. The fire department reopened, but the county sheriff took over for the police department earlier this year. The sense of community and pride that governed the town’s early days have all but disappeared.

    How one of the first black suburbs in the country fell so far from its halcyon early days exemplifies how systemic racism hampered the goals of those who were trying to build a community there. The people of Lincoln Heights might have had their own suburb, but the world made sure they had little else. From the beginning, historians say, the town was doomed to fail.

    “The notion of suburbanization, of neighborhood opportunities, all of that is embedded in that fantasy that black people can move to freedom, and we can’t,” said Henry Louis Taylor, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University at Buffalo, who wrote his dissertation on Lincoln Heights.
    […]

    When the county finally allowed the city to incorporate, in 1946, the boundaries were radically different than black residents had once hoped, encircling about 10 percent—one square mile—of the original proposal. The village now included no major factories or plants and no industrial tax base.

    “They ended up in a situation like many of these smaller suburban communities, without the type of economic framework and base that’s going to be required to sustain itself for a period of time,” said Taylor, the University of Buffalo professor. “Without that type of revenue base, these little small places would eventually get into trouble.”

    In much the same way that large municipalities such as Detroit and Cleveland started to suffer when white residents fled to the suburbs, taking with them prospective tax revenue, black suburbs such as Lincoln Heights struggled without the resources of better-paid white residents and thriving businesses. The difference is that Lincoln Heights had those resources until the residents of nearby suburbs usurped them. Lincoln Heights didn’t have to lose population to fail, its failure was written in the way the county shaped its boundaries from the beginning.

    It’s an example of the type of structural impediments that have hampered black suburbs like Lincoln Heights and Ferguson all across the country.

    And much more at the link.

    U.S. Senate passes amendment urging pardon for boxer Jack Johnson

    The amendment was introduced by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Harry Reid (D-NV), pushing for a posthumous pardon for Johnson, the first African-American heavyweight champion, for an unjust conviction in 1913. Johnson was charged with transporting a white woman across state lines, a violation of the Mann Act, which made it a crime to transport a person between states for the purposes of prostitution.

    “Jack Johnson is a boxing legend and pioneer whose reputation was wrongly tarnished by a racially-motivated conviction more than a century ago,” said McCain in a release. “While this resolution has passed both chambers of Congress several times in recent years, President Obama has refused to take action even though the practice of issuing posthumous pardons has clear precedent. I thank Senator Reid for his continued partnership on this issue and urge the House to send the resolution to the President’s desk. It’s past time for our country to right this historical wrong and restore this great athlete’s legacy.”

    Johnson famously defeated Tommy Burns in Australia in 1908 to become the world heavyweight boxing champion, and in the years that followed he became one of the world’s most prominent fighters. In 1915, Johnson brought a woman whom he was dating across state lines. The ruling in his case is believed to have been racially charged, and the conviction destroyed Johnson’s career and reputation.

    “I’m pleased that Senator McCain and I have secured passage of this resolution that corrects a historical injustice,” said Reid in the same release. “Jack Johnson was the greatest athlete of his time, a trailblazer for African-Americans and had his life and legacy tarnished by a racially motivated criminal conviction. As we have done for years, Senator McCain and I will continue to fight to restore his legacy and ensure that Jack Johnson is remembered for what he was, an incredible boxer sent to prison by an unfair system. I hope the President will pardon Jack Johnson and repair the legacy of this great man.”

    There again a white woman appears as justification for a racially-motivated conviction against a black man. Stop doing that.

    Tamir Rice Justice Committee to present 60,000 signatures calling for charges against 2 CPD officers

    The Tamir Rice Justice Committee is planning a march and press conference next week to present a petition to Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty calling for charges against the two officers involved in the 12-year-old’s death.

    According to the activist group, the petition has 60,000 signatures.

    The committee plans to meet July 23 at 1 p.m. at the Free Stamp in Willard Park. They will hold a press conference at 2 p.m. on the steps of theCuyahoga County Justice Center and present their petition to McGinty.

    Tamir Rice’s cousin, LaTonya Goldsby, told newsnet5.com Friday that the family has been waiting patiently for the prosecutor’s office to take action and are frustrated the investigation is not complete.

    In a statement, a spokesperson for the prosecutor said their review continues and any member of the public is welcome to present petitions to the office.

    The event will take place on the eight month anniversary of Tamir Rice’s death.

    Autopsy finds Mississippi black man in buggy was strangled, death a homicide, attorney says – pathologically a homicide, but still needs to be legally declared a homicide. Let’s hope that happens.

    An attorney for the family of a black man who died following an encounter with a white police officer in a Mississippi town says the cause of death was strangulation.

    Chokwe Antar Lumumba told The Associated Press on Thursday that he was present when multiple law enforcement agencies briefed family members of Jonathan Sanders on Tuesday, telling them that he died from “manual asphyxiation,” and that the death was a homicide and not an accident.

    The finding is based on a preliminary autopsy report, according to the Jackson Free Press.

    Cop who smashed 18-year-old woman’s face on ground remains on regular duty, in case you thought there might be some disciplinary action going on there.

  63. rq says

    Oh, found two more responses from Brittany Packnett to Coates’ critics: We must reframe blackness to be the nuanced spectrum of perspectives we possess. Restrictions on blackness are the fault of supremacy
    The black woman’s story isn’t .@tanehisicoates tale to tell. And if he included us more, someone else would feel left out.

    Annnnd some photos from the KKK rally:
    “White power” protesters arrive outside the South Carolina State House.
    #breaking: members of the #KKK have arrived
    Oh it gets better: Columbia, S.C., outside the State House. Yes, someone brought THAT flag, too. Coincidence?
    Kkk here ppl started pushing & throwing things now armed officers on scene #chsnews @ABCNews4
    They got dispersed an hour earlier than planned, last I looked at twitter, though no one really knows why. Not that I’m complaining.

  64. rq says

    This happened: #blacklivesmatter #blm protest breaks out in the middle of @MartinOMalley speech #nn15 #NN15TownHall
    “Welcome to Arizona where Monica Jones, a black trans woman, cannot walk down the street, TODAY.” #nn15 #blackroots
    The activist on the mike at #nn15 is @Tia_Oso. She’s a Phoenix-based organizer; she’s demanding O’Malley “advance a racial justice agenda.”
    We have to “dismantle, not reform” structural racism. The protesters have questions for @MartinOMalley about how he will. #NN15 #blackroots

    KKK Plans Rally at S. Carolina Capitol, just a Daily Beast blurb right now:

    A local Ku Klux Klan chapter is planning a rally in front of the South Carolina State House on Saturday, the same day that an African-American group is planning a demonstration in the same place. Around 200 Klan members are expected at the rally from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. ET, overlapping with the time that Black Educators for Justice will assemble. “Our family hopes the people of South Carolina will join us in staying away from the disruptive, hateful spectacle members of the Ku Klux Klan hope to create over the weekend and instead focus on what brings us together,” Gov. Nikki Haley said in a statement. State officials finally removed the Confederate flag from the State House last week.

    Plantation Tours: Don’t Expect to Hear How Horrible Slavery Really Was, with a couple of exceptions mentioned.

    I’m not sure how I picked up the hobby of touring plantations. I think it started with my interest in architecture—picked up from my husband, who works in real estate—and my best friend of 20-plus years, who is an interior designer. Over the years, I’ve adopted their combined interests.

    I’ve been to four plantations and an antebellum home with slave quarters over the past few months. That certainly doesn’t make me an expert on slavery or plantations. But it has given me some perspective on the popular article “I Used to Lead Tours at a Plantation. You Won’t Believe the Questions I Got About Slavery,” written by Margaret Biser for Vox.

    Biser, who described herself as someone who once “worked at a historic site in the South,” shared her observations of some white people who visited the grounds and the sometimes bizarre questions they asked. I’ve had my own experiences with strange questions on the tours, notably all from black people, and also the bizarre commentary from white—always white, always women—docents.

    A very interesting recap of the author’s experiences follows.

  65. rq says

    Not really seeing the humour here: Amy Schumer Rewrote Her ‘Star Wars’-Themed GQ Cover And Now It’s Perfect, in case anyone wants to pick apart that image.

    KKK, African-American group plan rallies at South Carolina Capitol, Reuters.

    A Ku Klux Klan chapter and an African-American group plan overlapping demonstrations on Saturday outside the South Carolina State House, where state officials removed the Confederate battle flag last week.

    Governor Nikki Haley, who called for the flag’s removal from the State House grounds after the killing of nine African-Americans in a Charleston church last month, urged South Carolinians to steer clear of the Klan rally.

    “Our family hopes the people of South Carolina will join us in staying away from the disruptive, hateful spectacle members of the Ku Klux Klan hope to create over the weekend and instead focus on what brings us together,” Haley said in a statement posted to her Facebook page.

    The Charleston shooting rekindled a controversy that has long surrounding the Confederate flag. A website linked to suspected gunman Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white man, contained a racist manifesto and showed him in photos posing with the flag.

    Opponents see its display as a painful reminder of the South’s pro-slavery past, while supporters see it as an honorable emblem of Southern heritage.

    The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a Pelham, North Carolina-based chapter that bills itself as “the largest Klan in America,” expects about 200 people to attend its demonstration, planned from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.
    […]

    A Jacksonville, Florida, group called Black Educators for Justice expects a crowd of about 300 for its rally, planned for noon to 4 p.m. The group is run by James Evans Muhammad, a former director of the New Black Panther Party.

    The Black Educators group wants to highlight continuing racial inequality, which Muhammad says endures despite the Confederate flag’s removal.

    “The flag coming down is not progress. It is an illusion of progress,” he told the State newspaper in Columbia.

    Muhammad said his group would not interfere with the Klan rally during the hour the two groups occupy the north side of the Capitol building.

    Kindra Chapman Found Dead in Jail Cell

    An 18-year-old Alabama girl reportedly took her own life while being held at a local jail, AL.com reports.

    Kindra Darnell Chapman was reportedly booked at Homewood City Jail Tuesday at around 6:22 p.m. on a first-degree-robbery charge for allegedly taking a cellphone from another individual. She was last seen alive at 6:30 p.m. Jailers found the 18-year-old a little under an hour and a half later, at 7:50, unresponsive. According to officials, Chapman used a bed sheet to hang herself. The teen was taken to Brookwood Medical Center but was pronounced dead.

    The Waller County Sheriff’s Office just released this statement regarding the jail commission’s findings: #SandraBland See attached text, in short: they do not believe that any of the deficiencies contributed to Bland’s death (notably, going to her in person and not having their employees’ mental health training up-to-date).

    Man Who Covered Home in Confederate Flags After Church Massacre Is Arrested

    A North Carolina man who covered his home with Confederate flags after the South Carolina church massacre was arrested on a parole violation and put behind bars this week, according to the Daily Mail.

    The man, Edward Lee West, 69, of Rocky Mount, N.C., was taken to Nash County jail on Wednesday on a probation-violation charge ahead of an Aug. 5 court appearance, the report says.

    West, who has faced weapon-related charges in the past, is serving two years of probation for a misdemeanor conviction for an assault involving a gun, the Mail reports. A judge issued an arrest warrant last week when he failed to show up at a court hearing for the probation violation charge, the report says, citing court records

    It is unknown just how West violated probation, but if he is found guilty he could face prison time or a longer term of supervision, notes the report.

    West, who has lived in Rocky Mount, a predominantly African-American city, for 37 years, made headlines last month when he increased the number of Confederate flags outside his home after the killings of nine African Americans at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. He has collected more than 150 Confederate flags.

    Good for him. Stellar work.

    EXCLUSIVE: Smile of the cop who choked Eric Garner. NYPD officer is still under 24-hour guard a year to the day since death which set off race storm. “Race storm”? Not citing.

  66. roachiesmom says

    My daughter works at Sports Clips. Her store endured epic staff drama today that’s not on topic, but while she was telling me about it earlier, she mentioned a co-worker who quit recently had seen an email from the bosses stating that when she (the co-worker) was gone, to not hire any more blacks for the store, and that this message had been re-iterated today in advance of the new hirings they are about to have to do: no blacks, and no one heavy. After daughterspawn left, I did a little digging on the internet. There’s not much posted out there, but I found this link to back up what she told me.

    http://www.hotcomplaints.com/complaint-racial_discrimination___hiring_pratices_4091.html

    If this doesn’t fully meet the requirements for the thread, I apologize in advance.

  67. says

    Oh this is rich!
    Photo of black officer helping white supremacist suffering heat stroke goes viral, says it all:

    In the wake of South Carolina’s decision to pull down its shameful Confederate flag from statehouse grounds, there has been a strong backlash from people who either (wrongly) believe the flag is about Southern “heritage,” or know damn well that the flag represents racism-inspired treason and like it anyway. Those who fall into the latter camp held a “Heritage” rally at the state capitol in Columbia and it was a predictable trainwreck.

    Among several clashes between racist groups, including members of the KKK and various neo-Nazi organizations, were moments of almost surreal disconnect between those who came to rally for hate and those who were tasked to protect them. At many points throughout the day, pro-Confederate ralliers bit off more than they could chew, only to be saved by the very people they came to hurl racial slurs at. To be an African-American officer in Columbia, South Carolina this summer should practically qualify one for sainthood. Throughout it all, the professionalism exhibited in the face of such ugly hatred is a testament to the black men and women on the police force.

    While people in full Nazi regalia or proudly showing off KKK membership badges marched through the streets, again and again black officers kept things from getting out of hand.

    In a photograph that is quickly spreading around the world and may one day become a sickening symbol of how crazy this Confederate flag backlash really was, an African-American officer identified as Leroy Smith was tasked with helping a neo-Nazi get cooled down and re-hydrated after suffering a potential heat stroke in the hot South Carolina sun… just so the guy could get well enough to rejoin his friends again in arguing Smith was a member of an inferior race.

  68. says

    $1 million bond for man charged with hate crime in pellet gun shooting:

    Michael Groh, 45, face one felony count each of committing a hate crime, impersonating a peace officer and aggravated battery with the use of a deadly weapon, Chicago Police said. He was also charged with possessing a replica of a firearm, which is a misdemeanor.

    On Friday about 12:50 a.m., police said Groh got into an argument with a 39-year-old man at a bar in the 2900 block of North Pulaski. Groh asked the other man for his citizenship status and his national origin before taking out a pellet gun and shooting the man in the face and the back of the head, police said.

    The victim was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in serious condition, police said.

    Groh was arrested at the tavern, and the pellet gun was recovered, police said. Officers also found that Groh had two metal badges, handcuffs and a handcuff key. Witnesses told authorities that Groh had identified himself as a Chicago Police officer.

    Groh, of the 2900 block of North Keating, was ordered held on a $1 million bond, according to the Cook County sheriff’s office. He is next due in court July 24.

  69. says

    Flag dispute triggers clash at South Carolina capitol:

    At least five people were arrested on Saturday as white-supremacist and African-American groups clashed outside the South Carolina State House, where the Confederate battle flag was removed last week after a half-century, authorities said.

    Beginning at noon, a Florida-based group called Black Educators for Justice demonstrated on the north side of the capitol. Tensions rose quickly when a column of about 50 white supremacists, many carrying Confederate flags and one a Nazi flag, marched toward the south steps of the capitol at 3:15 p.m.

    Lines of state police separated them from a large crowd that jeered and booed. When the group reached the State House lawn, a scuffle broke out, and police moved in quickly to keep the fight from spreading.

    While no further violence broke out, the atmosphere, on a day when temperatures neared 100 degrees, remained tense. Several times, police had to separate people shouting obscenities at one another.

    Ambulances took seven people to hospitals, the South Carolina Department of Public Safety said in a statement that provided no information on the severity of the injuries. No police officers were hurt, it said.

  70. rq says

    ‘Black Panther Break Room’: Workers Accuse American Airlines of Racial Discrimination

    The law firm accuses managers at American Airlines in Philly and D.C. of using the n-word and other offensive nicknames for areas where mostly African-Americans worked such as “jungle,” “ghetto,” “Darfur,” “Black Panther break room,” and “chocolate break room,” the report says. The employees also complain that the terminal where they worked had racially segregated break rooms, control rooms, teams and job assignments, the report says.

    A spokesperson for American Airlines denied the allegations of racism in a written statement to NBC10.

    “Diversity and inclusion are fundamental to our airline,” the statement says. “Ours is a diverse workforce serving customers who are equally diverse, and we are committed to fostering a work environment that is based on collaborative teamwork and mutual respect. We will vigorously defend our company and the hard-working employees who provide top-quality service to our customers each and every day.”

    What Happens When Cubans Speak About Anti-Black Racism in Their Country

    Soandres told me that he grew up during the Soviet Union’s collapse. He saw what it did to Afro-Cubans, and he began to wage his own personal war on the silence that followed. Listening to him, I started to feel inspired. Soandres wants to see social reform—to see the lives of Afro-Cubans get better, now. He wants all of Cuba to recognize a little reality and to join him in his personal war.

    “What we do is underground rap,” he explained. “Underground rap informs the people of what is really going on. What is being shown to us on television is not really what is going on. On television, they tell us that everything’s good, that everything’s okay, that everything is going the way it should, that the economy is doing great, that the country is getting better. But in the poor areas, this is not true.”

    “We do everything in an independent way,” he went on. “Our strategy is to get our music to people, because government institutions don’t play us. We build our own recording studios, we burn our CDs, and we give them out at concerts. We decided not to wait for major Cuban labels to tell us what they want. We create our own possibilities.”

    I asked him about the two songs I’d been told he is not allowed to perform because they deal with racism. “Well, I’m kind of allowed to sing them,” Soandres said, looking at me sideways and smiling, “but it puts the success of the concert and my colleagues at risk. The police could stop the concert right then and there. I could maybe sing that song, but the next person might not be allowed on stage, and that would be a loss for the rap movement. We want hip-hop to continue.”

    Soandres told me the government wants to censor artists of all kinds, but it also wants to avoid criticism for doing it. So punishments are not always direct. Soandres and his fellow musicians just keep making their music and testing their limits.

    The Death of Sandra Bland Isn’t Helping My Fear of Driving While Black

    I tell myself that I am paranoid. That I am overthinking things. That in human history, I couldn’t be living in a safer place and time. And yet I live in a time when Sandra Bland could drive to Prairie View A&M in Texas to start a new job, get pulled over for a routine traffic stop, have that escalate into an officer’s claim of assault, and a few days later be dead of “self-inflicted asphyxiation” in a jail cell.

    She was from Naperville, Ill. I used to go to school in Illinois, and my father graduated from Prairie View. I was there in my youth. I also once drove to Texas early in my career to take a job at a newspaper in Midland. Then, before the fear, I expertly drove the wide expanse of Texas highways and through the small, one-light towns and speed traps. My mother rode shotgun and pestered me about going the speed limit and using my turn signals.

    “What for?” I thought as I tore down another highway that seemed to go on forever, highways that Texas is full of. I was trying to get where I was going.

    “But you don’t want to arrive dead,” my mother would fret.

    She was worried about a traffic accident. Maybe she should have been worried about a police officer stopping me for speeding? But that couldn’t, or wouldn’t, happen to me.

    We tell lies to ourselves so that we feel safe. That if you just obey the laws, you’ll be safe. That if you are just polite to the police officer, you will be fine. That if you dress conservatively, you won’t get sexually harassed. That if you just go about being a good citizen, don’t curse, behave yourself, mind your manners, never get mad, don’t lose your temper, always be perfect, you will be safe.

    But that’s not even how your own brain works. That’s not how anyone’s works. One person’s polite refusal is another’s “insubordination.” Curse words erupt under duress without consciousness. We’re all one bad police officer from getting tossed to the ground. But you tell yourself, “I’m in control. I choose my fate.”
    […]

    A friend asked how bad my fear of driving was, and I joked that I had no desire to white-knuckle it to get from point A to point B. I could get over the fear, as I’d done in the past, by simply forcing myself to drive, confronting my terror, but it might take several harrowing days of driving every day to overcome my anxieties and to enjoy driving again. I could take a week or longer to not be plagued by my fears. To not have heart-thundering panic attacks. To not start crying the minute I had to pull onto the interstate.

    I want to get over my fear. Want. Desire. Would like to. But will I, when Sandra Bland and so many other black women are the victims of violence at the hands of either civilians or the police? Have my irrational fears found a small shred of rationality in this madness? I tell myself that I will be safe. That statistically it is more likely than not that nothing will happen to me.

    But didn’t Bland tell herself she was safe? Didn’t McBride? Didn’t so many others?

    We need to believe that we are safe—otherwise we stop functioning—and my inability to drive was proof that part of me had stopped functioning long ago. I want to get my power back. But how do you overcome a delusion that’s actually not so delusional?

    To feel safe, I need to believe a lie.

    From L.A. Times Columnist Who Says It’s Not as Progressive, United as It Seems

    The premise of Dexter Thomas’ argument was fairly well-intentioned: Black Twitter shouldn’t be thought of as this monolithic group that comes down on the progressive side of issues all the time.

    The columnist penned an article at the Los Angeles Times arguing that black Twitter, “like white Twitter,” is made up of a diverse group of people with a variety of different opinions about a variety of different topics. They’re not this kumbaya liberal group that is wondrously accepting of all isms.

    Eh, but that didn’t really need arguing, and the way Thomas went about proving his point wasn’t all that effective. He cherry-picked a few examples of black Twitter users being transphobic to prove his point.
    […]

    It goes without saying that people of all races, ethnicities and political affiliations can be homophobic.

    Also, no one said that black Twitter agrees on everything all the time. But the way that black Twitter users have pulled together to coin and promote social-justice movements like #BlackLivesMatters, #IAmJada, #NotOneDime, #FireElizabethLauten and #IfTheyGunnedMeDown is fodder enough to safely characterize the de facto conglomerate as an entity that generally trends progressive.

    Black Twitter was not here for how Thomas, a guy who was hired by the Los Angeles Times to cover black Twitter, dropped the ball on his first official piece documenting the group.

    Maybe Thomas should heed the advice from black Twitter, and run his analysis by people before presenting it, and if he wants to cover black Twitter well, he should learn the ins and outs of this group first.

    Akilah Hilariously Explains Racial Discussion Fatigue Syndrome

    In her latest YouTube video, Akilah Hughes of Akilah Obviously explains Racial Discussion Fatigue Syndrome (or RDFS) and how you can work through it. She asks, “Are you constantly having to explain why certain viewpoints are problematic?” If you’re reading this, I’m sure you can relate.

    In her video description, Akilah writes, “The racial climate (sidenote: what a weird term) isn’t always so great in America, and with the past two years being some of the bloodiest post civil-rights-era, you have to learn to take care of yourself and not lose your mind.”

    2 minute video at the link.

    WATCH: CBS guest whitesplains ‘Black Lives Matter’ to Gwen Ifill by likening it to Donald Trump, because that makes sense?

    Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus argued over the weekend that the “Black Lives Matter folks” represented “unreasonableness on the left” just as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump had embarrassed the Republican Party.

    During a panel discussion on CBS News about how Republican candidates were reacting to Trump insulting Sen. John McCain’s war record, Marcus suggested that the candidate had attracted anti-immigrant supporters who were mirrored by opponents of police violence against the black community.
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    “There’s one other thing that happened this week that I think we should talk about,” she interrupted. “This really bizarre encounter that Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley — the two other Democratic candidates — had at Netroots Nation.”

    “You have this segment of the Republican Party that seems to be semi-large that’s supporting Trump, but then you had on the other side,” Marcus continued, motioning to PBS broadcaster Gwen Ifill, “being shouted down while they were denouncing billionaires, while they were calling for an increase in a the minimum wage by the Black Lives Matter folks. And that was just this sort of outburst of unreasonableness on the left side of the party.”

    According to the Washington Post columnist, the Democratic candidates were “saying things that the base should be cheering, but there is a group shouting them down during their speech because they are not talking only about black lives matter.”

    “Or at all,” Ifill pointed out. “To be fair.”

    “Well, they might have gotten to it on their own,” Marcus speculated. “It seemed to me, watching this week, it was like the extremes of both parties had some kind of secret meeting where they got together and said, ‘How can we most alienate normal voters?’”

    “And they did a pretty good job,” she concluded.

    Wooooow…

  71. rq says

    ‘This is not a race issue’ but ‘I am here for white power’: Scenes from the KKK’s Confederate flag rally

    Dozens of Ku Klux Klan members gathered outside the South Carolina State House on Saturday to protest the removal of the Confederate flag from Capitol grounds—a movement that gained momentum after nine congregants of an historic black church were shot and killed on June 17.

    Bottles were thrown and fists were exchanged as scores of police officers worked to separate the demonstrators from the crowd that had formed around them—a number of whom had attended a counter-rally organized by the New Black Panther Party earlier in the afternoon. Here’s what people on both sides of the police barricade had to say.

    The title pretty much says it all – it’s not a race issue, it’s about white power. See how that makes so much sense? (Note: they did not talk to any women.)

    Group raises money to help transgender inmate

    Megan Rohrer, a transgender Lutheran minister who was born and raised in South Dakota, set out to raise $2,000 to post bail for Derez Darryl Flowers, who goes by the name Meagan Taylor. Taylor, a 22-year-old cosmetology student from Illinois, was arrested Monday at a West Des Moines hotel and charged with possession of prescription drugs, malicious prosecution and on an Illinois warrant.

    As of Saturday evening, Rohrer exceeded that goal and raised $2,173 for Taylor. The new goal is to raise $3,731.20 to cover a $1,731.20 fine Taylor received from Illinois, according the fundraising page.

    Rohrer said she didn’t know Taylor’s background or the circumstances of her arrest, but she wants Taylor to be able to get out of jail, find a lawyer and “make her own decisions about how to proceed.”

    Taylor is being held in the medical unit of Polk County Jail because officials didn’t know whether to place her in the men’s or women’s section of the jail.

    More on the circumstances of her arrest: A black transgender woman is in jail because police were called on her for being transgender

    Meagan Taylor, 22, was arrested Monday by Des Moines police after staff at the hotel she was staying with another transgender friend called police. According to the police report, officers were called by the hotel about “two males dressed as females who checked into the Drury Inn,” and that “staff was worried about possible prostitution activity,” according to the Des Moines Register.
    ADVERTISEMENT

    She is currently being held at Polk County Jail in isolation, because jail officials don’t know whether to place her with men or women.

    According to the Register, Taylor could be there for months. Her next court date is not until August 25. Her bail is only set at $2,000, meaning she could post $200 and be released. But because she was a visitor from out of state, she would need someone local to co-sign, and she doesn’t know anyone that lives in Des Moines. She doesn’t even have a lawyer yet.
    […]

    While federal guidelines under the Prison Rape Elimination Act take don’t say which sex transgender inmates should be housed with, it opposes long-term isolation and recommends decisions be based on the individual.

    “There is… no good reason for a 22-year-old nonviolent person like Taylor to be locked up indefinitely,” the Register’s Rekha Basu writes. “Maybe the real offense is a private business calling police on paying guests because they didn’t conform to gender stereotypes.”

    I just… they need guidelines?

    Sheriff Says Problems at Jail Played No Role in Death of Sandra Bland – No Role At All!

    The Texas sheriff’s office that runs a jail where a woman apparently committed suicide this week admitted problems with training and checking up on inmates, but said the deficiencies played no role in her death.

    Sandra Bland, 28, was found dead in her jail cell at the Waller County Jail on July 13, three days after she was arrested in Prairie View after allegedly becoming combative with an officer during a routine traffic stop on July 10. Authorities said it appears that Bland hanged herself, but her family has questioned that account.

    On Thursday, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards rapped the Waller County Jail for insufficient training and for failing to check on inmates face-to-face every hour, and ordered it to come into compliance.

    The Waller County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Friday that the two jailers involved did receive mental health training, just not in the past year, and jailers did check in on Bland, but used an intercom system rather than an in-person inspection as required.

    “At this time we have no reason to believe that either one of these deficiencies had any part on the death of Ms. Bland,” the sheriff’s office said in the statement, adding that it will come into compliance with the rules.

    “We will be working on any improvements that can be made to see that this type of tragic incident never happens again,” the sheriff’s office said.

    Taraji P. Henson And Viola Davis Have Made Emmy History

    Viola Davis and Taraji P. Henson made history on Thursday morning when they were both nominated for Emmys in the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series — Davis for her role as powerhouse Annalise Keating on How to Get Away With Murder and Henson for hers as take-no-prisoner Cookie Lyon on Empire — making this the first time ever that two women of color have been nominated in the prestigious category.

    But their feat is all the more monumental considering that in 2013, when Kerry Washington snagged an Emmy nomination for her work as Olivia Pope on Scandal, it was the first time in more than 40 years that a black woman earned a nod for heading up her own drama series.
    […]

    When Davis and Henson last made history together in 2009 — both earned Oscar nominations for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for their work in Doubt and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, respectively — they didn’t take home statues, but that could change come September.

    In fact, the 2015 Emmy nominations could see a lot of actors of color take the stage, like Don Cheadle and Anthony Anderson who were nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for their work on Showtime’s House of Lies and ABC’s Black-ish — the last and only other time two black men were nominated for Outstanding Actor in a Comedy was 1983-84 with Sherman Hemsley and Robert Guillaume.

    Well, the Emmys seem to be taking black actors and actresses seriously.

    Grave of first male slave freed by Lincoln rediscovered, experts believe, kind of random.

    Researchers believe they have found the grave of a man who could be considered the first black male slave freed by Abraham Lincoln, after tracking his final resting place to the cemetery of a former Minnesota psychiatric hospital.

    William Henry Costley was just 10 months old in 1841 when Lincoln, who was still a young lawyer, won an Illinois supreme court case freeing Costley’s mother from indentured servitude – a status historians say would have been akin to enslavement for the black woman and child at that time. That was 22 years before Lincoln, as president, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring slaves in rebel states not under Union control free.

    Nance Legins-Costley and her son William were from Pekin, a central Illinois community about 130 miles south-west of Chicago, which is what drew the interest of a local amateur historian, Carl Adams. Adams, who now lives in Stuttgart, Germany, spent years researching her and her children’s lives. Last year he published Nance: Trials of the First Slave Freed by Abraham Lincoln – a True Story of Nance Legins-Costley.

    In his book, Adams writes that after winning her lengthy legal battle for freedom, Legins-Costley, who had been born to slaves and sold twice before Lincoln took up her cause, lived to a ripe old age in Pekin. Military records helped Adams retrace her son’s steps, but finding his gravesite required the help of a curator at the Abraham Lincoln presidential library and museum in Springfield, Illinois, and a historical researcher in Minnesota.

    “We are 99.9% certain that this is William H Costley,” Adams said of the gravesite.

    More on the discovery at the link.

  72. rq says

    ‘This is not a race issue’ but ‘I am here for white power’: Scenes from the KKK’s Confederate flag rally

    Dozens of Ku Klux Klan members gathered outside the South Carolina State House on Saturday to protest the removal of the Confederate flag from Capitol grounds—a movement that gained momentum after nine congregants of an historic black church were shot and killed on June 17.

    Bottles were thrown and fists were exchanged as scores of police officers worked to separate the demonstrators from the crowd that had formed around them—a number of whom had attended a counter-rally organized by the New Black Panther Party earlier in the afternoon. Here’s what people on both sides of the police barricade had to say.

    The title pretty much says it all – it’s not a race issue, it’s about white power. See how that makes so much sense? (Note: they did not talk to any women.)

    Group raises money to help transgender inmate

    Megan Rohrer, a transgender Lutheran minister who was born and raised in South Dakota, set out to raise $2,000 to post bail for Derez Darryl Flowers, who goes by the name Meagan Taylor. Taylor, a 22-year-old cosmetology student from Illinois, was arrested Monday at a West Des Moines hotel and charged with possession of prescription drugs, malicious prosecution and on an Illinois warrant.

    As of Saturday evening, Rohrer exceeded that goal and raised $2,173 for Taylor. The new goal is to raise $3,731.20 to cover a $1,731.20 fine Taylor received from Illinois, according the fundraising page.

    Rohrer said she didn’t know Taylor’s background or the circumstances of her arrest, but she wants Taylor to be able to get out of jail, find a lawyer and “make her own decisions about how to proceed.”

    Taylor is being held in the medical unit of Polk County Jail because officials didn’t know whether to place her in the men’s or women’s section of the jail.

    More on the circumstances of her arrest: A black transgender woman is in jail because police were called on her for being transgender

    Meagan Taylor, 22, was arrested Monday by Des Moines police after staff at the hotel she was staying with another transgender friend called police. According to the police report, officers were called by the hotel about “two males dressed as females who checked into the Drury Inn,” and that “staff was worried about possible prostitution activity,” according to the Des Moines Register.

    She is currently being held at Polk County Jail in isolation, because jail officials don’t know whether to place her with men or women.

    According to the Register, Taylor could be there for months. Her next court date is not until August 25. Her bail is only set at $2,000, meaning she could post $200 and be released. But because she was a visitor from out of state, she would need someone local to co-sign, and she doesn’t know anyone that lives in Des Moines. She doesn’t even have a lawyer yet.
    […]

    While federal guidelines under the Prison Rape Elimination Act take don’t say which sex transgender inmates should be housed with, it opposes long-term isolation and recommends decisions be based on the individual.

    “There is… no good reason for a 22-year-old nonviolent person like Taylor to be locked up indefinitely,” the Register’s Rekha Basu writes. “Maybe the real offense is a private business calling police on paying guests because they didn’t conform to gender stereotypes.”

    I just… they need guidelines?

    Sheriff Says Problems at Jail Played No Role in Death of Sandra Bland – No Role At All!

    The Texas sheriff’s office that runs a jail where a woman apparently committed suicide this week admitted problems with training and checking up on inmates, but said the deficiencies played no role in her death.

    Sandra Bland, 28, was found dead in her jail cell at the Waller County Jail on July 13, three days after she was arrested in Prairie View after allegedly becoming combative with an officer during a routine traffic stop on July 10. Authorities said it appears that Bland hanged herself, but her family has questioned that account.

    On Thursday, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards rapped the Waller County Jail for insufficient training and for failing to check on inmates face-to-face every hour, and ordered it to come into compliance.

    The Waller County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Friday that the two jailers involved did receive mental health training, just not in the past year, and jailers did check in on Bland, but used an intercom system rather than an in-person inspection as required.

    “At this time we have no reason to believe that either one of these deficiencies had any part on the death of Ms. Bland,” the sheriff’s office said in the statement, adding that it will come into compliance with the rules.

    “We will be working on any improvements that can be made to see that this type of tragic incident never happens again,” the sheriff’s office said.

    Taraji P. Henson And Viola Davis Have Made Emmy History

    Viola Davis and Taraji P. Henson made history on Thursday morning when they were both nominated for Emmys in the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series — Davis for her role as powerhouse Annalise Keating on How to Get Away With Murder and Henson for hers as take-no-prisoner Cookie Lyon on Empire — making this the first time ever that two women of color have been nominated in the prestigious category.

    But their feat is all the more monumental considering that in 2013, when Kerry Washington snagged an Emmy nomination for her work as Olivia Pope on Scandal, it was the first time in more than 40 years that a black woman earned a nod for heading up her own drama series.
    […]

    When Davis and Henson last made history together in 2009 — both earned Oscar nominations for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for their work in Doubt and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, respectively — they didn’t take home statues, but that could change come September.

    In fact, the 2015 Emmy nominations could see a lot of actors of color take the stage, like Don Cheadle and Anthony Anderson who were nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for their work on Showtime’s House of Lies and ABC’s Black-ish — the last and only other time two black men were nominated for Outstanding Actor in a Comedy was 1983-84 with Sherman Hemsley and Robert Guillaume.

    Well, the Emmys seem to be taking black actors and actresses seriously.

    Grave of first male slave freed by Lincoln rediscovered, experts believe, kind of random.

    Researchers believe they have found the grave of a man who could be considered the first black male slave freed by Abraham Lincoln, after tracking his final resting place to the cemetery of a former Minnesota psychiatric hospital.

    William Henry Costley was just 10 months old in 1841 when Lincoln, who was still a young lawyer, won an Illinois supreme court case freeing Costley’s mother from indentured servitude – a status historians say would have been akin to enslavement for the black woman and child at that time. That was 22 years before Lincoln, as president, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring slaves in rebel states not under Union control free.

    Nance Legins-Costley and her son William were from Pekin, a central Illinois community about 130 miles south-west of Chicago, which is what drew the interest of a local amateur historian, Carl Adams. Adams, who now lives in Stuttgart, Germany, spent years researching her and her children’s lives. Last year he published Nance: Trials of the First Slave Freed by Abraham Lincoln – a True Story of Nance Legins-Costley.

    In his book, Adams writes that after winning her lengthy legal battle for freedom, Legins-Costley, who had been born to slaves and sold twice before Lincoln took up her cause, lived to a ripe old age in Pekin. Military records helped Adams retrace her son’s steps, but finding his gravesite required the help of a curator at the Abraham Lincoln presidential library and museum in Springfield, Illinois, and a historical researcher in Minnesota.

    “We are 99.9% certain that this is William H Costley,” Adams said of the gravesite.

    More on the discovery at the link.

  74. rq says

    ‘This is not a race issue’ but ‘I am here for white power’: Scenes from the KKK’s Confederate flag rally

    Dozens of Ku Klux Klan members gathered outside the South Carolina State House on Saturday to protest the removal of the Confederate flag from Capitol grounds—a movement that gained momentum after nine congregants of an historic black church were shot and killed on June 17.

    Bottles were thrown and fists were exchanged as scores of police officers worked to separate the demonstrators from the crowd that had formed around them—a number of whom had attended a counter-rally organized by the New Black Panther Party earlier in the afternoon. Here’s what people on both sides of the police barricade had to say.

    The title pretty much says it all – it’s not a race issue, it’s about white power. See how that makes so much sense? (Note: they did not talk to any women.)

    Group raises money to help transgender inmate

    Megan Rohrer, a transgender Lutheran minister who was born and raised in South Dakota, set out to raise $2,000 to post bail for Derez Darryl Flowers, who goes by the name Meagan Taylor. Taylor, a 22-year-old cosmetology student from Illinois, was arrested Monday at a West Des Moines hotel and charged with possession of prescription drugs, malicious prosecution and on an Illinois warrant.

    As of Saturday evening, Rohrer exceeded that goal and raised $2,173 for Taylor. The new goal is to raise $3,731.20 to cover a $1,731.20 fine Taylor received from Illinois, according the fundraising page.

    Rohrer said she didn’t know Taylor’s background or the circumstances of her arrest, but she wants Taylor to be able to get out of jail, find a lawyer and “make her own decisions about how to proceed.”

    Taylor is being held in the medical unit of Polk County Jail because officials didn’t know whether to place her in the men’s or women’s section of the jail.

    More on the circumstances of her arrest: A black transgender woman is in jail because police were called on her for being transgender

    Meagan Taylor, 22, was arrested Monday by Des Moines police after staff at the hotel she was staying with another transgender friend called police. According to the police report, officers were called by the hotel about “two males dressed as females who checked into the Drury Inn,” and that “staff was worried about possible prostitution activity,” according to the Des Moines Register.

    She is currently being held at Polk County Jail in isolation, because jail officials don’t know whether to place her with men or women.

    According to the Register, Taylor could be there for months. Her next court date is not until August 25. Her bail is only set at $2,000, meaning she could post $200 and be released. But because she was a visitor from out of state, she would need someone local to co-sign, and she doesn’t know anyone that lives in Des Moines. She doesn’t even have a lawyer yet.
    […]

    While federal guidelines under the Prison Rape Elimination Act take don’t say which sex transgender inmates should be housed with, it opposes long-term isolation and recommends decisions be based on the individual.

    “There is… no good reason for a 22-year-old nonviolent person like Taylor to be locked up indefinitely,” the Register’s Rekha Basu writes. “Maybe the real offense is a private business calling police on paying guests because they didn’t conform to gender stereotypes.”

    I just… they need guidelines?

    Sheriff Says Problems at Jail Played No Role in Death of Sandra Bland – No Role At All!

    The Texas sheriff’s office that runs a jail where a woman apparently committed suicide this week admitted problems with training and checking up on inmates, but said the deficiencies played no role in her death.

    Sandra Bland, 28, was found dead in her jail cell at the Waller County Jail on July 13, three days after she was arrested in Prairie View after allegedly becoming combative with an officer during a routine traffic stop on July 10. Authorities said it appears that Bland hanged herself, but her family has questioned that account.

    On Thursday, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards rapped the Waller County Jail for insufficient training and for failing to check on inmates face-to-face every hour, and ordered it to come into compliance.

    The Waller County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Friday that the two jailers involved did receive mental health training, just not in the past year, and jailers did check in on Bland, but used an intercom system rather than an in-person inspection as required.

    “At this time we have no reason to believe that either one of these deficiencies had any part on the death of Ms. Bland,” the sheriff’s office said in the statement, adding that it will come into compliance with the rules.

    “We will be working on any improvements that can be made to see that this type of tragic incident never happens again,” the sheriff’s office said.

    Taraji P. Henson And Viola Davis Have Made Emmy History

    Viola Davis and Taraji P. Henson made history on Thursday morning when they were both nominated for Emmys in the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series — Davis for her role as powerhouse Annalise Keating on How to Get Away With Murder and Henson for hers as take-no-prisoner Cookie Lyon on Empire — making this the first time ever that two women of color have been nominated in the prestigious category.

    But their feat is all the more monumental considering that in 2013, when Kerry Washington snagged an Emmy nomination for her work as Olivia Pope on Scandal, it was the first time in more than 40 years that a black woman earned a nod for heading up her own drama series.
    […]

    When Davis and Henson last made history together in 2009 — both earned Oscar nominations for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for their work in Doubt and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, respectively — they didn’t take home statues, but that could change come September.

    In fact, the 2015 Emmy nominations could see a lot of actors of color take the stage, like Don Cheadle and Anthony Anderson who were nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for their work on Showtime’s House of Lies and ABC’s Black-ish — the last and only other time two black men were nominated for Outstanding Actor in a Comedy was 1983-84 with Sherman Hemsley and Robert Guillaume.

    Well, the Emmys seem to be taking black actors and actresses seriously.

    Grave of first male slave freed by Lincoln rediscovered, experts believe, kind of random.

    Researchers believe they have found the grave of a man who could be considered the first black male slave freed by Abraham Lincoln, after tracking his final resting place to the cemetery of a former Minnesota psychiatric hospital.

    William Henry Costley was just 10 months old in 1841 when Lincoln, who was still a young lawyer, won an Illinois supreme court case freeing Costley’s mother from indentured servitude – a status historians say would have been akin to enslavement for the black woman and child at that time. That was 22 years before Lincoln, as president, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring slaves in rebel states not under Union control free.

    Nance Legins-Costley and her son William were from P-kin, a central Illinois community about 130 miles south-west of Chicago, which is what drew the interest of a local amateur historian, Carl Adams. Adams, who now lives in Stuttgart, Germany, spent years researching her and her children’s lives. Last year he published Nance: Trials of the First Slave Freed by Abraham Lincoln – a True Story of Nance Legins-Costley.

    In his book, Adams writes that after winning her lengthy legal battle for freedom, Legins-Costley, who had been born to slaves and sold twice before Lincoln took up her cause, lived to a ripe old age in P-kin. Military records helped Adams retrace her son’s steps, but finding his gravesite required the help of a curator at the Abraham Lincoln presidential library and museum in Springfield, Illinois, and a historical researcher in Minnesota.

    “We are 99.9% certain that this is William H Costley,” Adams said of the gravesite.

    More on the discovery at the link.

  75. rq says

    Okay, my previous comment might appear three times at some point. It had no bad words in it, but it won’t go through and I’m not sure why. Could be a bad link. Anyway, look for it later.

    UPDATED: In Contentious Netroots Speech, Bernie Sanders Shouts Over #BlackLivesMatter Protestors

    Facing raucous #BlackLivesMatter protestors who shut down Martin O’Malley’s interview at Netroots Nation just moments before, Bernie Sanders shouted over the protestors and stuck to his script rather than address their concerns directly.

    As protesters demanded answers about what he would do as president to address the epidemic of police violence against black men and women, Sanders largely dismissed them. “Of course black lives matter,” Sanders said. “I’ve been fighting for civil rights for 50 years.” He also spoke about his record as mayor of Burlington, Vermont encouraging community policing. But he didn’t offer specific plans to address police brutality.

    Instead, Sanders stuck largely to his script, talking about the minimum wage, college affordability, income inequality, and corporate power. He often raised his voice to be heard over the near-continuous chants of the protestors in the audience.

    The protests, clearly well-planned out beforehand, began during former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley‘s interview with immigration activist and journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, with dozens of people chanting about the people killed in police custody. One protestor, Tia Oso, was invited onto the stage and spoke for about 10 minutes as O’Malley stood waiting patiently for the protests to end.

    After another protestor, Patrisse Cullors, asked O’Malley what his plans were to end the brutality, O’Malley listed what he would do as president, including funding detectives for police forces to investigate complaints of police violence.

    But O’Malley had a misstep, too, saying “black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter,” a statement activists in the #BlackLivesMatter movement view as erasing the concerns specific to people of color.

    UPDATE: At a roundtable later in the day, O’Malley was asked about his “all lives matter” remarks. “It was a mistake, and I shouldn’t have said it,” he told the attendees.

    Sanders’ supporters keep citing his past record in civil rights. Maybe he should try doing better right now, too.

    15 pages deep in Between The World And Me and TNC has spoke on Renisha McBride,Marlene Pinnock, the women in his neighborhood & his grandma, for those who decry the lack of women in his book – ah, but how are those women shown?

    And of course there’s a response: In Ta-Nehisi Coates’ New Book, It’s Clear All the Blacks Are Still Men

    Baldwin’s poignant and, oftentimes, painful letter went on to be the cornerstone of The Fire Next Time, which shone a spotlight on America’s inability to deal with its deep-seated racism. These days, what the world has done to black folks is evident in the myriad unarmed black women and men cut down by those in power, and our defiant plea that no matter what happens to us, black lives still matter.

    Against this backdrop of extrajudicial killings and massive protests, The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates took a cue from Baldwin and penned a letter to his 15-year-old son, Samori, about America’s treatment of its black citizens.

    The result, Coates’ latest tome, Between the World and Me, takes an unflinching look at America and its mythological dream. Dreams we’ve been sold since birth—of equality, of access, of the chance to achieve. These dreams have been handed down through folklore, through spirituals, through calls for freedom, through sanitized Martin Luther King Jr. quotes. But as Coates writes, “The Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies.” The dream, he surmises, just doesn’t exist for black people in America.

    Coates’ discussion about what America has built on the backs of black bodies has been hailed as revelatory. Critics have called the book “extraordinary” and “essential.” Toni Morrison, matriarch of the black canon, said it is “required reading” and proclaimed Coates heir to Baldwin’s venerable legacy. But like Baldwin, and so many other revered writers and thinkers who have grappled with being black in America—from Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois to Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison—Coates’ exploration of the black experience once again sidelines women.

    In Between the World and Me we get a potent, full-throated description of young men and boys who stumble, fight and in some cases f–k their way through America, attempting to negotiate a world that is built on rendering them powerless. The young men of Coates’ youth “transmuted their fear into rage,” taking out their aggressions on one another in neighborhood battles for respect that the outside world refused to give.

    But what of the women? In Between the World and Me, black women are footnotes to the men’s stories—baby mamas, lovers, mothers, classmates, around-the-way girls, grieving mothers. As Coates recounts a world full of complex black men carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders, the same can’t be said for the women who bop down the same blocks, negotiate the same demons and are often victimized by the same men.

    As one reads Between the World and Me, it’s easy to get caught up in Coates’ brutally descriptive prose and his startling assertions about whiteness. At times I found myself getting lost in his world, and his ongoing conversation with his son hit me in the heart as a mother. Indeed, Coates is a writer’s writer whose pen game is so strong, I almost forgot that the black women in Between the World and Me are relegated to the same margins from which bell hooks hoped to escape.

    To be clear, Coates’ book is intensely personal, so his perspective as a black man writing to and about black men is somewhat expected. As he discusses the effects of systemic racism and capitalism on black bodies, he does so through the prism of his own life growing up in West Baltimore, attending Howard University and working as a writer in New York City. Still, I’m disappointed that yet another widely praised, “must-read” book about the black experience in America treats women like satellites of their more important male counterparts.
    […]

    As I read Coates’ book, I couldn’t help wondering why black female writers aren’t lavished with the same level of pomp and circumstance given to black male writers who write about race—or hailed as the second coming of Baldwin. After all, Coates isn’t the only person grappling with these issues today. In fact, black female writers, like Michelle Alexander, Nell Painter and Isabel Wilkerson—three women he’s mentioned in his blog—heavily influenced his work.

    Though some will assert that Coates’ book is one man’s perspective on the world, the accolades given to Between the World and Me have transformed this slim volume into more than just a memoir; rather, it’s a meditation on what it means to be black in America today. And apparently, 40 years after the inception of the Combahee River Collective, all the blacks are still men.

    Mother Morrison was right: Coates’ ambitious book is required reading, but not to understand the “black experience.” For that you’ll have to read his book in tandem with the writings of black female scholars like Barbara Ransby, Crystal Feimster, Deborah Gray White, Tamara Winfrey Harris and Blair L.M. Kelley. Only then will a fuller picture of black life start to come into view.

    Noted!

    A pro-police rally a week after @DenverPolice murdered #PaulCastaway is basically a rally celebrating such violence. #DefendDenver
    We have totally shut down this pro pig rally

    Update on #BrandonClaxton, who was shot & paralyzed by @SLMPD July 11. #STL #Ferguson #BlackLivesMatter

  76. says

    For anyone (like me) who might not know the Combahee Rive Collective mentioned in rq’s comment above:

    The Combahee River Collective, founded by black feminists and lesbians in Boston, Massachusetts in 1974, was best known for its Combahee River Collective Statement. This document was one of the earliest explorations of the intersection of multiple oppressions, including racism and heterosexism. For the first time in history, black women openly and unapologetically communicated their sexual orientations in the midst of their social justice work, no longer trading their silence for permission to engage in political struggle. The Collective’s name refers to a resistance action by Harriet Tubman in 1863 in South Carolina, the Combahee River Raid. Tubman freed more that 750 slaves in this unique military campaign, the only one in U.S. history conceived and directed by a woman. After attending the 1973 National Black Feminist Organization’s (NBFO) regional conference, the Collective’s founders began meeting on their own in Boston in 1974. They experienced much disillusionment with the second wave of American feminism from the 1960s along with the civil rights, black nationalism, and Black Panther movements. They thus knew from the beginning that their new platform would include struggles against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression. By summer of the Collective’s first year, the members broke from the NBFO to become a separate black feminist group. The group initially focused on consciousness-raising among black feminists and black women. Eventually they faced internal disagreements that reflected class and political differences among the members. Demita Frazier, Beverly Smith, and Barbara Smith were the primary authors of the Combahee River Collective Statement in 1977. They articulated the concept of multiple oppressions, critiquing both sexual oppression in the black community and racism within the wider feminist movement. The authors focused on identity politics and challenging racial-sexual oppressions. They sought to destroy what they felt were the related evils of capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy while rejecting the belief in Lesbian separatism. Finally their statement acknowledged the difficulties black women faced in their grassroots organizing efforts due to their multiple oppressions. The Collective sponsored seven black feminist retreats between 1977 and 1980. These retreats, held mainly along the east coast, drew thousands of women. The meetings promoted consciousness-raising but they also allowed the gathering of information and generated needed support for many women who, heretofore, had worked in isolation. One example of the impact of their work came in 1979, after the murder of 12 African American women in Boston. In response, the Collective organized and linked coalitions across the community in a bi-racial effort to address this tragedy. The Combahee River Collective disbanded in 1980. Their greatest impact was in preparing the way for current-day community organizing among people of color who face both sexual and racial oppression.

  77. rq says

    Report on evidence found at Walter Scott scene helps decipher video of shooting

    The supplemental incident reports from police detectives and supervisors give details about evidence found at the scene. Released after a request from The Post and Courier, they are some of the first records that help interpret the cellphone video showing officer Michael Slager opening fire as Scott tried to run away on April 4.

    North Charleston detectives found two discharged Taser cartridges, Scott’s hat, some keys and shell casings, but what’s missing from their observations — the stun gun — indicated that Slager picked up the device before they arrived. Officers are trained to secure any loose weapons at a scene.

    What happened with the Taser was the focus of wide public speculation when the bystander’s video surfaced three days after Scott’s death, renewing nationwide scrutiny on officers’ use of deadly force on black men. The footage appears to show Slager’s Taser falling during the fight. After the shooting, Slager fetches it and drops it near Scott’s body, only to pick it up again seconds later.

    Neither Slager’s attorney, Andy Savage of Charleston, nor a spokesman from the State Law Enforcement Division, which investigated the shooting, would comment on the documents. Slager remains jailed without bail on a murder charge.

    The evidence that would be documented in the reports gave pause for family members and other onlookers who showed up at the scene that day. The distance between the site of the struggle and where Scott fell prompted suspicions of a North Charleston Police Department account that the 50-year-old man posed a threat to Slager when he was killed.

    There’s a very fine and detailed account of what happens to the taser in the video at the link.

    The confederate flag protests have gone from ‘it’s not racist!’ to ‘fuck it we’re actual Nazis’ in like a week. See photo.

    Black Police Applicant Frustrated by Opaque Hiring Process

    The newscast described the furor that erupted last month after Police Commissioner William J. Bratton cited criminal records of young black men as an obstacle to the department’s efforts to recruit African-Americans. Mr. Douglas, a 28-year-old black college graduate who is also a sergeant in the National Guard, knew the department’s problems ran far deeper.

    Mr. Douglas, who does not have a criminal record, passed the police officer exam in 2011. He went through orientation and started undergoing the required background checks in 2013. Then, the process stopped cold. No emails. No calls. No explanations. Silence. For a year and a half.

    This month, Mr. Douglas wrote to me, at a loss for what had gone wrong. He had no idea that his case highlighted administrative problems in the hiring process that have stymied many qualified African-American applicants, even as officials strive to diversify the department.

    Generations of New Yorkers have staked their middle-class dreams on passing the police test and getting through the long and sometimes bewildering hiring process. (Police officers earn a total compensation package of $90,829 annually after five and a half years. That does not include overtime.)

    In a statement posted on the department’s website last month, in which he sought to clarify his remarks about African-American recruits, Mr. Bratton said that while “young men with felony records do reduce the available pool of black police candidates,” the “recruiting challenge stems much more from problems with our own recruiting system.”

    The hiring process can take four years or more, Mr. Bratton said, leaving applicants who are unfamiliar with the system feeling adrift and discouraged.

    White applicants, who are far more likely than their black counterparts to have relatives, friends and neighbors on the force, often know someone who can help navigate the bureaucracy. By contrast, many African-Americans end up dropping out of the application process, police officials say.

    The statistics are stark: 55 percent of white candidates who pass the police exam get jobs with the department, according to figures released by the department last month. Of the African-Americans who pass the test, 9 percent get hired. Nine percent.

    Some of those black men and women who passed the test may have been disqualified by medical or psychological issues or because they lacked the 60 college credits required, officials say. But Mr. Bratton pointed to what he described as the “failings of the recruitment process” as a key barrier.

    Eliminating such hurdles is critical, officials say, particularly at a time of increased tensions between the police and minority communities and when the number of black graduates from the Police Academy has fallen sharply over the past decade.

    Lots more at the link.

    Police Release Video of Man Who Died After Being Pepper Sprayed – haven’t watched it, so I can’t really comment on anything within. Anthony Ware.

    My favorite thing from Comic Con was this print by @GynoStar of @BreeNewsome’s textbook act of civil disobedience.

    Fetty Wap’s Tweaked Sound Yields Hit in ‘Trap Queen’

    Last year, Fetty Wap released his debut single, “Trap Queen,” a serenade directed at a woman who remains true even in difficult circumstances. From its opening wink — “I’m like, ‘Hey, what’s up? Hello.’ ” — to its highly digitally processed cheerful boasts of bonding over illicit activities, it’s almost saccharine.

    And sticky, too: “Trap Queen” went to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, and it’s now at No. 5, after 24 weeks on the chart.

    That meant that the odd opportunities began to roll in, like the Adidas Originals-branded Songs From Scratch series, which pairs a rapper and an electronic music producer.

    In the video, posted in March, there was Fetty Wap, in a shiny red three-stripe tracksuit and a pair of Yeezy 750 Boosts, trying to find his way into a beat by Baauer, the producer who’s been trying to dodge the long shadow of “Harlem Shake” for the last three years.

    On record, Fetty Wap’s voice is unsteady, almost silly. It’s full of character and irregularities.
    […]

    “Trap Queen” is a joyous song about how in hard times, true love is loyalty, and Fetty Wap sings it with almost Disney-like glee.

    He and his partner cook and sell drugs — “I just want to chill, got a sack for us to roll/Married to the money, introduced her to my stove/Showed her how to whip it, now she remixed it for low.” Then he and the queen of his drug house exuberantly spend the spoils: “I just might snatch up a ’rrari and buy my boo a Lamb’/I might just snatch her a necklace, drop a couple on a ring.”

    In a promotional video posted last year, when he was still an unknown, he called the style “ignorant R&B.” And while it does blur the lines between genres, “Trap Queen” is a tender, hardscrabble hip-hop love song, every bit as essential as Method Man and Mary J. Blige’s “I’ll Be There for You/You’re All I Need to Get By” was in 1995.

  78. says

    Actor Matt McGorry weighs in on ‘Black Lives Matter’ vs ‘All Lives Matter:

    After discussing everything from female nipple censorship to awareness of transgender issues, noted feminist Matt McGorry has weighed in on a new social issue: the Black Lives Matter movement.

    The movement was originally born from outrage over the number of black Americans killed every year by police, and some have responded by using the phrase “All Lives Matter” instead. The Orange is the New Black and How to Get Away With Murder actor took to Twitter and Instagram to show his support for “Black Lives Matter” and discuss how using the phrase “All Lives Matter” undermines the movement’s effectiveness.

    “For people who think they are being more inclusive by saying #AllLivesMatter in response to #BlackLivesMatter, they are in reality (un)consciously undermining the purpose of the moment because THIS particular movement is about SPECIFIC issues, as any decently effective movement is,” McGorry tweeted.

    He’s a white guy. I really do appreciate it when white people use their privilege to speak up in favor of anti-racist social justice movements. And it appears his feminism is intersectional. How nice!

  79. rq says

    Woman crying over the confederate flag during the KKK rally in SC today. RT if you laughed.

    AMAZING. KKK pulls knife on black panthers in SC. Guess whose side the cops took? My bro @Chinabria just shot this. https://youtu.be/sCrea1zcMvI

    1 of these is a KKK Rally in S. Carolina. The other is how @POTUS was greeted in OKC. Which is which?

    The Republican SC State Treasurer actually tweeted this during the KKK rally. It has since been deleted.

    Millennials are no less racist than Generation X and hardly less racist than Boomers.

  80. rq says

    Sanders and O’Malley Stumble During Black Lives Matter Protest

    Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley was midsentence when the chanting began. “What side are you on black people, what side are you on!” rang the chorus of around four dozen mostly black protesters streaming into a convention hall in Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday.

    A woman named Tia Oso grabbed the microphone as the protestors stormed the room.

    “We are going to hold this space and acknowledge the names of black women who have died in police custody, and then Governor O’Malley we do have questions for you!” Oso said as the former two-term governor and his interviewer, Jose Antonio Vargas, watched helplessly. “As leader of this country will you advance an agenda that will dismantle structural racism in this country?” Oso asked.

    “Yes,” O’Malley managed to answered, before he was drowned out again.

    O’Malley was speaking at Netroots Nation, the country’s largest gathering of progressive activists when the proceedings broke down in a cacophony of boos, cheers and heckles on Saturday. Shortly afterward, Bernie Sanders, another Democratic candidate for president, was also silenced on the same stage by the group of Black Lives Matter protesters. Chanting, the activists shouted out the names of black women who have died in police custody and peppered the candidates with questions about their civil rights records.

    A sea of mostly white progressives, including unions, labororers, bloggers, activists and musicians sat watching the drama unfold.
    […]

    “Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter,” O’Malley said to boos and jeers.

    After O’Malley exited, Sanders took the stage and flashed with annoyance. “If you don’t want me to be here that’s okay,” he said. “I don’t want to out-scream you.”

    The Democratic presidential candidates have all addressed race on the campaign trail, each in their own way. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—who was absent from the Phoenix conference—has called for automatic voter registration and fundamentally reforming the criminal justice system. Sanders has proposed for a massive jobs programs and raising the minimum wage, and O’Malley has discussed reforming policing and enhancing civilian review boards, among other measures.
    […]

    O’Malley stood mutely watching for some ten minutes as protestors jeered, and when he finally edged in a word, he spoke broadly about “all of the lives that been lost to violence” and aroused the protestors anger by saying “all lives matter.” (O’Malley later said he “meant no disrespect.”)

    Despite watching O’Malley fumble, Sander immediately began with his prepared stump speech, criticizing the media and calling for a political revolution, trying to speak over the protesters. “What are we doing here?” he grumbled to Vargas, who was unable to control the crowd. Halfway through his time, Sanders looked at the protesters and finally said “Black people are dying in this country because we have a criminal justice system that is out of control.”

    Even at Netroots Nation, a Shangri-La for progressive idealism where protesters in the hot Phoenix sun pass around sunscreen and water bottles and gather afterwards for group meditation sessions, some attendees were flummoxed by the outpouring of racial anger. Many in the crowd said later they were confused and uncomfortable, though sympathetic. As the protesters chanted, one man called out “Let the Governor speak!”
    […]

    “We have to center this conversation around blackness and anti-blackness. We cannot keep disguising structural racism as income inequality,” Angela Peoples, co-director of GetEqual and one of the hecklers, said afterward in an interview. “What we saw at this conference was a lack of acknowledgement of movement for black lives.”

    The organizers of the conference said that racial justice stands at the center of Netroots Nation.

    “Although we wish the candidates had more time to respond to the issues, what happened today is reflective of an urgent moment that America is facing today,” said a spokeswoman for Netroots Nation. “Netroots Nation stands in solidarity with all people seeking human rights.”

    The Netroots Nation conference featured a number of panels on racism, including ones called “Building Black-Brown Coalitions,” “Examining Racial and Gender Bias,” “Reclaiming Media in the new Dawn of Black Liberation” and numerous others. A day earlier, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren told a crowd to loud cheers that “black lives matter,” marking an important moment at the conference.

    But Black Lives Matter activists are calling on the presidential candidates to make racial justice a central part of their campaigns, and demanded more from the Netroots organizers.

    “They did not answer any of our questions,” Monica Simpson, one of the Black Lives Matter organizers said of Sanders and O’Malley. “Race has to be centered in all presidential candidate’s platforms.”

    Observers said that O’Malley and Sanders both flubbed their shot on stage.

    “It was a missed opportunity for both candidates. What Bernie did is he treated them as hecklers instead of a movement,” Charles Chamberlain, the executive director of Democracy for America, said in an interview. O’Malley’s comments were “incredibly tone deaf,” Chamberlain added.

    O’Malley has promised to lay out a plan to reform the criminal justice. O’Malley said afterword in an interview with the digital show This Week in Blackness that he regrets that as Baltimore mayor and Maryland governor he did not push to expunge misdemeanors from nonviolent offenders’ records and seeking to lead the way on a body camera program for police officers.

    The kerfuffle at Netroots for Sanders was especially pointed. As a student at the University of Chicago in the early 1960s, Sanders participated in one of the first sit-ins in the North protesting racial segregation, and was active in pushing to desegregate Chicago public schools. But Sanders tends to view racial injustice through an economic lens, putting forth jobs platforms intended to help the poor. When he was able to put in a word on stage, Sanders said the U.S. needs to create “an economy where people have good jobs and good wages”—a sentiment that did not satisfy the protestors.

    With the group continuing to chant toward the stage, Vargas said it was time to wrap up. “Okay, good,” Sanders said.

    To many in the audience, the Black Lives Matter showdown was an inspiring example of activism. “It was a moment we could stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement,” said attendee Alexandra Thebert, who is white. “It was a terrific example of how you can make change in the world.”

    But only a few joined in when the protestors left the hall singing the African-American spiritual, “Oh, Freedom” — “Oh freedom, oh freedom … Before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave.”

    Hundreds turn out for funeral of Jonathan Sanders

    A standing-room only crowd of hundreds of mourners gathered Saturday in the Family Life Center Church in Quitman to remember the life of 39-year-old Jonathan Sanders.

    Sanders, who had been driving a horse and buggy, died after an altercation Wednesday with a Stonewall police officer in neighboring Lauderdale County. There is no consensus of what occurred on that night.

    The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is looking into the death.

    WTOK-TV in Meridian reported that family and friends described Sanders as unselfish and a man who loved everyone. Others called the funeral a time for reflection, mourning and celebration of Sanders’ life.

    The Rev. Spencer Richardson, who delivered the eulogy, told Frances Sanders, Jonathan’s mother, that the healing now starts for the family, as does the search for justice in the investigation of his death.

    “This not just about being black or white. This not just about being rich or being poor. The picture is a lot bigger than that. This is not just about a flag hanging on the pole. I need you to understand that this is a whole lot bigger.

    “Today, Mrs. Frances, your healing starts, but for us today, justice begins,” Richardson said.

    Chokwe Antar Lumumba, the Sanders’ family lawyer, said, “We’re all the Lord’s vehicles so we can’t get mad at him when he calls home what is rightfully his. What we have to do is thank him; thank him and praise him for giving us Jonathan in the first place.”

    Burial followed the service at East Galilee Cemetery in Rose Hill, about 100 miles east of Jackson.

    S.F. police post far-out comments on union’s Facebook page, probably reflecting an attitude endemic to every single police union.

    We reviewed the union’s Facebook page and several editions of its monthly journal and found some musings that are, well, pretty far out there for San Francisco in 2015.

    Earlier this month, for example, the union’s Facebook page had a post about the killing of Kathryn Steinle on Pier 14, allegedly at the hands of an undocumented felon who’d been deported five times and released from jail in accordance with San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy.

    “He is an ILLEGAL ALIEN not an undocumented immigrant and if he was where he belonged (Mexico) this innocent victim would still be alive,” the post reads.

    In the June edition of its journal, former POA President Gary Delagnes wrote that the national conversation about racism in policing in light of myriad recent shootings of African American men by police officers is misguided. “There is no evidence, statistical or otherwise, to prove systemic racism in American policing,” he wrote.

    Instead, Delagnes said African Americans simply commit crimes at much higher rates than white people because of “poverty, lack of education, lack of opportunity and nanny-state dependence that have plagued the African American community for centuries. … Cops are thrust right into the middle and told to analyze it, control it, fix it, and do so with kid gloves.”

    While the POA did condemn the racist and homophobic text messages that were exchanged between 14 officers and made public in March, it is providing attorneys to the officers for their legal defense.

    The POA also printed in the May edition of its journal a column by a Mission Station sergeant stating that the officers had every expectation the texts would remain private. (The texts included “Cross burning lowers blood pressure! I did the test myself!” and “All n— must f— hang.”)

    “It has been said loudly and often that the erstwhile private conversations reflect a character that is incompatible with that required by the policing profession,” the POA column said. “This, however, is a dangerous tack to take. … The use of offensive words in private conversation is not by itself an indicator of poor character.”

    Another column in the April journal says that “attacks on police officers in San Francisco … are well orchestrated by race baiters, ambitious mediocre politicians, purveyors of bad grades in journalism school, and other assorted miscreants.”

    POA President Martin Halloran said he stands by every word and regrets nothing the union has printed. “I’ve made my positions very clear in the last few journals of the POA,” he said. “If it’s not clear in the journal, I don’t know how much more I can say it.”

    No regrets all’round. And people wonder why things don’t change.

    O’Malley apologizes for saying ‘all lives matter’ at liberal conference, a nice gesture. But is it a real apology?

    Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley apologized on Saturday for saying “All lives matter” while discussing police violence against African-Americans with liberal demonstrators.

    Several dozen demonstrators interrupted the former Maryland governor while he was speaking here at the Netroots Nation conference, a gathering of liberal activists, demanding that he address criminal justice and police brutality. When they shouted, “Black lives matter!” a rallying cry of protests that broke out after several black Americans were killed at the hands of police in recent months, O’Malley responded: “Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter.”

    […]

    Later that day, O’Malley apologized for using the phrase in that context if it was perceived that he was minimizing the importance of blacks killed by police.

    “I meant no disrespect,” O’Malley said in an interview on This Week in Blackness, a digital show. “That was a mistake on my part and I meant no disrespect. I did not mean to be insensitive in any way or communicate that I did not understand the tremendous passion, commitment and feeling and depth of feeling that all of us should be attaching to this issue.”

    Judith Butler, a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, recently explained why some find it offensive to respond to the “Black Lives Matter” movement with the “all lives matter.”

    “When some people rejoin with ‘All Lives Matter’ they misunderstand the problem, but not because their message is untrue. It is true that all lives matter, but it is equally true that not all lives are understood to matter, which is precisely why it is most important to name the lives that have not mattered, and are struggling to matter in the way they deserve,” Butler said in an interview with The New York Times. “If we jump too quickly to the universal formulation, ‘all lives matter,’ then we miss the fact that black people have not yet been included in the idea of ‘all lives.'”

    ‘Still a racist nation’: American bigotry on full display at KKK rally in South Carolina

    More than a week ago, South Carolina lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to take down the Confederate flag from its prominent position on the statehouse grounds. The controversial decision, which followed a racially motivated 17 June shooting that left nine African American men and women dead inside a historic Charleston church, prompted competing rallies between white supremacist and black activist groups.

    The Loyal White Knights, a North Carolina-based group thought to be the largest KKK faction, scheduled the protest to stop the removal of the flag. The group decided to carry on regardless. They received support from other KKK factions, National Socialist Movement members and Christian fundamentalists.

    “The blacks have been out here attacking people, stealing people’s property, taking their flags,” said Steven Johnson, a South Carolina father of two who was among those waving Nazi flags during the rally. “I’m scared of what my family’s about to grow up with.”

    Forgoing their notorious hoods, more than 50 protesters brandished flags and yelled racial epithets at minority onlookers from behind the protection of steel barricades, watched by dozens of law enforcement officers. According to Bader, some KKK members had planned to hold a church burning, wearing the infamous Klan uniforms.
    […]

    Earlier in the afternoon, black activists from several groups called for further progress in breaking down racial barriers. Members of Black Educators for Justice, a Florida-based group founded by a one-time New Black Panther Party leader, as well as Black Lawyers for Justice and other organizations wore military fatigues and yelled chants associated with the Black Power movement.

    “White America is going to have to come to grips with all people of color,” said Nancy Thomas, a Michigan resident who had traveled to Columbia for a family reunion and watched part of the demonstration.

    “I’m glad they took the flag down, but the flag is a piece of material. The hearts of the people whose minds are so set on the flag remaining, their hearts need to be changed.”
    […]

    Despite the KKK’s visible presence on Saturday, the group’s national influence has dwindled. Mark Potok, a senior fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center, estimated that the KKK has fewer than 4,000 members, down from four million at its peak in the 1920s and roughly 40,000 members at the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Current Klansmen, he said, are fractured into nearly two-dozen groups, many of whom are odds with one another.

    “The Klan today is weak, small and poorly led,” Potok said. “It’s without any real influence in the political mainstream. It’s a far cry from what it was before.”

    For some activists, like Columbia resident John Holmes, the irony of white supremacists touting the flag, after a month filled with southerners proudly defending its place in their heritage, did not go unnoticed. A descendant of a South Carolina lynching victim, Holmes wore a sign around his neck that said “unarmed black man, don’t miss”. The military veteran said it was important to rally against the KKK because the removal of the Confederate flag was only a small sign of change, especially in a state like South Carolina.

    “South Carolina has only been first in one thing: seceding from the United States,” Holmes said, referring to the outbreak of the American civil war in 1861. “They come in last in everything else – minimum wage, education, Medicare. The flag needed to come down first before they could address the other social issues.”

    Dr Lonnie Randolph, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) South Carolina chapter, said his organization had a policy of not counter-protesting rallies, in part because the KKK has the “right to protest and the right to be wrong”. Like Holmes, he did not believe race relations had improved – aside from in college athletics. He said the state’s schools remained segregated, lawmakers continued to pass laws hurting African American people, and people still believed in the principles behind the Confederate flag.

    “Hate groups are as common as baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and racism in America,” Randolph said. “America is still a racist nation. South Carolina is still a racist state … We’re in denial and won’t admit it.”

    More at the link.

    Jonathan Ferrell was just starting his life in Charlotte

    On his last night in Charlotte, Jonathan Ferrell joined his co-workers at one of their favorite spots and took on what his family members say was a familiar role.

    Ferrell, never a big drinker, volunteered to give a friend a ride home.

    Early on the morning of Sept. 14, 2013, after the gathering had broken up, Ferrell went miles out of his way to drive co-worker Max Funderburke to Bradfield Farms, a sprawling suburban neighborhood east of Charlotte, court documents say.

    That’s just the way Jonathan was, friends and family say. Whatever the occasion, he pitched in.

    “He did not like to see people down, so he would help anyone he could,” says Quenton Williams, who had been friends with Ferrell since fifth-grade science class in their hometown of Tallahassee, Fla.

    “Listen, if you were to meet Jonathan, his appearance – big and muscular – well, he had the softest heart of anybody.”

    Throughout his life, Ferrell built a reputation for quiet dependability, a strong work ethic and a respect for authority, those close to him say.

    And he spent his last year building a life in uptown Charlotte with fiancee Caché Heidel, whom he had first proposed to during their junior year in high school.

    Now his family is bracing for how defense lawyers may portray Ferrell during the trial of the police officer accused of killing him.

    Wes Kerrick’s attorneys have argued in pretrial motions that Ferrell was out of control after smoking marijuana at Funderburke’s house and then wrecking Heidel’s car.

    They’ve claimed that the 6-foot, 225-pound former college football player then tried to rob a home with a woman and infant inside. Minutes later, they say, he ignored repeated police orders and plowed into Kerrick.

    Not once, they will argue, did Ferrell tell anyone that he’d been in an accident and needed help.

    Confronted with that depiction, Ferrell’s loved ones respond with disdain.

    If Ferrell had robbery on his mind, they say, he left himself no way to escape. He had no car. He had lost his cellphone and shoes, and he was some 17 miles from home.

    More (positive) details on Ferrell’s life, as well as the last night of his life, at the link.

  81. rq says

    After Liberal Protesters Heckle Him for Saying ‘All Lives Matter,’ Democratic Presidential Hopeful Rethinks Things

    As Democratic presidential contender Martin O’Malley endured protests at a liberal blogger convention Saturday — primarily undergirded with the rallying cry “Black lives matter!” — O’Malley countered with an alternate point of view.

    “Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter,” O’Malley told the Netroots Nation convention audience, as some heckled and booed him.

    Well, O’Malley was singing a new tune about “all lives matter” just hours later.

    “I meant no disrespect,” he said in an interview on This Week in Blackness, a digital show, CNN noted. “That was a mistake on my part and I meant no disrespect. I did not mean to be insensitive in any way or communicate that I did not understand the tremendous passion, commitment and feeling and depth of feeling that all of us should be attaching to this issue.”

    Here’s a clip that includes O’Malley saying, “Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter.” His statement, which he repeated, comes at the 5:30 mark:

    Love the first line, about how O’Malley ‘endured’ protests. I think other people have been enduring protests far longer and far better. But that’s just me.

    This Powerful Photo Shows a Surprising Moment of Humanity From the S.C. KKK Rally, from Mic, with examples of twitter responses.

    JAMES BALDWIN : HIS VOICE REMEMBERED; Life in His Language , Toni Morrison’s eulogy to him in 1987. Worth a read.

    Mothers of #TrayvonMartin, #TamirRice, #MikeBrown & #EricGarner at vigil in Brooklyn earlier today. #StillCantBreathe

    Our Racial Moment of Truth

    FOR as long as many Americans have been alive, the Confederate flag stood watch at the South Carolina capitol, and Atticus Finch, moral guardian-father-redeemer, was arguably the most beloved hero in American literature.

    The two symbols took their places in our culture within months of each other. The flag was hoisted above the capitol dome in April 1961, on the centennial of the Civil War during upheavals over civil rights. Atticus Finch debuted in July 1960 in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a novel that British librarians would later declare the one book, even before the Bible, that everyone should read. Given life by Gregory Peck in the 1962 Oscar-winning film, Atticus Finch would go on to be named the top movie hero of the 20th century.

    Nearly at once, both icons have fallen from grace in ways that were unimaginable just months ago. They are forcing a reckoning with ourselves and our history, a reassessment of who we were and of what we might become.

    The flag was lowered and placed in storage on July 10 after the South Carolina Legislature voted to take it down in response to the massacre of nine black parishioners at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston. The following Tuesday, as if receiving a message from the gods of history, the world was introduced to a new Atticus Finch with the publication of “Go Set a Watchman,” a young Harper Lee’s earlier manuscript, set 20 years after the fictional events in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” making it as much artifact as literature. Rather than the Atticus who urges his daughter, Scout, to climb into someone’s skin to understand him, this Atticus is now an old-line segregationist, a principled bigot who has been to a Klan meeting and asks his now-grown daughter visiting from New York City: “Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?”

    It has seemed as if the force of history has led us to this moment, stirred as we have been by the recorded killings of unarmed black people at the hands of the police, the uprisings and hashtags, a diatribe of white supremacy from the young man accused in the Charleston rampage, a former slave ship captain’s “Amazing Grace” sung by a sitting president. History is asking us to confront the wistfulness that we had ever escaped racism’s deep roots.

    “It is building up to a crisis for those who want to will this away,” the historian Taylor Branch told me. “Things are starting to shake loose, and I keep thinking that things are rumbling to the surface,” he said.

    Coming to terms with Atticus Finch as Harper Lee originally imagined him to be means confronting what the country wishes to believe it stands for. “It’s being sent to us as a gift,” the South Carolina poet Nikky Finney said. “It’s a blueprint to decode, something that we need to be better than we are.”

    The importance of this new Atticus is that he is layered and complex in his prejudices; he might even be described as a gentleman bigot, well meaning in his supremacy. In other words, he is human, and in line with emerging research into how racial bias has evolved in our society. He is a character study in the seeming contradiction that compassion and bigotry can not only reside in the same person but often do, which is what makes racial bias, as it has mutated through the generations, so hard to address.

    “This complex pattern of behavior is not unlike the actual racism that resides in many Americans today,” David R. Williams, a Harvard sociologist who studies the effects of implicit bias on health, said of the new characterization of Atticus Finch. “As an American raised in this society with negative implicit biases against black people, you are not a bad person. You are simply a normal American. We have to come to grips with the reality that this racism is so deeply embedded in our culture that it shapes how we see the world, it shapes our beliefs, our behavior, our actions toward members of other groups. We have to examine ourselves in a profound way.”

    Where are the “heritage not hate” apologists today? Shouldn’t they be out there telling these people that?

  82. rq says

    Working thru trauma of their mother being tazed 3x by #STL #police #BlackLivesMatter #BWLM #ABanks #PoliceBrutality

    Black group, KKK stage rallies outside South Carolina Statehouse

    Hundreds of people crowded outside the South Carolina Statehouse Saturday and taunted each other during separate rallies staged by groups from outside the state.

    Black Educators for Justice, a Florida-based group, held its rally on the north side of the Statehouse, where the Confederate flag was removed earlier this month. Later, the North Carolina-based Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan held a rally on the opposite side of the building to protest the flag’s removal.

    William Bader, the imperial wizard of the Kentucky-based Trinity White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, said its members plan to take back America, according to The Post and Courier.

    “They’re taking our heritage from us,” Bader said. He also said he wants to see the Confederate flag back on Statehouse grounds.

    The South Carolina Department of Public Safety said about 2,000 people showed up for the rallies. Spokeswoman Sherri Iacobelli said five people were arrested and 23 people needed medical attention. A statement from Richland County Emergency Service said many of the 23 were treated for heat, but no specific number was given.

    Several people carried the Confederate flag along the margin of the crowd at the black educators rally. At least 40 members of the KKK marched up the Capitol steps and waved flags. Many in the crowd jeered.

    The Post and Courier reports Klansmen and sympathizers clashed with counter-protesters outside the barricades. Protesters screamed obscenities at the Klansmen leading to the slew of arrests. The tensions forced police to keep the demonstration to about an hour, the newspaper reported.

    Interlude: make-up! Selena’s Colorful Spirit Brought To Life In New M.A.C. Makeup Line.

    Black women murdered by police #SayHerName, a tumblr with a list. An excerpt:

    Miriam Carey was a 34-year-old dental hygienist who made a wrong turn near the White House and was fatally shot by federal law enforcement officers in 2013.

    Yvette Smith was a 47-year-old woman who was shot and killed by Texas police officers as she opened the door to her home for police in 2014.

    Natasha McKenna was 37 years old when she was restrained by Virginia police, shackled at the legs and shot with a stun gun four times earlier this year. She stopped breathing and died at a hospital several days later.

    Rekia Boyd was a 22-year-old woman living in Chicago when she was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer.

    Mya Hall was a 27-year-old transgender woman who was shot and killed by National Security Agency guards after crashing a car into a government facility.

    Shelly Frey was a 27-year-old mother of two who was shot by Wal-Mart security who accused her of shoplifting.

    Darnisha Harris was only a teenager when Louisiana law enforcement officials fired two shots into the car she was driving in 2012.

    Malissa Williams, 30, died after Cleveland police fired 137 times into the car that she was riding in with Timothy Russell.

    Alesia Thomas was 35 when she was kicked to death by a Los Angeles Police officer.

    That’s a not particularly large excerpt.

    The Highlander Rule of PoCs from Skepchick.

    “Things”? What kind of “things”? How about the boards of tech companies? Darold Cuba states in The Loud Fight Against Silicon Valley’s Quiet Racism that “Just three companies—Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce.com—have a black or Hispanic person on their boards.” Emphasis totally added, y’all. The Chemical & Engineering News list of the ‘Talented 12‘ includes one PoC, Dr. Hosea Nelson. What other things? Scripted TV or news shows, science fiction & fantasy writers? Check and check and check!

    Racial turmoil in Md.’s ‘Friendliest Town’ after black police chief is fired – uh-oh!

    The crowd gathered outside City Hall last week, demanding that their community’s first black police chief — fired amid allegations leveled against white officers of departmental racism — be given his job back.

    In a place that bills itself as the “Friendliest Town on the Eastern Shore,” angry residents marched with posters that read “We Support Chief Kelvin Sewell” and jammed inside the quaint red-brick building to voice their outrage to the Pocomoke City Council.

    Pocomoke City has been on edge since Sewell was fired by the council June 29. According to the former chief and his supporters, he was sacked for refusing to dismiss two black officers who described working in a hostile environment.

    The officers alleged in complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that they faced racism that was overt and rampant — allegations the city denies. Among the incidents alleged: a food stamp superimposed with President Obama’s face that was left on a black detective’s desk and a text message that read, “What is ya body count nigga?”

    “This is one of the most egregious cases of primary racial discrimination and retaliation for assertion of rights before the EEOC that I’ve seen,” said Andrew G. McBride, co-counsel for the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, which is representing Sewell. “Chief Sewell has a fantastic record as a police officer. He was terminated because he stood up for two African American officers who filed an EEOC complaint.”
    […]

    On Monday night, dozens of residents praised Sewell’s performance, pointing out that arrests have risen and serious crimes have fallen since he took over the department. His supporters told the five-member council that Sewell helped get rid of drug dealers who did business on Pocomoke City’s streets. He championed community policing, requiring officers to get out of their patrol cars and walk their beats. He checked on elderly residents.

    “You terminated a man who made a difference,” said the Rev. James Jones, pastor of Macedonia Baptist Church, who presented the council with a petition with 500 signatures seeking Sewell’s reinstatement.

    So there you see another example of what happens to the good (or at least better) cops.

  83. rq says

    Ku Klux Klan and New Black Panther Party Protest at South Carolina Capitol

    With police officers watching from nearby rooftops and a din of racial slurs heard on the pavement below, members of the Ku Klux Klan and the New Black Panther Party appeared at dueling rallies outside the South Carolina State House on Saturday, eight days after officials here removed the Confederate battle flag from the Capitol grounds.

    Despite sporadic scuffles and hours of inflammatory rhetoric from white and black demonstrators alike, the authorities largely maintained order and prevented any significant violence. The police made five arrests, and the South Carolina Department of Public Safety estimated that the State House crowd, including onlookers, had at one point swelled to about 2,000 people. They chanted — or at least heard — volleys of incendiary speech and shouts of “white power!” and “black power!”

    Bystanders watched people wave flags celebrating Pan-Africanism, the Confederacy and the Nazi Party. And they watched as black demonstrators raised clenched fists, and white demonstrators performed Nazi salutes.

    Much of the day’s drama was on the south side of the State House, near a statue of former Senator Strom Thurmond, where a few dozen people associated with the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan held a demonstration. A Columbia newspaper, The State, reported that it was the first Klan rally outside the State House since the late 1980s.

    Saturday’s protesters, who were predominantly men, did not don the Klan’s traditional white hoods and robes. Even as they denied being members of a hate group, their message was a relentless one of white supremacy.

    “This is my country,” one shouted at a group of black onlookers. “My ancestors founded this country!”

    “Peace is over with,” said William Bader, who said he was a Kentucky resident and the imperial wizard of the Trinity White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “There is no peace.”

    Mr. Bader, who said he planned to wear his Klan regalia for a cross burning on Saturday night, added, “What do I want to see happen? White revolution is the only solution.”

    But on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Bader and the other demonstrators who championed a vision of white supremacy were vastly outnumbered as they protested for an hour in a barricaded area of the State House grounds and sometimes became involved in angry shouting matches with black people in the crowd.

    Yep, all the ancestors of those white people founded that country… on the backs of black people and Native Americans and anyone else they could take advantage of.
    Some heritage.

    Counterprotest at today’s Pro-Police Brutality Rally in Denver. #DefendDenver #ftp

    Rachel Dolezal Says Her Black Identity Is ‘Not a Costume’, in case anyone still wants to read about her.

    Vigil being held at #PrairieView A&M for #SandraBland.

    Jidenna: “To all my Nigerian brothers and sisters”

    Last week, “Classic Man” emcee Jidenna unexpectedly unleashed a storm on Nigerian Twitter following an interview with the U.S.-based hip-hop video news site Vlad TV. In the clip, posted July 9th, the 30-year-old Nigerian-American musician was asked to respond to how being light-skinned and having a certain texture of hair has affected how he functions within the Black community. Jidenna, who was born in Wisconsin to an American mother and an Igbo father, responded by noting that he’s had what he refers to as a very particular type of upbringing in comparison to the “traditional” experience of light-skinned, mixed African-Americans in the states. The artist went on to explain his childhood experience spending time in southeast Nigeria as a light-skinned Igbo-American.

    And there was backlash, and he wrote an open letter, and it’s interesting insight into the life of one bi-racial person and his experiences.

    Sandra Bland Family Seeking Independent Autopsy of Woman Found Dead in Texas Jail

    The family of a Chicago-area woman found dead in a Texas jail cell last week is ordering an independent autopsy, their lawyer says.

    Attorney Cannon Lambert says Sandra Bland’s family expects autopsy results within 48 to 72 hours, ABC News reported Sunday. Lambert did not return a phone call from The Associated Press seeking comment.

    Authorities say Bland hanged herself with a plastic bag three days after being pulled over by police for a traffic violation and then arrested for allegedly kicking an officer during the stop. Friends and family have questioned that account.

    The 28-year-old black woman’s death at the Waller County jail, about 60 miles northwest of Houston, comes amid increased national scrutiny of police after a series of high-profile cases in which blacks have been killed by officers.

  84. rq says

    Report raises questions about Ferguson-related donations

    A group of youth advocates is questioning how money donated to programs for young people in the aftermath of the unrest in Ferguson has been spent and whether the funds have made an impact.

    During a community meeting on Saturday, St. Louis Advocates for Youth released the preliminary findings for its Resource Allocation Project. The report focused on donations to services and programs for adolescents and teens, ages 10 to 18 years old, in the St. Louis region. It sought to find out what youth-related programs were supported by donations, what outcomes are expected, and who are the young people participating.

    “There ought to be some standardized way: ‘Here’s the money, here’s where it went, and here’s how many people it served, and here’s what happened as result of them getting that money.’ Are poverty rates going to go down? Are test scores going to go up? Those are legitimate questions when you’ve got this kind of money flowing into a community that small,” said group leader Jamala Rogers of the report’s main questions.

    But even after research, Rogers said many of these questions remain unanswered.

    “The concern from the Ferguson residents, like, ‘Why weren’t they involved in some of the decision-making about where the monies were going?'” Rogers said. “When you get ready to bring money in, you bring the community together and say what are the needs. So that piece seems to be missing, so we want to make sure we double back and bring those folks into the fold.”

    If I Die In Police Custody…

    In 2k15 America, Black people now have to proactively and publicly declare for the record that we, like anyone else, would neither lynch ourselves nor commit suicide while in police custody.

    This is (apparently) necessary now because if we are caught being human and – even once – state that we were even momentarily sad or depressed, that single statement alone can and will be used against us by corporate media and the police to blame us for our own murders…at the hands of the police.

    #SandraBland #SayHerName #BlackLivesMatter #JusticeForSandra

    (to hear all of these Black women’s voices and to watch their full videos, please go to the tumblr or twitter of youth activist/organizer, millennialau. see full videos here)

    (via jaedabatax3)

    With gif statements, and link to video.

    On what would have been his 80th.. Happy birthday Frantz Fanon.

    A Black Teen Died This Week In An Alabama Jail Cell, And Authorities Say It Was Suicide

    An Alabama teen died in her jail cell earlier this week, just over an hour after she was booked into the facility. Authorities claim the cause of death was suicide by asphyxiation.

    According to AL.com, officials with the Homewood City Jail said Kindra Darnell Chapman, who was black, was processed on Tuesday at 6:22 p.m., following an arrest for first-degree robbery. Police say Chapman, 18, stole a cell phone from another individual on the street.

    Chapman was last seen alive at 6:30 p.m on Tuesday, when staff conducted an initial welfare check. At 7:50 p.m., jailers returned to find Chapman unresponsive. Authorities say she hanged herself. She was later pronounced dead at a local hospital.

    The Homewood police are investigating her death, according to local WSFA. Bill Yates, chief deputy coroner for Jefferson County, told The Huffington Post that the results of Chapman’s autopsy are still pending. Calls to the Homewood city jail and police department were not immediately returned.

    As The Root notes, Chapman’s death comes amid increasing anger about the death of 28-year-old Sandra Bland, found in her cell at the county jail in Hempstead, Texas.

    #BlackLivesMatter founder @aliciagarza breaks down our action at #NN15 for those of you riding the hype train:

    Police must balance enforcement with safety in high-speed pursuits,

    Pursuits are highly risky and come with a huge toll measured too often in lives lost, painful injuries and multimillion-dollar lawsuits that drain taxpayer funds. The National Institute of Justice estimates that one of every 100 high-speed pursuits results in a fatality, and FBI data show that 55,000 people are injured annually as a result of pursuits. Other studies indicate that there is, on average, a pursuit-related fatality daily and one-third of those are innocent victims. This year, communities including Antelope, Calif.; Flint, Mich.; Kansas City, Mo.; and Houston have been rocked by pursuit-related incidents that have killed many innocent bystanders.

    Milwaukee criminals are definitely stealing more vehicles this year. Milwaukee police officers are still restricted in their ability to pursue solely for vehicle theft. So, with limited means of enforcement, what’s to stop criminals from continuing their thieving ways? The answer is a combination of policing tools.

    First, the continued quality investigative work by the Milwaukee Police Department has allowed it to recover most stolen vehicles. According to the Journal Sentinel, “As of July 5, 85% of stolen cars in 2014 had been recovered. Two-thirds of those recovered cars had minor or no damage, suggesting they were used for joy riding.”

    Second, there are tools that enable police to apprehend suspects without resorting to a chase. Cities in a dozen states including Austin, Texas, and St. Petersburg, Fla., have implemented a technology that enables law enforcement to tag and then track fleeing vehicles with a GPS device launched from the front grill of their cruisers. Using GPS tagging is one example of an excellent tool that allows police to safely apprehend these criminals without the need for a dangerous chase.

    Pursuit alternatives and technology requires investment, which some resourceful police departments have been able to address by accessing government grants. Funding is limited, however, and there are many competing demands from police departments nationwide that depend on these grants for tools and training. Law enforcement, the media and the public must push and educate our local and national legislators to do their part by making existing funds and grants available for training and technologies aimed at saving innocent citizens’ and police officer lives.

    Milwaukee officials took a huge step by limiting pursuits for violent felonies, and for that I applaud them, but limited pursuit policies are not the only long-term solution for law enforcement. Police must balance public interest and safety while still enforcing the law, and making funds available for pursuit training and technology must be a priority for policy-makers to address.

  85. says

    After 8 months, the Cleveland PD finally admits it was wrong to ever hire the officer who killed Tamir Rice:

    Over eight months after Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice, ignored him as he struggled to live, and let him die, the Cleveland Police Department has finally admitted what we already knew—it was a mistake to ever hire Loehmann in the first place. So incompetent and mentally unstable was he at hispolice academy, his superior specifically stated that he should never serve in law enforcement.

    Five other departments checked on this and refused to hire Loehmann.

    The Cleveland Police Department now admits it failed to check Loehmann’s background when they hired him. Their response, giving one supervising officer a two-day suspension and another officer a write-up in his file, amounts to a proverbial “oopsy.”

    There’s a lot of information at the link, including a look into Loehmann’s records and documents detailing how he was turned down from as many as 7 other police departments. But the Cleveland PD hired him.

  86. rq says

    Tony>
    The PD will take the fall, and Loehmann will suffer no consequences in the end. This is my guess.

    +++

    Pleasanton Police Accused Of Covering Up Facts Surrounding Deadly Officer Shooting

    Attorneys for the family of a man shot and killed by police during a confrontation outside a Pleasanton auto dealership earlier this month have accused the Police Department of covering up the facts of the shooting.

    In a statement released Thursday, the law firm Geragos & Geragos accused the department of inconsistencies in its accounts of the shooting and obstruction in responding to questions about the case.

    Police last week released a lengthy account of the July 5 confrontation outside Specialty Sales Classics, a car dealership specializing in antique and exotic cars at 4321 First St.

    Initial police accounts said that 19-year-old John Deming Jr. was found outside the dealership when police arrived at about 2 a.m., but the revised account said he was inside but visible through the dealership’s large glass windows.

    Police said he was acting threateningly and erratically, throwing a 50-pound floor jack through the window. Officers tried to subdue him with beanbag rounds but missed.

    The officers went in after Deming with a dog, and attorneys for the family said police dispatch records indicate that only 22 seconds passed between officers entering the business and Deming being shot.

    According to police, once officers entered they found Deming in a back room. He escaped out a broken window and was chased by Officer Daniel Kunkel. Deming then turned to fight Kunkel, knocking him to the ground and punching him repeatedly in the head.

    Kunkel twice used a Taser on Deming but that failed to subdue him, so he shot him once. But Deming continued the attack even then and finally Kunkel shot Deming twice more, including once in the face.

    Police said Deming continued to resist officers as they tried to handcuff him. Kunkel was knocked unconscious, according to the police account.

    The family’s attorneys said it is impossible for the confrontation as described to have lasted only 22 seconds. They also questioned why Kunkel was reportedly released from the hospital later that day given the severity of the described attack.

    Also unclear is whether Kunkel was wearing a body camera at the time of the shooting and captured the incident on video. The firm has accused police of inconsistent statements in this regard, at first saying the incident was captured on video but later saying it was not.

    All that, followed by a 30-second character assassination of Deming. :P

    Black Deaths Matter

    For generations, black frustration with policing has been best described in a two-part statement: Cops don’t care enough to solve crimes in our neighborhoods—they just come and harass our kids. Novelist Walter Mosley even built a best-selling detective series around a tough private investigator who does all the serving and protecting that cops won’t do on the black side of town.

    The bitter irony is that it was this same complaint that helped spawn the aggressive policing tactics now under attack from Ferguson to New York City. In the 1980s, when crack and heroin syndicates swept through black neighborhoods, black parents and pastors were some of the first and loudest voices to demand a war on drugs. What they got was “broken windows” policing—an emphasis on curbing petty offenses to prevent more serious crime.

    What they also got were mandatory minimum sentences for shoplifters, indiscriminate stop-and-frisk sweeps, and deadly choke holds on men selling loose cigarettes. There’s little evidence that these tactics contributed much to the national decline in crime. But they did erode trust in law enforcement across many communities—leaving places like Chester increasingly bereft of the protection they badly need. With residents both fearful of police and worried about being targeted for talking to them, detectives can’t find the witnesses they need to solve crimes, breeding further distrust and a vicious cycle of frustration. A 2014 New York Daily News investigation found that in 2013, police solved about 86 percent of homicides in which the victim was white. For black victims, the number was just 45 percent. And in high-minority communities like Chester, says David Kennedy, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, clearance rates for murder—and even more so for nonfatal shootings—can get “pathetically low. They can easily fall down to single digits.” [we recently saw similar numbers for STL]
    […]

    What determines the likelihood of a murder case being solved? One factor appears to be police response in the hours and days after a killing: According to a study published in the National Institute of Justice Journal, the faster officers secure the scene, notify homicide detectives, and ID witnesses, the more likely it is the killer will be brought to justice.

    But that can be hard in a place like Chester, says Cory Long, a community leader who worked on the city’s anti-violence task force, because the relationship between police and community is so strained that residents are often reluctant to come forward. Witnesses not only fear police won’t protect them from retaliation, they simply don’t believe law enforcement will help them find justice.

    “Some of these issues have been going on with the same neighborhoods,” Long says. “You know, generations under them. One guy gets locked up. His younger brother or cousin or relative will take [the retaliation] on, as they get a little older. It just keeps recycling and recycling.” There was a time when homicides mostly resulted from turf wars between neighborhoods, but now, he says, “it has spiraled a little more out of control. It’s a free-for-all.”

    Homicide, at its core, is an intimate crime. In any given city, criminologist Kennedy points out, gun violence is concentrated among a small number of residents in struggling neighborhoods. When someone gets shot, the news travels quickly. “People know what happened,” Kennedy explains. “So if the criminal-justice system isn’t taking care of this, the likelihood that you’ll get your friends and a gun and take care of this goes up.”

    “The person wanted for a homicide today has been shot three times by rivals over the past three years,” he says. “Many of these men are involved in violence because people are trying to hurt them. The moral territory is much murkier than we think it is from a distance.” When cops lack trust in the tiny geographic areas where most shootings occur—and where the penalties for talking to police are well understood—lots of shootings go unsolved, which leads to more shootings, and so on.

    But Kennedy points to cities that turned things around. “Paterson, New Jersey, is a very tough environment that nonetheless has managed to keep its clearance rate way above the norm,” he notes—partly thanks to a community-policing model in which law enforcement agencies prioritize building trust with neighborhood groups and residents.

    Chester has made its own efforts to turn things around. In 2010, after a string of homicides left four people—including a two-year-old boy—dead in just eight days, then-Mayor Wendell Butler Jr. declared a state of emergency, imposing a 9 p.m. curfew on five of the city’s most violent neighborhoods. Anyone who couldn’t give a good reason for being outside at night could be cited and charged.

    Community leaders also put together anti-violence rallies, where families and residents joined police officers and city officials in National Night Out-style parties. Long says he would take neighborhood guys out to dinner on Butler’s tab as a sign of good faith. But after a while, he says, the rallies stopped and the community’s trust in the police department waned.

    In his spacious office overlooking the industrial riverfront, Chester Mayor John Linder moves deliberately like the social-sciences professor he once was. As a black teenager in the 1960s, he hung out with friends at Bennett and William Penn and watched as tension between the two housing projects seeped into the schools. “I had friends on both sides,” Linder says, laughing. “I’ve always been a politician. Nah, man. It was rough. I had to fight my way out of the William Penn sometimes.”
    […]

    Last May, Chester launched another crackdown on violence, with its officers joining state and federal agencies to sweep the city for parole offenders. District Attorney Jack Whelan promised regular gun sweeps, and throughout the summer, officials went door to door and urged residents to file tips anonymously. In November, the city also received $1.1 million to install surveillance cameras over the span of 25 high-crime blocks.

    “You can’t stop crimes with cameras,” Linder says. “But you can solve cases with it. People are intimidated to come to court. You have the cameras, and the camera becomes the witness.”

    And yet, 2014 had the highest number of homicides in Chester’s history, even as overall violent crime continued to fall. There were nine homicides in the first six months of 2015, and at press time, one of them had been cleared.

    … And that’s how it works: people worry about black-on-black crime, but they never stop to wonder about what happens with that crime – do people care enough to solve it, too? But no. “Black-on-black crime” is a dismissal.

    Family: Officer killed 19-year-old after mistaking him for someone else

    Read more: http://www.wsmv.com/story/29578116/man-dead-after-struggle-with-mpd-officer#ixzz3gVUW1jBi

    A teen is dead after being shot by a Memphis police officer late Friday night.

    The MPD officer stopped a car for a broken headlight in the 5700 block of Winchester Road. The officer issued the driver a ticket and let him go. However, the passenger in the car had several warrants for his arrest.

    Darrius Stewart, the 19-year-old passenger, was placed in the back seat of the police car to verify the warrants.

    Investigators said when the officer opened the back door to handcuff Stewart, he kicked the door and attacked the officer. During the fight, Stewart grabbed the officer’s handcuffs and swung them at him. The officer grabbed his gun and shot Stewart to end the fight.

    Stewart went to Regional Medical Center in critical condition where he later died.

    The officer had several cuts and bruises from the fight, but he did not need to go to the hospital. He is relieved of duty pending the outcome of this investigation.

    “Words can’t express how I feel,” Stewart’s mother said. “If my son attacked this officer, why didn’t he use a taser? There were two officers and only one of my son.”
    […]

    “They told him he could leave because he wasn’t the one they were looking for, but to be safe, because there is someone out there with the same name and a lot of warrants,” she said.

    Police said Stewart had a warrant in Iowa that was believed to be for a sex offense and another warrant in Illinois. When asked why Stewart was not handcuffed, police said they do not have a policy about handcuffing people in the car.

    Stewart’s mother said her son was going to attend the University of Memphis in the fall. He planned to become a doctor, and he has never been arrested.

    Police said they could not provide answers about the warrants at this time.

    He hit the officer with handcuffs, so he just shot him. Just like that.

    Family of Sandra Bland has Ordered Independent Autopsy, the Root.

    how not to get shot by a cop. Cartoon. Black man in suit giving advice on how not to get shot (incl. not wearing hoodies and saggy pants), having a gun pointed at himself at the end.

    Cop impersonator goes on racist rant in Chicago bar before shooting Latino man in the face with pellet gun – giving the cops a bad name or just acting like a cop?

    A Chicago man with a history of hate crimes was arrested once again after going on a racist rant at a local bar and shooting a man he believed was an illegal immigrant in the face with a pellet gun while claiming to be a police officer, reports the Chicago Tribune.

    Michael Groh, 45, is being held on $1 million bail after being charged with a felony hate crime, impersonation of a peace officer and aggravated battery, police stated. He was also charged with possessing a replica firearm, a misdemeanor.
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    According to police reports, Groh accosted a 39-year-old Latino man, calling him “a f*cking Mexican” and demanding to see his green card after the man said he was from South America.

    Assistant State’s Attorney Barry Quinn said Groh continued to yell racial slurs at the man, who responded back before attempting to leave the bar. Groh then announced that he was a Chicago police officer and pulled out a Smith & Wesson pellet gun. He shot the man three times in the head, hitting him once in the eye.

    Groh was subdued by the bartender until police arrived and took him into custody.

    So nobody shot him for being threatening, I guess.

  87. rq says

    Millionaires, Kid Rock and a Detroit Lion found in Oakley police reserve applications

    The documents read like a “who’s who” of Detroit-area movers and shakers.

    There are company CEOs and presidents. There are physicians, attorneys and millionaires who make news in Michigan and beyond.

    Mixed into the documents is a copy of rock star Kid Rock’s passport and the driver’s license of former Detroit Lion Jason Fox. Detroit casino developer Michael Malik Sr.’s information is there, too.

    The paperwork is held in the files of the tiny village of Oakley, a one-traffic-light community of 300 in southwest Saginaw County. The documents are applications to join the village’s reserve police force.

    Membership to the force has its privileges.

    Reserve officers have worked on patrol with certified officers, according to Oakley police incident reports. Some Oakley reservists have their own uniforms, village records show. Some reservists have received Oakley Police Department badges and ID cards that name them as officers, village records and reservists themselves admit.

    And under Michigan law, a police reservist can seek an enhanced concealed-pistol license to carry their weapon in areas such as schools and bars.

    Oakley Police Chief Robert Reznick has said his department is doing nothing wrong in attracting high-profile out-of-towners to serve on the village’s reserve force. He’s fought to keep the identities of those reservists a secret.

    A recent court order compelled disclosure, though, and the documents released by the village show the connection between Reznick’s reserve force and dozens of well-heeled Metro Detroiters.

    Some of those people have helped fill Oakley’s coffers, records show, as tens of thousands in donations have rolled in to fund the police department and other municipal activities in the village.

    Well, it’s nice to see which people and what kind of people want to be cops for fun.

    Sandra and Kindra: Suicides or Something Sinister?

    Although the mantra “Black Lives Matter” was developed by black women, I often worry that in the collective consciousness it carries with it an implicit masculine association, one that renders subordinate or even invisible the very real and concurrent subjugation and suffering of black women, one that assigns to these women a role of supporter and soother and without enough space or liberty to express and advocate for their own.

    Last week, the prism shifted a bit, as America and the social justice movement focused on the mysterious cases of two black women who died in police custody.

    […]

    The deaths seem odd: young women killing themselves after only being jailed only a few days or a less than a couple hours, before a trial or conviction, for relatively minor crimes.

    And the official explanations that they were suicides run counter to prevailing patterns of behavior as documented by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which has found that, on the whole, men are more likely to commit suicide in local jails than women, young people are less likely to do so than older people, and black people are the least likely to do so than any other racial or ethnic group.

    That doesn’t mean that these women didn’t commit suicide, but it does help to explain why their coinciding deaths might be hard for people to accept.

    Indeed, because state violence echoes through the African-American experience in this country, it is even understandable if black people might occasionally experience a sort of Phantom Lynching Syndrome, having grown so accustomed to the reality of a history of ritualized barbarism that they would sense its presence even in its absence.

    We have to wait to see what, if any, new information comes out about these cases. But it is right to resist simple explanations for extraordinary events.

    These black women’s live must matter enough for there to be full investigations of the events surrounding their deaths to assure their families and the public that no “foul play” was involved.

    Women are not adjuncts to this movement for social justice and the equal valuation of all lives; they are elemental to it.

    The same week that news broke about these black women found dead in their jail cells, Google celebrated the 153rd birthday of anti-lynching advocate Ida B. Wells with a Google Doodle image. There seemed to me a fortuitous righteousness in the timing, an aligning of stars, an act of cosmic symmetry: celebrating a black female civil rights icon at the very moment that black females were the singular focus of the present civil rights movement.

    Wells once said: “Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so.”

    I think that this burden of proof remains, and in this moment has gathered onto itself an increased, incandescent urgency, “like the light from a fire which consumes a witch,” as James Baldwin once phrased it.

    In this moment, it falls to many of us to take up the mantle and articulate and illuminate the balance of the sinning against, vs. the sinning, for both black men and women alike.

    This week that means investigating the “suicides” of Sandra and Kindra.

    City fires investigator who found cops at fault in shootings

    A Chicago investigator who determined that several civilian shootings by police officers were unjustified was fired after resisting orders to reverse those findings, according to internal records of his agency obtained by WBEZ.

    Scott M. Ando, chief administrator of the city’s Independent Police Review Authority, informed its staff in a July 9 email that the agency no longer employed supervising investigator Lorenzo Davis, 65, a former Chicago police commander. IPRA investigates police-brutality complaints and recommends any punishment.

    Davis’s termination came less than two weeks after top IPRA officials, evaluating Davis’s job performance, accused him of “a clear bias against the police” and called him “the only supervisor at IPRA who resists making requested changes as directed by management in order to reflect the correct finding with respect to OIS,” as officer-involved shootings are known in the agency.

    Since its 2007 creation, IPRA has investigated nearly 400 civilian shootings by police and found one to be unjustified.

    WBEZ asked to interview Ando, promoted last year by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to head the agency. The station also sent Ando’s spokesman questions about sticking points between IPRA investigators and managers, about the agency’s process for overturning investigative findings, and about the reasons the agency had reversed many of Davis’s findings.

    The spokesman said there would be no interview and sent this statement: “This is a personnel matter that would be inappropriate to address through the media, though the allegations are baseless and without merit. IPRA is committed to conducting fair, unbiased, objective, thorough and timely investigations of allegations of police misconduct and officer-involved shootings.”

    The performance evaluation covered 19 months and concluded that Davis “displays a complete lack of objectivity combined with a clear bias against the police in spite of his own lengthy police career.”
    […]

    Davis says he helped investigate more than a dozen shootings by police at the agency. He says his superiors had no objections when his team recommended exonerating officers. The objections came, he says, after each finding that a shooting was unjustified. He says there were six of those cases.

    “They have shot people dead when they did not have to shoot,” Davis said about those officers. “They were not in reasonable fear for their lives. The evidence shows that the officer knew, or should have known, that the person who they shot was not armed or did not pose a threat to them or could have been apprehended by means short of deadly force.”

    Davis says he can’t go into detail about the cases because some are still pending and because the city considers them confidential. Emanuel’s office did not respond to WBEZ questions about Davis’s termination or about IPRA’s record investigating shootings by officers.

    Former IPRA Chief Administrator Ilana Rosenzweig, who hired both Ando and Davis before leaving the agency in 2013, declined to comment about the termination.

    Anthony Finnell, a former IPRA supervising investigator, says he considers Davis a mentor. He says the two would confer on cases.

    “When the investigators would bring cases to us, as supervisors, we would look, first, to see if the officer was justified in his actions,” said Finnell, who now heads a police-oversight agency in Oakland, California.

    Finnell, who left IPRA last year, says the agency’s investigators were better situated than its management to size up a case.

    “Many times we would look at the situation and say, ‘Well, I don’t think that reasoning makes sense or that officer is not being as truthful as I think he should be,’ ” Finnell said. “In fact, many times we may have thought they had lied.”

    Finnell, who worked at IPRA only 15 months, says he was never asked to change findings. If he had been, he says, he would have followed Davis’s example.

    “As an investigator,” Finnell said, “I wouldn’t just change findings because someone told me to.”

    I don’t really know what to say to this.

    Eric Garner’s Death Marked With Week-Long Protests In NYC

    Over the last week, New Yorkers marked the one-year anniversary of Eric Garner’s chokehold death with over a dozen events and actions across the city, from banner drops, to rallies with victims of police violence from around the country, to a march with over 1,000 people leading to dozens of arrests.

    The actions kicked off last Monday with a march on Staten Island organized by NYC Shut It Down (NYCSID) and led by Erica Garner, Eric’s oldest daughter and founder of the Garner Way Foundation. “It’s important to keep bringing actions to Staten Island,” Erica told ANIMAL, “because the police still haven’t reformed out there.”

    The march hit many locations directly connected to Eric Garner’s story, from the courthouse where the Grand Jury failed to indict Officer Pantaleo, to the NYPD’s 120th Precinct, where Pantaleo still works, to the spot where Eric died, just seven blocks away. At each location, and while taking the streets between them, Erica led protesters in chants of, “No Justice! No Peace,” and “Pantaleo Has To Go!”

    After the march, NYCSID dropped a banner reading “I Can’t Breathe” on the Staten Island ferry. This was a marked change in tactics from the past year, when protesters explicitly stated they would not demonstrate on the ferry in order to keep peace with the DOT. “After one year and still no justice, it is important to increase the pressure,” said an organizer with NYCSID who asked to remain anonymous.

    During the week, the group also dropped the banner at two other iconic locations: on the balcony inside Grand Central Station, and from the High Line. At Grand Central, one MTA officer and three State Troopers stopped the group as they left, told them they weren’t allowed to do what they had just done, and needed to get a permit next time.

    The largest demonstration took place Friday night, with more than 1,000 participants. Dozens were arrested. The rally and march was organized by Millions March NYC, NYC Shut It Down, and the People’s Power Assembly. Before the march made it three blocks, the NYPD arrested one prominent member from each of the three groups that organized the event, prompting calls from protesters that they were targeted for their role in organizing and not engaging in activity that other protesters were not.

    More at the link.

    A Confederate General’s Final Stand Divides Memphis

    But this month, the Memphis City Council voted unanimously to begin an intricate process of removing the brass statue from the park — along with the remains of Forrest and his wife, encased since 1905 in its marble base. This effort joins a national wave of casting off Confederate icons since the massacre last month at a church in Charleston, S.C.

    Efforts to take down public flags or monuments associated with the Confederacy are being renewed in communities like New Orleans; Tampa, Fla.; Austin, Tex.; and Stone Mountain, Ga. Yale and the University of California, Berkeley, are among educational institutions being pushed to rename campus buildings honoring people connected to slavery and the Confederacy.

    But because of Forrest’s notoriety, Memphis’s harsh racial history and the fact that advocates want to disinter bodies, not just take down a flag or monument, the issue has particular resonance.
    […]

    In 1905, white Memphis society scions created the park to be Forrest’s new resting place. They dug up his body and his wife’s, 28 years after his death in 1877, and moved them there. They commissioned the statue, which was designed in New York and built in Paris, to sit atop the remains.

    Then the park was dedicated, just as streetcar segregation laws were coming into full force here.

    Many of the Confederate monuments being reconsidered now were put up then. Part of the intent behind them, said Beverly G. Bond, a history professor at the University of Memphis, was to intimidate black people. “I am pretty sure,” she said, “nobody ever took a vote among African Americans here in 1905 asking, ‘Do you want this statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest in this park?’ ”

    Myron Lowery, 68, the City Council chairman, is leading the removal effort. He is fully aware that as a black man, he would not have been a public official in 1905, and that if he had opposed the statue then, he said, “I could have been lynched.”

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    The Council’s resolution did not settle things. But it initiated two separate, complex processes — one to move the remains and another to move the statue.

    Predicting a backlash, Mr. Millar stirred the crowd at the recent Confederate rally. “They’ve got a lot of obstacles ahead of them,” he said. “I like to think one of them is us.”

    The resolution started legal procedures to move the remains back to the cemetery where they were originally buried. That case will be heard in the Chancery Court, which sits on Adams Avenue, directly across from where Forrest once sold slaves.

    The resolution also began a six-week ordinance procedure to remove the statue. After that, the Tennessee Historical Commission will have to vote in October on waiving a 2013 state heritage law prohibiting war monument changes.

    The City of Memphis owns the statue of Forrest. If the waiver passes, the city will have the statue on hand, for sale, in the fall. Mr. Lowery said they were already fielding offers from lots of potential buyers.

    I think they should auction it off for the highest possible price and thus have revenue for the city to use for good causes.

    Sandra Bland Mourned From Illinois to Texas

    Sandra Bland began her Facebook videos by greeting viewers as “kings and queens.” Those close to her believe she truly meant it.

    “She talks to us as kings and queens,” one of her sisters, Shavon Bland, said outside the family’s church in Illinois on Sunday. “That’s how she went around the world speaking. From here to Chicago to Texas — wherever she went.”

    On both ends of the path that marked Bland’s 28-year life — the western suburbs of Chicago where she grew up, and the Texas town where she died — family, friends and supporters continued to raise questions Sunday about her startling death in the Waller County jail as they took time to remember, honor and reflect.
    […]

    Multiple agencies, including the Texas Rangers and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have announced investigations into her death, and Waller County officials have promised they would hide no information from the Bland family.

    A Prairie View A&M graduate, Bland had returned to take a temporary job with the school’s extension service.

    In the wake of her sister’s death, Cooper said her family has found support in the Waller County community.

    “I can’t tell you how connected we have become to you all throughout this last week,” Cooper told those at the Prairie View prayer vigil. “Until we were able to physically be here, the people that were our voice and our ears and our eyes were from this community.”

  88. rq says

    #RichWhiteLivesMatterToo — Update – It’s a look at David Brooks’ response to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book, and down at the end, there’s a whole list of other people responding to David Brooks’ response.

    Confederate flag under siege, but U.S. hate groups alive and well (CBC)
    Mourners gather to remember Andrew Loku, shot dead by Toronto police (Toronto Star)
    Sandra Bland’s arresting officer on desk leave (Toronto Star)

    Sandra Bland’s death in Texas jail to be treated like murder probe: prosecutor (CBC) – I thought I’d left a comment to this effect before I went out and about today, but apparently I did not. This is a small piece of good news.

    Photo of black cop helping man with racist T-shirt at KKK rally goes viral (Toronto Star)

  89. says

    Sovereign citizen arrested after twice trying to grab one of six loaded guns in his confederate flag car:

    A Towns County sheriff’s deputy and an agent from the Appalachian Regional Drug Enforcement Office stopped 30-year-old Dustin Lee Gunnells, of Hiawassee, for an unspecified misdemeanor traffic offense Wednesday, reported WKRK-AM.

    “Immediately the driver exhibited aggression towards the officers and began making statements consistent with ‘sovereign citizen type beliefs,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement. “Rather than comply with deputies, the driver reached for a gun.”

    The deputies feared for their safety but did not shoot, and instead broke out a window in Gunnell’s car and physically removed him from the vehicle.

    Gunnells then tried to reach for a gun he kept in a holster at the small of his back, deputies said, but they were able to subdue him and take away his weapon.

    One of the deputies suffered minor injuries from broken glass, and they said Gunnells refused medical treatment for minor injuries.

    Deputies said they found six guns — a 9mm hand gun, a .45-caliber handgun, a .40-caliber handgun, a .44 magnum caliber short rifle, and a .223-caliber AR-15 military-style rifle — and extra ammunition inside Gunnells’ car.

    Each of the weapons was loaded, and all but the AR-15 had rounds within the chamber, authorities said.

    ****
    TX trooper who arrested Sandra Bland claims the Black Lives Matter activist assaulted him.
    Can’t copy paste because you have to have permission to reprint.

  90. Saad says

    Samuel Dubose, 43-year old black man, shot to death by police officer in University of Cincinnati police officer during traffic stop

    Cincinnati police are investigating the fatal shooting of an apparently unarmed black man by a University of Cincinnati police officer after a confrontation during a traffic stop Sunday.

    The dead man, who was shot in the head, was Samuel Dubose, a 43-year-old father of 13 children, according to CNN affiliate WKRC-TV. A CNN records search showed that Dubose had more than 60 arrests.

    Authorities identified the officer as Ray Tensing, who has five years’ experience in law enforcement and who has worked for the University of Cincinnati Police Department for more than a year. He is white.

    [. . .]

    Tensing asked several times to see Dubose’s driver’s license, Cincinnati police said. Instead, police said, Dubose handed the officer a bottle of alcohol.

    According to police, Tensing asked Dubose to step out of the car, at which point a struggle ensued.

    “There was a struggle at the door with Mr. Dubose in the vehicle and the officer outside the vehicle, and the vehicle sped away,” Cincinnati police Lt. Col. James Whalen told reporters.

    Police said Dubose then stuck his key back in the ignition and sped away as Tensing fired a single shot, hitting the driver in the head.

    Tensing fell to the ground as he fired the shot, bruising his legs and tearing his uniform, Cincinnati police said.

    It appeared that Dubose did not have a weapon, according to police.

    [. . .]

    The officer has been placed on administrative leave with pay. He has not yet been interviewed, nor have two other officers who arrived on the scene, as they are allowed 24 to 48 hours to work with their attorneys first.

    Tensing was wearing a body camera, police said. They also said they have received surveillance video from nearby buildings but have yet to view it. No dashboard camera video is available, police said.

  93. says

    How slavery built Charleston:

    July 12, 2015, marked the 197th anniversary of “Mother Emanuel” African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Its senior pastor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, was not there to celebrate the occasion—he was among the nine African Americans shot dead on June 17 by Dylan Storm Roof, a follower of white supremacist screeds.

    Instead, Rev. Dr. Norvel Goff Sr., Emanuel’s interim pastor, presided over the anniversary service, receiving gifts from church visitors as far away as Africa. His sermon theme was “Things to Remember,” which focused on the Bible passage Joshua 4:21.

    “And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones?”

    In front of the church is an elaborate stretch of flowers and memorials occupying a sizable chunk of Calhoun Street in Historic Downtown Charleston, which can’t be missed by anyone driving or walking by. What also can’t be missed, a block away from the site of one of the nation’s most horrific acts of domestic terrorism, is another memorial: a towering bronze statue of the man the street is named after, John C. Calhoun, the former U.S. Secretary of War and forever defender of slavery. It stands on a long, granite pedestal hoisted from Marion Square, an expansive green space operated (though not owned) by the city. Not long after the Emanuel shootings, someone spray-painted “RACIST” along the base of the Calhoun monument.

    Calhoun’s is but one of many public monuments honoring slavery’s advocates in South Carolina. When Klansmen and New Black Panthers clashed over the weekend at the state’s capitol, they did so below a monument dedicated to Confederate soldiers, which still stands right in front of the state house building, just yards from where the Confederate rebel flag waved before it was taken down on July 10.

    There are plenty more Confederate monuments standing in plain sight throughout the state—over 170 as of 2001, according to this letter from former state Attorney General Charlie Condon. Notably, the Confederate Soldier Memorial in Columbia and the Calhoun monument statue in Charleston are both inextricably stitched into each city’s fabric. The function they serve is that they help tell their respective city’s histories. They also project who should be considered the heroes among grand narratives that focus on war.

    The black descendants of the enslaved victims of these heroes, meanwhile, have grown up in these cities asking themselves the question Mother Emanuel’s pastor referenced in his sermon: “What mean these stones?”

    Roughly 44 percent of black children in Charleston lived in segregated areas characterized by concentrated poverty between 2009 and 2013, compared to just 5 percent of white children, according to the Annie E. Casey’s Kids Count Data Center. The perseverance of these Confederate stones and monuments may provide some context for the ongoing segregation seen today, but that examination is obscured when the conversation focuses squarely on the valor of men who fought and died in Civil War battles.

    Edwin C. Breeden, a graduate student at Rice University’s Department of History, and Joseph McGill, founder of The Slave Dwelling Project, are hoping to change this discussion. Rather than focusing on the Civil War generals, commanders, and plantations that Charleston’s historic landscapes and tourism industry rely heavily upon, they are urging the city to recognize the places where imported Africans were sold and purchased. These are locations that aren’t just about slavery, but also the centrifugal forces of commerce that set the city’s economic and physical formations in motion.

    “Slave labor created the wealth that built all of these buildings, or they were physically built by the slaves themselves,” says McGill as he walks me through Charleston’s French Quarter, a tourist-driven district in downtown where swanky new taverns and bistros share shadows with centuries-old banks and libraries. “[The city] sells history to the public through these architecturally, historically significant buildings, but these same buildings were centrally involved in the institution of slavery.”

    There’s a lot more at the link.

    ****
    4 things you should teach your kids about racism right now:

    For the past three years, ever since Trayvon Martin was murdered for walking while black and reports of unarmed black people being killed by cops and wanna-be cops have surged, leading to the Black Lives Matter movement and push-back from black communities all over the country, I’ve wondered how, and if, we’re ever going to beat anti-black racism. I don’t even mean eliminate it. I just mean…get a leg-up. Because sometimes it seems as if we’re getting nowhere, and getting there really fast.

    In the wake of the South Carolina church shootings, when South Carolina governor Nikki Haley said, “Parents are having to explain to their kids how they can go to church and feel safe,” I wondered what those parents have been teaching their kids about anti-black racism all this time.

    More importantly, what is everyone (who actually cares) teaching their kids about anti-black racism?

    “Don’t say the N-word, Bobby!”

    “Be nice to people no matter what the color of their skin is, Malik!”

    “The Ku Klux Klan is bad, Madison! Don’t ever put on a hood and burn a cross on someone’s lawn! Okay, nap time!”

    Is this the gist of it? God, I hope not. Jokes aside, I suspect that it’s not much more nuanced than this. And it really needs to be.

    As informed, non-presidential black people have been saying forever, and as one presidential black person, President Obama, recently said, too: anti-black racism isn’t just saying the N-word.

    It’s not just being in a hate group, either. Or being mean to people because of the color of their skin. It’s way more complicated than that.

    As someone who is working on baby-making with my partner, and is already auntie to the cutest nephew ever, I’ve tried to imagine what, exactly, I’ll tell my kids about racism, and especially anti-black racism, that will make them less likely to internalize it when they encounter it, which, as black children, they absolutely will. There are a few things I’ve identified as especially important for them to understand as soon as they’re able to, and I think these are good things for everyone (who actually cares) to teach their kids about anti-black racism.

    Here are two of the ways:

    2. Don’t trust the mainstream media, Mateo.

    We all grow up watching, reading, listening to, and being influenced by the mainstream media. Without a basic understanding of the ways the MSM works to uphold systemic racism, kids are ill-equipped to avoid its trappings.

    We should all teach kids that the U.S. media isn’t fair and unbiased, but rather that it’s made up mostly of people who benefit from white supremacy and anti-blackness, and who hold white supremacist and anti-black biases themselves.

    Teach your kids to constantly question the media’s narratives, especially about black people, including what stories the media tells and doesn’t tell, what images they show and don’t show, and the ways that black people and other people of color are made less than human by the media, while white people, even mass murderers, are allowed full humanity. Point out to them the differences in headlines and language used to describe people of color vs. white people and make sure they understand the motives behind them.

    3. Being “colorblind” is not the answer, Tiffany.

    The “I’m colorblind” or “I don’t see color” or “I don’t see you as black, just as a person” approach is one of the major ways that racism actually gets perpetuated. The fact is that everyone sees race, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem occurs when we make assumptions about people of color based on race, when racialized people are stereotyped and denied access based on race.

    Most of the black people I know, most of the people of color I know, don’t want their race, culture and heritage ignored or erased. They also don’t want their experiences of racialized oppression ignored or erased. They simply don’t want to be treated as less human because of their race.

    Also, if you have to pretend my blackness isn’t there in order to see my full humanity, you might be racist (j/k you’re definitely racist).

    We have to teach kids of color that being surrounded by “colorblind” people is no kind of goal to have, and teach white kids that “not seeing race” isn’t possible, isn’t necessary, and, in fact, perpetuates racism.

  94. says

    Another day, another black person killed by a LEO:

    Prosecutors are intensively reviewing the fatal shooting of an unarmed Cincinnati man by a University of Cincinnati police officer who had pulled the driver over for having a missing front license plate and fired on him after a brief struggle, authorities said Tuesday.

    The man, Samuel Dubose, 43, who was African-American, was shot once in the head as he sat behind the wheel of his car Sunday night, university and city police said. The officer, Ray Tensing, who is white, was placed on administrative leave pending the investigation.

    The deadly shooting occurred amid a national conversation of race and policing, with critics alleging that black suspects are more likely to have force used against them during encounters with police.
    Cincinnati police said Tuesday that they have taken over the investigation at the request of the university. Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said in a statement that his office is “rapidly investigating” the shooting.

    “This incident didn’t involve a Cincinnati Police Department officer, but it happened in our city, and it is our job to ensure this investigation is handled with the attention it deserves,” City Manager Harry Black said Tuesday.

    University Police Chief Jason Goodrich said the campus department has an agreement with Cincinnati police to patrol shared areas near campus.

    ****

    Guardian database is up to 637.

  95. says

    I news that will come as a surprise to pretty much no one the dashcam video of Sandra Bland’s arrest was edited:

    The dashcam video released to the public of the violent arrest of Sandra Bland was edited.

    Bland was a 28-year-old Black Lives Matter civil rights activist and vocal critic of police brutality who died in police custody after a Texas officer pulled her over for a traffic violation, ordered her out of her car when she refused to put out her cigarette, and aggressively arrested her. Police say Bland committed suicide, yet the Waller County prosecutor says Bland’s case is “being treated just as it would be a murder investigation.”

    The Texas Department of Public Safety uploaded dashcam police video of the arrest to YouTube on 21 July. Parts of the approximately 52 minutes of footage it uploaded have clearly been doctored.

    A man leaves the truck in the center of the frame at 25:05. For the next 15 seconds, he walks toward the right of the frame and leaves. At 25:19, he suddenly appears again, promptly disappears, then returns at 25:22. The same footage of him walking is subsequently repeated.

    This is not the only part of the video that was edited.

    At 32:37, a white car drives into the left side of the frame, then promptly disappears in the middle of the road. Seconds later, the same car drives back into the frame and subsequently turns left. This footage is later looped several times.

    A different white car also drives into the left side of the frame and turns left from 32:49 to 32:59. The previous white car again briefly enters the frame at 33:04, and once more at 33:06, yet it suddenly disappears both times. When these cuts are made in the footage, the lights on top of the truck in the center of the frame also abruptly cut out.

    At 33:08, the exact same footage from 32:37 is repeated, followed by the same second white car at 33:17.

    Similar edits and loops are made throughout the video.

    Someone clearly cut footage out and looped part of the video in order to correspond with the recorded audio of Texas state trooper Brian Encinia speaking. Who exactly edited the footage is unknown, but the video was recorded by police and released by the Texas Department of Public Safety.

    UPDATE:

    Award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay also agrees that the video has been edited.

  96. rq says

    Memphis cop fatally shoots black teen after mistaking him for someone else, family says – as reported by Raw Story.

    Ebony photoessay (Sept. ’70) on African-American contributions to #space program and #Apollo11 (2/2) (I missed part 1/2.)

    Family Attorney: Dashcam Video Of Sandra Bland’s Arrest Shows Texas Trooper Trying To Pull Her Out Of Her Car – I think that’s the one that’s probably edited as mentioned by Tony above. It also never ever shows Sandra Bland attacking the officer.

    The attorney for Bland’s family, Cannon Lambert, told a radio show Monday that the dashcam video of her arrest showed a Texas state trooper reaching into her car and trying to pull her out. Lambert told the Tom Joyner Morning Show that Bland did not strike the state trooper in the video footage that was shown to the family. Lambert said the two argued about Bland smoking in her car and the trooper tried to open her door as she attempted to record him with her cell phone. The video then showed the trooper pulling his taser out after which Bland complied and got out of her car, Lambert said.

    An official from the Waller County Sheriff’s Office told BuzzFeed News her death “appears to be a suicide for now,” but her friends and family told ABC 7 they suspect foul play. The official said the autopsy report could “take several more days.”

    Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis said at a Thursday news conference that Bland used a plastic bag to hang herself from a partition in her cell, the Chicago Tribune reported. The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, which conducted Bland’s autopsy, had earlier listed her manner of death as “suicide,” with hanging as the primary cause.

    On Friday, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) announced that it had “identified violations of the department’s procedures regarding traffic stops and the department’s courtesy policy.”

    Pending the outcome of the Texas Ranger and FBI investigation into the incident, the officer involved in the arrest has been assigned administrative duties, the statement added.

    The location of Bland’s phone, I understand, is currently unknown. Or what material there might be on it.

    Black women speak out about their experiences with police violence – I will add, as long as they feel safe doing so.

    The names of black men shot and killed by police became synonymous with the slogan “black lives matter.”

    But that doesn’t mean black women and girls are unaffected by state violence.

    A new report and campaign called Say Her Name addresses the lack of accountability for the deaths of black women and girls—and puts faces and names to the black and brown women whose lives have been cut short.

    But what do the survivors and families of victims have to say about the realities of policing black and brown communities?
    […]

    Andrea Ritchie, a black police misconduct attorney and co-author of “Say Her Name,” has been raising the issue of how black and brown women are policed for 20 years, she says. “Unfortunately, I’m no longer surprised by stories, but I continue to be deeply enraged by them,” Ritchie said.

    Article from July 1.

    More vandalism, in Denton (link won’t load for me).

    U.S.
    A Startling Third of Black Children Live in Poverty: Census

    Impoverished black children (4.2 million) may outnumber impoverished white children (4.1 million) for the first time since the U.S. Census began collecting poverty data in 1974, says a new Pew Research Center report, released Tuesday.

    Overall, 20 percent of children in the U.S., or 14.7 million, lived in poverty in 2013, down from 22 percent in 2010. The rate declined for all races and ethnicities during that period, except black children. Their poverty rate held steady at around 38 percent throughout the same period.

    While black children were almost four times as likely as white children to be living in poverty in 2013, more Hispanic children lived in poverty than any other group (5.4 million that year). This has been true since at least 2008, as the Hispanic population is larger and younger than the other minority populations.

    That’s HUGE.

  97. rq says

    Sure, Whites Are Privileged—but Not Me Personally! As removed from the Lounge.

    In their minds, white privilege may exist, but its impact on them is effectively negated by other, unrelated factors. “Importantly, this discounting of personal privilege is ultimately associated with diminished support for affirmative action policies,” write Stanford University scholars L. Taylor Phillips and Brian S. Lowery.

    In the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the researchers describe three experiments that provide evidence backing up this assertion. The first two featured 94 and 91 white Americans, respectively, who were recruited online via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

    “Participants completed two ostensibly unrelated surveys, the first regarding beliefs about inequality in America, and the second about childhood memories,” the researchers write. In the first, they were asked the degree to which they believe white people have “certain advantages minorities do not have in this society.”

    Half addressed this touchy question cold, while the others did so after reading a paragraph describing the reality of white privilege in such realms as academics, housing, and health care.

    The “personal memory” questionnaire included five items addressing hardships, including the assertion “I have had many difficulties in life that I could not overcome.” Participants expressed their level of agreement with each on a one-to-seven scale.

    “In both experiments, we found that whites exposed to evidence of white privilege claimed more hardships than those not exposed to evidence of privilege,” the researchers report. In other words, evidence that their race was an advantage prompted white people to move toward a victimhood mindset.

    The final experiment, featuring 234 white Americans from a national online pool, found “people claim more life hardships in response to evidence of in-group privilege because such information is threatening to their sense of self.” What’s more, “these denials of personal privilege were in turn associated with diminished support for affirmative action policies—policies that could help alleviate racial inequity.”

    Altogether, the results suggest “people may accept that in-group privilege exists, but change their perceptions of their own lives in order to deny the role of systemic advantages in their success,” Phillips and Lowery conclude.

    8 months later, the Cleveland PD admits it was wrong to ever hire the officer who killed Tamir Rice, I think Tony posted this upthread. The culmination of an internal investigation, I suppose, that saw two supervisors mildly punished for hiring Loehmann. And still nothing for Loehmann himself.

    DA: Sandra Bland’s death being treated like murder investigation – CNN on that positive step.

    “It is very much too early to make any kind of determination that this was a suicide or a murder because the investigations are not complete,” Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis told reporters. “This is being treated like a murder investigation.”

    He said the case would go to a grand jury.

    “There are too many questions that still need to be resolved. Ms. Bland’s family does make valid points that she did have a lot of things going on in her life that were good,” Mathis said.

    So there you go.

    Hillary Clinton said it. Black lives matter. No hedge. Did she say it online or live?

    She said it. She really did. Actually she typed it. But still, there was no hedge.

    In a live Facebook Q&A set up primarily for average people interested in asking Hillary Clinton questions, some reporters popped in too. Ok, a lot of reporters popped in, since Clinton hasn’t exactly been too open about taking questions from reporters. Among the online attendees was the Post’s own, Wesley Lowery. […]

    “Black lives matter.” With those three little words, Clinton acknowledged that there are myriad ways that race continues to shape life in America that have almost no relationship to pocketbooks, educational credentials or class. There’s ample evidence that income, education and the like do not deliver the same results in black lives that they do in others.

    After three successive summers filled with news about the nation’s rocky racial landscape, it’s probably fair to say that at least some of the people running for office in 2016 expect questions about the way the police do their work and how the country responds when something goes wrong.

    But for a group of activists who first organized loosely online under the hashtag #blacklivesmatter in the hours after a jury acquitted George Zimmerman on all charges in the death of unarmed, black teen, Trayvon Martin, just getting someone in the 2016 field — especially the heavy favorite to be the Democratic nominee — to acknowledge that black lives are in particular peril is pretty huge.
    […]

    More than a few activists and supporters of this cause disagree with the campaign’s characterization of Clinton as a full and long-term ally. And some of Clinton’s more recent choices haven’t helped.

    In June, Clinton went to a Missouri forum, held in a church not far from the place where another unarmed black teen was shot and killed by a police officer whom a grand jury later opted not to indict. At the time, she said this while connecting the struggles of young black Americans and her own mother’s deeply difficult upbringing : “All lives matter.”

    It was, whether intentional or not, the phrase to which opponents of the Black Lives Matter movement have most often turned. And that’s the kind of equivocation that can, to some ears, sound a lot like minimization or worse, outright rejection.

    Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, has offered up his own assessment of the singular way that race shapes policing in the United States and the relationship between economic isolation and continued racial inequality.

    But Sanders has also used that same phrase, “All lives matter,” when pressed. And, this weekend, when activists in Phoenix deeply concerned with the way that police do their work in communities of color stormed into a liberal gathering, Sanders wasn’t as forceful on the issue as Clinton.

    “Black lives of course matter,” he said. “But I’ve spent 50 years of my life fighting for civil rights. If you don’t want me to be here, that’s okay.”
    […]

    So late Monday, Hillary Clinton, habitual avoider of direct contact with reporters has said on the record: “Black lives matter.” She didn’t add qualifiers. She didn’t hedge. She didn’t find a way to connect, compare or somehow associate the systemic and wide-spread challenges that black and Latino communities face with policing right now to difficult circumstances in individual white lives in the past. That is indeed a moment worth noting.

    And, perhaps that’s a moment that came in the nick of time. Black Lives Matter groups from around the country are set to convene in Cleveland this weekend to talk tactics, platform and strategy. Critique what you will, but Black Lives Matter has certainly evolved beyond a hashtag.

    Lookin’ at you, Bernie.

    Request for protective order in Freddie Gray case denied

    A judge has denied the request of State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby to keep attorneys in the Freddie Case from publicizing evidence before the trial.

    Mosby, who is prosecuting six police officers in Gray’s death, wanted a court hearing to argue for a protective order that would bar the release of any evidence — or, if the officers’ attorneys agreed, to post all of it online.

    Mosby said she was concerned that the defense attorneys would leak only evidence that supported their clients’ defense, jeopardizing the ability to conduct a fair trial.

    Gray, 25, died in April after sustaining a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody.

    In a ruling issued Monday, Judge Barry G. Williams rejected Mosby’s request without a hearing. He wrote that the state “does not suggest there is anything in discovery that warrants restricting disclosure.”

    “The Court notes that discovery was turned over on June 26, 2015, and as of this date, the court is not aware of the dissemination of any discovery information by Defendants,” Williams wrote. “The only discovery item that has become public as of this date has been information from the autopsy report, and at the time of the alleged disclosure, the report had not been turned over to Defendants.”

    Williams concluded that “there simply is no basis in the assertions presented to the court for the broad and extraordinary relief sought in the motion.”

    Weeellll, I wouldn’t put it past them.

    Denver Police Keeps “Spy Files” on Peaceful Protesters

    On February 7, 2003, the Denver Police made public 1,500 pages of the so-called “”Spy File”. More than 300 people jammed police headquarters, wondering whether they were the focus of police intelligence. Representatives of 70 groups also showed up. The document was the product of nearly five decades of intelligence-gathering and contained more than 3,200 people and 208 organizations.

    Many of those people did nothing more than attending peaceful protests and conferences. Some of them did more activist work, such as volunteering with Amnesty International and the American Friends Service Committee (both of which are recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize).
    […]

    The ACLU of Colorado also obtained documents that indicate that the FBI’s Joint Terrorist Task Force (JTTF) has been gathering information and creating files on the activities of peaceful protesters who have no connection to terrorism or any other criminal activity.

    The terms of agreement ACLU reached with the Denver Police to resolve the Spy Files lawsuit became effective on May 7, 2003 with Judge Nottingham’s signed order:

    “”Denver has agreed to put an end to its decades-long practice of monitoring and keeping files on peaceful critics of government policy who have no connection to criminal activity,”” said Mark Silverstein, Legal Director of the ACLU of Colorado. “”The end of this political spying enhances the professionalism of the police department and is a victory for the First Amendment and for the civil liberties of all people in Denver.

  98. rq says

    No, I’m not going to respect one’s opinion about ‘what Black people need to do’ and ignore the context of history. Because that’s bullshit.
    Folks want me to value their feelings over the reality that me and mine can get snuffed by a cop for nothing and they’ll get away with it.
    I really don’t give a shit if you ‘feel exhausted by race conversations’. The KKK are fucking parading in the streets in 2015.
    I don’t care if you ‘feel’ Obama should have done more. The reality is that 2/3 of the government refuse to cooperate b/c he’s a Black man.
    I don’t give a fuck if you ‘feel’ police aren’t that bad. We’re half way through the year and they’ve killed 600+ people, up from last year.
    I may have posted those backwards: thoughts from a random twitter person.

  99. rq says

    Getting lots of honks as people drive by w/fists up. #DefendDenver

    At least three people were hit by cars, cops watched cars plow through crowd, Cops then gave protesters tickets and made arrests.
    Just in that the woman who was hit by a driver at the #PaulCastaway protest was arrested shortly after for not being able to walk #fuckdpd
    I just Watched my good friend Carol, a single mother, get hit by an SUV & fuck up her leg in front of riot cops then the cops arrested her.
    That happened.

    ‘It’s not a racist thing’: Florida rally fights to keep mural of hooded Klansmen in county courthouse, I believe a repost.

    Demonstrators arrested at Colorado Chiefs of Police meeting in Denver

    Demonstrators protesting against police brutality and the police shootings of unarmed people of color attempted to shut down rush-hour traffic near the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police annual conference in Denver, leading to several arrests.

    In photos (20).

  100. rq says

    Being Black in America vs. Being White in America. On parenting.

    Death Of Woman Found Hanged In Texas Jail Cell Will Be Investigated As Murder, NPR with the news.

    Mathis: Bail bondsman who spoke to #SandraBland says she was afraid for her safety. Only had $100, not enough to post $500 bond.

    In Prairie View, tx #sandrabland “Signal lane change or sheriff may kill you”.

    Mapping Hate: Pro-Confederate Battle Flag Rallies Across America

    In the aftermath of the June 17 massacre of nine black churchgoers by a white Confederate battle flag enthusiast in Charleston, S.C., the symbol that has long been revered by the Ku Klux Klan and other defenders of the antebellum South has come under bitter attack. The flag has been removed from both the South Carolina and the Alabama state Capitol grounds, banned by commercial giants like Amazon, Walmart and eBay, and denounced even by an array of conservative Republicans who had never criticized it in any way.

    But as calls continue to mount around the country for the removal of the flag and other monuments to the Confederacy, a major backlash from enthusiasts of the Lost Cause has set in. Most dramatically, the North Carolina-based Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is staging a July 18 rally in support of the flag in Columbia, S.C., just over 100 miles from Charleston. In the run-up to that rally, there already have been nearly 90 such events with thousands of participants around the country, and more than 20 others are planned in the coming weeks.

    If you know about a rally that isn’t on the map, let us know.

    [interactive map]

    The Southern Poverty Law Center compiled the information in this map from lists created by other human rights organizations, hate groups and its own research in order to give a sense of the size of this reactionary movement. When available, event organizers, hate groups and key members involved, source information and crowd sizes at past events have been included. When not explicitly reported by credible news sources, the number of attendees has been estimated from photos and video evidence. Our hope is that the map will serve as an interactive resource for those seeking to understand the scope of the forces supporting the embattled flag.

    Tears and anger at funeral of ‘police chokehold victim’ Jonathan Sanders – I find it interesting that the Guardian has been covering that story so much, maybe more than US media. Or maybe it just seems that way to me.

    Mourners packed into a church here on Saturday morning, to grieve the loss of Jonathan Sanders and to grapple with the circumstances of his death.

    Sanders, 39, died on 8 July, allegedly choked to death by a local police officer in a case state and federal authorities are now investigating. Sanders was black. The officer, Kevin Herrington, is white. Police have appealed for residents to stay calm until the investigation is finished. But at Sanders’s funeral, the grief was mixed with protest.

    A thousand people turned out – as many as live in the entire town of Stonewall – and many wore shirts printed with the slogan “Justice For Jonathan”.

    “When you put heat to the kettle, the pressure begins,” said speaker Dennis Evans, in remarks that brought the congregation to its feet. “When you turn up the heat, the water starts to boil. And finally when the pressure gets too high, the kettle whistles. That’s us whistling, now, calling for justice for Jonathan.”

    Sanders’s mother, Frances, wept in the first pew, as ushers – ladies in white dresses and white gloves – fanned her.

    One of those women, Lisa Johnson, 51, is a distant relative of Sanders.

    “This is a sad day, Jesus,” she said. “We have a bad history with the police here. Five years ago they beat my cousin to death. Believe and trust me: we have a problem here.”
    […]

    The Sanders case has gripped Stonewall, where neighbors view their town with a new fear and suspicion. The day before the funeral, Sanders’s 21-year-old cousin, Sierra Sanders, visited the impromptu memorial at the site of his death. As she described to a visitor the events that led to Sanders’s death, a white pickup truck came barreling into sight, skidding to a stop diagonally across the road.

    A man, Derek Williams, jumped out of the driver’s seat and said he owned the property on which Sanders died. He demanded to know the visitor’s interest in the case.

    “Everything’s fucked up right now. My kids are scared to death,” he said. “That cop didn’t look dangerous either. He’s supposed to protect and serve. And look what happened.”

  101. rq says

    Let’s make this pic and of Me and other Black fathers & Daughters go viral @deray #BlackLivesMatter

    How Baltimore schools became aware of ‘purge’ threat on day of unrest

    Dorsey’s message was sent nearly 12 hours before the first notice of the 3 p.m. “purge” — a reference to a movie in which crime is made legal — at Mondawmin Mall reached city schools headquarters at North Avenue. At 12:23 p.m., the flier dropped into the inbox of Maj. Akil Hamm, deputy chief of the Baltimore City School Police Force.

    “The flier has been circulating on social media and I believe it to be creditable [sic],” wrote Joe Orenstein of the Baltimore City Police Department. “If you could, please have the officer who reports to the Watch Center (Unified Command) briefed and knowledgeable about what has been occurring in schools Monday.”

    From there, emails detailing lists of schools and their close proximity to Freddie Gray’s funeral, crisis plans and talking points for educators to help students through trauma began to bounce back and forth between school officers.

    Plans were also firmed up for the mayor to speak to a group of Gilmor Elementary School students before heading to Gray’s funeral.

    The next morning, it was still unclear whether the planned “purge” would happen, though rumors had been swirling that a group of students from Frederick Douglass High School —located directly across the street from Mondawmin — were planning to walk out at 3 p.m.

    School police had also devised a plan — five officers and two detectives would be stationed at Mondawmin Mall, with two officers stationed at schools in the area.

    Douglass’ principal, Iona Spikes, sent an email at 7:56 a.m. to her staff, asking for “all hands on deck” and for staff to be “on point.”

    Media calls began to grow by 9:11, according to a school communications staff member, not just about a planned purge, but also a shooting threat at City College.

    By 11:15 a.m., city schools Police Chief Marshall Goodwin was fielding emails from City Hall.

    One came from a staffer in City Council President Bernard “C” Jack Young’s office, asking, “Do you think it’s actually going to happen?”

    “Unsure,” Goodwin responded. “We have many rumors at this time. Some have not happened thus far today.”

    At 1:34 p.m., Fred Damron from the Maryland Transit Administration emailed Hamm, asking if the district could delay bell times to decrease traffic at Mondawmin Mall, which serves as a major bus hub for students.

    “That’s a big ask,” Hamm wrote. “I’ll check with my higher-ups.”

    Follow-up interviews indicated that such a request came within an hour of when 99 schools were due to dismiss.

    Schools CEO Thornton said in a recent interview that such a request was nearly impossible to fulfill.

    “We basically said: We can’t turn it in 40 minutes,” Thornton said. “We can’t get kids ready to go home, notify parents, and ensure their transition home.”

    Eight minutes after the request, the first concerns about transportation came from a school official, saying that the MTA No. 22 bus, the primary mode of transportation for students from Reach Academy, wasn’t running.

    School officials did not realize that transportation at the Mondawmin hub — where more than 5,000 students transfer per day — had been halted.

    And that is how schoolchildren came to be stranded and surrounded by riot cops. And people are surprised that emotions were running high.

    Wale Teams Up With Michelle Obama for Reach Higher Initiative and Will Perform at the White House

    According to a press release, Obama, Wale and scholars will participate in a panel that will address the students who “have overcome substantial obstacles to persist through high school and make it to college.”

    “I believe that the youth are the first step in creating a better country, so to be involved in a program that aims to enrich their lives is truly the greatest reward,” Wale stated. “Having grown up in Washington, D.C., being invited to the White House by the first lady is a dream come true. Thank you to Mrs. Obama and her entire staff for this opportunity.”

    The Reach Higher Initiative was started by the first lady to inspire all students in America to take charge of their future by completing their education past high school, whether at a professional training program, a community college, or a four-year college or university.

    Just got text from #BlackLivesMatter Alabama that #KindraChapman protestors are IN JAIL! And cops pulled a gun on an organizer IN THE JAIL!

    MSNBC Maps ‘the Geography of Poverty’

    MSNBC’s Trymaine Lee and photographer Matt Black are collaborating to highlight the sobering truth about what it means to be poor in one of the world’s richest countries. “The Geography of Poverty” will take the award-winning journalists to more than 70 cities and towns across the United States in which 20 percent of residents fall below the poverty line. About 45 million Americans are living at or below the official government poverty benchmark ($23,850 a year for a family of four; $11,670 for an individual), and this figure doesn’t even include the millions of people who fall into the working poor category. Many others are earning only slightly more than that, according to MSNBC.

    We spoke with Lee about the project and what poverty means for people of color in the U.S.

    […]

    EBONY: What are your thoughts on Blacks and Latinos serving as the face of poverty in this country?

    TL: When you see 27 percent of African Americans living below the poverty line and 24 percent below for Hispanics, that’s not a stereotype. Those are realities. But again, those are realities that have created over a very long time by bad, sometimes racist policy, all the way around. It’s kind of this pathway to the present of “how did we get to this point?” That’s the not the stereotype that is concerning. The stereotype that is concerning is that poor people are poor by their own doing and that poor people are poor because they’re lazy or because they’re criminally inclined or whatever. That’s the stereotype that we need to be concerned about, not just the reality that there are disproportionately more people living on the poverty line who are people of color. By the numbers, there are more White Americans on welfare than people of color, but we’re talking about proportions here, not sheer numbers, because we’re only 13 or 14 percent. We’re concentrated in certain places. When you’re talking about the middle of the country, we’re not out there. We are concentrated in places where there had once been booming industries. Look at Detroit. Look at parts of New York, where people were, during the Great Migration, coming up to work. Again, that industry dried up. So you have all these Black folks in these communities that have moved up for good jobs and a better life and when that dried up, so did their prospects at a better quality of life.

    EBONY: What is the current state of the American Dream for immigrants? Do you think it’s still attainable at this point?

    TL: I think many people are willing to die trying for the American Dream. For some, they succeed. Others, again, its kind of this perilous journey into America hoping for something better. Again, when you look down in Texas, so many people who are coming just to try to make a living and try to support their families and feed their children are literally dying along the way. We see this isn’t unique to the border with Mexico, but you see it with the Haitian exodus. All around the world, people are willing to put their lives on the line for the American Dream, for something better.

    EBONY: What do you hope to accomplish with this project?

    TL: I think on one end, it’s to show the true face of poverty in America and that face is white, it’s Black, it’s Latino, it’s Native American. It’sfrom coast to coast, from border to border. I think a big chunk of this is awareness. Because we live in such a segregated society, we simply don’t live near each other. Society, as a whole, is often blind to the reality that so many of us face. When you talk about what’s going on on Native Americans reservations, who’s gonna be in South Dakota? There’s no reason for you to be there if you don’t live there. Who’s gonna be out in the Badlands in the Southwest? You’re certainly not gonna be there. Look at the South Bronx for that matter. Who’s really going to the South Bronx? If you don’t live there, there’s not much for you there. Look at Appalachia or Flint, Michigan with the poor white folks. It’s to bring awareness that poverty is still a staggering issue in America. This is the face of it. These are the kind of lives that people are living. For the most part, it’s awareness. We’re not trying to be prescriptive here. At the end of this, I don’t think I’ll be able to offer some golden nugget that will change things.

    There are no easy answers here. The end goal is awareness and to show this is an issue that we’re dealing with. We all have to shoulder the burden of poverty in America.

    What do white millennials think about whiteness? Jose Antonio Vargas is on a mission to find out.

    If you ask one of our country’s preeminent scholars on race, there’s a huge problem with how we think about whiteness. The issue? We don’t think about it. Not really.

    “Whiteness is on a toggle switch between ‘bland nothingness’ and ‘racist hatred,’” historian Nell Irvin Painter wrote recently. Clearly, it’s more than that. So what is it, exactly?

    In his new documentary for MTV’s Look Different initiative, which aims to tackle racial, gender and anti-LGBT bias, immigration activist Jose Antonio Vargas travels around the country asking white millennials to do something. According to MTV’s own polling, that “something” doesn’t happen very often: thinking about race, and moreover, thinking about whiteness.

    Vargas’s documentary is an addition to an atmosphere where discussions of race are seemingly inescapable — he’s certainly not the first person to focus on whiteness. But his focus on the racial attitudes of millennials is noteworthy.

    Vargas is a former employee of The Washington Post who was part of the Pulitzer prize-winning team that covered the Virginia Tech massacre. He is also an undocumented immigrant, which he revealed in a 2011 story in the New York Times Magazine. Vargas now runs Define American, his advocacy organization centered around immigration reform.

    In the film, he meets Lucas, a white student at Whatcom Community College in Bellingham, Wash., who teaches a white privilege workshop to other white students. Lucas says he never talked about race with his parents growing up, something that’s fairly typical for white millennials, according to MTV’s research. Lucas finds himself at odds with his mother Lauresa and stepfather Mark, whose media diet consists of a heavy stream of Fox News, particularly “The O’Reilly Factor.”

    Vargas and the cameras are present as Lucas attempts to engage Lauresa and Mark in a conversation about race based on his work. The tension around the dinner table is palpable when Vargas asks Mark what he thinks.

    “When Lucas mentioned ‘white privilege,’ I went on Google and started looking it up. Most of the stuff I saw was so slanted against white people,” Mark says.

    “So it’s almost like an attack? As if it’s attacking white people?” Vargas asks.

    “A little bit,” Mark replied. “You get a bad feeling. … You can’t just slam it into me and say ‘you’re a jerk.’”

    Mark’s reaction, and the reflexive defensiveness that characterizes it, is a familiar one that knows no class or geographical boundaries.

    More on the hurt feelings of white people at the link.

  102. rq says

    #BernieSoBlack creator explains why he’s so frustrated with Sanders’s supporters

    On Saturday, progressives watched #BlackLivesMatter activists confront Bernie Sanders at the Netroots Nation conference. Sanders didn’t exactly handle the interaction well — he told the protesters that he could leave if he wasn’t wanted, but didn’t (in their estimation) do much to address the issues they were raising about deaths of black women at the hands of police.

    By Sunday, the rift between Sanders supporters and critics had gotten contentious. Roderick Morrow, a 36-year-old podcaster and comedian in Charlotte, North Carolina, pulled up a tried-and-true coping mechanism: the joke hashtag. #BernieSoBlack ended up trending nationally and fed a continuing controversy about whether Sanders and white progressives are taking racial inequality seriously enough.

    Vox spoke to Morrow on Sunday evening about why he wasn’t impressed with Sanders or his online fans, and whether he thinks the campaign and the progressive movement is responding to the demands of black progressives.

    Dara Lind:So how did the #BernieSoBlack hashtag get started?

    Roderick Morrow:Bernie Sanders, while he does have a good track record on race in the past, he’s kind of been avoiding talking about certain racial issues now. Whenever he’s asked a question, he goes into a spiel on economics — which is fine, obviously, people do want wage and class equality. But certain issues are race issues, and they do need to be talked about, at least from a candidate that I would like to vote for.

    And it seems like any time black people bring this up on Twitter, there’s all these people who, I don’t know, they’re just sitting around searching his name on Twitter or something, they just come and get in your mentions and start harassing you, they start saying the same things over and over to you, like, “He marched with Dr. Martin Luther King,” and, “He was at a sit-in,” and they send you a picture of him at a sit-in from 1960-something. That’s all well and good, and I’m not denigrating that work, but it’s almost as if they’re trying to say, “You shouldn’t expect him to continue this” or, “Because he’s done stuff in the past, you shouldn’t question him now.”

    I thought it was happening to just a few people — apparently it’s happening to a lot of us.
    […]

    Dara Lind:So I assume your mentions were an absolute disaster area at that point.

    Roderick Morrow:Sort of. The thing about the Bernie Sanders fans is while they’re very obtuse and they don’t listen, they are more polite than the people who just call you the n-word or a racial slur or something. It’s more like that passive-aggressive “We’re on the same side, man!” where clearly they don’t want you to talk about anything that their candidate can do better, but they do want you to just vote for him.

    There’s a lot of “You’re not saying this stuff to other candidates,” but we are. He just kind of had a bad 48 hours or so. I’m not expecting him to drop out of the race; I think he’ll be fine. Hopefully, from the tweets I’ve seen, I think his campaign’s listening, and hopefully they’re going to regroup and hopefully reform and be more vocal around some of these issues.

    Dara Lind:But while this is all kind of targeted at Sanders’s campaign, it’s also targeted at the people who are just sitting around waiting for someone to talk smack about Bernie Sanders, right?

    Roderick Morrow:Oh, it’s mostly about them.

    Dara Lind:So the Sanders supporters who aren’t with the campaign, did you see any receptiveness from them, or was it just a lot of unironic “#BernieSoBlack he marched with MLK,” which missed the point completely?

    Roderick Morrow:Oh, yeah, there’s a ton of that. Honestly, the joke is not even on Bernie Sanders. That’s what’s so funny — the joke is on the defense of him, which is, if you extrapolate to the furthest extent, he can do no wrong on race. Like, we should not even expect anything of him, he put in his time already, we need to just shut up.

    I’m sure it does happen, but I can’t imagine people doing this to other constituencies, because you do rely on those votes. At Netroots Nation, you’re going to be addressing a very diverse but very black-centric audience, and to not really be prepared to talk about race there is a little bit of a slap in the face. So for us — and when I say “us,” I just mean black people, I’m not any level of an activist or anything — for us to just say, Hey, you kind of did a bad job, hope you do better in the future, and then get bombarded with “He marched in 1968!” it’s like, All right, man, I don’t know what to tell you.

    And it’s kind of scary, too, because on a deeper level, when he talked about Ferguson, he was like, “Well, the real problem is that there’s not enough jobs.” And while I agree — jobs are definitely a problem, and opportunities are a problem, and you definitely want people to be working — Mike Brown was going to college. He was on his way to school in a couple of days. I don’t think that was necessarily the problem in that situation. I hope it’s not just him saying, “If these Negroes were working there wouldn’t be any problems,” because ooh, that’s not too far from some really bold negative statements that we’ve heard about the black race in the past. I don’t think that’s what’s underlying it, I just think he needs to be more vocal and speak with some authority about it because he seems to run from talking about it. I don’t think it’s that hard to talk about it. Elizabeth Warren knocked the socks off the room, because she was talking about the economy, but she just happened to mention, “Hey, black lives matter, we do need people working, we do need to get people out of jails.” She was very vocal about it, but I didn’t feel like she was just coming there to kiss butt. I felt like she was just being sincere.

    More at the link.

    Sandra Bland Case: Update, from Shakesville. A nice summary of the latest information and opened investigations.

    Federal Investigators to probe racism claims in Pocomoke City

    Federal Department of Justice investigators are expected to visit a small riverfront city on Maryland’s Eastern shore this week to look into ugly allegations that the firing of a popular African-American police chief was motivated by racism.

    Former Chief Kelvin D. Sewell was fired June 29 after he backed a pair of African American officers who had filed Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Complaints. Sewell also raised questions about how a federal grant meant to hire an additional police officer had been spent by town officials. Sewell filed his own EEOC complaint, claiming he was being pressured by the city’s mayor to fire the two officers.

    Town officials refuse to comment or explain their position because of the legal actions. However, the city’s attorney denies any wrongdoing by city officials.

    Meanwhile, a town council meeting last week drew a large crowd in support of Sewell, who is seeking his job back.

    “We want our chief back,” said Tonya Ginn of Pocomoke City after Monday night’s mayor and city council meeting at City Hall.

    It was so packed for the meeting that many people were standing in the lobby, crowding around the entrance to Council Chambers, shushing each other at times to try to hear what was being said. It was hot, and people were fanning themselves.

    The group listened as people spoke to the mayor and council, sometimes telling the others who was speaking for those who couldn’t see.

    Even though Sewell is not the chief anymore, some still think of him that way.

    “I came out to help support Chief Kelvin D. Sewell and I still call him chief because that’s how I look at him,” said Pocomoke City resident Vanessa Jones, wearing a T-shirt with Sewell’s photo on it. “He has done so much for the Pocomoke community.”

    Tyler Bivens of Pocomoke City also came to support Sewell. “I call him my chief,” he said at one point.

    Jones came “demanding answers,” she said.

    “How do you take a public figure off of a job without letting the public know about it?” she asked Monday. “Totally wrong. So we are out here tonight to demand answers and we would love to see him reinstated — tonight.”

    The community response is encouraging.

    Police Target Journalists and Organizers in Recent Anti-Police Brutality Protests

    Protests in Denver continue in the wake of the killing of Paul Castaway by Denver police officers. Paul Castaway, a 35 year old enrolled member of the Rosebud Lakota nation, was killed July 12, 2015 after his mother called police for “mental help assistance.” His last words were, “What’s wrong with you guys?” as he held a knife to his own neck. Police claimed that Castaway ran at them with a knife, but local witnesses contradict police claims. Also contradicting the police claims is a yet to be released video reviewed by a local reporter who stated that it showed Castaway standing still at a distance when police shot him.

    While the #BlackLivesMatter protest movement continues to sweep across the country, Castaway’s protesters & allies have used the hashtag #NativeLivesMatter tying it to the ongoing #BlackLivesMatter movement. On Monday, July 20th, protesters continued to take the streets in Denver demanding justice for Paul Castaway’s death and gathered outside a Police Chiefs meeting. The police reacted by targeting journalists & protesters. Denver Police used what one journalist called a book that looked like a year book from High School with photos of people they were targeting. @elisabethepps, also shot this video which shows an officer holding the book.

    One of Unicorn Riot’s producers was also targeted and arrested at Monday’s protest. We spoke to a member of the Direct Autonomous Media collective who told us that the Denver Police ran right past @DAM_collective videographer to grab our journalist as he documented the event. He stated, “He was targeted. He was standing right next to me filming. They just pushed me aside and grabbed him.” Direct Autonomous Media also gave us this video showing the arrest.
    […]

    The New York Police Department targeted organizers from three different organizations at the protest. As we inch our way to the 1-year anniversary of the killing of Michael Brown by the St. Louis police department, which ignited the #BlackLivesMatter movement, these coordinated police actions against people using their 1st amendment rights to protest police brutality & killings are cause for alarm. It’s not hard to imagine that police departments, the FBI and a large list of agencies are collaborating through a string of Fusion centers to unravel the growing anti-police brutality protest movement. It’s already been shown through a Freedom of Information Act by the Partnership of Civil Justice Fund which detailed nationwide coordination to unravel the Occupy movement four years earlier. In 2015, it’s not hard to believe the same to be occurring again as anti-police protests go on across the country.

  103. rq says

    Atticus Was Always a Racist: Why Go Set a Watchman Is No Surprise

    The final tableau of To Kill A Mockingbird has always given me a sour feeling toward the book—it ends with the black man dead, the poor white man also dead, the law uninterested in prosecuting their murders. The white gentleman and his children are sadder and wiser, but the wisdom imparted is essentially about the hopelessness of defending black people and poor white people from one another. I used to think Mockingbird was a shameful book to hand out in a high school classroom, all things considered, given that it’s a race story that scarcely passes the black-person version of the Bechdel test. It’s about white people within white culture making Tom Robinson’s life and death about themselves.

    So, when the news broke about Go Set a Watchman’s Atticus being racist—in contrast as people said, to Mockingbird’s Atticus, I went back to read both books, wondering: hasn’t it always been this way? Hasn’t he always been racist? As Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in the New Yorker, his defense of Tom Robinson is based on segregationist principles—he works for “accommodation, not reform.” The new book gives the impression that Lee knew what much of her audience didn’t: that her character’s principles didn’t constitute justice. By itself, I thought To Kill a Mockingbird was a racist book. Now, with the publication of Watchman, it stands to be redefined as a book about racism not just in Maycomb County, but within the Finch household itself.

    More at the link.
    And I am re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird before I try for Go Set a Watchman.

  104. rq says

    INJURIES TO SANDRA BLAND LIKELY TO BE RELEASED WEDNESDAY!

    A limited number of autopsy photos showing injuries (neck, arm, and back) to Sandra Bland will likely be released Wednesday. Officials with Waller County have received a preliminary autopsy report from the Harris County Medical Examiner. However, as you can see below the completed version is not done or hasn’t been released to the public just yet.

    New Video Shows Aggressive Arrest of Sandra Bland Prior to Her Death in a Texas Jail – first of a couple more on the video release, in addition to those on how it hs inconsistencies and cuts.

    On Tuesday, Texas officials released a police dash cam video showing the July 10 arrest of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black woman from Illinois who died three days later in a Waller County jail cell, in a case ruled a suicide by local authorities. The footage shows Texas state trooper Brian Encinia aggressively confronting Bland after pulling her over for a traffic infraction and ordering her out of her car. “I’m going to drag you out of here,” he says, reaching into Bland’s vehicle. He then pulls out what appears to be a taser, points it at her and yells “I will light you up!” After Bland emerges, they walk out of the frame where the argument continues and Encinia eventually forces Bland to the ground violently as she continues to protest the arrest. (The confrontation can be heard on the police footage, and was already seen widely since late last week, after a different video recorded by a bystander appeared online.)

    By Tuesday night, questions were swirling on social media about what appeared to be glitches in, or possibly edits to the dash cam video; a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety told the Guardian that he did not have an immediate explanation for the inconsistencies.

    In a press conference on Tuesday, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety said that Encinia failed to “maintain professionalism” throughout his interaction with Bland, and that he has been taken off the street and placed on administrative duty for duration of the investigation into Bland’s death. In answer to a reporter’s question, Texas state Sen. Royce West said that the dash cam footage showed that Bland should not have been taken into police custody.

    The subsequent death of Bland has continued to raise troubling questions since she was found hanged on the morning of July 13. A medical examiner report and the county sheriff’s office ruled her death a suicide, but during the three days Bland spent in jail, Bland’s family members said they spoke to her on the phone about posting bail, and that a suicide seemed “unfathomable.” An hour before she was found, Bland had asked to use the phone again, county officials said.

    On Monday, officials in Waller County released additional details about the morning Bland died, including surveillance video footage showing the hall outside of cell 95, where Bland was held. Citing interviews with family members and with the bail bondsman who was among the last to speak with Bland, Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis said it is “too early to make any kind of determination” and that “this investigation is still being treated just as it would be a murder investigation,” signaling that he had not ruled out any motives and would explore all leads and evidence, including videos, fingerprints in her cell, and the plastic bag found around her neck.

    The Texas Rangers are currently leading the investigation into Bland’s death, with the FBI overseeing the process. The family’s attorney has also asked the US Department of Justice to open a federal investigation. Mathis said he will take the case to a grand jury, which is expected to be impaneled in August.

    Y’all, #SandraBland knew her rights. She knew that officer was wrong. & she was waiting for her day in court. And they killed her.

    DPS releases video of Sandra Bland’s arrest, ABC.

    The DHS Planned to ‘Plug’ Federal Officers Into the Ferguson Protests, Documents Show

    As the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri considered whether to indict police officer Darren Wilson over the shooting death last August of unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was working on a plan to “plug” federal officers into protests to “perform surveillance” and “collect intelligence in the crowd.”

    The disclosure is contained in more than 700 pages of documents VICE News obtained from DHS in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, and comes just a couple of weeks before the one-year anniversary of Brown’s death, which helped spark national debate about the targeting of African Americans by police.

    It’s unclear, however, whether DHS executed the plan. Some information in the documents was withheld on grounds that it would reveal law enforcement techniques, procedures, and trade secrets, or potentially endanger the life of an individual, DHS said.

    Kade Crockford, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Technology for Liberty project, told VICE News that sending officers into protests “to spy on dissidents is both relatively routine and extremely problematic.”

    “The First Amendment protects our right to criticize the government and agitate for social and political change, and this kind of law enforcement activity directly threatens that right,” she said. “DHS’s choice to spend taxpayer dollars spying on today’s black civil rights activists shows that federal law enforcement continues to view black people’s demands for basic rights and equality as somehow threatening.

    “Congress or inspectors general of the FBI and DHS should investigate how federal law enforcement agencies have been spending precious government resources keeping track of activists. The results of such investigations should be made public so we have a more complete picture of how and where the Feds are dedicating funds and staff to monitoring black dissidents in the wake of Ferguson.”

    Protesters raised concerns at the time on social media about the presence of DHS vehicles at the protests. It is not uncommon for DHS and other federal law enforcement agencies to keep tabs on protests, particularly in cities where federal buildings and parks are located (St. Louis has both). But it has become increasingly clear over the years, internal government documents show, that federal law enforcement also views such high-profile protests as a possible breeding ground for domestic terrorist activity and a good source of intelligence.

    Police officer shoots man to death in Cincinnati traffic stop, CNN on the traffic stop posted by Saad above.

  105. rq says

    Racist Readers Need Not Apply, “In which reactions to an advertisement provoke a reaction from us”.

    Recently, we heard about a doctor in Tomball who, like many of his ilk, has a waiting room in his office. In that waiting room, just as in the waiting rooms of many, many physicians in our area, you can often find an issue of Houstonia. And if you can’t find one, there’s a good chance that someone has slipped it into a purse or pocket, this being the sort of magazine whose qualities have often enough seduced upstanding, law-abiding citizens into lives of crime.

    Still, the remarkable thing about the disappearance of our June issue from Dr. Tomball’s waiting room is not that it was snatched improperly, but that Dr. Tomball himself was behind the improper snatching. This he did, by all accounts, not for the usual reason, i.e., to selfishly reserve its literary glories for himself. Nor was he motivated by a desire to protect his patients from said glories, an impulse we see on occasion, however rarely.

    No, Dr. Tomball’s action was apparently provoked by something he saw on the very first page of our June issue, in an advertisement by the Ashton Martini Group, a residential real estate agency. The ad, you may recall, featured a family of five Houstonians—a husband and wife, and the couple’s three children—relaxing in the living room of their home. To the lion’s share of our readership, one imagines, such a tableau must have looked almost aggressively typical. Perhaps they observed that the husband is black, the wife is white, and the couple’s three adorable children biracial, but that’s all it was for most, an observation.

    Not so Dr. Tomball, who on May 26 sent an email to the Ashton Martini Group registering his disapproval. The note, which I have seen, carries the subject “Disgusting Ad,” and explains: “Your ad in the June Houstonia magazine is DISGUSTING! I will not put this magazine in my reception area! If you care to discuss this,” the note concluded, “I am available.”

    As it happens, we did care to discuss this with Dr. Tomball, who oddly was not available when we attempted to make contact.

    Exactly one week later, we heard from a second man, this time a resident of the Memorial area, who called to say that although he usually likes Houstonia, he “just can’t go for racial mixing.” The caller—identifying himself only as Fred—voiced his concern that children might see the ad and “get it into their heads that this is okay.” To ensure that that did not happen, the man informed us that he’d taken our June issue straight from the mailbox to the trash can, although he declined our invitation to cancel his subscription altogether. He counts himself among this magazine’s fans, he told us.

    Well, we are not fans of him. Indeed, if Memorial Fred ever finds the courage to call and give us his full name, we will remove him from our subscription rolls immediately. I’m not sure if Dr. Tomball is a fan of this publication or not. I do know that if so, he will have to go get it himself, as we will no longer be sending copies to his office. Houstonia’s championing of diversity does not extend to bigots, and while we are by definition dedicated to discovering the best things about this city, we’ll never ignore the worst. On the contrary, our magazine’s mission is to maintain standards of quality always and everywhere, in burgers, in bike trails and in readers, Dr. Tomball included.

    And if he cares to discuss this, I am available.

    Scott Vogel
    Editor-in-Chief

    *furiously supportive applause*

    FEATURE: The Satirical ‘Black Body Survival Guide’ From Creative Collective Intelligent Mischief

    Take a look at the ‘Black Body Survival Guide’, courtesy of creative collective Intelligent Mischief. The on-going multi-media project is a satirical guide for black people, providing tips (in book form) to survive the surreal and absurd racism experienced by many in the United States. Intelligent Mischief tell us: “Our goals are to use the healing elements of laughter and validate many forms of anti-Black oppression through humor. Through this process, we will build political movement and consciousness.” Check out some tips from the guide below, and CLICK HERE to support the project via Indiegogo (illustrations by Col Williams and race cards by Felicia Perez).

    It would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragically true…

    People who Pro-Confederate flag are calling for the Black Panther Monument in Detroit to be removed….. Because they’re totally the same things.

    Sandra Bland arrest video has continuity problems, anomalies, LA Times weighs in.

    In the video, which is more than 52 minutes long, there are several spots where cars and people disappear and reappear. When it released the video, the department did not mention any editing. The audio ends more than a minute before the video images do.

    One of the more conspicuous spots comes 25 minutes and 5 seconds into the video, when a man walks from a truck off screen and then reappears suddenly at the spot where he began walking. The image flutters for a moment before resuming.

    That’s a small fragment.

    Sandra Bland and the Long History of Racism in Waller County, Texas

    Waller County, Texas, has had a complicated racial history since the days when it was a part of Mexico. At one of its first settlements, Bernardo Plantation, about 100 slaves grew cotton on a large farm on the banks of the Brazos. Yet in the years before Texas fought Mexico for its independence, the area became a magnet for free blacks from elsewhere in the South who sought a welcoming home.

    The messy, confusing double legacy of that history has persisted to the present, most recently embodied in the death of Sandra Bland in a Waller County jail cell. Bland, a 28-year-old from Chicago, was on a road trip to start a new job at her alma mater, historically-black Prairie View A&M University, when she was pulled over by a state trooper for failing to signal a turn. Somehow, that apparently routine stop escalated and ended with Bland with an arm injury, under arrest for assaulting an officer. She was found dead in her cell three days later, on July 13, of what police say was suicide by asphyxiation. Her family disputes that account, saying she had no inclination to suicide and was upbeat about her new job.

    We’ll need more information to understand what happened to Bland. As Radley Balko notes, jailhouse suicide is disturbingly common. Regardless of the circumstances of Bland’s death, however, a routine stop for failing to use a blinker should not end in several days of imprisonment and death. That has brought a natural focus on Waller County and the figures involved.
    […]

    The history is especially painful because Waller County was for a time a beacon of black progress. During Reconstruction, an office of the Freedmen’s Bureau opened in the county seat of Hempstead, and federal troops—including, for a time, some commanded by George Custer—occupied to keep the peace. Not coincidentally, the Ku Klux Klan also set up shop. Nonetheless, Hempstead became a locus of black political activity and hosted the Republican Party’s statewide convention in 1875. In 1876, the predecessor of Prairie View A&M was established, and in the 1880 Census, the county was majority black.

    But the last two decades of the century saw an influx of white immigrants from Eastern Europe, and that dilution of the black vote, along with the end of Reconstruction, reduced blacks to a minority and slashed their political power. After a 1903 law established “white primaries,” African Americans were effectively shut out of politics—such that in a county with some 8,000 black voters, only 144 Republican votes were cast in 1912, according to The Handbook of Texas. Waller County, as Leah Binkovitz notes, had among the highest numbers of lynchings in the state between 1877 and 1950, according to a comprehensive report by the Equal Justice Initiative.

    This may seem like distant history, but it set something of a pattern for the county’s race relations through to the present—and as the events of the last year have made clear, a place’s history is often an effective predictor of how it treats its black residents, from St. Louis County to Cuyahoga County. In fact, the disenfranchisement of black voters in Waller County has continued to be a source of contention.

    More at the link.

    Dashcam Video of Violent Arrest of Sandra Bland Was Edited

    A man leaves the truck in the center of the frame at 25:05. For the next 15 seconds, he walks toward the right of the frame and leaves. At 25:19, he suddenly appears again, promptly disappears, then returns at 25:22. The same footage of him walking is subsequently repeated.
    […]

    At 32:37, a white car drives into the left side of the frame, then promptly disappears in the middle of the road. Seconds later, the same car drives back into the frame and subsequently turns left. This footage is later looped several times.

    A different white car also drives into the left side of the frame and turns left from 32:49 to 32:59. The previous white car again briefly enters the frame at 33:04, and once more at 33:06, yet it suddenly disappears both times. When these cuts are made in the footage, the lights on top of the truck in the center of the frame also abruptly cut out.

    At 33:08, the exact same footage from 32:37 is repeated, followed by the same second white car at 33:17.
    […]

    It appears that someone cut footage out and looped part of the video in order to correspond with the recorded audio of Texas state trooper Brian Encinia speaking. Who exactly edited the footage is unknown, but the video was recorded by police and released by the Texas Department of Public Safety.

    I wonder if the audio was edited, too?

  106. rq says

    104 weeks of peaceful protests & @BaltimorePolice thought they needed 24+ cops for 2 year anniversary of #TyroneWest

    33 black people were killed by police last year in situations that started with a simple traffic violation. #SandraBland

    Meet the two black men in law enforcement who were fired when they stood against injustice

    Two seasoned and highly respected black men in law enforcement in two different cities were each fired this summer—not for corruption, not for misconduct, not for poor management, not for sexual harassment, but because they each stood up against injustice inside their own departments.

    In 2007, the city of Chicago created an “independent” review board to monitor fatal shootings by police. I put those quotation marks around independent because the boards are often stacked with retired police officers who are often anything but independent in their views of their comrades. Of the 400 cases they reviewed, only one shooting of the 400 was found to be unjustified.

    Lorenzo Davis was the supervising investigator for the review board and the facts in many of the cases just weren’t adding up to him. He had been a Chicago police officer for 23 years and served as a commander, the head of a detective unit, then the head of an entire district, and eventually oversaw the entire public housing unit until he retired and joined the review board.

    Soon, Davis began determining that many more police shootings in Chicago weren’t justified at all. He found that six shootings were unjustified. That may not seem like a lot, but it’s a 600 percent increase from the one shooting that was deemed unjustified in the previous eight eight years. His supervisors demanded that he reverse the rulings. He refused, and on this past July 9, he was fired. Chicago doesn’t even deny that this is why they fired him.
    […]

    Chief Kevin Sewell of Pocomoke City, Maryland, the first African-American police chief in the city’s history, was fired June 29 after he stood by two fellow African-American officers who were experiencing over racism from white officers in the department. According to the Washington Post:

    The officers alleged in complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that they faced racism that was overt and rampant — allegations the city denies. Among the incidents alleged: a food stamp superimposed with President Obama’s face that was left on a black detective’s desk and a text message that read, “What is ya body count nigga?”

    “This is one of the most egregious cases of primary racial discrimination and retaliation for assertion of rights before the EEOC that I’ve seen,” said Andrew G. McBride, co-counsel for the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, which is representing Sewell. “Chief Sewell has a fantastic record as a police officer. He was terminated because he stood up for two African American officers who filed an EEOC complaint.”

    Both of these stories are deeply disturbing and reveal that cities are fighting against even the most basic decent reforms to address police brutality and racism within their own departments. It’s absurd that two honorable men who were award-winning public servants were basically taught that if they wanted to be in the system, they had to play the deadly game of pretending like injustice is imaginary. It isn’t, and we must demand answers in both of these terminations.

    Dashcam video shows officer threatening Sandra Bland with taser, Mashable.

    You can watch the video, below. The verbal confrontation begins around the 8:35 mark with Officer Encinia ordering her out of the car at the 9:20 mark. The confrontation gets physical, with Officer Encinia reaching into the car, at 9:55 in.

    In the video, Encinia appears to get irritated after Bland questions why he asked her to put out her cigarette (the 9:00 mark). He then opens the door and tells Bland he will “yank her” out of the car if she doesn’t step outside (9:55). When she refuses, he appears to pull his taser, at which point Bland gets out (10:29) as Encina yells at her, “I will light you up.” Encinia handcuffs her (11:30), and then a struggle seems to take place just off camera (13:10). Bland winds up on the ground.

    Encinia filed a report saying Bland had kicked him and he had “pain in my right leg.” Encinia never cries out in pain during the video. You can read the full affidavit at the bottom of the article.

    Taylor Swift Caught In Nicki Minaj’s VMAs Outrage Tweetstorm

    Apparently upset by missing out on a nomination for Video of the Year at the forthcoming MTV Video Music Awards, Nicki Minaj vented, as one does, on her Twitter account.

    And then Taylor Swift took it personally.

    #JusticeForDariusStewart

  107. rq says

    ELI5: Why is it so controversial when someone says “All Lives Matter” instead of “Black Lives Matter”? That’s a DoNotLink link to reddit.

    Imagine that you’re sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don’t get any. So you say “I should get my fair share.” And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you, saying, “everyone should get their fair share.” Now, that’s a wonderful sentiment — indeed, everyone should, and that was kinda your point in the first place: that you should be a part of everyone, and you should get your fair share also. However, dad’s smart-ass comment just dismissed you and didn’t solve the problem that you still haven’t gotten any!

    The problem is that the statement “I should get my fair share” had an implicit “too” at the end: “I should get my fair share, too, just like everyone else.” But your dad’s response treated your statement as though you meant “only I should get my fair share”, which clearly was not your intention. As a result, his statement that “everyone should get their fair share,” while true, only served to ignore the problem you were trying to point out.

    That’s the situation of the “black lives matter” movement. Culture, laws, the arts, religion, and everyone else repeatedly suggest that all lives should matter. Clearly, that message already abounds in our society.

    The problem is that, in practice, the world doesn’t work the way. You see the film Nightcrawler? You know the part where Renee Russo tells Jake Gyllenhal that she doesn’t want footage of a black or latino person dying, she wants news stories about affluent white people being killed? That’s not made up out of whole cloth — there is a news bias toward stories that the majority of the audience (who are white) can identify with. So when a young black man gets killed (prior to the recent police shootings), it’s generally not considered “news”, while a middle-aged white woman being killed is treated as news. And to a large degree, that is accurate — young black men are killed in significantly disproportionate numbers, which is why we don’t treat it as anything new. But the result is that, societally, we don’t pay as much attention to certain people’s deaths as we do to others. So, currently, we don’t treat all lives as though they matter equally.

    Just like asking dad for your fair share, the phrase “black lives matter” also has an implicit “too” at the end: it’s saying that black lives should also matter. But responding to this by saying “all lives matter” is willfully going back to ignoring the problem. It’s a way of dismissing the statement by falsely suggesting that it means “only black lives matter,” when that is obviously not the case. And so saying “all lives matter” as a direct response to “black lives matter” is essentially saying that we should just go back to ignoring the problem.

    TL;DR: The phrase “Black lives matter” carries an implicit “too” at the end; it’s saying that black lives should also matter. Saying “all lives matter” is dismissing the very problems that the phrase is trying to draw attention to.

    Why “All Lives Matter” instead of “Black Lives Matter” is such a stupid thing to say, which just links to the previous link.

    3 Killings by Chicago Police Covered Up, Ex-Investigator Alleges

    Three people killed by police in Chicago should be alive today, according to a retired cop who says he was fired for reaching that conclusion after investigating their deaths for the city.

    If the allegations made by Lorenzo Davis are true, then the authority charged with investigating the Chicago Police Department for police shootings and claims of misconduct since 2007 can no longer be trusted—if it ever was.

    Davis, a former supervisor at the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) who previously had a 23-year career with the Chicago Police Department, tells The Daily Beast that he was fired after refusing to obey orders to reverse his findings that police were not justified in shooting suspects six times in the past eight years. In three of those incidents, the suspects died.

    “Bad shootings,” Davis says in police parlance for unjustified officer-involved shootings.

    IPRA boss Scott Ando was responsible for the orders to reverse the findings, Davis said, adding that when Davis refused to whitewash the incidents, Ando fired him. Davis, despite his decades in law enforcement, was accused by Ando of having an “anti-police bias,” he said.

    “He made it clear that supervisors there serve at his pleasure,” Davis said. “Our jobs are completely at-will. He doesn’t have to have a reason to fire us.”

    IPRA spokesman Larry Meritt declined to comment directly on Davis’s allegations.

    Police investigator: I was forced to call shootings ‘justified’

    The agency that investigates police involved shootings in Chicago is coming under fire for allegedly having a pro-police bias. And a recently fired supervisor said the Independent Police Review Authority has an agenda.

    “The agenda is to not embarrass the city. The agenda is, so far, the agenda has been to justify all of the shootings,” said Lorenzo Davis, a former Supervising Investigator.

    Davis believes IPRA has lost its independence, and with that the public’s trust.

    Prosecutor: Too Soon To Know How Sandra Bland Died In Texas Jail Cell, Talking Points Memo.

    Texas releases full police dashcam video of Sandra Bland’s arrest, BoingBoing.
    I think the police are going to get more shit for editting the video than for the wrongful arrest of Bland. Sadly.

  108. rq says

    Interlude: musicals! How Taye Diggs Is Transforming the Role of Hedwig

    The man standing before you, stumbling over the gnarled roots of a fake German accent, is Taye Diggs. That’s right. Taye Diggs, the buffed, straight, 44-year-old African-American sex symbol Ebony magazine once called ‘‘the black Clark Gable.’’ The star who gave Angela Bassett (and most other warm-blooded animals) a love catharsis in ‘‘How Stella Got Her Groove Back’’ (1998), with a complexion smoother than osmosis and a solar smile. He’s an actor who radiates as much sex appeal when he’s wearing a suit, a pair of thick glasses and a fedora as when he’s naked to the waist.

    Hold up, though — is this not madness? Black America’s most eligible bachelor is about to play a glammed-out Teutonic genderqueer mash-up of Nico and Axl Rose?

    Yes. More at the link.

    And because ALL black lives matter, Ga. Transgender Woman Charges Repeated Sex Assaults in Prison, Again Sues for Safe Housing – she has appeared on this thread before, and apparently, her ordeal is not over yet. TW for transphobia.

    Attorneys for a Georgia transgender inmate are attempting to have her moved or, at minimum, want to hear the state prison’s plan to keep her safe after she says she was again sexually assaulted while in prison custody, the Macon Telegraph reports.

    In February, as an imate at the Baldwin State Prison in Milledgeville, 36-year-old Ashley Alton Diamond filed a federal lawsuit against the state Department of Corrections demanding safe housing and the hormone treatments she has been denied.

    The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in February that Diamond, who had been receiving hormonal treatments for 17 years before being imprisoned, was denied the necessary treatments and was allegedly told by prison officials that she had lost her right to express her female identity when she was imprisoned.

    The warden at the time reportedly referred to Diamond as a “he-she thing” in front of guards and inmates, and Diamond was also placed in solitary confinement as punishment for “pretending to be a woman,” the lawsuit stated.

    Diamond, who has been in prison since 2012 on theft, obstruction and escape convictions in Floyd County, may be imprisoned until 2023.

    This month her attorneys, as well as the lawyers representing prison officials, filed a joint status report saying that Diamond was sexually assaulted last month while being held temporarily at Georgia State Prison in Reidsville while on a trip to Augusta for a medical appointment, the Macon Telegraph reports.

    Diamond accused her cellmate of assaulting her. While being driven with that same inmate to Rutledge State Prison in Columbus, Diamond claimed that the attacker threatened her, telling her not to say anything. After reporting the assault to officials in Columbus, the prisoner was placed in “segregation” until being relocated to another facility.

    Diamond, however, says that the prison warden told inmates about the alleged assault, including identifying information about the alleged attacker. Diamond says that she was then called “a snitch” by other inmates who allegedly pressured and threatened her to retract the complaint, according to the news site.

    And yes, she fears for her safety.

    Just saw word some asshole(s) desecrated the memorial for #PaulCastaway, who was murdered by @DenverPolice a little over a week ago.

    Brian Encinia: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know – this is the officer who arrested Sandra Bland.

    Trooper Brian Encinia is the officer who stopped 28-year-old Sandra Bland on June 10 in Waller County, Texas, for failing to properly signal a lane change.

    After Encinia arrested Bland on a charge of assaulting a police officer, Bland was held in the county jail until the morning of June 13, when she was found dead in her cell. Authorities say it appears Bland killed herself, but the investigation is ongoing and her family says they don’t believe she would take her own life. She was about to start her dream job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M, and had just moved from Illinois to Texas to do so.

    Police are also investigating whether Encinia committed any wrongdoing during the traffic stop, which was recorded by a dashboard camera and a bystander.

    He’s only been a trooper for a little over a year. Is this the aggressive training still rearing its head?

    Sandra Bland Death: Texas to Look Into Alleged Edits of Dashcam Video

    Texas Department of Public Safety authorities said late Tuesday they were looking into alleged edits to a 52-minute dashcam video of the traffic stop and arrest of Sandra Bland, who subsequently died in her jail cell three days after her arrest.

    Police say Bland committed suicide but her death has raised the suspicions of her family and supporters and has become the latest rallying cry among activists suspicious of the treatment of blacks by law enforcement. Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis said Monday that prosecutors would handle the case as thoroughly “as it would be in a murder investigation,” adding that it was “too early” to determine what happened.

    So they’re looking into the edits.

    New Ferguson interim police chief to be announced Wednesday

    The new Ferguson interim police chief is scheduled to be announced at a 9 a.m. press conference Wednesday.

    News 4 This Morning’s Laura Hettiger was outside the Ferguson Police Department Wednesday morning and met Andre Anderson, the new interim police chief. Anderson was previously a commander with the Glendale, Arizona Police Department.

    Anderson told News 4 he first arrived in the area on Monday and officially found out he was hired as the chief on Tuesday.

    Two years ago, Anderson applied to be a police chief in a small Arizona town and, during the hiring process, stated he had a “very diverse background in working with different diversity and different groups.”

    Anderson will join Ferguson’s new interim city manager, Ed Beasley. Beasley was formerly the city manager in Glendale.

    Yep, a black man to lead Ferguson’s mostly-white force. Here’s to hoping it’s not a career-killing move for Anderson.

  109. rq says

    Witnesses say 23yo man shot was at a memorial gathering for a neighborhood friend who died in a car crash three years ago.
    Witnesses: Cops pulled up, man ran away with a cup in his hand and two officers fired at least 10 shots from 10-15′ away. “He was no threat”
    Activists form peace circle after 23yo man shot by CPD in Englewood

    As usual, the media portrays Nicki as “the black angry woman” and Taylor as “the blonde sweetheart”.

    Dylann Roof indictment on federal hate crime charges is imminent, sources say

    A grand jury indictment of Dylann Roof on federal hate crime charges was expected this afternoon, a move that would make the 21-year-old man a defendant in one of the worst racially motivated attacks since the Civil Rights era, according to sources close to the investigation.

    Roof, who is white, is accused of fatally shooting nine black worshippers during a June 17 Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston.

    That night, authorities first stated that the shooting would be considered a hate crime. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division also sent FBI agents into the field to investigate the possible motive for what was thought to be South Carolina’s worst racial hate crime in history.

    An indictment could bring that aspect of the crime that has sparked conversations about race relations nationwide into the courtroom for the first time. Multiple sources confirmed that the indictment by a Columbia grand jury was imminent and could come as early as 2 p.m. today. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss a grand jury action.

    U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch was expected to address reporters during a 3 p.m. a news conference, the Justice Department announced without providing specifics of her planned remarks.

    “This is a very novel situation,” Miller Shealy, a professor at the Charleston School of Law who has served as a prosecutor in state courts and at the Justice Department. “This has never happened in South Carolina before, where a defendant has such infamous celebrity. … This case is in the spotlight, and the feds want to make a statement.”

    And PZ on Sandra Bland, Changing lanes while black.

  110. rq says

    Selma Director Ava DuVernay and Los Angeles Times Say Sandra Bland Dash-Cam Video Was Edited

    Since the release of the Sandra Bland dash-cam arrest video, many people have wondered if the video was edited. To the naked, untrained eye, it looks like a simple play-by-play version of an unedited video, but professionals who work with editing and directing videos see something totally different.

    Ava DuVernay, director of Selma, tweeted that the video was indeed doctored.
    […]

    The Los Angeles Times also reported that it looks as though the video was indeed edited, and pinpointed similar issues with the video.

    “In the video, which is more than 52 minutes long, there are several spots where cars and people disappear and reappear. When it released the video, the department did not mention any editing. The audio ends more than a minute before the video images do,” the Los Angeles Times wrote.

    This brings to issue the dubious nature of the Texas Department of Public Safety and the police department involved and the fact that someone is clearly attempting to cover up what exactly happened to Sandy Bland.

    SEE IT: Sandra Bland arrest video released following jail death; some question apparent edits in footage, New York Daily News.

    After a University of Cincinnati officer shot #SamuelDubose in the head, here is the U of Cincinnati’s statement: basically, police officers risk their lives and any death that results is a tragedy. Doesn’t sound particularly sympathetic or apologetic.

    Bernie Sanders, learning from confrontation on race, calls #SandraBland video “totally outrageous.” Except he goes more ‘police reform’ instead of ‘dismantling white supremacy’.

    Ferguson, Mo. hires a black officer as interim police chief

    The City of Ferguson, Mo. will announce Wednesday — almost one year after the police shooting death of Michael Brown — that it has chosen a black officer from Arizona as its interim police chief.

    City officials will name Andre Anderson, 50, a commander with the Glendale, Ariz. police department, as Ferguson’s new interim chief, giving him control of a 45-officer suburban police department that has faced international scrutiny following the shooting of Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, by Darren Wilson, a white officer, in August.

    “He is extremely well-qualified,” Ferguson Mayor James Knowles told Reuters. “He will bring us a fresh perspective coming from outside the St. Louis region.”

    The incident and subsequent investigations by the Department of Justice prompted a massive upheaval in Ferguson city government, including the resignations of then-police chief Tom Jackson and city manager John Shaw.

    Ferguson hiring new interim police chief from Arizona city, from the St Louis Post-Dispatch.

    Mayor James Knowles and city spokesmen declined to comment Tuesday, but a press conference to name a new interim chief was set for Wednesday morning.

    Anderson was making about $125,000 in Glendale. It’s unclear what he would be paid here; sources said his contract has not been finalized.

    Tom Jackson, who was chief when Officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown and during the protests that followed, resigned shortly after a report from the Department of Justice in March. It strongly criticized the city’s police and court operations. Jackson’s salary was about $95,000.

    Deputy Chief Al Eickhoff had been interim chief since. He will remain in the department, sources said.

    Anderson worked with Beasley in Glendale, a city of 226,000 northwest of Phoenix. In 2013, Anderson was a finalist for chief in Casa Grande, Ariz., a town of about 50,000.

    He is listed as an executive board member of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives on the group’s website.

    In 1999, the Arizona Republic wrote about how Anderson, as a police officer, mentored and coached at-risk youth at a boxing gym. The profile says Anderson grew up in Philadelphia, boxed his way through the Army as a “formidable amateur” and later moved to Arizona and won two professional fights. Injuries from being hit by a car while fixing a flat tire ended his boxing career.

    He then worked as a prison guard in Arizona before joining the Glendale police Department.

    His online résumé lists his title as Criminal Investigations Commander for Glendale police, and says he holds a master’s degree in education and leadership from Northern Arizona University.

  111. rq says

    Dashcam Video of Violent Arrest of Sandra Bland Was Edited, I think it’s the same article by Ben Norton just via the Medium instead.

    And here is the official statement where they say they did not edit the #SandraBland dashcam video. Soooo apparently they’re going to address uploading issues because they tried to upload video and audio simultaneously and some things got messed up in the process, so they’re going to try again later. I mean holy shit. As someone on twitter said, let’s hope the second edit is better than the first.

    Black Man Samuel Dubose Shot in Head by Cincinnati Cop Ray Tensing

    Prosecutors are reviewing the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a University of Cincinnati police officer who had pulled the driver over for having a missing front license plate, authorities said Tuesday.

    Samuel Dubose, 43, was shot once in the head following a brief struggle as he sat behind the wheel of his car Sunday night, university and city police said. The officer, Ray Tensing, who is white, was placed on administrative leave pending the investigation.
    […]

    Cincinnati police said Tuesday that they have taken over the investigation at the request of the university. Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said in a statement that his office is “rapidly investigating” the shooting.

    “This incident didn’t involve a Cincinnati Police Department officer, but it happened in our city, and it is our job to ensure this investigation is handled with the attention it deserves,” City Manager Harry Black said Tuesday.

    University Police Chief Jason Goodrich said the campus department has an agreement with Cincinnati police to patrol shared areas near campus.
    […]

    After a brief struggle, the car began rolling forward and Tensing was knocked to the ground, Goodrich said. Dubose was shot very soon afterward, police said. Tensing, a member of the force since April 2014, was treated at a hospital for minor injuries and released.

    Cincinnati police said that Tensing was wearing a body camera and that the video confirmed that there was a struggle. The video won’t be released until the investigation is complete.

    Asked at a news conference whether Tensing reached into the car at any point, Cincinnati police Lt. Col. James Whalen said: “I don’t have clarity on that yet. I’m waiting to enhance this video to get a better answer to that.”

    Friends and relatives held a vigil Tuesday demanding to see the video and seeking answers to why Dubose had been shot. They said he was the father of 12 children and was engaged to be married.

    A friend, J.B. Smith, told NBC station WLWT that Dubose was a gentle and non-confrontational man.

    Hadassah Thomas, a friend and neighbor, told the station: “Everybody in the community loved Sam. He was so helpful, and he was always around. He used to baby-sit for my daughter.

    “What men do that?” she asked “He didn’t carry a gun, so why did he get shot?”

    Activists demand answers in Ohio traffic-stop death, USA Today on the same.

    Officer Ray Tensing had worked at the University of Cincinnati Police Department for a little more than a year when he shot and killed Samuel Dubose, 43, during the traffic stop on Sunday. Tensing, who earns $51,604.80 a year, is now on paid administrative leave.

    When Tensing asked Dubose to produce his license, Dubose gave the officer an unopened bottle of alcohol instead, university police Chief Jason Goodrich said. They then struggled through the car door.

    Tensing drew his gun, fired one shot and was knocked to the ground, Goodrich said. The officer, who was treated at a hospital Sunday and released, sustained bruised legs and his uniform was torn during the struggle.

    Interesting. This version says a shot was fired before the officer was knocked to the ground, while the previous mentions shots fired only after the officer was knocked to the ground.

    Councilman asks Mosby to reopen investigations into three in-custody deaths

    Praising the prosecution of six officers in the death of Freddie Gray, the chairman of the City Council’s public safety committee wants State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby to reopen investigations into three earlier deaths in police custody.

    Councilman Warren Branch said Tuesday that he’s asking Mosby to review the deaths of Tyrone West, Anthony Anderson and Maurice Donald Johnson.

    No charges were filed in those cases, which occurred while Mosby’s predecessor was the city’s chief prosecutor.

    “I’m asking on behalf of the families if she would reopen these three cases and reinvestigate these three cases,” Branch said before a City Hall hearing on West’s death. “Many people were impressed with the actions the state’s attorney took in the Freddie Gray case.”

    Mosby’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Interim Police Commissioner Kevin Davis promised transparency in misconduct cases.

    “You have my word that we will move heaven and earth to get to the bottom of the circumstances that led up to that loss of life,” Davis said.

    Rodney Hill, the chief of the city’s internal affairs division, told the council the agency is improving.

    “Mr. Tyrone West did not die in vain,” he said. “I assure as a result there will be changes in the Baltimore Police Department.”

    Branch had asked medical examiner David Fowler to attend the hearing, but he declined. The council has no legal authority to compel him to attend.

    I wonder what interesting things might be dug up in those cases? Tyrone West’s family has been out every Wednesday demanding answers.

    Fundraiser for ‘Baltimore 6’ to Feature Blackface Performance, because blackface is still a thing that happens…

    I received a photo of an invite to a fundraiser for the six Baltimore Police officers charged in the death of unarmed 25-year-old Freddie Gray. According to the flyer, a “bull roast” (a popular Maryland tradition) is scheduled to take place on November 1st at Michael’s Eighth Avenue and features a pretty hearty menu for $45, including various pork dishes, cake and beer and a cash bar option.

    That members of the Baltimore Police Department and/or their supporters would have a fundraiser for these cops is unsurprising and would not have warranted much of a reaction from me. The “Blue Lives Matter” phrasing, which appears twice on the invite, also fails to be shocking; we’ve heard that appropriation of protest language since August of last year.

    However, one of the planned performances for the evening tells a more interesting story. A number of “entertainers” are also advertised, including a few lounge singers and instrumentalists, and at the end of that list is “Bobby “Al Jolson” Berger-out of retirement.”

    According to The Baltimore Sun, Berger was dismissed from the Baltimore Police Department in 1984 due to his off-duty performances as the late Jolson, one of history’s most well-known Blackface performers. His dismissal came after 3 years of tension between the officer and his employer due to his act, with both parties spending a decade in court as a result. Ultimately, Berger settled with the city in 1991.

    One struggles to think of a stranger way to raise funds for a group of police officers implicated in the death of a Black man than a Blackface performer, especially considering that 3 of the accused officers are Black themselves. Did the organizers think they could keep this event hidden from the public? Or do they simply not care about the optics? If “Blue Lives Matter” isn’t a direct counterpoint to “Black Lives Matter,” where exactly does Blackface fit into the equation? And are Black officers/supporters not invited?

    I contacted Berger at the number listed on the invite and though I was prepared for some hesitation to speak to me about the fundraiser, he opened up immediately. “I’m hosting the event,” he informed me when I asked who was responsible for putting the event together.

    Berger says that he empathizes with the 6 officers because he knows what it’s like to lose his job (“I was a Baltimore city policeman…and then I had no income, no insurance, and a wife and child. We’re trying to get something together for them for Christmas”) and insists, most incredulously, that there is nothing “racial” about his performance as Al Jolson, though it is in Blackface.

    “There really isn’t. I know it sounds crazy,” said the 77-year-old.

    He says that many Black people have attended his shows over the years and support this assertion. Among them: a Black reporter from a local newspaper who he knew from high school and boxing great Joe Frazier, who Berger claims joined him in song after watching one of his performances (“The only thing I can tell you is that the heavyweight champion of the world isn’t going to stand by and watch me mock Black people.” He claims to have some footage of this interaction somewhere.)

    “I was on Montell Williams in Blackface and he said on national TV that there was nothing racist about it. Ben Vereen commented on the show, he was fine with it,” says Berger. Though I could not find footage of the Montell Williams appearance, the talk show host famously turned his back on Ted Danson at his notorious Friars Club performance. What exactly is the difference?

    “What Danson was doing was making fun, being mean-spirited. I am just performing as Al Jolson.”

    I believe Montell Williams isn’t the ultimate authority on what constitutes something racist or not.
    More excuses at the link.

  112. rq says

    Interestingly, the video linked to here has been removed – is that because it’s the original? Or what? Dashcam video shows #SandraBland changing lanes without signaling BECAUSE of cop speeding aggressively behind her https://youtu.be/yf8GR3OO9mU?t=1m33s …

    Anyway, here’s a newer version: Texas Department of Public Safety releases new version of #SandraBland traffic stop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaW09Ymr2BA …

    Chappelle: Unarmed black deaths taking a toll

    Comedian Dave Chappelle is growing weary of seeing headlines about unarmed black people being killed by police, he told the Associated Press over the weekend.

    “A kid gets killed by the police and I buy a T-shirt and before I can wear that one, there’s another kid (killed) and I’m running out of closet space,” he said while on Long Island for the Art for Life benefit, where he received an award from Russell Simmons’ Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation.

    He added that celebrities have a responsibility to get more involved in social justice and to help everyday people unpack heavy issues like race and police brutality.

    “The biggest enemy of an artist is apathy. … This is a very surprisingly emotionally charged time, so people like me, I think, are very relevant and necessary in sorting through all this information and emotional content.”

    Chappelle, who stepped away from the spotlight after a meteoric rise to stardom on Comedy Central, says his reemergence just happens to coincide with this turbulent period of race relations in the USA, but he didn’t plan it that way. “I think it is important to be out now, but what’s going on in the world isn’t why I initially came back out.”

    He also joked that he’s happier away from Hollywood and away from the pressures of work.

    “I can say honestly that I’m happy, that I can sit at home on a Tuesday night and watch Key and Peele do my show and it doesn’t hurt me.”

    “Dear Publishing Industry: Fix Your Own Racism Before You Beg for Diverse Books”

    Mixed feelings. That’s what I get when I see a “We Need Diverse Books” logo. Mixed feelings because I love the campaign and everyone in it, but I also get so frustrated with the campaign for many more reasons.

    I’m a writer of color writing characters of color who deal with issues of color. My book’s characters are almost all of color, and my book explores black culture, black family, black viewpoints, black frustrations with white society and racial oppression, and black truth.

    In querying, I failed, drastically. Despite my beta readers’ assurances, my crit partners’ praise, I didn’t get a single request from many dozens of queries. The personal rejections I got came around to, “This isn’t for me, but please query me with your next project,” or, “The writing is beautiful, but subjectively this isn’t for me.”

    I’m aware, as I write this post, that I have to tread softly, for people will think of me as simply another writer upset at rejection and playing the ‘race card’. Yes, I am upset. Furious. And here’s why. A movement supposedly for me has failed me.

    I am no stranger to rejection. I’m a constant member of the online Twitter community, I’m respectful and polite. I know how the industry works, I am not just an upset rejected writer. I’ve been rejected over a hundred times for past works – I have tough skin.

    When I got rejected so constantly despite years of revision, I started to think – do I have to make my book less ‘radical’? Don’t get me wrong: there was no call for ‘white genocide’ or ‘all white people are horrible,’ but the book honestly reflected some of my own experiences and my friends’ experiences, experiences that people that aren’t black don’t always understand and might be frightened of. The book reflected black individuals’ frustrations with white society. I knew that if I watered the book down, I would not be writing the truth.

    What should I do? And then I decided, let’s research! I realized every single agent I queried was white. I need to search for black agents who might understand.

    From the major NYC agencies, I could only find a few black agents – I can count them on one hand and still have many fingers left over.

    Almost all are comprised solely of white agents. Here’s a few: Wolf Literary, Laura Dail, Harvey Klinger, Donald Maass, Fine Print, Corvisiero, The Book Group, Curtis Brown, Writer’s House, the Gernet Company, the Knight Agency, Waxman Leavell, and Folio. Some of these have over a dozen agents. But if you take into account the major agencies that have no black agents, the list goes on and on: Foundry, Fuse, The Bent Agency, just to name some (these three only have one non-white agent). The only agency that has many writers of color is Serendipity, and that agency was created specifically in response to the lack of institutional support for writers of color. (It scares me, though, that Serendipity does not accept submissions from currently incarcerated authors, since for many black people, the prison system is the greatest oppressor.)

    The lack of diversity is a big part of the reason why truly diverse books – books with characters that people of color can relate to – haven’t been on bookshelves as much as they should. Even if people write diverse novels, they must first be filtered through a very white institution.

    “But how are you deciding if these agents are white?” you say! “That’s racist, you can’t tell if people are of color simply by their pictures.”

    I used a flawed system and I deeply apologize for that – there was no better way, but that is no excuse for my propagation of erasing the identities of people who identify with color but may not look of color. This erasure is a major issue (people of color needing to ‘prove’ their color) and I’m sorry for falling into this oppression. I used something called the Paper Bag Test. If you know the history behind this test, you should be horrified and appalled at the idea that I used something like this.

    There is more at the link. None of it pretty.

  113. rq says

    The #OurSignaturesMatter rally in #Ferguson, continuing efforts for to recall Mayor Knowles in Ferguson.

    Official: Church shooting suspect to face hate crime charge, AP on the anticipatory news-but-not-yet-news noted above.

    #UnionMLP read this from @pastortraci – a poem, of sorts.

    Transgender Woman Of Color Killed In Tampa, Florida – not by cops, but still.

    India Clarke, 25, was found dead on Tuesday after suffering blunt force trauma to the upper body, according to police in Tampa, Florida, who described the killing to BuzzFeed News as a murder. Clarke is the ninth confirmed transgender woman of color killed in a homicide this year — marking the latest in a trend of homicides that anti-violence advocates are calling an epidemic.

    Police have not identified a suspect and are asking for the public’s help.

    However, law enforcement and media have consistently misgendered Clarke — by describing her as a man in a dress, using Clarke’s former male name, and using male pronouns. And while trans women of color appear to be killed at disproportionately higher rates than most populations, police don’t believe gender identity is a factor in this case. Rather, police told BuzzFeed News, Clarke’s “history of prostitution” may appear to have played a role, but they have offered no evidence that sex work was a factor in the homicide.

    “We are not going to categorize him as a transgender. We can just tell you he had women’s clothing on at the time,” Detective Larry McKinnon, a spokesman for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, told BuzzFeed News. “What his lifestyle was prior to that we don’t know — whether he was a cross dresser, we don’t know.”

    Initial calls to 911 descibed the victim as a woman but a medical examiner later identified her as male, McKinnon said.

    “He is a male,” McKinnon continued. “I can’t tell you he is a female.”

    In her Facebook profile, however, Clarke identifies as a woman, uses female pronouns, and presents as female in all her photos.

    LGBT anti-violence organizations have long warned that misgendering transgender victims and quickly downplaying gender identify as a factor in investigations can alienate people who know the victims and who could provide tips that identify a suspect.

    Are they ever going to learn? Is it really that hard, to grant them that small dignity? Fuck them. Sideways.

  114. says

    Don Cheadle’s directorial debut ‘Miles Ahead’ to close 53rd New York Film Festival:

    The Film Society of Lincoln Center has lined up “Miles Ahead,” Don Cheadle’s highly-anticipated directorial debut, as the Closing Night Film for the upcoming 53rd New York Film Festival (NYFF). The screening will mark the film’s world premiere.

    The Oscar-nominated actor (“Hotel Rwanda”) also stars in the biopic as Miles Davis, one of the 20th century’s greatest and most fascinating artists. Cheadle’s film will focus on the legendary jazz musician’s crazed years in the late 1970s, during which he struggled with a variety of ailments while also contending with memories of past triumphs and falls. His years with Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi), the love of his life, are also explored.

    NYFF Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones said, “I admire Don’s film because of all the intelligent decisions he’s made about how to deal with Miles, but I was moved—deeply moved—by ‘Miles Ahead’ for other reasons. Don knows, as an actor, a writer, a director, and a lover of Miles’ music, that intelligent decisions and well-planned strategies only get you so far, that finally it’s your own commitment and attention to every moment and every detail that brings a movie to life…”

    Don Cheadle added, “I am happy that the selection committee saw fit to invite us to the dance. It’s very gratifying that all the hard work that went into the making of this film, from every person on the team, has brought us here. Miles’ music is all-encompassing, forward-leaning, and expansive. He changed the game time after time, and New York is really where it all took off for him. Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center… feels very ‘right place, right time.’ Very exciting.”

    The 53rd NYFF runs from September 25 to October 11. Check out the “Miles Ahead” NYFF promotional still below.

  115. says

    Here are 10 things black people fear that white people don’t or don’t nearly as much:

    3. Not being able to get a job. The black unemployment rate has been twice the rate of unemployment for whites, basically forever. According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2013, the unemployment rate for black Americans has been about double that of whites since 1954.

    The current unemployment rate is 5.7 percent overall. For white people, it’s 4.9 percent; the percentage is 10.3 for AfricanAmericans, a little more than double.

    Not much has changed for us since the ’50s, has it?

    This one has been in the back of my mind a lot. I’ve been unemployed for 2 months now and today was the first time I got a call back (though I wasn’t hired bc they’re just conducting interviews). I worry that people don’t want to employ me bc of my ethnicity as if it has some sort of bearing on my ability to perform a job. Then that reinforces my frustrating, feelings of melancholy, and worthlessness. It’s a fucking vicious cycle is what it is.

    4. Our daughters being expelled from school because of “zero tolerance policies.” According to a 2015 report titled “Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected,” that analyzed Department of Education data from the New York City and Boston school districts, 12 percent of black girls were subjected to exclusionary suspensions compared to just 2 percent of white girls. In New York City, during the 2011-2012 school year, 90 percent of all girls subject to expulsion were black. No white girls were suspended that year.

    Let that marinate for a minute. Before you do, data from the Department of Education reports that “black children make up just 18 percent of preschool enrollment, but 48 percent of preschool children suspended more than once.”

    The black kids aren’t being suspended simply because they aren’t as well-behaved as the white children.

    5. We are much more likely to be harassed by police than by white residents in NYC. Though the NYPD has legally put an end to its racist stop-and-frisk policy, the department’s “Broken Windows” policy is in full effect. What the policy does is arrest people for smoking small amounts of pot, peeing on the streets, riding a bike on a sidewalk, selling cigarettes on the corner and other minor offenses. Between 2001 and 2013, roughly 81 percent of the summonses issued have been to African Americans and Latinos, according to the New York Daily News. Most of the arrests were made in black and Latino neighborhoods, as if white people never pee on the sidewalk or smoke pot on their stoops.

    NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton swears by the policy, saying it keeps the city safe. Eric Garner, who was apprehended for allegedly selling loose cigarettes, likely wouldn’t agree. He died after an officer on the scene put him in a chokehold.

    Every black person walking the streets of New York City knows he or she could be the next Eric Garner. That’s not just a fear, it’s our reality.

    6. Being bullied at work. Fifty-four percent of African Americans claim to be victims of workplace bullying compared to 44 percent of white respondents, according to the 2014 Workplace Bullying Survey.

    A recent example of workplace bullying comes from Portland, Oregon, where two current and two former black employees of Daimler Trucks North America are suing the company for $9.4 million. Joseph Hall, 64, says half a dozen white employees threatened him with violence, wrote graffiti showing “hangman’s nooses” at his job, and placed chicken bones in his black co-worker’s locker. There’s much more ugly racism alleged in the case, if you have the stomach to read it.

    Black people who just want to earn an honest buck sometimes have to put up with crap like this.

    7. Being pulled over by the police. Black drivers are 31 percent more likely to be pulled over than white drivers, according to the Washington Post. We fear this pretty much every time we enter our vehicles. Sure, we sometimes violate traffic traffic laws. But we get stopped even when we don’t.

  116. says

    Oops. The above article is from March, so it’s probably already been posted. Oh well.

    ****
    Dallas firefighter under investigation after threatening to delay treatment for black people:

    “We can’t have one bad post affect what we do for a million people every day,” department spokesperson Joel Lavender told WFAA-TV.

    The investigation against driver-engineer Chad Tyson stems from a Facebook thread on a contact’s personal page on Sunday, after Tyson posted a story regarding a stabbing attack against two San Diego firefighters, Ben Vernon and Alex Wallbrett, last month. The story indicated that 34-year-old Ryan Allen Jones would stand trial in connection with the incident.

    “I understand the initial post,” Lavender said. “The response is what causes us some concern.”

    A retired firefighter identified as Sandy Bell responded to the story by posting, “Sad but true. But remember black lives matter.”

    Tyson concurred, writing, “Sadly, I will delay treatment for more of them as well.”

    According to WFAA, Tyson has refused to comment on the post, saying he was not allowed to do so out of his “personal policy.” But officials began looking into his statement after being notified by the station. Department policy restricts what employees can post online while identifying themselves as working for the city. The post containing Tyson’s remark has since been deleted.

    “We’re looking into it, with an idea toward discipline,” Lavender said.

    ****

    ‘Apprentice’ alum says Donald Trump is creating the next Dylann Roof:

    “Everyone is entitled to their opinion,” Jackson said, “but what you’re not entitled to do is create a toxic environment that creates this whole poisonous ecosystem where people hear these dog whistles of ‘Mexicans are taking over, they’re all rapists, black people are out to get your money, your jobs, gay people are ruining traditional marriage.”

    “All of those things,” Jackson said, “are corrosive dog whistles that create this toxic ecosystem that weak minded people act on. Dylann Roof, Tim McVeigh, those are people who hear those things and go out and have direct action and everyone says, ‘oh, I don’t know how that happened.’”

    He went on to say that repeating those things with such vehemence, Trump is creating the next Dylann Roof or the next Tim McVeigh, but that when it explodes, Trump will take no blame.

    Jackson appeared on The Apprentice in 2004. He was runner-up, but immediately after the show, job offers began rolling in. Trump rival Mark Cuban was the first to offer Jackson a job but he ended up working for himself, saying that, “It’s betting on yourself. It was never about ‘How do I get to work for Mr. Trump?’ I’m not trying to work for Trump — I’m trying to be Trump.” Now, he’s a successful entrepreneur and, fortunately, he failed at “being Trump.”

  118. rq says

    This is a few cross-posts (I think) and pick-ups from PZ’s post on Sandra Bland.
    Man Calls 911 To Report Burglary, Police Show Up and Shoot Him While Criminals Speed Off, it’s from May, but I don’t know if it got posted then.

    Two men had broken into his house when Bryant Heyward called 911. He called the cops, hoping that they would arrive and help. But when the sheriff’s deputies arrived to the mobile home in Hollywood, South Carolina on Thursday morning, they saw the armed home owner and opened fire.

    Now the sheriff says there is an internal investigation to determine what happened. But few members of the community believe there will be any sort of justice for the victim – who was twice victimized: once by the home invaders and another time by the responding officers.

    The deputies reported seeing a man standing in the doorway of his own home. They claim he “refused to drop his gun,” but witnesses say there was no time between the yelling of this order and the discharging of police weapons for him to react.

    On the way to the hospital, Heyward told police that he was simply trying to protect himself and his home from home invaders and he didn’t know the police were even there until they had shot him in the neck.

    A Message From Elon James White, in response to Sanders supporters who are still mad about black people interrupting his speech.

    Oh, hello.

    It has come to my attention that some of the Daily Kos community are very angry over the disruption that occurred at #NN15’s Town hall with Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley. And on top of said anger it seems that some of you have decided that I either started, planned, or participated in the interruption based on my twitter stream which clearly voiced support for the action.

    So for the record, I did not plan the action. That was done by amazing Black Women organized by Tia Oso. I was not even in the same venue that the action was planned in. I was hosting the #TWIBnation #NN15 party. And when the protest started I was actually standing on the TWiB! Media Stage at NN dealing with the theft of all of our cameras the night before. I ran into the auditorium and immediately started covering the action as I have done across the nation from NYC to Ferguson to Baltimore to Berkeley.

    Some of you have called for my firing from Netroots Nation. Some of you have said I helped destroy a progressive space. And to these folks I say, what do you think Netroots is? Every year there are protests. This shouldn’t be a surprise. And while yes I am affiliated with Netroots, my stance on these issues and actions are quite public. And why in the world would Netroots Nation be upset at me for being the exact person that was hired in the first place. I’ve been a member of this space before my official capacity for years. I would think that many of you would be happy that NN is a space that’s accepting of strong voices and wouldn’t ask us to tone down or silence us.

    Also, Netroots Nation released a message in support of the action that took place. Why would you want this progressive space to be simply a spot where people drop stump speeches and not listen to the people? Do you know how White Netroots has been? And now you’re angry that PoC are actively coming to this space and demanding a place at the table? I find this very problematic. Your desire to protect politicians is being placed above the state of Emergency that is Black Life in America. So just to be clear, I will continue to be as vocal as I have been because I actually give a shit about the progressive space. I want it to be inclusive and supportive of voices that are constantly be silenced and give them a platform to make people listen. We’ve seen it start to work already.

    So as opposed to throwing anger towards the protestors or myself, perhaps you should throw that same energy towards the candidates so that they will get their shit together. If you care about a coalition that can win then maybe you should care about the voices that have been ignored for decades.

    Exercise:
    Watch the following video, then tell me (a) what is missing and/or never mentioned in the video? and (b) exactly what Sandra Bland did not do according to the video? How To Survive A Crazy Cop. It might help if I point out to you that the people surviving are white and the people still getting shot are black.

    14: The number of times Sandra Bland asked why she was being arrested without an answer.

    On July 10, Sandra Bland was confronted, assaulted, and arrested by police in Waller County, Texas, near the campus of Prairie View A&M University. On Tuesday evening, footage (seen below) of this encounter with Officer Brian Encinia was released. In it, many conclusions can be drawn and determinations can be made, but none are clearer than the indisputable fact that Sandra Bland asked the officer FOURTEEN times why she was being arrested without once receiving a respectable answer of any kind.

    Fourteen.

    She asked him from inside of her car, outside of her car, while he had his hands on her, while he was cuffing her, and he gave her no credible answer whatsoever.

    In what world is any person going to calmly and willfully submit to an arrest without being given any true answer on what they are being charged with? This entire arrest, from start to finish, was completely despicable.

    Short little piece, but where’s the common courtesy an officer should be granting those he (supposedly) serves?

    So mad, @Deray! #SandraBland’s Epilepsy was IGNORED as was Blunt Force Trauma & Hearing Loss. Her Epidural Hematoma = an Asphyxiation Death.

    @blogdiva thread is so relevant right now – she talks about Sandra Bland’s mug shot and several interesting points about it, including the weird (but somehow not implausible) idea that Bland is already dead in her mugshot (all depends when they took it, don’t it?). Yes, it is a bit conspiracy, but then, Sandra Bland died in police custody.

  119. says

    Stunning images show how American Indian fashion looks without cultural appropriation:

    It’s bigger than fashion.

    That’s the first thing to know about Bethany Yellowtail’s work, a vibrant, elegant melding of classic style and the staples of her Native upbringing. Elk teeth line the sleeves of one gown, drawn with intricate floral beadwork, that drapes, glistening black, on the body of Jade Willoughby, an Ojibwe model from the Whitesands First Nation in Northern Ontario, Canada.

    All of Yellowtail’s collaborators are indigenous: Thosh Collins, the photographer, is Onk Akimel O’Odham, Wah-Zah-Zi and Haudenosaunee. Martin Sensmeier, another model, is Tlingit, Koyukon and Athabascan. Promotional video director and poet Tazbah Rose Chavez, is Nüümü and Diné.

    And all have converged behind Yellowtail’s vision, a fashion collection that bears the unmistakable mark of Native American influence and history, but with a twist — it’s actually made by a Native American.

    This is rarer than one might assume. Indigenous designers are scarce in this space, and for most of its existence, the mainstream fashion industry’s relationship with Native peoples has been one of appropriation and — put bluntly — theft.

    Today, this trend is apparent every time Pharrell Williams graces the cover of Elle magazine in a warbonnet or Heidi Klum arranges a Project Runway fashion shoot starring white models in face paint, feathers, headdresses and animal pelts.

    “My brother is a chief, and those warbonnets are how we honor him,” Yellowtail told Mic in an interview. “You don’t just run around and parade in it.”

    Perhaps the most vivid example of appropriation from Yellowtail’s own experience occurred at this year’s Fashion Week in New York City. In a widely documented incident, London-based design label KTZ sent a model onto the runway wearing a dress that bore striking similarities to one Yellowtail herself had designed — including a multi-colored print bearing the distinctive hourglass pattern native to her Apsáalooke people.

    “That design I did comes from a bag that my great-grandmother made,” she told Mic. “I can’t even describe that feeling — here I am, trying to reclaim our voice and represent myself, and this designer acts as if [Native women] are not alive, like we can’t do this ourselves.

    “It felt personal. It really lit a fire under me.”

    ***

    Some good news-
    Ex-deputy indicted after no-knock raid that injured child:

    A former Georgia deputy sheriff was indicted Wednesday on federal charges for her role in setting up a “no-knock” drug raid that severely injured a toddler when a flash grenade detonated in his playpen.

    A federal grand jury indicted Former Habersham County Deputy Nikki Autry, 29, on charges of providing false information in a search warrant affidavit, Acting U.S. Attorney John Horn said. Autry also is charged with providing false information to obtain an arrest warrant.

    During the raid on the northeast Georgia home in May 2014, a flash grenade detonated in 19-month-old Bounkham “Bou Bou” Phonesavanh’s playpen, blowing his chest and face open and burning him.

    The Phonesavanh family was staying with relatives temporarily at the time of the raid because their home in Wisconsin had recently burned down.

    A Habersham County grand jury in October found that the investigation that led to the raid was “hurried” and “sloppy,” but the jury recommended no criminal charges be brought against the officers involved.

    Prosecutors said Autry, a 10-year department veteran, gave an affidavit to a Habersham County magistrate judge saying a reliable informant bought drugs from someone standing outside the home where the Phonesavanhs were staying. In the affidavit, Autry told the judge the informant had in the past provided information that led to criminal charges, investigators said.

    Prosecutors said that the informant was actually “brand new,” and that it was not him but his roommate — who was not working with the task force that executed the raid — who allegedly bought a small amount of methamphetamine, but there was no surveillance to verify the purchase.

    Investigators said that Autry knew the informant didn’t buy drugs from anyone inside the house, that the new informant wasn’t a proven reliable source, and that Autry didn’t confirm there was heavy traffic coming and going from the house before she gave the affidavit to the judge who issued the “no-knock” warrant, which was executed roughly two hours later.

    Prosecutors said the judge issued the warrant based on false information Autry is accused of providing. The flash grenade a deputy sheriff tossed into the house through a side door landed in the baby’s playpen, critically injuring him.

    The suspected drug dealer whom authorities had been looking for was not in the house, and was arrested at a nearby home afterward.

    Federal court records do not list an attorney for Autry, who could not be reached for comment.

    The toddler’s parents, Alecia and Bounkham Phonesavanh, in February filed a lawsuit in federal court in Gainesville seeking damages from Sheriff Joey Terrell and members of the task force that was involved in the raid.

    The lawsuit asks for a jury trial and seeks damages, including for physical injuries, emotional pain and suffering, medical bills and alleged violations of their constitutional and civil rights. It also seeks attorney fees and punitive damages.

    I hope they win. IIRC, the city refused to pay for the hospital bills for the child so that family needs all the financial help they can get.

  120. rq says

    Officials: Sandra Bland spoke of previous suicide attempt, and guess how they’re going to swing that one.

    The information was discussed in a closed meeting with dozens of elected officials and law enforcement on Tuesday, shortly before authorities made public the video of the arrest of Sandra Bland by a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper on July 10. She was taken to the jail after her arrest.

    Bland disclosed on a form at the jail that she previously had attempted suicide over that past year, although she also indicated she was not feeling suicidal at the time of her arrest, according to officials who attended the Tuesday meeting with local and state leaders investigating the case.

    Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, told the Chronicle that officials at the meeting said Bland’s suicide attempt was related to losing a baby. But Turner said Bland’s mental health history still remains “a little bit fuzzy.”

    Turner said Bland’s disclosure about her suicide attempt to jail authorities should have led to increased supervision by jail staff. And it illustrates “the need to make sure we provide the care and the interventions for people who are having behavioral and mental health issues when people are coming into our county jail system.”

    Another official who was at the meeting but did not want to be identified confirmed Turner’s comments.

    And in relation to that, someone asked, Where is the Trooper’s mental health history, @HoustonChron?

    The New Ferguson City Manager says this form has to be turned in 90 days before ANY protests. @aclu_mo @GlobalNomad87 – seriously, a protest form, 90 days in advance? Activists are outraged, and rightfully so.

    Dashcam footage clearly shows the real reason Sandra Bland changed lanes in the first place

    Below the fold is dashcam footage from the day Sandra Bland was arrested by Officer Brian Encinia. I’ve edited it to just show you the moment Bland’s first car appears in the video until the moment she stops her car because she is being pulled over.

    Upon analysis, it quickly confirms something Bland herself states later to the officer—the only reason she changed lanes, which the officer claimed was his rationale for pulling her over, was so that she could get out of the way for his patrol car.

    As you will see below, when Sandra Bland turns onto University Drive, she gets a significant distance away from Officer Encinia, who was driving in the opposite direction, but made a sudden U-turn and mashed on the gas to catch up to Bland’s vehicle. His speed is evident as he barrels down the road, which has a speed limit of 20 mph.

    Bland, clearly not wanting to be in his way, simply changes lanes, but does so without using her turn signal. He puts on his lights immediately.

    Notice that the officer NEVER mentions anything about the stop sign or his erratic U-Turn, or speeding in his police report. #SandraBland

    Alleged Charleston, SC, Church Shooter Dylann Storm Roof to Face Federal Hate Crime Charges

    Dylann Storm Roof will face federal hate crime charges, NPR reports. The Justice Department intends to indict the 21-year-old on federal charges today.

    Roof, who is accused of murdering nine people, including state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, in a mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., already faces nine murder counts as well as charges of attempted murder and a weapons charge. His trial for those will begin in the summer of 2016.

    The news of the pending indictments comes just over a month after Roof allegedly walked into a Wednesday-night prayer meeting and opened fire on the unsuspecting congregation, whose members had welcomed him.

  121. says

    Cincinnati police officer who fatally shot black motorist praised as ‘extremely proactive’:

    The University of Cincinnati police officer who shot a man to death after a traffic stop was described in an annual review this year as being “extremely proactive” with traffic enforcement.

    It was unclear whether that was meant to be high praise or an indication that he was overzealous in his policing. But a supervisor said the officer, Ray Tensing, “only meets the standards when it comes to community service,” according to records released by the university.

    The supervisor wrote that Tensing should interact with the public more outside of traffic enforcement to improve his demeanor.

    On Sunday night, Tensing shot and killed motorist Samuel Dubose, who was unarmed and in his car, allegedly after a brief struggle, according to university and city police.

    Tensing had pulled Dubose over for a missing front license plate. Moments later, Dubose was shot once in the head, police said. The officer has been placed on administrative leave.

    ****

    Sandra Bland arrest video: 12 burning questions answered:

    Did she really have to put out her cigarette? Exactly when was she arrested, and for what? Newly released dash cam footage of Sandra Bland’s arrest has raised as many questions as it has answered. To help make sense of the 49-minute video, we talked to Andrea Ritchie, a police misconduct attorney and co-author of “Say Her Name,” a recent report on black women’s experiences with state violence. Ritchie is not personally involved in the Sandra Bland investigation.

    1. The arresting officer tells Sandra Bland to get out of her car after she declines to put out her cigarette. Is that legal?
    Yes, unfortunately the officer can tell the driver to get out of the car. Now, whether the officer had a legitimate concern for his safety in that moment based on the fact that [Bland] was smoking a cigarette and questioning him is another story. I didn’t see anything in that video that would give the officer a reason to ask her to step out of her car other than to punish her for asking questions and saying, “Why should I have to put a cigarette out in my own car.”

    So, while technically he was correct in giving her a lawful order to get out of the car, from a practical perspective and from a best practices of law enforcement perspective and based on law enforcement officers being trained on how to de-escalate rather than escalate situations, it was completely unnecessary and resulted in escalation.

    If an officer looks into a car and sees the driver reaching into the console or glove compartment and sees maybe a gun sticking out of a seat or sees something that could be a weapon then that would be why an officer has justification to ask a driver to step out of a car. Or if they feel like the person is about to drive away, or trying to escape. That’s a legitimate reason why an officer would ask the driver to step out of the car.

    From watching that video it’s clear he mentions nowhere that he thought she had a gun, or that he saw a weapon or anything of that nature. The car was clearly stopped. It wasn’t even that the car was running and she had her foot on the break. Her brake lights weren’t on.

    So while an officer can tell a driver to get out of the car at any time, there was no practical reason to that he articulated or that was visible. She was calm, she was in her car. She was definitely irritated. He asked her why she was irritated. She gave him an honest answer. At that point the best practices for procedure would be to either take her license and information and walk away and give her the ticket. Or try an de-escalate the situation that he clearly escalated.

    2. When Bland refuses to get out of her car, is that legal?
    For a driver, if you’re told to get out of the car, you have to get out of the car. She said, “Why do I have to get out of my car?” and she is entitled to ask a question. And at that moment he could have said, “You know I am worried you’re going to drive away, I think you’re reaching for a weapon, I’m afraid for my safety.” He didn’t have to answer, but he could have. Instead he just escalated the situation further by screaming at her, screaming at her, screaming at her, and continuing to detain her.

    3. Was the officer allowed to pull his taser on her and threaten her with the words “I’m going to light you up?”
    I don’t know the excessive force policy of the department, but the best practices of law enforcement is to use the least amount of force necessary in a situation. At the time he could see all of her body; no part of her was making any contact with any part of his body. While she was verbally questioning his behavior, she wasn’t threatening him verbally in any way, she wasn’t threatening him physically in any way. The car wasn’t preparing to leave, there was no indication the car was moving. So I can see from looking at that no justification whatsoever for threatening to use force on her in that moment other than being punitive.

    And to the extent that he needed to use restraint or put his hands on her in what he called a “lawful order,” the first thing you should do is try verbal communication. The next step is to try something involving using your hands, and for many departments, tasers are supposed to be a last resort, and only a substitute for lethal force. [They’re] not supposed to be something you use to get compliance when you haven’t tried anything else. And they’re not supposed to be something you use to punish people. Clearly in that situation he was threatening to use it to punish her and went straight from zero to a thousand. There was nothing in that video that shows he was under threat from her physically. Nor was she verbally threatening to him. Nor did she present any physical threat to him. There was absolutely no justification for him to threaten to “light her up” to get her to comply with an order. And I just want to point out that she voluntarily got out of the car. He did not pull her out of the car. She voluntarily got out of the car.

    4. When Bland asks him 14 times what she’s being arrested for, is he supposed to tell her?
    He’s not required by law to answer, but again it’s generally understood best practice of law enforcement, especially when there’s no dangerous circumstances. Obviously, the best practice is to give the person information.

    5. I don’t understand how the arresting officer can tell Bland she is going to jail for resisting arrest. How can you be arrested for resisting arrest?
    There has to be a lawful arrest in order to be resisting it. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has decided that you can be arrested for a traffic violation, and that it’s entirely up to the officer’s discretion whether they’re going to give you a ticket or arrest you. It was a Supreme case called Atwater that said that. So, the thing about the camera is that it fails to show whether or not she didn’t signal [for a lane change]. But the moment she failed to use her turn signal, he had probable cause to arrest her.

    He didn’t just arrest her for resisting arrest. I think what he was saying was, I now exercise my discretion to arrest you for failure to turn because you were non-compliant and now I’m also going to charge you with resisting arrest.

    6. Are the police allowed to search her car?
    Yes. When she’s under arrest they can search the immediate area around her. And in this case they were impounding the car because she isn’t going to drive anywhere, so they’re allowed to search it before impounding it.

  122. rq says

    And here is the official statement re: #SandraBland from Texas Governor Abbott. (via @davidmcswane) “Hearts and prayers with the family, investigation proceeding, answers, justice, etc., etc.”

    10 Things About The Sandra Bland Traffic Stop Every Texan Should Know, another one on the legalities, similar to Tony’s 12 questions above.

    On July 10, 28-year-old Sandra Bland was arrested and charged with assaulting a public servant. She was taken to the Waller County Jail; three days later, she was found in her cell dead from what officials called suicide. Both the FBI and the Texas Rangers launched investigations trying to find out what happened.

    Dashboard camera footage from Bland’s traffic stop was released on Tuesday. (Note: The video was uploaded to YouTube Tuesday evening; it has since been taken down, after people pointed out errors and inconsistencies in the video, which led many to believe it had been edited. A DPS spokesman denied editing the video, and said this morning they would re-upload the footage without errors or omissions.)

    Questions, in the wake of the video: What are the rules? Not policies or politeness – specifically, what are your rights when you’re pulled over by police?

    Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, speaks with Texas Standard about the footage of the arrest, point-by-point. Here’s a transcript of the conversation, edited for brevity and clarity:

    The trooper asks, “You mind putting out your cigarette please?” And Ms. Bland says, “Well, I’m in my car – why do I have to put out my cigarette?” Does she have to put out her cigarette?

    “No, she doesn’t have to put out her cigarette. And you wonder why the officer is even bothering with that. This is part of his escalation of the whole event that unfolded, unfortunately.”

    The next part: “Step out of the car.” Ms. Bland says, “You do not have the right.” He interrupts – “I do have the right, step out of the car or I will remove you.” Does he have the right, first, to order her to step out of the car, and second, to actually physically remove her from the car?

    “He does not have the right to say get out of the car. He has to express some reason. ‘I need to search your car,’ or, whatever; he needs to give a reason. He can’t just say ‘get out of the car’ for a traffic offense.”

    It’s one thing to say he has a reason; it’s another to say he has to give a reason. He may have had probable cause, or thought he had it, we don’t know. Does he have to state it?

    “He doesn’t have to state probable cause; he has to state some reason … And that’s part of the training that he should have had about how to de-escalate a situation. She’s clearly upset about what happened, particularly – as we know later on – that she moved over because he was tailing her. … He should be working on de-escalation. That’s the key. ”

    Ms. Bland says, “I refuse to talk to you other than to identify myself.” Is she right or wrong?

    “She’s right. Unfortunately, officers don’t like it when you know the law. In this case, even if you are right, you are still in danger. And that’s what we see unfolding here.”

    More at the link, including audio. It’s very similar to the video I posted yesterday, about what to do when encountering an agitated or confrontational officer. Unfortunately, you can do everything right, and they can still be assholes and do their own thing.

    Coroner just texted #SandraBland family atty: they messed up autopsy & “have to do another one.” Dashcam & jail tape missing chunks of time.
    Let me have someone say that again, Lawyer for #SandraBland’s family tells @Lawrence: Texas officials want to do another autopsy on the body, say 1st was defective. #lastword
    Defective HOW? Defective WHY?
    Lawyer for #SandraBland’s family tells @Lawrence: “We have absolutely no intention of moving her body.” #LastWord #SayHerName So they’re refusing. I don’t know if their independent autopsy has been completed yet, but I was thinking about that arrest and a possible head injury, one not medically attended, plus others have been talking about how head injuries affect people with epilepsy, and I’m starting to think that maybe it wasn’t suicide.
    Oh, which is mentioned here: The first one must have showed exactly what happens when you slam an epileptic’s head into the ground.

    Voicemail from Sandra Bland, as left on a friend’s phone.
    So there’s that, and there’s tweets and probably will be articles with her medical information (that she submitted to the jail), and I’m not comfortable sharing ALL of that on here. I will be linking articles that may contain links to that information, but I won’t be adding any of the tweets that have this information attached to them, unless it’s a statement about those records. I think there’s only one significant one that I have tabbed. Just an FYI.

  123. rq says

    Okay, I miscounted links. Please check back for a new 122.

    Shift focus for a moment to another traffic stop gone bad: MPD Does Not Have Passenger Policy For Traffic Stops

    Darrius Stewart, the 19-year-old Memphis man who was shot and killed by Memphis Police officer Connor Schilling, was a passenger in a car pulled over for having a headlight out.

    The driver of the vehicle reportedly got off with a ticket, but police on the scene put Stewart in the back of a squad car while running a check for active warrants. The police account of what happened says that, when Schilling opened the squad car to handcuff Stewart, the man kicked the door and tried to attack the officer. Shortly after the warrant check, police reported that Stewart had been shot and an ambulance was called for. Stewart later died at The Med. Some have questioned whether or not the police should have even been checking on warrants for a passenger.

    When asked if the Memphis Police Department (MPD) had a policy in place on dealing with passengers during traffic stops, MPD spokesperson Karen Rudolph said no set policy exists.

    “There is no policy in place that says to or not to check passengers in a vehicle; however, it is common practice for officers to identify those they come in contact with during a traffic stop or while on the scene of any other type of call. The person may be requested but not compelled to provide identification or other information,” Rudolph wrote in an email to the Flyer.

    In a press conference Wednesday morning, Memphis chapter NAACP president Keith Norman said they were looking into the rights of passengers in traffic stops.

    “We have questions about what are the rights of a passenger under the rule of law during a mere traffic violation,” Norman said. “Should officers have the right to question everyone in the car? This can lead to inappropriate contact with citizens who have not committed a crime.”

    On Wednesday afternoon, Mayor A C Wharton released a statement on the need for a clear policy on questioning, searching, and detaining passengers in cars at traffic stops.

    “I’ve not gotten a clear answer,” said Wharton. “I have asked Director [Toney] Armstrong to do a thorough review and make sure we immediately get a clearly understood policy as to when it is standard operating procedure or permissible to question, detain and search a passenger. Police stops are made every day and officers need to know this.”

    “This not just about the Stewart case. We have heard assertions about ‘driving while Black’, now we hear questions about ‘riding while Black’. The public wants to know what the courts say about their rights as passengers, what MPD policy is, and what’s being taught in the police academy. These are the questions I’m being asked and that we need answers to,” Wharton said.

    The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is currently looking into the case. Schilling has been relieved of duty pending the outcome of the investigation.

    Memphis cop fatally shoots 19-year-old after ‘mistaking him for another person’ , I think a repost. Please note, though, that this article mentions that Stewart was the driver, while the article above claims he was only a passenger.

    FOX13 uncovers identity of officer involved in shooting of Darrius Stewart

    Three independent law enforcement sources have told FOX13 News Officer Connor Schilling was the Memphis Police officer involved in Friday night’s deadly shooting. 19-year-old Darrius Stewart was shot and killed during a struggle with the officer according to the Memphis Police Department.

    Police have said the officer was acting in self-defense.

    The investigation into the shooting has been turned over to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

    A TBI spokesman told FOX13 in an email, “As policy, we do not identify the officers involved in these types of incidents. Instead, we leave that to the respective departments.”

    NYPD Assaults 11-Year-Old in the Bronx — On Video. That’s the NYPD, leading by example.

    Take a look at this video, in which a white male New York City police lieutenant grabbed a 6th grade elementary school student of color — big for her age but only 11 years old — around the neck and threw her to the pavement on a Bronx street corner, six months after Eric Garner was wrestled down on a Staten Island pavement. (The video is grainy because it was copied from a surveillance camera onto a phone before the family came to me seeking legal representation; the original surveillance videotape was automatically taped over).

    Here’s the background. This past February, after school was out for the day, some boys from the school were throwing snowballs at a passing car. When the driver got out to yell at them — and put one of the boys in a headlock — his smartphone fell out of his pocket and another boy picked it up. Upon realizing his phone was gone, the driver chased down one of the boys and threatened to call the police if the phone was not returned, and when it was not forthcoming, he did, apparently using someone else’s phone.

    This 6th grader — let’s call her Angie — and a classmate were walking from school to the bus stop when they saw some of this. They were bystanders who had nothing to do with either the snowballs or the phone. But as the police arrived, the girls exchanged words as to whether they should stay to watch, or go, and then took off running for a block before stopping.

    The driver — the man in the white jacket with the knapsack in the video — seeing Angie running, suspected — wrongly — that she was part of the group and had his phone. He approached Angie and asked for his phone. She told him she didn’t have his phone.

    Shortly thereafter, as the video starts, this police lieutenant crossed the street, motioning for Angie to come toward him, which she did. But instead of engaging her verbally and asking her anything, like her name, or about the phone, he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her roughly toward him. Shocked, and scared, we can see her trying to protest, but he does not let go; instead, he escalates the situation, pushing her toward the camera, frightening her even more, and then grabs her around the neck and throws her to the ground, where he rolls her over and rear cuffs her. It was totally unnecessary and gratuitous police violence, borne out of the same disrespect which animated the violence visited upon Mr. Garner. If Angie were white on the Upper East Side rather than Hispanic in the Bronx, would it have happened?

    After Angie’s arrest (and that of one of the boys), the police quickly determined that she did not have the phone. She was released to her parents. The shopkeeper in front of whose premises Angie was assaulted let her mother copy the video onto her phone.

    The arrest was referred to the Family Court’s probation department, which supervises an adjustment process that requires the child to attend programs based on an assumption of guilt. Properly thinking that such punishment was not good for a child innocent of any wrongdoing, Angie’s parents declined the adjustment process. Thereafter, for months, the case lay dormant without charges, leading them to think that the prosecutor, from the office of the Corporation Counsel of the City of New York, had decided not to prosecute.

    Almost three months after the incident, Angie’s parents served formal notice on the City that they were going to pursue claims on Angie’s behalf of police assault and battery and the use of excessive force, among others. Such claims are defended by the same Corporation Counsel of the City of New York that prosecutes Family Court proceedings after arrests like Angie’s. A month after the City acknowledged receipt of such claim, the Corporation Counsel commenced a juvenile delinquency proceeding against Angie, in which this police lieutenant swore under oath that, during a “struggle” with Angie, she “and I both slipped and fell to the ground. On the ground [Angie] continued to flail her arms and thrash her body, preventing me from placing handcuffs on her. We continued to struggle until I was eventually able to place handcuffs on” Angie.

    As is obvious from the video, neither he nor Angie slipped on ice — he grabbed her around the neck and threw her to the floor. Nor did she flail her arms and thrash her body. All she did was take one arm away briefly to wipe the tears from her eye and then put her arm right back again behind her back. This police supervisor’s sworn statement appears to be a false statement in official records designed to cover his abusive conduct and defend himself and the City from Angie’s claim.

    Freddie Gray Case Brings New Effort To Reexamine Additional Police Custody Deaths

    There’s a growing number of calls for the city state’s attorney to investigate other police custody deaths.

    Derek Valcourt explains the push to re-open some of these cases.

    The death of Tyrone West while being arrested in north Baltimore in 2013 led to city hall hearings, and a decision by then City State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein not to charge any officers with wrong doing saying their use of force was justified. That outraged his family.

    West’s heartbroken family has now filed a federal lawsuit but they haven’t stopped demanding justice for Tyrone.

    Now they’re getting some support from City Councilman Warren Branch who’s calling on new City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby to reexamine the case after she announced charges against all six officers involved in the high profile in-custody death of Freddie Gray.

    “We might get the same results that Greg Bernstein got, but just having a fresh set of eyes take a look at it it’s nothing,” said Councilman Branch.

    Branch says Mosby should also reexamine two other in-custody deaths including the death of Anthony Anderson.

    Those families and their attorneys aren’t comfortable with how Bernstein handled their cases.

    As the article notes, Bernstein just accepted what the PD told him. Sounds like a thorough investigation to me.

    Assessing the Legality of Sandra Bland’s Arrest, from the New York Times, a commentated recap bit-by-bit.

    A dashboard camera video released by Texas officials, which contains vulgar language, confirms accounts of a physical confrontation between Sandra Bland and a state trooper. Ms. Bland, an African-American woman from the Chicago area, was arrested on July 10 during a traffic stop. She died three days later in her jail cell. Her arrest and cause of death remain in dispute.

    So yeah, 1) watch out for that vulgar language and 2) someone has mentioned that the original released video was 52 minutes long, while the second edit (yes, I’m calling it that!) is 49 minutes long. Interesting détaille.

  124. rq says

    Question: Are you thinking about killing yourself? #SandraBland: No – Waller County Jail Medical Health Evaluation – she did, apparently, admit to a suicide attempt either this year or last year, which is now being labelled as a sign that she may have been suicidal. However:
    #SandraBland’s suicide attempt was this year, not 2014. She told jailers she was diagnosed with epilepsy, taking anti-seizure med, Keppra. From the comments on that, I understand that suddenly not taking that medication can have serious side effects. So, if cops were withholding her medication, or she did not have access to it, then… some serious medical negligence going on here.
    NO #SandraBland NEVER ADMITTED TO SUICIDE ATTEMPTS @ttthomas1 and it’s right there in her medical intake. So there’s conflicting reports, one which has Bland’s name on it, one which (in photo) does not.

    They Killed Her. They Fucking Killed Sandra Bland

    My wife and I went to the YMCA tonight; her to take a yoga class, me to play basketball. After the Y we went to Giant Eagle, and sat in the parking lot for 10 minutes to create a grocery list. While doing this, I checked my phone for emails, texts, and Facebook/Twitter notifications. A link shared on my Facebook feed took me to Gawker. And there I watched several minutes of the recently released dashcam footage of Sandra Bland’s arrest.

    And then I started crying.

    My wife didn’t notice it. She was still going over the list on her phone. Plus, I wasn’t bawling. My eyes had just begun to water. Not wanting her to see them, I spent a minute or so just staring out my window, trying to will them dry. It didn’t work.

    She finally noticed something was wrong.

    “Babe, is everything ok?”

    “They killed her. They fucking killed her.”

    I’m sure the anger will come. And then the outrage. And then my mind will be clearer. And then I’ll be able to write something better. Something (hopefully) powerful and poetic and poignant about police brutality. About Sandra Bland.

    But right now, at this moment, I just feel a sadness. An all-encompassing, panoramic, sadness that plateaus momentarily and then crescendos every time I write Sandra Bland or see Sandra Bland’s name. I am devastated by this. And that devastation escalates when seeing my wife and the child she’s carrying and realizing how easily — how effortlessly — Sandra Bland could have been her. Screamed on, threatened, and forced out of her car like a fucking dog. And suffocated, alone, in a fucking jail cell. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck this fucking shit, man. Fuck.

    I have nothing else to say tonight. I am hopeful and confident that I will have more to say about this eventually. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not. Good night.

    @isiahcareyFOX26, a Houston reporter, has noted that they’ve now left an open bible in #SandraBland’s former cell. A previous media team apparently either didn’t notice it, didn’t mention it, or it wasn’t there.

  125. rq says

    Hundreds are already gathered in NYC to pay their respects and #SayHerName #SandraBland
    #NYC stands with #SandraBland and has gathered to tell the rest of America to #SayHerName
    Union Square. NYC. #SandraBland #SayHerName

    Sending out the #BlackTwitter signal. @deray we got a time sensitive matter. Please circulate. Calling attention in North Carolina (that’s NC, right?) to a law about to be passed that would allow for confederate memorials and symbols in the public space.

    “Between the World and Me”: Ta-Nehisi Coates Extended Interview on Being Black in America, via Democracy Now!

    We spend the hour with Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of “Between the World and Me,” an explosive new book about white supremacy and being black in America. The book begins, “Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage.” It is written as a letter to his 15-year-old son, Samori, and is a combination of memoir, history and analysis. Its publication comes amidst the shooting of nine African-American churchgoers by an avowed white supremacist in Charleston; the horrifying death of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old African-American woman in Texas who was pulled over for not signaling a lane change; and the first anniversary of the police killings of Eric Garner in Staten Island and Michael Brown in Ferguson. Coates talks about how he was influenced by freed political prisoner Marshall “Eddie” Conway and writer James Baldwin, and responds to critics of his book, including Cornel West and New York Times columnist David Brooks. Coates is a national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues.

    There’s a transcript at the link.

    CNN panel explodes after ex-cop says Sandra Bland died because she was ‘arrogant from the beginning’. Arrogant? More like firm, determined, and ready to stand up for herself. But because she’s black, that gets turned into ‘arrogant’ and ‘combative’. It’s disgusting.

    CNN contributor and former NYPD detective Harry Houck argued on Tuesday that a Texas woman would not have died in police custody if she had not been “arrogant from the very beginning.”

    Disturbing dashcam video released on Tuesday shows a Texas trooper pulling Sandra Bland over for failure to signal, but the incident quickly escalates when she refuses to put out a lit cigarette, prompting the officer to remove her from the vehicle. The 28-year-old black woman was found dead in a county jail cell three days later under suspicious circumstances.
    ADVERTISEMENT

    “An officer does have the choice to bring anyone out of the vehicle when he stops them for his own safety,” Houck told CNN’s Don Lemon on Tuesday. “The whole thing here is that she was very arrogant from the beginning, very dismissive of the officer, alright?”

    CNN political contributor Marc Lamont Hill pointed out that Bland did not have a legal responsibility to “kiss the officer’s butt.”

  126. rq says

    So, they’ll release #SandraBland’s mental health evaluation form but won’t release her autopsy. Oh, okay. I think the official one, not the one requested by the family.

    Sandra Bland told jailers she’d once tried suicide, jail documents say – which now means she was for sure-for sure trying it again, right?

    Sandra Bland, who died in a Texas cell three days after her arrest during a traffic stop, told jailers that she had previously tried to commit suicide by taking pills because she had lost a baby, according to booking documents released Wednesday.

    The documents were made public as officials investigated whether Bland killed herself on July 13 in the Waller County Jail, where she was being held on a felony charge of assaulting a state trooper who had pulled her over in Prairie View, Texas.

    Her family and friends have insisted that the 28-year-old Illinois woman was upbeat about getting a new job in Prairie View and would never have taken her own life.

    The family lawyer, Cannon Lambert, told reporters at a televised news conference Wednesday that there was no evidence that Bland had ever attempted suicide or been treated for depression. Texas officials were trying to shift the focus away from the contentious arrest on July 10 that started the chain of events that led to the discovery of Bland’s body in the cell three days later, he said.

    Law enforcement officials had briefed local lawmakers about the jail documents on Tuesday, and the substance of them was reported in the local press. On Wednesday, the county prosecutor’s office released the documents after inquiries from the media.

    Question 14 asks whether the woman being arrested had ever attempted suicide and if so, when, why and how. Bland responded to the screening officer that she had attempted suicide “in 2015, lost baby, by taking pills,” the documents showed.

    The form also noted that Bland did not seem confused, preoccupied, sad or paranoid when she was interviewed.

    The article conveniently skips mention of the question just prior to the one about previous suicide attempts, the one that asks ‘Are you thinking about killing yourself?’ (perhaps I paraphrase).

    Showing Eickhoff form #Ferguson Clerk gave 4 scheduling protests. “72hrs notice?” “No, 90 days” “Let me make a call.”

    Ex-cop and blackface performer’s fundraiser for officers in Freddie Gray case canceled – good.

    A Glen Burnie venue on Wednesday abruptly canceled a planned fundraiser for the six Baltimore police officers charged in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray after the scheduled entertainment — a former Baltimore officer singing in blackface — drew sharp criticism.

    Bobby Berger, 67, who was fired from the city police force in the 1980s after his off-duty performances in blackface drew the ire of the NAACP, had said he wanted to revive the act to help the families of the officers.

    He said he had sold 600 tickets at $45 each to the bull roast scheduled for Nov. 1 at Michael’s Eighth Avenue, where he and several singers planned to perform as guests dined.

    In his performances, Berger impersonates Al Jolson, a white entertainer from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s best remembered for his blackface performance of “Mammy” in the film “The Jazz Singer.”

    But after news of the event began spreading Wednesday, Michael’s posted a statement on its website saying the event would not be held there.

    “No contract was signed with Mr. Berger,” the venue wrote. “Michael’s does not condone blackface performances of any kind. As an event venue, it has not been the practice of Michael’s Eighth Avenue to pre-approve entertainment that is planned as part of a contracted event. This policy will be carefully and thoughtfully reviewed.”

    Berger’s plans drew criticism earlier in the day from the NAACP, the city police union and an attorney representing one of the officers charged in the Gray case.

    Ivan Bates, who represents Sgt. Alicia D. White, called the planned entertainment “racist and in poor taste.”

    “My client will not participate. We will not accept a single solitary dime from this sort of action,” Bates said before the show was canceled. “This is the type of racist behavior that we do not need and do not want.”

    Good because (a) not too fond of holding fundraisers for these six cops and (b) blackface is just wrong – also, I suppose he forgot that two of the accused officers are black. And they might not be as entertained, esp. if the event is supposedly in their um honour.

    The new Ferguson interim police chief reminds me of when Ferguson PD was called racist, they hired that “PR” person Devin. Another blk face.

    Why Hillary Clinton and her rivals are struggling to grasp Black Lives Matter

    Then, this week, Clinton rivals Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley each began a frenetic push to appease Black Lives Matter activists who are angry about the way the two men handled a demonstration by the group at a liberal conference last weekend. O’Malley, a former governor of Maryland, appeared on a black-oriented talk show to say he made a mistake, while Sanders, a senator from Vermont, called activists to request meetings.

    The strained interactions demonstrate the extent to which a vibrant new force on the left has disrupted traditional presidential politics, creating challenges for Democratic candidates who are facing intense pressure to put police brutality and other race-
    related issues on the front burner ahead of the 2016 election.

    The rise of Black Lives Matter has presented opportunities for Clinton and her opponents, who are seeking to energize black voters to build on the multiethnic coalitions that twice elected Barack Obama. But the candidates have struggled to tap into a movement that has proved unpredictable and fiercely independent. It is a largely organic web of young African American activists — many of them unbound by partisan allegiances and largely un­affiliated with establishment groups such as the NAACP that typically forge close ties with Democrats.

    Led by several dozen core activists, many of whom voted for the first time in 2008, Black Lives Matter has organized protests — at times drawing hundreds of participants — in more than two dozen cities and colleges. Many of the movement’s leading activists are among Twitter’s most influential users — with the ability to pump messages out to hundreds of thousands of people, often prompting topics to trend nationwide.

    At times, they have pressured media outlets to cover stories surrounding race and justice, and they have leveled sharp critiques of politicians and celebrities that often go viral. In one such instance, activists blasted Clinton when she appeared at a black church near Ferguson last month and said that “all lives matter” — a phrase that struck the demonstrators as dismissive of the unique discrimination against African Americans by law enforcement officers.

    The activists say they are ready to make their voices heard in the presidential race. Although they are pressuring candidates to talk more about police brutality, they say they intend to carve out a broader agenda encompassing other issues relating to systemic racism.

    “If you are running to be the leader of the free world, it is your responsibility to seize the opportunity that the protest movement has created,” said Brittany Packnett, 30, a St. Louis-based activist who serves on a White House task force formed after the Ferguson protests to study policing issues.
    “Unless candidates are willing to discuss legislative, statutory and legal action that they will support or take themselves as president in order to right deeply entrenched historical wrongs, then they’re not really ready to play at the level that the protest movement will require of them,” Packnett said.

    Patrisse Cullors, another leading organizer, added: “It’s not going to be easy to get our votes.”

    Democratic leaders are taking note, party strategists say. The campaigns recognize the importance of reaching out to the movement, and understand the perils of ignoring it.

    Except sometimes they’re kind of crap at paying attention or really understanding:

    At Netroots Nation, the two candidates may have expected to receive a warm welcome. Instead, they seemed to wilt under the questions of protesters, who stormed the space around the stage and recited the names of black people who have been killed in confrontations with police.

    Many liberal activists consider the episode an embarrassment for the two candidates, who appeared ill prepared to respond to questions many thought they should have expected.

    Sanders threatened to leave the stage as demonstrators demanded that he repeat the name of Sandra Bland, a black woman who died in a Texas jail cell this month.

    Then he canceled a series of meetings he had scheduled with some of the activists following his appearance — something they found out only when ­campaign manager Jeff Weaver showed up in Sanders’s stead.

    “I think they were trying to stanch the bleeding from the larger conversation about Sanders, that he’s not talking about issues of color in his stump speech,” said Elon James White, co-founder of a popular online broadcast, “This Week in Blackness.” “And then [they] canceled.”

    More on O’Malley and also Clinton at the link, and at least one Republican candidate.

  127. rq says

    What police are saying about the Sandra Bland video

    The video of Encinia’s tactics — at one point he pulled out his Taser and yelled “I will light you up!” — caused the Texas Department of Public Safety to place him on desk duty pending the outcome of the investigation into Bland’s death. “Regardless of the situation, the DPS state trooper has an obligation to exhibit professionalism and be courteous,” said DPS Director Steve McCraw. “That did not happen in this situation.”

    While public reaction to the video has generally been negative, law enforcement officers’ reactions to it were mixed. A thread devoted to the video on ProtectAndServe, the law enforcement community of Reddit, has garnered 331 comments so far. A round-up of those comments, below, offers some insight into the Sandra Bland arrest through a police officer’s eyes. The comments that follow are from users verified as sworn law enforcement officers by the site’s moderators.

    “meuglerbull” gives a helpful rundown of the state and federal law applying in cases like this. The 1977 Supreme Court decision Pennsylvania vs. Mimms has generally been understood to allow officers to order people to exit a car during a traffic stop, for any reason.

    But “Quick_Everyone_Panic” notes that a lawful order isn’t necessarily a prudent one — “It’s not worth turning a simple traffic stop into a major ordeal just because somebody wouldn’t put a cigarette out,” he writes.
    […]

    And in focusing on the video, it’s easy to lose sight of some of the broader issues Bland’s traffic stop brings up, like the well-documented phenomenon of “driving while black,” and the larger structural components of racism in the area Bland was pulled over.

    Perhaps the cruelest irony of Bland’s death is that she was a civil rights advocate who often spoke out against police violence, and about problems between police officers and the black communities they serve. She lived and breathed these very issues. And last week, she died by them.

    If you read the cited comments from (supposed) police officers, many express suspicion at the lit cigarette – some suggesting that she only lit up once she was stopped, etc. But if she was just smoking in her car – which means one hand is busy and hence it’s more likely she didn’t have a chance to signal before her lane change – then there’s no reason to be suspicious (for me). People smoke in their cars. Why is this suspicious? (I know, I know.)

    Why Ferguson’s Black Interim Police Chief May Be Set Up To Fail

    In what is known as the glass cliff phenomenon, women and people of color are hired in times of crisis to clean house, but are blamed for not being able to solve the problem quickly or without hitting a few obstacles. This pattern often affects corporate executives, who are called upon to fix problems that their white, male predecessors left. When the job hits a rough patch or is completed too slowly, women and minorities are ousted and labeled failures who drove the companies into a deeper hole. For instance, Ellen Pao, the former interim CEO of Reddit, recently stepped down from her position after the contentious termination of popular staffer Victoria Taylor. Pao took the job after a slew of scandals damaged the reputation of the site, and she may not have been involved in Taylor’s departure at all.

    Studies show that white men typically occupy leadership positions when companies and organizations are successful. Minorities and women are hired to shakeup the status quo when business goes awry, in part because white men do not want to be associated with a sinking ship. Moreover, many women and people color see these types of shakeups as the only means to advance in a company, and are therefore more likely to step up to the plate.

    “We’ve known for a long time that women and minorities find it hard to break into the top ranks of organizations because of subtle barriers, and that’s known as the glass ceiling,” says social scientist Shankar Vedantam. “If the glass ceiling means that there are invisible barriers that limit the mobility of women and minorities, the glass cliff suggests that when women and minorities are promoted they tend to be promoted to struggle at firms or firms in crisis. In other words, they’re pushed off the glass cliff.”

    But the glass cliff also impacts law enforcement. Early this month, Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts was relieved of duty by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, months after Freddie Gray’s death in police custody. Rawlings-Blake originally hired Batts because he was able to reduce the crime rate in Long Beach, California. But a spike in homicides in Baltimore since Gray’s death, coupled with officer backlash, created an even more fraught relationship between police and black residents in the city, and the police union pinned the blame on Batts.

    The former commissioner was critical of how members of his force handled unrest in the city, and said Gray should have received immediate medical attention. He also admitted that Gray could have been abused — an admission that outraged the Baltimore police union. The union submitted a disapproving report to the mayor, arguing Batts was responsible for the rioting that took place and “put officers in harm’s way.”

    While it is too early to tell what changes Anderson will make during his tenure in Ferguson, he may be poised to follow in Batts’ footsteps.

    Beware the glass cliff!

    Federal charges including hate crimes for accused shooter – did I just post this?

    Fundraiser for Baltimore cops charged in Freddie Gray’s death to feature blackface performance , Salon on the fundraiser before it got cancelled.

    Family of Feras Morad, college student shot by Long Beach police, wants $28 million

    The family of Feras Morad, a college student shot and killed by a Long Beach police officer in May, is seeking $28 million in damages from the city and is demanding changes to police policies, procedures and practices.

    Attorneys Dan Stormer and Joshua Piovia-Scott filed the claim for damages against the city and the police department this morning on behalf of the family. The claim, which makes no specific recommendations about changing police policy and procedures, represents the first legal step toward a lawsuit.

    The Press-Telegram has reached out to City Attorney Charles Parkin’s office and is awaiting comment.

    A homeless woman picked up an LAPD nightstick during the skid row shooting — and could get life in prison. FOR WHAT?

    Millions of people viewed video of the fatal police shooting March 1 of an unarmed black man known as “Africa” outside his skid row tent.

    Police said the man, Cameroonian immigrant Charly Keunang, grabbed an officer’s holstered gun when they tried to take him into custody on suspicion of robbery. The shooting stoked long-simmering tensions and anger among skid row inhabitants and advocates who accuse Los Angeles police of being too quick to resort to heavy-handed, violent tactics.

    Lost in the debate was a second actor in the confrontation: A thin black woman who stepped into the frame and picked up a nightstick one of the officers dropped during the fierce struggle with Keunang.

    The homeless woman, Trishawn Cardessa Carey, 34, has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon against a police officer and resisting arrest, and could face 25 years to life in prison under California’s three-strikes sentencing law for repeat offenders.

    After nearly five months in jail, Carey was granted a reduction in bail late Wednesday afternoon, to $50,000 from just over $1 million.

    Carey’s supporters, about a dozen of whom showed up in Los Angeles County Superior Court for the hearing, tie her case to the national movement against mass incarceration of black people, which got a boost this month in a speech by President Obama.

    “These excessive charges are just updated Jim Crow,” said Suzette Shaw, a member of Los Angeles Community Action Network’s Downtown Women’s Action Coalition.

    Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregory Denton rejected the characterization. “It’s just one woman charged here,” he said.

    Whether she ends up in prison for decades may ultimately hinge on the video.

    The footage shows Carey briefly lifting the baton as police scuffle with Keunang nearby. It does not show her swinging the club or striking anyone, and the prosecutor says he won’t try to prove she did so.

    Instead, Denton said he will argue that Carey attempted to attack an officer by “picking up the officer’s baton and raising the baton to strike the officer.”

    “An attempt to strike someone is assault,” Denton said. “There’s no mystery here. The reality is all the conduct involved in this case is on the video.”

    Defense attorney Milton Grimes said he will try to show that Carey, whom he described as mentally ill, didn’t threaten or attack any of the officers.

    “I’ve seen the video, you’ve seen the video; she doesn’t go after anybody,” Grimes said. “Is possession of a baton an assault? No. The legal basis appears to me to be a distraction or coverup of the killing of a man by the police.”

    Ye gods. She picked up a stick and that’s assault? I can’t.

  128. rq says

    Charleston police investigating apparent bullet holes at another AME church

    Police in Charleston, S.C., are investigating shots fired at an African American church after receiving a vandalism report.

    A member of the Bethel African Methodist Church found four holes in the building’s front window Wednesday morning, according to a statement from Charleston police posted on Twitter. The church member, who is unidentified, also found broken glass inside the building.

    “It appears the damage was from gunshots. The church was unoccupied when this incident occurred,” the police statement said.

    Authorities will patrol the James Island, S.C., area during church services, the statement also said. Bethel is about five miles south of the Emanuel AME Church, where nine people were slain last month allegedly by white supremacist Dylann Roof.

    The Rev. Joe Darby, presiding elder of the AME Church’s Beaufort District, told the Post and Courier none of the AME churches have received threats to his knowledge, but the churches are more alert since the mass shooting at Emanuel AME Church last month in Charleston.

    “Most of our churches are trying to be more vigilant these days,” Darby told the Post and Courier.

    Sandra Bland Told Jailers She Was Depressed, Attempted Suicide Before: Jail Records, just NBC news getting on that dismissively victim-blame-y bandwagon.

    I’m sick. #SayHerName #SandraBland Just some attached screenshots for reading and thinking about, re: inconsistencies.

    Sheku Bayoh’s family say their confidence in police is ‘shattered’ after his death

    Speaking ahead of the official launch of a campaign for justice this weekend, they called for cross-party support in their quest for the truth.

    Their comments follow a meeting with Kirkcaldy MP Roger Mullin who will this week seek a meeting with the chief constable to discuss the case.

    Mr Bayoh, 31, died in hospital on May 3 after being detained by officers using batons and CS spray in a Kirkcaldy.

    Solicitor Aamer Anwar, acting on behalf of the Bayoh family, said: “The last 11 weeks have only increased the serious concerns that Sheku’s family have in what happened to him.

    “Their confidence in Police Scotland is shattered and it is essential that all politicians have the courage to speak out in support of the family’s demands for justice and truth.”

    In her response to Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift has just proven that she’s white feminism’s off-beat, bambi-legged Patronus

    When the VMA nominees were announced on Tuesday, Nicki Minaj was not best pleased. Despite nominations for Best Female and Hip-Hop Video, her oiled-up, internet-breaking offering Anaconda didn’t make the Best Video shortlist. It left the rapper rightfully feeling snubbed – and she let Twitter know about it.

    “If I was a different ‘kind’ of artist, Anaconda would be nominated for best choreo and vid of the year as well,” she wrote in a not-so-subtle subtweet aimed at the systemically racist music industry. “When the ‘other’ girls drop a video that breaks records and impacts culture they get that nomination,” she added.

    She then let off a series of tweets about her disillusionment towards the fact that her record-breaking Anaconda video, which amassed 19.6 million views in its first 24 hours on VEVO, was not deemed worthy of a Best Video nomination. However, after tweeting “If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies, you will be nominated for vid of the year,” she was soon interrupted by Taylor Swift who – like so many often do – decided that her comments were a personal attack. “I’ve done nothing but love & support you,” she replied. ‘It’s unlike you to pit women against each other. Maybe one of the men took your slot.”

    And in less than 140 characters, Swift succinctly summed up the problem with “white feminism”.

    Despite popular belief, “white feminism” is not about white women who happen to be feminists. It is about feminism that prioritises the needs of white women while sidelining issues affecting women of colour. And Swift has just proved she is white feminism’s off-beat, bambi-legged Patronus.

    Swift appears to have been so dazed by her own blinding white privilege that she couldn’t see Minaj’s tweets extended far beyond usual pop princess pettiness. Her tone deaf response proves the music industry’s well-documented issues with race aren’t on her radar because they don’t affect her and instead of taking heed, took offence. But it’s nothing we’ve not seen before.

    And the article continues at the link.

    Chief Dotson blames everyone but himself

    In light of the article “Dotson blames judges for homicide rates” (July 9), I think it would be a good time to stop for a moment and evaluate St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson’s performance.

    Under his guidance of the police, the number of crimes in the city, particularly violent crimes, has significantly risen. At the same time, the number of crimes actually solved — with charges issued by the circuit attorney’s office — has steadily declined. Those trends demonstrate how well the police are doing under Dotson’s leadership.

    Dotson’s response: It’s everyone else’s fault but his.

    He blames the city judges, despite the fact that they impose the highest bonds and harshest sentences in the state, as being too soft on crime. His latest attempt at this deflection is to cast blame on a city judge who gave probation to a nonviolent, first-time felony offender — something that every judge statewide would do — for that offender’s alleged subsequent crime years later. Judges, he says, should create an unconstitutional punishment court to stamp out crime.

    He also blames the circuit attorney’s office, one of the most aggressive and hard-line prosecutor’s offices in the state, for not issuing charges on weak cases brought to them by police. Prosecutors, he says, should issue charges on any case his police bring them regardless of the quality of evidence or investigation.

    The reality is that the judges have tried to work with Dotson. They have given gun cases highest priority on their dockets, have significantly increased bond amounts on gun cases, and are giving gun offenders much higher levels of scrutiny in their sentencings.

    The circuit attorney’s office has also tried to work with Dotson, and now sends prosecutors to homicide sites to assist the police in building solid cases that they can prosecute. It is worth noting that this is not something they had to do before Dotson took the helm.

    It’s these numbers, and not how many tweets he makes per day, that really show how well Dotson is doing.

  129. rq says

    Civilian Complaint Review Board ordered to reveal disciplinary history of NYPD cop who used chokehold on Eric Garner

    The Civilian Complaint Review Board has to reveal the disciplinary history of the police officer who put Eric Garner in an apparent chokehold, a Manhattan judge ruled on the anniversary of Garner’s death.

    The Legal Aid Society won a suit to force the CCRB to turn over summary information about complaints made about Daniel Pantaleo, the NYPD officer whose takedown of Garner led to his death on Staten Island last year.

    The CCRB had denied requests for the info, citing privacy and claiming such summaries of complaints and recommendations should be considered personnel files.

    Judge Alice Schlesinger disagreed, and ordered the complaints be turned over.

    The decision, filed Wednesday, also noted Pantaleo’s opposition to the release of the files. The cop claimed his life would be in danger if they were made public.

    A grand jury declined to indict him in Garner’s death, and Pantaleo remains on modified duty as the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau conducts its investigation.

    Officials: Bland told jailers of earlier suicide try, USA Today on that.

    Blackface performer raising money for Baltimore police, Chris Hayes on NBC on that.

    Apparently if black ppl weren’t so obsessed w/ cigarettes, the police wouldn’t have to kill us so much. #MikeBrown #EricGarner #SandraBland I had to laugh. But it’s not really funny.

    Questions About the Sandra Bland Case, from Charles M. Blow.

    I have so many questions about the case in which Sandra Bland was arrested in a small Texas town and died in police custody. These are questions that ought to be easy to answer, questions that I suspect many others may share. Here are just some of my areas of inquiry.

    1. On the video released by the Texas Department of Public Safety of Bland’s traffic stop, the arresting officer, Brian Encinia, tells her that the reason for her stop is that she “failed to signal a lane change.” The officer returns to his car, then approaches Bland’s vehicle a second time. He remarks to Bland, “You seem very irritated.” Bland responds, “I am. I really am.” She continues, “I was getting out of your way. You were speeding up, tailing me, so I move over, and you stop me. So, yeah, I am a little bit irritated.”

    Was Bland simply trying to move out of the way of a police vehicle?

    The video shows the officer’s car accelerating behind Bland’s and passing a sign indicating a speed limit of 20 miles per hour. How fast was the officer closing the distance on Bland before she changed lanes? Was it completely reasonable for her to attempt to move out of his way?

    2. The officer, while standing at the closed driver’s side door, asks Bland to extinguish her cigarette. As soon as she refuses, he demands that she exit the vehicle. Was the demand to exit because of the refusal? If so, what statute in Texas — or anywhere in America! — stipulates that a citizen can’t smoke during a traffic stop?

    3. According to Encinia’s signed affidavit, Bland was “removed from the car” and “placed in handcuffs for officer safety.” The reason for the arrest is unclear to me. At one point, Encinia says, “You were getting a warning until now you’re going to jail.” So, what was the arrest for at that point? Failure to comply? Later in the video, Encinia says, “You’re going to jail for resisting arrest.” If that was the reason, why wasn’t Bland charged with resisting arrest? The affidavit reads, “Bland was placed under arrest for Assault on Public Servant.”

    Encinia’s instructions to Bland are a jumble of confusion. After she is handcuffed, he points for her to “come read” the “warning” ticket, then immediately pulls back on her arm, preventing her from moving in the direction that he pointed, now demanding that she “stay right here.” He then commands Bland to “stop moving,” although, as she points out, “You keep moving me!” What was she supposed to do?
    […]

    5. The initial video posted by Texas authorities also has a number of visual glitches — vanishing cars, looping sequences — but no apparent audio glitches.

    The director of “Selma,” Ava DuVernay, tweeted: “I edit footage for a living. But anyone can see that this official video has been cut. Read/watch. Why?” She included a link to a post pointing out the discrepancies in the video.

    According to NBC News:

    “Tom Vinger, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, blamed a ‘technical issue during posting.’ He said that the department was working to correct the video.”

    What kinds of “technical difficulties” were these? Why wouldn’t the audio also have glitches? (Authorities have now released a new, slightly shorter video.)

    6. Texas authorities say that, while in the Waller County jail cell, Bland used a trash bag from a trash can in the cell to hang herself. Is it standard procedure to have trash cans with trash bags in jail cells? Is the can secured to the floor? If not, couldn’t it be used by an inmate to hurt herself, or other inmates or jail staff?

    According to a report on Wednesday by The Houston Chronicle:

    “Bland disclosed on a form at the jail that she previously had attempted suicide over that past year, although she also indicated she was not feeling suicidal at the time of her arrest, according to officials who attended the Tuesday meeting with local and state leaders investigating the case.” Shouldn’t they have known it was a suicide risk?

    The Bureau of Justice Statistics points out that suicide is the No. 1 cause of non-illness-related deaths in local jails (although blacks are least likely to commit those suicides), and between 2000 and 2011 about half of those suicides “occurred within the first week of admission.”

    Why weren’t more precautions taken, like, oh, I don’t know, removing any suicide risks from the cell?

    More at the link. Very good questions.

    The Transcript Of Sandra Bland’s Arrest Is As Revealing As The Video

    A close look at the police car dashcam video that recorded the exchange shows her questions had merit: Encinia at every occasion escalates the tension. He tells Bland, a Black Lives Matter activist, she’s under arrest before she has even left her car, shouts at her for moving after ordering her to move, refuses to answer questions about why she’s being arrested and, out of the camera’s view, apparently slams her to the ground. He gets testy with her — “Are you done?” — when she explains after he points out she seems irritated. And, contrary to a recent Supreme Court decision, he unconstitutionally extends the traffic stop, it appears, out of spite.

    The video also shows that Encina never actually ordered Bland to put out her cigarette, but rather asked her politely, to which she responded with a question. To which he answered with aggression.

    At times, the confrontation becomes chaotic, but a transcript shows Bland answering the trooper’s questions, asserting her rights, and, eventually, directly challenging his treatment of her — an evaluation shared by some police officers who’ve watched the video.

    The following exchange — transcribed with the help of HuffPost’s Matt Ramos and Dhyana Taylor — comes after the dashcam video shows Encinia quickly driving toward the rear of Bland’s car.

    Yep, there’s a transcript. It’s all so fucking ridiculous, Sandra Bland should not have even come close to that jail.

  130. says

    In the WTF category-
    Calling their 1st autopsy ‘defective’, Texas asks family of Sandra Bland if they can provide another one:

    Having already lost her daughter, Sandra Bland’s mother was told late Wednesday evening by the assistant district attorney of Waller County, Texas, that the first autopsy performed on Bland was “defective.”
    Excuse me?

    What the hell does that even mean? Defective?

    Did you lose the results?

    Did you forget to do something?

    Did you send the wrong person to do it the first time?

    Did your results not match your alibi?

    According to family attorneys, Bland’s body, which has already undergone the state autopsy and an independent autopsy, is now in Illinois being prepared for burial and the family will not allow Texas the chance for one last indignity.

    This is just one in a very long line of unjust and incompetent offenses faced by Sandra Bland and her grieving family.

    See the video at the link.

  131. says

    Sandra Bland’s death ruled a suicide by hanging says TX prosecutor:

    Medical examiners ruled the death of Sandra Bland a suicide by hanging, and the autopsy uncovered no evidence of a violent struggle, a Texas prosecutor said Thursday.

    Warren Diepraam, the first assistant district attorney of Waller County, released the findings at a press conference.

    Bland, 28, was found dead in her Texas jail cell on July 13, three days after she was stopped for failing to signal a lane change. Her family and friends had expressed suspicion about the official account that she hanged herself with the plastic liner of a trash can.

    Diepraam said the autopsy found no defensive injuries on Bland’s hands — only abrasions on her wrist consistent with a struggle while she was being handcuffed.

    Bland’s encounter with a state trooper on July 10 escalated in minutes from a traffic stop to a physical struggle. The trooper threatened to “light you up” with a Taser after Bland questioned why she was being told to put out her cigarette and get out of her car.

    Diepraam said there were about 30 cuts on Bland’s wrists, and that the scarring suggests they were made two to four weeks ago, well before her arrest.

    The only injury to her neck or head was a “uniform and consistent” mark consistent with a suicide by hanging, not a violent strangling.

    Diepraam said that toxicology tests found marijuana in Bland’s system, but he said further tests would be necessary to determine when she ingested it.

    District Attorney Elton Mathis told NBC News on Thursday that the amount of marijuana suggests that Bland either would have “smoked marijuana recently or possibly ingested a large amount of marijuana prior to her being placed in the jail.”

    Diepraam said it was “hypothetically possible that it could have been smoked in the jail,” but he said the sheriff searched the jail and found nothing to support that conclusion. Other inmates told the sheriff they didn’t smell anything unusual, Diepraam said.

    Jail intake forms filled out for Bland appear to show that she told jailers she tried to commit suicide last year, and that she had been “very depressed” in the past. But the answers on the forms are inconsistent.

    Both the traffic stop and the jail cell death are the subjects of investigations. The Texas Department of Public Safety determined that the officer violated its courtesy policy. Mathis told reporters no evidence of criminal behavior had been uncovered so far.

    Fuck that shit. She’d be alive if not for that authoritarian thug.

    ****
    Asian-American Film Festival has resurgence:

    Now in its 38th year, the Asian American International Film Festival is fighting back to its former glory after early success gave way to financial troubles.

    About a month after the newly-founded American Black Film Festival filled with fans, producers, and media professionals, an Asian-American film festival with substantial history struggles to keep the lights on as it highlights talented filmmakers.

    Beginning in 1975, the Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF) began when “there was a bunch of Asian Americans activists who saw a need to tell Asian-American stories in the midst of the black-white dichotomy” said Lei. As the first of its kind, it was established to broadcast the current achievements in Asian and Asian-American independent film-making to large audiences. Through AAIFF, filmmakers, artists, and cultural aficionados have been able to gather and discuss how to push creative boundaries forward by working with a host of ethnic backgrounds, religions, and classes to spread the message that the Asian and Asian-American experience is complex and dynamic.

    But organizers say the festival has seen both impressive and tumultuous years since the beginning.

    “It’s been an up-and-down ride,” said Judy Lei, the festival’s director. “We lost all of our corporate sponsorships in 2011.”

    Today, according to Lei, the festival is slowly climbing back from its previous decline.

    Stephen Dypiangco, co-founder of the National Film Society, maintains that festivals like AAIFF are crucial in connecting audiences with filmmakers, and sustaining the artistic stories from within the community.

    “They give viewers the rare chance to see stories from our community, which are often ignored in the mainstream, on a big screen” said Dypiangco, who is also behind the new film Awesome Asian Bad Guys now available on iTunes and Amazon. “These communal spaces can lead to beautiful and profound conversations, ideas, and collaborations that can take on a life of their own.”

    To rebuild and preserve authenticity, Lei says the fanfare surrounding the festival has been toned down for 2015.

    “We’re focused on the films,” said Lei. “We don’t have much glamour. We try to keep it alive.”

    The 38th annual festival boasts a selection of different sessions, conversations, and film features including the “Comic Book Master Class with Greg Pak,” a “Book Talk with Arthur Dong and Reception,” a screening of “The Blood of Yingzhou District.”

  132. says

    In an article at The Root, President Obama writes that Africa’s progress is good for America:

    Tonight I begin my fourth visit to sub-Saharan Africa since taking office, the most of any U.S. president. I’ll also become the first sitting American president to visit Kenya, Ethiopia and the headquarters of the African Union. My visit to Kenya, where my father was born, obviously holds deep personal meaning for me, and my visit will be a chance to reaffirm the ties of family and friendship that bind us as Americans and Africans.

    The focus of my trip, however, reflects my approach to Africa since taking office—that it’s in our national interest to deepen our partnerships with the nations and people of Africa who are leading their continent’s remarkable progress. Despite its many challenges, Africa is a diverse region of incredible dynamism and opportunity and the world’s youngest continent—a place of unlimited potential.

    On this trip, I’ll focus on three areas: strengthening our economic ties, combating common threats to our security, and reinforcing strong democratic institutions and human rights.

    Africa is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world, and it’s in our economic interest to make sure we deepen our trade relationship. Since I took office, we’ve boosted U.S. exports to Africa, which last year supported 280,000 American jobs. We’ve joined with Africans to launch historic initiatives to promote health, agricultural development and food security. With our Power Africa initiative, we aim to bring electricity to 60 million African homes and businesses.

    Now we have to build on this progress. Thanks to members of Congress from both parties—especially the leadership of the Congressional Black Caucus—I recently signed into law a 10-year renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, the foundation of our efforts to support more trade and good jobs in both Africa and the United States. During my visit to Kenya, with its new technology hubs and startups, I’ll co-host a summit to expand our support for the entrepreneurs—especially young people and women—who can help unleash the next wave of African economic growth.

    Throughout my trip, I’ll also stress that the economic growth Africans seek also depends on good governance. That includes free and fair elections; strong, democratic institutions; freedom of speech and the press; vibrant civil societies that give citizens a voice; and respect for universal human rights so that all people are free from discrimination and violence. Some African nations have made impressive progress on these fronts. Others have not. My trip will be an opportunity to address these issues candidly, both publicly and privately in my meetings with leaders.

    Finally, our shared progress and security with Africa also depends on addressing common threats, from extremist ideologies to global climate change. The United States has a national-security interest in preventing terrorists from using African nations to radicalize, recruit, seek sanctuary or secure the financing they need to support their terror. That’s why we’re working to help strengthen the ability of local forces to defend their own nations. We support Nigeria and its regional partners in their fight against Boko Haram, and African-led efforts against al-Shabab in Somalia. During my trip, I’ll discuss how we can step up our common efforts to counter violent extremism wherever it exists.

    Twenty-seven years after I first visited Kenya as a young man, it’s remarkable to look back at how far the region—and the entire African continent—has come. This progress is a testament to heroes like Nelson Mandela and to world leaders, including Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who made historic investments in Africa. Most importantly, Africa’s progress is a tribute to the people of Africa who have never stopped working for the future they deserve.

    My visit to Africa reflects my abiding belief that if we keep working with our African partners, in a spirit of mutual interest and mutual respect, then we’ll continue to unlock Africa’s limitless potential, which will benefit us all for generations to come.

  133. says

    I’ll toot my own horn here. I just wrote a piece at my blog-
    To the defenders of police. Basically my argument for Schrodinger’s Cop.

    ****

    A brief history of slavery and the origins of American policing:

    The birth and development of the American police can be traced to a multitude of historical, legal and political-economic conditions. The institution of slavery and the control of minorities, however, were two of the more formidable historic features of American society shaping early policing. Slave patrols and Night Watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities. For example, New England settlers appointed Indian Constables to police Native Americans (National Constable Association, 1995), the St. Louis police were founded to protect residents from Native Americans in that frontier city, and many southern police departments began as slave patrols. In 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the nation’s first slave patrol. Slave patrols helped to maintain the economic order and to assist the wealthy landowners in recovering and punishing slaves who essentially were considered property.

    Policing was not the only social institution enmeshed in slavery. Slavery was fully institutionalized in the American economic and legal order with laws being enacted at both the state and national divisions of government. Virginia, for example, enacted more than 130 slave statutes between 1689 and 1865. Slavery and the abuse of people of color, however, was not merely a southern affair as many have been taught to believe. Connecticut, New York and other colonies enacted laws to criminalize and control slaves. Congress also passed fugitive Slave Laws, laws allowing the detention and return of escaped slaves, in 1793 and 1850. As Turner, Giacopassi and Vandiver (2006:186) remark, “the literature clearly establishes that a legally sanctioned law enforcement system existed in America before the Civil War for the express purpose of controlling the slave population and protecting the interests of slave owners. The similarities between the slave patrols and modern American policing are too salient to dismiss or ignore. Hence, the slave patrol should be considered a forerunner of modern American law enforcement.”

    ****

    Sandra Bland’s mother declares ‘war’ on the police who lynched her daughter:

    Sandra Bland’s mother is ready to go with the Texas police who killed her daughter. She had serious words for the police at a memorial service for her daughter, which was held on Tuesday.

    “I have a baby to put in the ground. She wasn’t my convict, she wasn’t my suspect – she was my baby,” Bland’s mother, Geneva Reed-Veal said to the audience at Johnson Phillip All Faiths Church.

    The Dallas Morning News added that Reed-Veal declared, “once I put this baby in the ground, I’m ready… This means war.”

    These fighting words came shortly after the release of the dashcam footage that documented the incident where Bland was falsely arrested by Texas state trooper Brian Encinia.

    Encinia threatened he would “light [her] up” with a Taser if she didn’t exit the vehicle after refusing an illegal order to put out her cigarette. All of this emanated from a highly discretionary traffic stop over an alleged failure to signal.

    It was only three days later that Encinia was found dead in the Waller County jail cell.

    Now her death has been ruled a suicide, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. Reed-Veal doesn’t believe that is an accurate description of what happened to her daughter.

    She told mourners that Bland was excited about her new job and her renewed fervor to fight police brutality and injustice as an activist.

    She told her mother, “my purpose is to go back to Texas and stop all the injustices in the South.”

    “There is not anywhere I could see that my baby took her own life,” Reed-Veal said Tuesday.

    The FBI and Texas Rangers say they have launched investigations into the death, but local law enforcement in collusion with the coroner’s office, say that the case is closed.

    Local law enforcement can go fuck themselves. Even if she committed suicide, they set up the chain of events that led to her death. If that overzealous authoritarian thug of a cop hadn’t acted the way he did, she’d still be alive.

    ****

    Marvel’s Axel Alonso responds to criticism of hip-hop covers:

    As part of its All-New, All-Different universe, Marvel announced a series of hip-hop variant covers designed to both celebrate the new comics and new universe being launched while also paying homage to classic hip-hop album covers. This didn’t sit too well with some critics, who called the move culturally appropriative. Now, in an interview with Comic Book Resources, Marvel Editor-in-Chief, Axel Alonso, addresses the criticism the covers have received.

    The complete interview is pretty great, so you should definitely check it out. However, here is the (rather long) bit where Alonso specifically addresses criticism of the covers:

    When we launched this initiative, we knew there would be critics. At San Diego Comic-Con, I was previewing the covers on my iPhone for Reggie Hudlin and Denys Cowan, both of whom were blown away. Denys is doing a cover, by the way — any ideas which one…? [Laughs].

    Anyway, we talked about how that this initiative would likely be a lightning rod for a broader discussion about diversity in comics, and I said so be it, that’s a good conversation to have. The entire comic book industry benefits from greater diversity, my editors — who are very racially diverse, by the way — know that, and you’ll see that throughout the “All-New, All-Different Marvel” [initiative] that continues through February. I am very excited about the stuff we have planned — especially “The Totally Awesome Hulk” and “Black Panther.” Yes, Black Panther.

    But some of the “conversation” in the comics internet community seems to have been ill-informed and far from constructive. A small but very loud contingent are high-fiving each other while making huge assumptions about our intentions, spreading misinformation about the diversity of the artists involved in this project and across our entire line, and handing out snap judgments like they just learned the term “cultural appropriation” and are dying to put it in an essay. And the personal attacks — some implying or outright stating that I’m a racist. Hey, I’m a first-generation Mexican-American…[Laughs]

    Not to mention the casual disrespect that’s been shown to the artists involved in this. One op-ed was so lazily researched that when the writer was confronted with his litany of factual errors on Twitter, he apologized, saying he didn’t know that most of the announced artists are Black. Dude, you call yourself a journalist: Do a Google search! [Laughs] And when he learned that the “3 Feet High and Rising” homage he’d asserted was in bad taste was rendered by an African-American artist [Sanford Greene] and that Posdnuos [of De La Soul] himself, gave props to the cover on Twitter, [the writer’s] response was, “Well, to each his own.” [Laughs] Look, the divide between these critics’ response to this initiative and that of the outside world and, indeed, the hip-hop community they claim to speak for couldn’t be bigger. I actually feel sorry for them.

    The response of the hip-hop community to these variants has been tremendous. All the major hip-hop sites are shining a spotlight on this, and social media outside of comics has exploded with excitement — which means we are talking to a new audience. We’ve revealed less than a quarter of our variant covers at this point, and already the hip-hop community is showering us with love — including the hip-hop artists themselves. I’m talking luminaries: Killer Mike [of Run the Jewels], Posdnuos [of De La Soul], the legendary DMC, the Pharcyde, Pete Rock, Nas — they’ve all expressed their excitement and joy on social media.

    They get what’s going on here. Hip-hop has its roots in African-American culture. And part of the beauty of the music and culture is that it’s grown into a culture that spans the globe and unites people of all races. At its core, hip-hop is a Black art form. It was pioneered by African-American artists — and, of course, Hispanics — but the contributions of all races to hip-hop’s evolution into a global culture can’t be denied. The artists that are doing these homages — Sanford Greene, Damion Scott, Juan Doe, Mahmud Asrar, Brian Stelfreeze, Mike Del Mundo, Jason Pearson — span the globe and the color spectrum. And all of them bring love to this project. This isn’t just another assignment to them. I mean, have you seen Mike Del Mundo breakdance? [Laughs]

    ****

    Fast 6 actor Joe Taslim joins Star Trek: Beyond cast:

    Indonesian actor and martial artist Joe Taslim, who’s previously appeared in The Raid: Redemption and Fast & Furious 6 has joined the Star Trek Beyond cast. Although the details of his role are being kept under wraps, The Hollywood Reporter says that Talim will play a “key part opposite” Idris Elba, who plays the film’s villain.” This will be Taslim’s second time working with director Justin Lin, who directed him in Fast & Furious 6.

    I’m glad that Taslim is getting more recognition! Will Lin put Taslim’s martial arts to good use and make him fight Elba?

    ****

    Eric Garner killing, one year on: ‘Sit down son, it’s time for The Talk’:

    Erica Garner doesn’t know how she will explain to Alyssa, her five-year-old daughter, why her grandfather died. “She knows he was killed,” says Garner, sitting in the courtyard of the Gowanus housing projects in downtown Brooklyn. “And she knows it was police officers that killed him. But she’s a little too young to comprehend anything … I’m just going to explain the truth.”

    Erica’s father, Eric Garner, was accused by NYPD officers of selling loose cigarettes or “loosies” on the streets of Staten Island a year ago. The 43-year-old was placed in a banned chokehold that led to his death. “I can’t breathe,” Garner gasped. They were his last words.

    Erica started to see New York differently after her father’s death. She says that, as a child, her father tried to shelter her from the constant harassment he faced at the hands of police.

    “Growing up, we always thought seeing a cop meant being safe, it would mean help. But since the incident, a lot of things have been coming to light,” says Garner, clutching a handwritten lawsuit, written by her father in 2007 when he argued that police officers humiliated him by carrying out an unwarranted full-body search on him in the street. The suit was later dismissed.

    There is a dark irony to the fact that Garner Sr chose to keep his victimisation and racial profiling at the hands of the NYPD from his children. His death sparked a new wave of frank discussion about race and policing in African American households around the city.

    In December last year, as a grand jury on Staten Island declined to indict Officer Pantaleo over the death, and thousands of protesters marched through the streets of New York City chanting Garner’s last words, the mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, called a press conference. “This is profoundly personal for me,” said the mayor, flanked by black community leaders at a church on Staten Island.

    De Blasio is white and married to an African American poet and speech writer, Chirlane McCray. They have a son, Dante, and daughter, Chiara.

    “Chirlane and I have had to talk to Dante for years about the dangers that he may face,” says De Blasio. “[A] good young man, a law-abiding young man, who would never think to do anything wrong and yet because of the history that still hangs over us, the dangers he may face, we’ve literally had to train him – as families have all over this city for decades – in how to take special care in any encounter with police officers who are there to protect him.”

    The comments were a lightning rod. All five of the city’s aggressive police union chiefs lined up to tear strips off the mayor, accusing him of disloyalty and blaming him for increasing the volatility that already existed between police and many of New York’s minority communities.

    For others, though, the comments were a rare moment of political candour and addressed the genuine fears of black families in the city.

    Since the 1990s, a model of “broken windows” policing – the tactic of aggressively targeting low-level criminal acts such as vandalism or loose cigarette selling – has been in play throughout the city. Critics argue that the practice results in racial bias, with communities in poorer neighbourhoods unfairly targeted. An investigation by the New York Daily News found that between 2001 and 2013 a staggering 81% of summonses issued in the city for minor infractions were issued to black and Hispanic people.

    Robert Cornegy Jr is a father of six. He is also a New York City councilman. Like De Blasio, he gives his children “the talk”.

    In the Cornegy household it runs something like this: look an officer directly in the eyes. Answer clearly. Submit, basically, to whatever they ask you to do. Don’t be sarcastic.

    “It’s basically putting the onus on a child to do everything they possibly can to walk away from a situation unscathed,” says Cornegy. “That is a lot of responsibility to give to a child when really what we should be demanding is that officers protect our children in every situation.”

    The councilman worries that as the eldest of his children, who range in age from eight to 24, have inherited his impressive height (he’s nearly 7ft tall), it potentially makes them more of a perceived threat. His daughter, Nia, 15, is 6ft 5in, her sister Nala, 11, is already 5ft 8in. His son Nicholas, 19, who also has developmental delays, is 6ft 9in. “We fear for him more than any of the others,” says Cornegy.

    More at the link.

  134. says

    Hulk Hogan fired by WWE after racist recordings emerge:

    World Wrestling Entertainment fired Terry Bollea – better known as Hulk Hogan – after several recordings emerged in which he reportedly made racist comments.

    […]

    In a statement to People magazine on Friday, Hogan apologised for his comments. “Eight years ago I used offensive language during a conversation. It was unacceptable for me to have used that offensive language; there is no excuse for it; and I apologize for having done it,” he said.

    “This is not who I am. I believe very strongly that every person in the world is important and should not be treated differently based on race, gender, orientation, religious beliefs or otherwise. I am disappointed with myself that I used language that is offensive and inconsistent with my own beliefs.”

    Almost every reference to Hogan appeared to have been removed from the WWE website Thursday evening, and all Hogan-themed merchandise also appeared to have been removed from the online store.

    Annie Kruger, a spokeswoman for WWE, confirmed that Hogan’s contract had been terminated. However, she said that the organisation was unable at this point to say what exactly had precipitated the break.

    In a statement, the organisation said: “WWE is committed to embracing and celebrating individuals from all backgrounds as demonstrated by the diversity of our employees, performers and fans worldwide.”

    After the news broke, Hogan tweeted: “In the storm I release control, God and his universe will sail me where he wants to be.”

    They always mention god. As if that absolves them.

    ****

    The WWE may have fired Hulk Hogan, but they’re still racist as hell:

    The WWE fired Hulk Hogan Friday and erased any trace of the former wrestling star from its websites after the National Enquirer and Radar Online reported that Hogan was heard on a recording going on a racist tirade aimed at his daughter.

    The company’s announcement of the move was just two sentences long, saying they were “committed to embracing and celebrating individuals from all backgrounds as demonstrated by the diversity of our employees, performers and fans worldwide.”

    It is true that there have been at least 20 major black professional wrestlers, and that many people of color watch WWE matches.

    But there have been countless instances, both past and present, where professional wrestling has been brutally racist. And while the WWE has occasionally acknowledged its complicated relationship with race in performances, these moments have been led by WWE executives who themselves have been shown to be racist, or accused of racism.

    The article goes on to mention multiple examples of racism in the WWE, from the Fabulous Freebirds to Cryme Tyme to Kamala to the Godwins. Damn. I’ve never really paid attention to the WWE, but that’s some racist crap all right.

    ****

    Legislation against ‘Sanctuary Cities’ might make life harder for these two Detroit brothers:
    And if anything says conservative values, it’s making life harder for families of color.

    In Detroit, Michigan, the Gomez brothers have made a nice life for themselves. They work construction, Monday through Friday, and sometimes Saturday if the work demands it. They even play in a band, playing traditional banda music. As undocumented immigrants, however, they live in constant fear of deportation.

    “In the morning, we go to work every day, and we are afraid,” Roberto Gomez tells Fusion. “I say to my little ones, my babies, bye-bye, I give a kiss. Because we don’t know if we’re coming back.”

    The Gomez brothers can at least take refuge in Detroit’s relatively friendly policy toward undocumented immigrants—in this “sanctuary city,” enforcing immigration law isn’t high on law enforcement’s priority list.

    But legislation working its way through the United States House of Representatives might force these sanctuary cities to reconsider their policy. A bill authored by Rep. Duncan Carter of California would “deny federal grant funding to states with policies that prohibit law enforcement from gathering information about individuals’ immigration status or that contradict federal statute.”

    And after undocumented immigrant Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez was charged by law enforcement with the murder of Kathryn Steile in San Francisco, a sanctuary city, the debate over these cities has intensified.

    Jim Steinle, Kathryn’s father, spoke to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and “urged Congress to pass tough new laws targeting criminal immigrants.”

    The House will vote on the “Enforce the Law for Sanctuary Cities Act” Thursday and it is expected to pass.

  135. says

    CBR-tv interview with David Walker on making DC’s Cyborg relevant, ‘Shaft’, and societal change:

    Writer David F. Walker made his first major splash in comics as the writer of Dynamite Entertainment’s “Shaft” comic book based on the eponymous detective in Ernest Tidyman’s novels, and made even famous by the blaxploitation movies starring Richard Roundtree in the lead role. But for most comic book readers, Walker entered a whole new arena this week with the release of “Cyborg” #1 from DC Comics, the debut of an ongoing series starring the cybernetically-enhanced Vic Stone, a character created by George Perez and Marv Wolfman during their seminal 1980s “New Teen Titans” run. With the character now a member of the Justice League and with a solo film on the schedule from Warner Bros., “Cyborg” is easily the biggest project of Walker’s career.

    Ahead of the book’s release, Walker visited the world famous CBR Floating Tiki Room at Comic-Con International in San Diego to discuss a number of topics with Jonah Weiland including his “Cyborg,” his lengthy journey to writing mainstream comics, societal change and more.

    In the first part of the conversation, Walker discusses living in Portland before Dark Horse and other major players were there, the industry heavyweights who finally encouraged him to make the leap into telling his own stories and redefining what it means to be an “overnight success.” For a character first introduced in 1980, there’s a lot about Cyborg that doesn’t work as well today as it did 35 years ago. Walker discusses what he’s doing with the character to make him work with the times he’s living in and the role technology plays in the book. He also talks about living in an era of mass social change, and how social media and other technology has changed the face of revolution.

    Video at the link.
    Walker is one of the few black writers at DC Comics.

  136. says

    Sandra Bland to be laid to rest as scrutiny continues:

    Sandra Bland will be laid to rest Saturday at her home church of DuPage African Methodist Episcopal here, as nagging questions about her death in a Texas jail cell, and the arrest that preceded it, continue.

    Bland was found dead in her cell in a Waller County, Texas, jail three days after she was arrested during a traffic stop in Hempstead, Texas. Authorities have ruled her death a suicide by hanging.

    Elton Mathis, the Waller County district attorney, and Warren Diepraam, the assistant district attorney in charge of the forensics in the investigation into the 28-year-old woman’s death, said Thursday there is no evidence to suggest Bland was murdered inside the Waller County Jail, where she was found hanging on the morning of July 13. Authorities on Friday released autopsy results for Bland. Both the traffic stop and Bland’s death remain under investigation. Mathis has said no evidence of criminal behavior has been uncovered in the investigation so far.

    Bland’s death sparked a fresh round of outrage and activity for the Black Lives Matter movement, along with new hashtags: #JusticeForSandraBland and #IfIDieInPoliceCustody, where African-Americans poured out pain and anger in plaintive messages to friends and family warning that such deaths should not be allowed to be brushed aside as suicide or accidental.

    Bland’s family has resisted accepting the official account of her death. Bland was in Texas to start a new job at her alma mater, and her family insists she was looking forward to a new start.

    “We know that she didn’t commit suicide,” said Rev. Theresa Dear, an assistant pastor at DuPage AME who has known the family for 20 years. “She was killed, and it’s just so hurtful.”

    Dear expressed concern over inconsistencies in the information released by authorities, including a dashcam video of Bland’s arrest that appeared to include edits. The Texas Department of Public Safety blamed the irregularities on a “technical issue during posting.”

    Dear said Bland was part of an “extremely close family and community here in Lisle,” and she said Bland had a bright future ahead of her.

    “Most importantly, she was a fighter, and a civil rights activist,” said Dear, who is also a national board member of the NAACP. “Civil rights people and social justice people don’t just lay down and take their lives. In other words, Sandy was me 20 years ago.”

    Indeed, Bland launched a Facebook video series, Sandy Speaks, earlier this year. Online, people have been sharing the videos, including two recordings in which Bland focuses on the issue of police brutality.

    ****

    Are Americans more pessimistic about race or more realistic:

    You don’t need a pollster to tell you that race relations are not especially good at the moment in the United States—all you need is a quick survey of headlines. But a new CBS/New York Times poll confirms it.

    Fifty-seven percent of Americans believe race relations are bad, versus 37 percent who disagree. (Among whites, 56 percent think relations are bad; among blacks, it’s 68 percent.) Four in 10 Americans, among both black and white respondents, believe things are getting worse. The last time polls showed results this bad was immediately after the Rodney King riots in 1992.

    Polling is an important barometer for what’s going on in the nation, but it’s a second-order tool. A poll measures whether people feel race relations are getting worse, not whether race relations are actually getting worse. It’s possible that what this poll actually shows is less a material change in race relations, than greater awareness among white Americans of racial divisions that were previously invisible to them. This poll offers some strong evidence for this theory.

    ****
    Here’s the CBS/NYT poll referred to above.

  137. rq says

    Going to start some catch-up from Friday. Bit by bit. Excuse any typos, I got stung by bees (plural intentional and accurate) on my hands. Not trying that trick again. ;)

    +++

    Pastor Dewey Smith – Homosexuality, file under All Black Lives Matter.

    Black Lives Matter activist hit with arson charges in Colorado for burning the Confederate flag

    Activist Patricia Cameron, 32, planned the event, #BurnTheConfederate, at Soda Springs Park. Video from the event shows activists burning a Confederate flag in a barbecue under an outdoor structure while someone plays Native American flute music nearby.
    ADVERTISEMENT

    “This symbol, to me, represents hatred, division and racism,” Cameron told the Gazette in an earlier interview. “This is about having a dialogue – if you don’t get people to talk about racism, it will never go away.”

    Cameron had told the Colorado Springs Independent that the event would be peaceful.

    “We don’t advocate for violence at all — we’re all about peaceful protest and engaging dialogue,” she told the Independent. “But the point is protest is a right and not a privilege, and when you start dictating how you do so it becomes a privilege. And I don’t believe in the Bill of Privileges, it’s the Bill of Rights.”

    She said the protest was meant to engage youth in her community.

    “[I]t’s simply us getting together and reiterating the fact that black lives in fact matter. And we’re calling for unity, and the struggle here is the Confederate flag not being one of unity — obviously,” she said. “If this is one nation, there’s not going to be multiple flags, especially one that has a racist quote-unquote heritage — so we want to unite under one flag.”

    Cameron was taken into custody briefly on Wednesday and cited on misdemeanor arson charges, but declined to comment to the Gazette. Police said she was arrested because of the danger the fire from the flag posed to the structure and people nearby.

    “An accelerant was poured onto the flag, which was held over a small grill, lit with a lighter, at which point flames erupted,” according to a press release from the police department. “The situation posed a risk of danger to the property and citizens of Manitou Springs, as there were multiple people in the area.”

    Looks like they were safe about it.

    “If I die in police custody”: Why Sandra Bland’s death is just the latest evidence that Black America is under attack

    No one should end up dead after receiving a citation for failure to properly signal a lane change. However, this is exactly what has happened to 28-year-old Sandra Bland, a resident of Illinois who was pulled over in Waller County, Texas, two Fridays ago, where she was traveling to take a new job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University. According to police, after she refused an officer’s instructions to stop smoking a cigarette, she was ordered out of the car, accused of assaulting an officer, and then wrestled to the ground. The video of the arrest only shows an officer’s knees in her back, and her yelling that he had hurt her arm and slammed her head into the ground. She was taken to jail, arraigned, given a $5,000 bond, which she made arrangements with her older sister to pay, and set for release on Monday morning. Instead, she was found dead of an alleged suicide, having supposedly hanged herself with a plastic bag.

    I do not believe that Sandra Bland hanged herself just a few hours before her sister was set to come and pay the $500 bail it would have taken to get her out of jail. I do not believe Sandra Bland hanged herself two days before taking her dream job at her alma mater. I do not believe Sandra Bland hanged herself.

    No one with good sense believes that. And I challenge the sense of anyone who is willing to contort themselves into intellectual knots to make such a ridiculous story seem remotely plausible. This is what media reports about Sandra’s prior traffic tickets and minor previous arrest for smoking marijuana are supposed to make us do. This is what reports about her struggles with depression and PTSD are supposed to make us do. Depression and PTSD should not be conflated with being suicidal, and smoking marijuana is legal in a range of states and municipalities now. Moreover, PTSD diagnoses are rising at alarming levels in Black communities, because of continued exposure to poverty and violence.

    More at the link, which mostly delves into the black community’s deep and deserved mistrust of the police and the police narrative in cases of questionable death.

    #JusticeForSandraBland – there’s a poem attached that I love. About what Sandra Bland should have done.

    Are emoji a new and budding form of online language? It might depend on who you ask. These little pictographs have developed a vast range of contextual meanings among certain circles, but by design very few of them have become universal. For some, an [aubergine] is just an [aubergine]. For many Instagram users, it’s a dick, and has been banned along with other suggestive phrases in Instagram searches. Emoji occupy a special place in the vernacular of Black Twitter, and perhaps their increased contextualization has something to do with the structure and form of linguistic characteristics of minority groups online.

    A look back at the history of emoji is instructive in understanding their place in Black Twitter. Of course, the concept of pictographs dates about as far back as humanity itself, with painted symbols of objects becoming the first form of non-verbal, non-sign language communication. As systems evolved and some of these symbols gained meaning beyond the actual objects they represented, they became ideographs instead of pictographs, and what linguists call “proto-language” was invented.

    Fast-forward a few thousand years and pictographs have made a remarkable comeback in world culture, used in ways none-too-different than their Neolithic ancestors. The predecessors of emoji are emoticons, developed from various budding ways to indicate emotion in text. Perhaps the earliest usage of a proto-emoticon was in the transcript of an Abraham Lincoln speech in 1862, but other examples abound through written history. In the early 1980s Scott Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, formalized and codified smileys for use in Carnegie Mellon message boards. The smiley–the emoticon–as a major digital supplement to text was born.

    Variants of the emoticon became hits in the budding Japanese mobile markets in the mid to late 90s. Kaomoji followed emoticons, and they were developed into a massive library of artistic punctuation-based expressions. Japan, with its high degree of connectivity, mobile communications via two-way pagers, and high cultural context, was a natural innovation lab for the rapid development of these kaomoji into something more. Kanji-a form of writing that still incorporates pictographic and ideographic elements-considered the early building blocks that led from images to words, was the early facilitator for this transition. Kanji, kaomoji, and the popularity of pictographs in wider Japanese society set the stage for a revolution.
    […]

    How did these symbols obtain special status in Black Twitter? African-American usage of the English language has a special structure that makes the most out of emoji. Call it African-American Vernacular English, AAVE, Black English, or Ebonics; the history is just as complex and rich either way. AAVE is the end result of a base stock of West African language structures and early Southern English sent through the blender of Black ingenuity. Grammatical rules are surprisingly constant, although they often resemble structures of languages other than English (“I ain’t got no quarters,” is basically French. Stick your pinky up).

    However, vocabulary in AAVE shifts like quicksand and context becomes key in parsing meaning. This is important for AAVE, as it belongs to a high context culture, or one in which “[w]ords are not so important as context, which might include the speaker’s tone of voice, facial expression, gestures, posture—and even the person’s family history and status.” Many communities of color exist as high-context cultures, which stand at odds with America’s generally low-context culture.

    Thus, for Black Americans, creating ciphers of deep layers of context has always been a smokescreen for both avoiding cultural appropriation and for staying a step ahead of oppressors. Ebonics is jazz, and jazz quickly becomes exported to the mainstream. As Dr. Jonathan Rosa, an expert in anthropology and linguistics and associate professor at UMass Amherst describes, “We’ve seen a history of racialized populations performing semantic inversion on different forms or creatively constructing new sorts of meaning and new forms that then get appropriated by mainstream populations.”

    This jazz, when exported via Black Twitter, has become the object of American mainstream fascination, shifting between voyeurism, genuine appreciation, envy, and appropriation. There are Black Twitter beats and dozens of reactions to it. These are all, in a way, manifestations of the fascinations with our jazz. When the New York Times describes the “unabashedly black spin on life,” that’s a description of jazz. And when emoji met Black Twitter, jazz met Japanese culture, an interaction that has often borne interesting fruit. The high-context usage of emoji in Japan thrived in the high-context nature of Black Twitter. Black Twitter and other online communities of color adopted emoji quickly, and in doing so connected themselves with an age-old tradition of multi-layered pictographs, even stretching back to and through Egyptian hieroglyphics.

    But even though Black Twitter and other communities of color have a unique recent history with emoji, does this usage qualify as something beyond just a notable quirk? Dr. Rosa discussed how emoji’s potential as language rested on their usage. “Are emoji becoming a language?” Rosa asked. “When you ask about POC specifically, then it becomes interesting. Do people in different groups use emoji in different ways?” The key to forms being recognized as distinct languages involves creation of distinct meanings specific to the speaking group and unambiguously recognized within it.

    Emoji enthusiast and expert Jenna Wortham, a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine, gave some indications that those kinds of differentiation may already be happening in her circles. “I feel like if I were a child of parents that didn’t speak English, emoji would be like going back to my own language,” states Wortham. “Going back and forth between something that feels really more like familiarity…there’s an element of comfort, [I’m] less worried about being misinterpreted. Less worry about being considered flippant.” This experience, of adopting a usage within and without certain contexts is strikingly similar to code switching, an experience common to users of non-standard dialects and second languages.
    […]

    Emoji share one more similarity with our constructed languages: that new forms are added by a person or group of people that have power over it. While innovation and assigning new meaning to the pictographs in communities of color increase their richness tenfold, neither you nor I could decide tomorrow that we could use an extra emoji for a phallic food. There’s an interesting, perhaps troubling, power dynamic at play, especially given AAVE’s history of fluidity as rebellion. As Dr. Rosa details: “Is the general population endowed with the capacity to create new emoji? And I think you see people requesting things, but they roll out at the behest of designers. And then the question is : who are those designers? What demographics do they represent? And to what demographics do they respond?”

    Just days after the NBA emoji war and World Emoji Day and just days before a whole new selection of emoji are rolled out, these questions are important. Emoji are just getting started as a means of communication, and they’ve already gained special status in communities of color. Studying how they develop as some quasi-proto-language along an anthropological linguistic continuum is vital in understanding something peculiar: a digitally created code system that picks up context and new connotations like real languages. This study also helps understand our own existing language structures; dialects and first languages in communities of color.

    But for the basic question, are they trending towards becoming a proto-language? According to Dr. Rosa, “you could certainly stake a claim to that.” To Jenna Wortham, the distinction matters less than how much emoji have enriched the way we communicate:

    “It’s just hard to have this much fun with traditional language.”
    More fascinating linguistic-related stuff at the link, it’s awesome.

    Death of woman in Texas jail consistent with suicide: prosecutor, by Reuters. But people have visited the jail and talked to people there and it seems there are still a lot of unanswered questions. From this article:

    Evidence from an autopsy on Sandra Bland, the black woman found hanging dead in a Texas jail days after a traffic stop, supports the medical examiner’s initial ruling of suicide, a county prosecutor told reporters on Thursday.

    The preliminary results also found high levels of marijuana in Bland’s system, although officials are seeking additional tests to confirm when and how much she might have smoked or swallowed, Waller County Assistant District Attorney Warren Diepraam said.

    “The evidence that we reviewed up to this point supports those findings,” he said of the initial suicide ruling.

    There’s a lot of mention of the marijuana in her system, and later accounts (to be posted) even have the authorities saying that Sandra Bland ingested large amounts of marijuana while in jail. Though nobody mentions where it came from. Also, demonization of marijuana as mood-altering. Which it can be, I know, but note how that mention places the blame squarely on Sandra Bland, and removes it from any inconsistencies in policy and protocol that might have been in practice at the Waller County jail.

  138. rq says

    The link works, even though it’s darned ugly and it missed the blockquote. I blame the bees.

    +++

    Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Body Shaming Black Female Athletes Is Not Just About Race

    Serena Williams won her 21st Grand Slam title at Wimbledon this month. This marks the 17th time in a row that she has defeated Maria Sharapova. Yet Williams, who has earned more prize money than any female player in tennis history, is continually overshadowed by the woman whom she consistently beats. In 2013, Sharapova earned $29 million, $23 million of that from endorsements. That same year, Williams earned $20.5 million, only $12 million of that from endorsements. How’s that possible? Because endorsements don’t always reward the best athlete. They often reward the most presentable according to the Western cultural ideal of beauty.

    I know, you think this article is about racism. It’s not.

    Misty Copeland just became the first African-American woman to be named principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre. But when she was 13, she was rejected from a ballet academy for having the wrong body type. As an ad featuring Ms. Copeland put it, summarizing the responses she received early in her career: “Dear candidate, Thank you for your application to our ballet academy. Unfortunately, you have not been accepted. You lack the right feet, Achilles tendons, turnout, torso length, and bust.” At 13? That criticism of her body being too muscular and “mature” has followed her throughout her career. “There are people who say that I don’t have the body to be a dancer, that my legs are too muscular, that I shouldn’t be wearing a tutu, that I don’t fit in,” Copeland said in response.

    What do these two highly successful athletic women have in common? They seem to endure more body shaming than their white, less successful counterparts.

    (Still not about racism.)

    It all intersects, though. In the end.

    Protesters demand Ferguson’s mayor resigns, as city installs interim police chief

    The city of Ferguson named a new interim police chief Wednesday several weeks before the first anniversary of the Michael Brown fatal shooting that plunged the city into turmoil last year.

    Mayor James Knowles said it is part of the city’s plan to move forward with a strong community policing approach. The new chief, Andre Anderson comes from the Glendale, AZ police department. He described himself as having a “caring nature” and as an officer with experience with community policing and community engagement.

    Protestors standing outside Ferguson City Hall later in the morning questioned the hiring of the chief. “I think they should have notified the people of the city of Ferguson and got some kind of input from us instead of just throwing somebody in there,” said Phil Gassoway of Ground Level Support.

    Gassoway and about 15 demonstrators continue to call attention to their campaign to force a recall vote on Mayor Knowles. “He hasn’t really been in the African-American community addressing concerns African-Americans have,” Gassoway said.

    Gerry Jasper signed the recall petition. “The mayor should have known people weren’t being treated right,” she said. Jasper explained she has black relatives. “Racial profiling is real,” she added. “For the mayor not to realize that some of his police, not all, were doing wrong, then there’s a problem,” Jasper said.

    The recall petition drive fell 28 votes short and now organizers have filed a lawsuit in St. Louis County Circuit Court claiming more than 28 signatures ruled as invalid are actually valid signatures of Ferguson registered voters.

    Several community events are scheduled in the coming days offering assistance to citizens and organizing volunteers for a cleanup in the business area along West Florissant.

    Bratton calls up 400 cops for ‘quality of life’ crackdown – sounds like a good plan?

    Police Commissioner Bill Bratton on Wednesday gave his top commanders new marching orders to crack down on the disturbing spike in “quality of life” offenses around the city.

    Bratton summoned about 400 captains, inspectors and chiefs to the Police Academy in Queens for an “all-in” meeting, where they were given directives to improve conditions on the city’s streets.

    Sources said the instructions, which come on the heels of a series of Post reports on the issue, include:

    – Targeting aggressive panhandlers, including people who attempt to sell items to drivers stopped at red lights.

    – Focusing on lawbreaking vagrants who camp in parks, bathe in fountains and urinate in public.

    – Not arresting homeless for disorderly conduct — busts that are frequently challenged in court, another source said.

    – Getting help for people with psychological issues. “If you ask somebody to move and they don’t move, and you can see if the person is mentally ill, take them to a hospital,” one source quoted Bratton as saying.

    “The legal department updated them, so we will be updating all our training officers on quality-of-life enforcement,” Bratton later told reporters.

    “You know — what’s legal, what’s not legal, and the appropriate remedies to deal with things.”

    Bratton said enforcing quality-of-life laws can lead to bigger busts, citing the seizure of illegal guns from people playing dice games in public, according to a police source at the meeting.

    Deputy Commissioner for Legal Affairs Larry Byrne and Deputy Chief Kerry Sweet, commanding officer of the Legal Bureau, both gave presentations that focused primarily on dealing with the homeless, a source said.

    Cops in attendance were also given handouts with more than two dozen examples of bad behavior and the laws that prohibit them.

    Judge Buys Shoeshine Kit For Unemployed Man Who Can’t Pay Child Support. From 1986. Relevancy? That’s the Waller County judge.

    Bullet holes found in second black church on James Island

    Bullet holes were discovered Thursday in a second church occupied by a black congregation on James Island, although it’s still unknown if the shootings are connected.

    James Island United Congregational Church at 1890 Central Park Road, where at least nine bullet holes were discovered Thursday morning, is only a couple hundred yards from Bethel AME Church at 1827 Central Park Road, where four bullet holes in the main window of the sanctuary were found the day before.

    Charleston County deputies are investigating the second shooting with the FBI and several other agencies, Maj. Eric Watson said. Markers could be seen in both front windows and the door.

    Charleston city police are investigating the first shooting at Bethel. The agencies are working together to see if the two incidents are connected.

    The connection is probably way over their heads.

    Sandra Bland Death Ruled a Suicide by Hanging, Texas Prosecutor Says, NBC. Possibly what Tony had posted above.

  139. says

    In a case very similar to Sandra Bland, an American Indian man was found dead in his jail cell days after he was arrested for a traffic fine:

    Rexdale W. Henry, 53, was recently found dead inside the Neshoba County Jail in Philadelphia, Mississippi, on July 14th. He had been arrested over failure to pay a minor traffic citation.

    Local WTOK, reported that corrections officers reported Henry dead around 10 a.m.. But reports and logs reveal that he was seen alive and perfectly fine only half an hour before that.

    Reports say that the state crime lab in Jackson are currently conducting an autopsy. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation also says that they are “looking into” Henry’s death.

    But that hasn’t satisfied Henry’s fellow activists, friends and family. Just after funeral services were held on July 19th, in Bogue Chitto, Henry’s body was flown to Florida for an independently-funded autopsy paid for by anonymous donors. They hope that this autopsy will get to the bottom of what really happened.

    Syracuse University law professors Janis McDonald and Paula Johnson of the school’s Cold Case Justice Initiative comment that, “at a time when the nation is focused on the terrible circumstances of the brutal death of Sandra Bland, it is critical to expose the many ways in which Black Americans, Native Americans and other minorities are being arrested for minor charges and end up dead in jail cells.”

    Henry was a member of the Choctaw tribe. He has been well known in the community and by opponents in law enforcement as a lifelong community activist.

    He was also a candidate for the Choctaw Tribal Council from Bogue Chitto, only the week before his arrest on July 9th.

  140. rq says

    Why I Hate Black History Month, from Akilah Obviously. She has a whole string of videos worth watching.

    WATCH: Ken Cuccinelli smacked down on CNN for suggesting ‘Black Lives Matter’ is insult to white people

    Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) argued on Sunday that many Americans objected to the “Black Lives Matter” movement because it suggested that the lives of black people mattered more than whites and other races.

    CNN political contributor Bakari Sellers explained during a panel discussion that the “Black Live Matter” movement had become a hot topic in the Democratic presidential primary because the lives of so many black people had ended during confrontations with police officers.
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    “You have African-Americans who literally do not get the benefit of their humanity,” he pointed out. “And that’s a problem. You know, in my next interaction — I’m the only person at this table whose next interaction [with law enforcement] may cause them to be a hashtag.”

    “And that’s something that we feel, that’s a very deep pain,” Sellers said.

    Cuccinelli argued that it was important to add the word “too” to the end of the “Black Lives Matter” slogan.

    “Adding t-o-o at the end puts it in a context that makes sense,” the former Virginia attorney general insisted.

    “But it’s implicit though,” Sellers noted.

    “Well, you may say that,” Cuccinelli replied. “And there’s plenty of reason to understand that. But I don’t think every American hears it that way. They hear, ‘Here we are, yes we have this political motivation that we’re separating out this one category of Americans and saying they matter more than everybody else.’ That’s actually what a lot of people see.”

    “We’re saying stop killing us,” Sellers remarked. “We’re saying, my life matters.”

    “I understand that, but that’s why you have the retort,” Cuccinelli opined. “No, all lives matter. We’re not leaving these out.”

    Cuccinelli, remove your head from your white ass.

    It’s Time to Get Real About Racial Diversity in Comics, consider it an interlude!

    Federal Prisons Could Release 1,000 Times More Drug Offenders Than Obama Did. Now, will the new guidelines be also applied to black folk incarcerated? Or will it affect majoritarily white folk?

    A lesser-known policy change, enacted in 2014 with far less fanfare, will affect 1,000 times the number of people as Obama’s commutations. Colloquially known as “drugs minus two,” the amendment to the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s guidelines could reduce the sentences of as many as 46,000 people.

    Though the guideline changes are final, hardline Republican lawmakers continue to express concern about their implementation. House and Senate judiciary chairs Bob Goodlatte and Chuck Grassley this week sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch warning of the 10,000 federal “inmates with violent criminal histories” who could be released this year as a result of the amendment, and demanding detailed information about each. (Grassley has also stated his opposition to the Smarter Sentencing Act, a bipartisan bill that would shorten federal drug sentences and eliminate mandatory minimums for some drug crimes.)

    The new “drugs minus two” changes become effective in November, but because federal prisons allow inmates to spend up to a year in a halfway house before their sentences end, the first of those with new sentences have, in the past eight months, begun to go home.

    More at the link.

    Kindra Chapman’s family: ‘We want the world to know her death was a suicide’ – she died the same week as Sandra Bland.

    Kindra Chapman, an 18-year-old found dead in her Homewood jail cell last week, committed suicide by hanging herself with a bed sheet, authorities and family members said today.

    Despite community concern that the teen’s death was a result of police brutality – protesters chanted for justice in Chapman’s “lynching” as recently as Wednesday night during a Sandra Bland rally in New York – video evidence of the hanging, along with witness statements, confirmed what police have said all along.

    “We are so grateful for the outpouring of support for Kindra. We are devastated that she is gone, and we miss her terribly,” according to a family statement released to AL.com this afternoon from the Birmingham law firm of Marsh, Rickard and Bryan. “We want the world to know what a wonderful soul she was. At the same time, we want the world to know that her death was a suicide. We have hired lawyers to investigate how this could have happened while she was in police custody.”

    See, there’s no conspiracy-mongering. When the family are satisfied with the evidence presented and know their loved one well enough, the narratives agree. And all is as well as can be – I don’t think Sandra Bland’s case is going to be that easy.

    Denver police identify officer who shot Paul Castaway

    Patrolman Michael Traudt shot Paul Castaway at the Capital City Mobile Home Park on West Kentucky Avenue, said Sonny Jackson, a police department spokesman. Police said Castaway came dangerously close to officers with a large knife.

    Traudt joined the Denver Police Department about 13 months ago and served as patrolman in District 4, which covers the southwest section of the city. He has prior law enforcement experience, Jackson said.

    Traudt is taking time off and will be placed on a nonline assignment once he returns to work, Jackson said.

  141. rq says

    Yes, this first stuff is from Friday last. Except the first link. From Lynna.
    Armed Confederate supporters interrupt black child’s birthday party with racial slurs, death threats

    In an Atlanta suburb this past weekend, Melissa Alford (a black woman) and her family were hosting an outdoor birthday party in Douglasville, Georgia, when a convoy of seven large pickup trucks donning Confederate flags interrupted the party and pulled into the grass. The occupants then called them n*gg*rs and threatened them with violence, according to multiple eyewitnesses, who also stated that the men actually flashed guns at them:

    Jeb Bush condemns ‘political correctness’ of #BlackLivesMatter protesters, WTF.

    After an event in Gorham, N.H. today, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush rolled his eyes at the mention of protesters who heckled the phrase “black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter” at a progressive conference.

    After uttering the phrase, Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley made a series of quick apologies to attendees of Netroots Nation. Progressives at the conference, which took place over five days in Phoenix, praised O’Malley for the walkback. People unfamiliar with the phrase have since characterized that an inscrutable pander. When Yahoo! News reporter Jon Ward asked Bush if O’Malley should have apologized, the Republican said “no.”

    “We’re so uptight and so politically correct now that we apologize for saying ‘lives matter?'” asked Bush. “Life is precious. It’s a gift from God. I frankly think that it’s one of the most important values that we have. I know in the political context it’s a slogan, I guess. Should he have apologized? No. If he believes that white lives matter, which I hope he does, then he shouldn’t have apologized to a group that seemed to disagree with it. Gosh.”

    The trackers at American Bridge quickly uploaded a video of the exchange.

    Poor white people.

    Thanks to @hanneblank for sharing this Kate Rushin poem. #SandraBland #WhatHappenedToSandraBland TW Suicide.

    A homeless woman hoisted an LAPD nightstick during the skid row shooting — and could get life in prison, LA Times link.

    Mike Lee Traudt is like a caricature of a racist, killer cop. #PaulCastaway #DefendDenver

    Protesters question Denver police killing of mentally ill Native American, from Al-Jazeera.

  142. rq says

    March to the Capitol for #SandraBland #SayHerName #atx #TexasCapitol

    Sandra Bland Swallowed Or Smoked ‘Large Quantity Of Marijuana’ In Jail: DA – as mentioned earlier in passing, they got hung up on that point.

    Sandra Bland, the black woman found hanging dead in a Texas jail days after a traffic stop, smoked or possibly swallowed a large amount of marijuana while in custody, her family’s attorney reported the district attorney as saying.

    Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis made the disclosure in a text message to attorney Cannon Lambert, who has called the state’s autopsy on the Chicago-area woman defective, Lambert said.

    “Looking at the autopsy results and toxicology, it appears she swallowed a large quantity of marijuana or smoked it in the jail,” Mathis said in a text message to Lambert that the attorney provided to Reuters.

    Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the text. Repeated calls to Mathis’ office were not returned.

    “This will of course be very relevant in any future criminal or civil litigation,” the message from Mathis to Lambert said.

    Sounds like smear-campaign stuff to me.

    Why This Artist Let Her Nude Body Tell The Story of Slave Trading in New York City – we’ve seen her on this thread before!

    Nona Faustine’s photographs are blowing up on Facebook and no one is more surprised than her. Born and raised in Brooklyn, with a distinct city accent, her tone is as light as her work is somber. In the “White Shoes” photo series, Faustine appears in the places where African slaves were bought, sold, and traded in 1620’s New York City. Her expression is solemn, in some photos there is a shackle on one of her limbs, and aside from her shoes, she is completely naked.

    As a single mother, Faustine attended the International Center for Photography at Bard College and received her M.F.A. in 2013. Despite feeling as though she didn’t possess the same language and technical skills as her classmates, she forged ahead in her art-making, determined to make them eat the words, “You don’t belong here.” Now that Faustine’s work is steadily gaining recognition she’s finally able to pay homage to her ancestors the best way she knows how: telling their true story and beating the odds.

    Houston. #SandraBland. Vigil.

    Ohio State’s Quarterback Has the Perfect Response to a Fan’s Stupid “Shut Up and Play” Tweet

    Sometimes athletes choose to stand in the center of a movement and make a statement. Ohio State’s Cardale Jones, quarterback of this year’s national championship football team, took some time Thursday to ask a simple question on Twitter:

    And when getting blasted for not concentrating enough on sports, he said:

    Sorry Mr master I aints allowed to tweet nothing but foolsball stuff I donts want you to think I more than a foots ball playa sir

    how we see #SandraBland’s traffic stop, differently – cartoon.

  143. rq says

    The officer who choked #JonathanSanders to death in MS also fits the profile. #KevinHerrington: 25, WM, 1 year experience, nicknamed Rambo. I think that nickname says a lot about why people want to become cops.

    This is what “pull your pants up and talk with some sense and they won’t mess with you” looks like… (Martese Johnson)

    Feds in gym mat death probe seize phones, computers of FBI agent, sons. It’s taken ’em two years to do something about this.

    Federal agents on Tuesday seized computers and cell phones belonging to an FBI agent, his wife and their two sons as part of an ongoing investigation into the 2013 death of a Valdosta teen whose body was discovered in a rolled-up gym mat.

    Last November, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported exclusively that Brian and Branden Bell had received notification from U.S. Attorney Michael Moore that they were targets of the federal grand jury’s investigation into Kendrick Johnson’s death. That probe is nearing its second year despite the brothers’ alibis that, while challenged, have yet to be contradicted.

    I can’t read the full article, though.

    Poll Finds Most in U.S. Hold Dim View of Race Relations

    A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted last week reveals that nearly six in 10 Americans, including heavy majorities of both whites and blacks, think race relations are generally bad, and that nearly four in 10 think the situation is getting worse. By comparison, two-thirds of Americans surveyed shortly after President Obama took office said they believed that race relations were generally good.
    Continue reading the main story
    Related Coverage

    How the Poll Was ConductedJULY 23, 2015

    The swings in attitude have been particularly striking among African-Americans. During Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign, nearly 60 percent of blacks said race relations were generally bad, but that number was cut in half shortly after he won. It has now soared to 68 percent, the highest level of discontent among blacks during the Obama years and close to the numbers recorded in the aftermath of the riots that followed the 1992 acquittal of Los Angeles police officers charged in the beating of Rodney King.

    Only a fifth of those surveyed said they thought race relations were improving, while about 40 percent of both blacks and whites said they were staying essentially the same.

    Respondents tended to have much sunnier views of race relations in their own communities.

    For instance, while only 37 percent said they thought race relations were generally good in the United States, more than twice that share, 77 percent, thought they were good in their communities, a number that has changed little over the past 20 years. Similarly, only a third thought that most people were comfortable discussing race with someone of another race, but nearly three-quarters said they were comfortable doing so themselves.

    The nationwide telephone poll of 1,205 people, which focused on racial concerns, was conducted from July 14 to July 19, at the midpoint of a year that has seen as much race-related strife and violence as perhaps any since the desegregation battles of the 1960s. It came one month after the massacre of nine black worshipers at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., apparently by a white supremacist, and after a yearlong series of shootings and harassment of blacks by white police officers that were captured by smartphone cameras.

    They talk like it’s been going on for a year.

    Bullet holes found in second black church on James Island – word is, there’s been a third such incident since. I think this is a repost.

    Do You Know Why I’m Pulling You Over, Being Wildly Aggressive, And Charging You With Assault Today, Sir?

    Good afternoon, sir. Go ahead and roll your window all the way down for me. My name is Officer Daniel McEwen from the Greene County Police Department. Now, do you know why I’m pulling you over today, being overly aggressive, and charging you with a felony count of assaulting a police officer?

    I’m going to need to see your driver’s license, vehicle registration, and proof of insurance. Thank you, sir. Now, just sit tight in your car while I take a look here and grow increasingly hostile. I’m just going to start addressing you in an unmistakably threatening tone that is specifically meant to intimidate and provoke, and then drastically escalate the situation so that it quickly gets out of hand.

    Are you aware of the speed limit on this road, sir? It’s 35. I had you clocked at 52 miles per hour, which is why I had to stop you and exhibit a nakedly confrontational, antagonistic, and condescending attitude, practically daring you to challenge my authority in any way whatsoever. You can’t be driving that fast around here, so I’m going to have to write you a ticket and then violently place you under arrest the moment you do or say anything that isn’t in complete and utter compliance—or which could even be remotely construed as noncompliant—with every single instruction I give to you.

    Do you understand all that, sir?

    If you have any questions about this ticket, I’d be happy to wildly overreact to anything you say that shows the slightest hint of resentment, annoyance, or resistance. Really, while you have me here, I can easily interpret any snide remark or frustrated comment as a potential threat to my safety—even so much as an angry look—and respond in a disproportionately combative way by erupting in unwarranted rage, taking out either my 50,000-volt Taser or my handgun, and pointing it directly at you through the driver’s side window.

    Now, I have to head back to my patrol car real quick, so please bear with me here for a few minutes. Then you can be on your way to jail in no time as soon as I come back and forcibly remove you from your vehicle, slam you into the asphalt, cuff you, and jam my knee into your back as I radio in that I need backup right away because you’re resisting arrest—all the while both outright ignoring your vocalized concerns for your safety and directing my own petty, barbed insults at you. Just so we’re on the same page here, you’ll be getting three points on your license for speeding and also assault charges that carry a minimum sentence of one year in prison, but you’ll be assumed guilty of both while I automatically receive the benefit of the doubt despite any and all evidence to the contrary.

    You know what, why don’t you step out of the car, sir? And put that goddamn cell phone away.

    It’s the Onion.

  144. rq says

    The year comment above should have an ‘only’ before the ‘year’.

    Ohio State’s Cardale Jones Destroys Man Who Thinks He Should Only Worry About Football, Huffington Post adds a horrible overblown clickbait title. Nobody got destroyed. He used black humour. It was great.

    Too often athletes don’t speak out on issues, losing both the platform and experience they have to bring a valuable voice to the table, whatever the cause may be. Unfortunately, even more often, when athletes do weigh in, a collective groan tells them to “just focus on sports.”

    Well, Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones wasn’t about to let the latter happen, and excellently shut down a Twitter user who told him to just “worry about getting us fans another championship,” rather than speak on the issue of racial politics.

    Shocking racial slur typed into a traffic sign in Gwinnett Co. yesterday AM. One mother saw it on the way to work.

    Man ‘upset with life’ fires 5 rounds at Hoover police during traffic stop, and lives to tell the tale! #CrimingWhilteWhite.

    Atlanta city councilman receives racist death threats after suggesting Dr. King be on Stone Mountain

    Stone Mountain is racist. It was the birthplace of the modern KKK, and the Confederate generals that are carved into it were put their as a big fu*k you to the civil rights movement. It makes no sense for this place to be a Confederate memorial.

    As much as people want to deny the racist nature of the mountain, racists can’t help but do racist crap.

    Case in point…

    Atlanta City Councilman Michael Bond presented the idea that Dr. Martin Luther King and other famous Georgians be carved into the mountain alongside the Confederate generals (none of whom were born in Georgia).

    Immediately, the hate mail and death threats came in.

    I still think the original idea of changing it was better.

    Clinton: ‘Black lives matter’ is a guiding principle. She seems to be trying to catch up with the times. Anyone heard from Sanders lately?

    Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday tried to show black activists that she’s learned from her mistakes — and her opponents’ mistakes — when she declared it “essential that we all stand up and say loudly and clearly, yes, black lives matter.”

    “This is not just a slogan. This should be a guiding principle,” Clinton told a forum of local elected officials in South Carolina.

    The comments marked the second time this week that the Democratic presidential hopeful aligned herself with the movement that sprang from the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin and aims to address systemic racism in the United States.

    In a Facebook forum on Monday, Clinton wrote that everyone in the nation should “stand firmly behind” the idea, and promised to take actions to address racial inequality and its consequences.

    But the Democratic front-runner frustrated activists last month when she declared that “all lives matter” during an event at a black church near Ferguson, Mo, site of the police-shooting death of Mchael Brown, an 18-year-old black man, and subsequent unrest. To some, the twist on the original rallying cry only takes the focus off the cause of addressing injustices facing African Americans. Democrat Martin O’Malley, a Clinton rival, was booed by activists last week when he made a similar statement.

    Clinton on Thursday opened by calling it a “remarkable time for South Carolina,” echoing President Obama in saying the state’s response to the massacre of nine African Americans at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church was “an example of true grace.”

    “We all were grateful when the leaders of this state did the right thing and removed the Confederate battle flag from Statehouse grounds,” Clinton said. “But you know better than most that the work of healing our communities and taking on the challenge of systemic racism is far from finished.”

    Huh. Nice. How much of it is just campaign slogans?http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/248979-connecticut-dems-remove-thomas-jefferson-from-dinner-name-over“>Connecticut Dems remove Thomas Jefferson from dinner name over slavery

    Connecticut Dems remove Thomas Jefferson from dinner name over slavery – I think we talked about this already.

  145. rq says

    Oops, messed up the fromatting there, some moderation.

    Growing really uncomfortable with the discourse around suicide and #SandraBland’s death. Gonna tweet it out and hope it makes sense.
    Suicide means a lot of different things to different people. My lens is mental health and historical acts of resistance.
    a.) If we find that Sandra Bland did in fact kill herself, there is no shame, nor is the injustice that occurred suddenly void.
    b.) Rarely is suicide expected, predictable, or planned. Attempts to reconstruct Bland’s happiness/state of mind are futile for this reason.
    c) For the imprisoned/captured/enslaved, suicide is often an important act of resistance- a final reclamation of control over one’s own body
    And in chattel slavery, where bodies are commodity, suicide was an assault on those who profited in the dealing/ownership of those bodies.

    I never thought suicide could be so racialized.

  146. rq says

    In second White House bid, Clinton denounces ‘systemic racism,’ talks frankly about race. Well, she’s certainly in headlines again.

    In her second bid for the presidency, Hillary Rodham Clinton is discussing “systemic racism” and making the issue a hallmark of her campaign, as she looks to connect with the black voters who supported rival Barack Obama in 2008.

    At multiple stops in South Carolina this week, Clinton bemoaned “mass incarceration,” an uneven economy, increasingly segregated public schools and poisoned relations between law enforcement and the black community.

    She praised South Carolina leaders, including Republican Gov. Nikki Haley, for removing the Confederate battle flag from statehouse grounds after a white gunman’s massacre of nine people at a historic black church in Charleston, but she warned that the act is only symbolic.

    “America’s long struggle with racism is far from finished,” the former secretary of state said before a mostly white audience at a Greenville technical college. Hours earlier, with a majority black audience at a West Columbia church, she declared, “Anybody who says we don’t have more progress to make is blind.”

    At both stops, she added symbolism of her own, trumpeting the mantra “Black Lives Matter” that has become a rallying cry of and name for activists who organized protests in several cities amid high-profile cases of black citizens being killed during encounters with police.

    “This is not just a slogan,” Clinton said. “This should be a guiding principle.”

    “I want Sandy to be remembered as an activist”

    “I want Sandy to be remembered as an activist, sassy, smart, and she knew her rights. And so while everybody is in an uproar, go do your research…so that you know your rights and it’s not your daughter, your son, your kid. The anger can be channeled.”

    With video.

    The Funk Family Tree: Celebrating George Clinton’s Influence in Music

    Most people tend to get the words “inspiration” and “influence” confused. The former is the act of convincing others that they too can achieve the great heights that you’ve reached. Inspiration is the setting of a blueprint detailing how to climb to a certain plateau, and from there how to make that plateau yours alone. While inspiration is important in the canonization process of a future icon, influence is the quality that actually motivates one’s followers and drives their decision making. Influence is the coercive force behind the choice to take that first step in their idol’s path. Influence is the direct effect on the immediate interests and actions of the greater public. It’s when the summation of your exploits is so inspiring that people can’t help but to want to emulate you and strive to follow in your footsteps. Whether it be the manner of your dress, how you approach your craft, or your general outlook on life, others adopt these characteristics and apply them to their own existences. There have been numerous examples of both types of artists in music. While the inspirational are great in number and continue to grow as the years pass, the truly influential are much harder to come by and leave their mark for years, even decades, after. And throughout our lifetimes there have been few creatives as influential as George Clinton.

    Clinton’s fingerprints are present on almost every worthwhile artist’s sound since the late 1970s. His musical journey is one of the most interesting and wide-ranging of any of his peers. Having originally been a member of a doo wop band and Motown staff songwriter in the early 60’s, it became clear over time that he needed to change lanes in order to stand out. He took time to explore new sounds, not realizing how his exploits would help father and redirect genres of music. With (a lot) of LSD supplementing his already healthy imagination, Clinton began to bring the world a sonic pattern that would become more and more important as the years passed.

    The article continues at the link.

    Why Is It So Hard to Track Taser Use? A peripheral point to Bland’s arrest. Peripheral? Ha. Actually pretty key, since being threatened with a Taser is what got her out of the car in the first place.

    The footage is disturbing, but it also reflects a common problem: Tasers are not only used by law-enforcement agents as less lethal alternatives to guns, or even as weapons for self-defense—but often as tools to get people to do what they want. Bland does not appear to endanger Encinia, but she is not complying with his order, so he threatens to tase her.
    […]

    Though experts believe the practice is common, there’s little accounting for how Taser weapons are used nationwide. And though there’s no evidence that Bland’s death involved a Taser, there are few reliable databases tracking even more elementary questions: Just how many people die every year because of Tasers? How lethal are stun guns?

    An ongoing reporting project from The Guardian has attempted to keep track of such deaths. That publication and The Washington Post are tracking every police-affiliated death this year, a difficult task that has not been successfully accomplished by a federal agency, but The Guardian’s project specifically includes and separately categorizes those deaths that occurred after use of a stun gun.

    The Guardian reports that 33 people in the United States have died because of a Taser weapon since January 1. Taser International, the company which manufactures and markets Taser weapons, told me that The Guardian is ascribing “cause” incorrectly.

    “If someone dies following a TASER incident, The Guardian is automatically and erroneously assuming causality,” said Steve Tuttle, the company’s vice president of communications. He called the publication’s assignment of cause “inflammatory, ridiculous, and wrong.”

    Tuttle told me the paper’s reporting was “not consistent at all” with its own tally of Taser-affiliated deaths, but he did not describe the company’s methods. He referenced a 2009 study from a Wake Forest professor that found that serious injuries occurred in fewer than 1 percent of Taser uses. “These weapons appear to be very safe, especially when compared to other options police have for subduing violent or combative suspects,” said the lead researcher, William Bozeman, at the time. “That is not to say that injuries and deaths are impossible.”

    Indeed, a peer-reviewed study published in the journal of the American Heart Association three years later found that Taser weapons could cause heart attack and death.

    And Bozeman’s quote gets to the problem of Taser use. Tasers are undoubtedly safer than firearms: No one, not even the company’s harshest critics, contend that. But they are often used not on violent or combative suspects, as Bozeman says, but on people simply failing to comply with officer orders. They are effectively “pain-compliance tools,” not less lethal weapons. In practice, they join a host of other compliance tools, including rubber bullets and tear gas, that are billed as harmless but can cause great harm to their subjects.

    Love the company’s statement. And ‘harmless’? Maybe ‘less harm’, but not completely ‘-less’.

    We asked @TxDPS why no time stamp on #SandraBland arrest video, why newer upload 3 mins shorter. Here’s the answer: There’s a 3 minute difference because of a different conversion format used. Or something. I didn’t know it could compress time.

  147. rq says

    Waller County judge is using social media to spread rumors about #SandraBland investigation (h/t @ethanbrown72).

    Gunfire damage to black churches on James Island leaves members cautious but not afraid. I believe that is #3.

    Elder Jerome Fludd of Mt. Sinai Evangelistic Church on Friday morning found five bullet holes in a stained glass window depicting the burning bush through which God spoke to Moses in the Old Testament.

    “We’re all thankful that nobody was in the church,” Fludd said.

    He decided to check on the building because of bullet damage to windows at two nearby churches that are also home to black congregations on James Island.

    The Riverland Drive church will stay the course, Fludd said, because faith and love triumph over hatred.

    “This too shall pass,” he said.

    Maisha Rounds, music minister, said the church would not give the vandals the satisfaction of inciting fear. The congregation will pray for them, she said.

    “Ultimately this is a great opportunity to show God’s love,” Rounds said.

    The church will not change its routine, Fludd said. “If we do that, the person who did this wins.”

    Baltimore police fundraiser cancelled after blackface controversy. The Toronto Star got into that.

    A Baltimore venue has cancelled a fundraiser for six local police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, after it was revealed that the event would feature a blackface performance.

    Bobby Berger, a 67-year-old retired Baltimore police officer, was set to perform in blackface at the Nov. 1 fundraiser.

    Berger was fired from the force in the 1980s for his performances, The Baltimore Sun reported.

    Berger often impersonated Al Jolson, a singer from the 1920s and ’30s who performed with black makeup on his face to impersonate black people.

    Michael’s Eighth Avenue said in a statement that Berger would not host the event. “No contract was signed with Mr. Berger,” the venue said.

    “Michael’s does not condone blackface performances of any kind. As an event venue, it has not been the practice of Michael’s Eighth Avenue to pre-approve entertainment that is planned as part of a contracted event. This policy will be carefully and thoughtfully reviewed.”

    On Wednesday, Berger told The Associated Press that 610 tickets had been sold in eight days at $45 each for the fundraiser. He told AP there was nothing racist about his act.

    “It’s coincidence,” Berger said about the fact that the entertainer he impersonates wore blackface. “There’s no racial overtones to this show. There’s nothing racial to the show.”

    NOTHING, I tell ya, NOTHING.

    Arizona Drug Tested Welfare Recipients — Here Are the Shocking Results

    “In Wisconsin, we enacted a program that says that adults who are able to work must be enrolled in one of our job training programs before they can get a welfare check,” he said. “Now, as of the budget I just signed, we are also making sure they can take a drug test.”

    The Republican romance with legislation meant to complicate the process of delivering aid to low-income residents or, as critics argue, defame and shame them, can be traced back to 2009. In November of that year, newly arrived GOP Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona announced that the cash-strapped state would begin testing adults if the state had “reasonable cause” to believe they were getting high.

    “We don’t want people who are abusing drugs to be on welfare,” GOP state Rep. John Kavanagh told the Arizona Republic in 2009, “because that means that the taxpayers are subsidizing and facilitating illegal drug use.”

    But an examination of Arizona’s experiment reveals a flawed policy that has failed to accomplish its stated goal of saving the state money, and has instead done little more than further stigmatize poverty and marginalize the poor.

    The results are thin: According to USA Today, more than 87,000 welfare recipients went through Arizona’s program in the three years after it began. The total number of drug cheats caught was exactly one — a single positive result, which saved the state precisely $560.

    Checking in again in March, the Arizona Sonora News Service cited state Department of Economic Security figures which found that over the course of more than five years, “42 people have been asked to take a follow-up drug test and 19 actually took the test, 16 of whom passed. The other 23 were stripped of their benefits for failing to take the drug test.”

    That adds up to a grand total of three failed tests from 2009-2014. The net savings reaped from withholding benefits for those who either tested positive or failed to complete a drug test was around $3,500, once the $500 cost of testing the 19 is factored in, according to one state agency report. The haul is especially unimpressive when you consider the $1.7 million in savings state officials promised when they unveiled the program.

    Lesson learned? Not quite.

    Maybe stop demonizing the poor.

    Ex-Baltimore Police Officer on Abusive Cops: ‘So Many of Them Are Punks’

    In late June, a little more than a month after the uprisings involving the death of Freddie Gray, a series of tweets appeared from retired Baltimore police officer and former Sgt. Michael A. Wood Jr., who worked on the force 2003-2014, that started with: “I’m going to start Tweeting the things I’ve seen & participated in, in policing that is corrupt, intentional or not.”

    Wood had spoken about police corruption previously, but these tweets went viral. They included discussion of incidents in which a police officer slapped a black woman in the face for accidentally bumping in to him, and kicking a handcuffed suspect in the face. Wood says that black people were specifically targeted and added, “All of these things that you suspected, it’s all real.”

    Wood reveals more to The Root about police corruption and a system he feels is broken and needs an overhaul, not just repair.
    […]

    TR: Was there someone giving these orders? Someone who was saying this is what you need to do in terms of quotas?

    MW: They would do it on easy people. An old lady who wouldn’t fight you, and they would issue a warning and look like they did something for that day. You focus on 16-24 black males because they commit the crimes in this city. You look at the offenders: That’s profiling, that’s intelligent policing. That’s what you think. That’s not intelligent policing. You’re creating the criminal.

    When I arrest a guy for a dime bag because I jack him up on a stop and frisk—which would never happen to me—he gets a fine. He can’t get the money for the fine together, so now they suspend his license. Well, he still has to drive to work, so he gets pulled over, and it goes on and on.

    They reduce everything to numbers. You hear the mayor say we had two homicides yesterday. Why can’t you say, Tyrone West and Freddie Gray died yesterday? The whole mentality is, everything is a number … numbers, numbers. No humanity.

    You’ll come up with an algorithm that says if you get more guns off the street, you’ll reduce crime by this number. It will become some anecdotal reference like that. And then it becomes an ideology that is actually true. They will keep going after these numbers, and they’ll say this is effective. Acceptable average working for me—you would have had to have at least 10 arrests a month for me not to get on you.

    When we have politicians that represent the people, we can end the drug war. I am for complete legalization for every drug. Ninety percent of what I did was drug cases. Prison population is all drugs. Shootings are over drug profits.

    There’s more at the link.

    Opinion: Washington needs to tell the truth about police violence. Just a repost, worth a re-read.

  148. rq says

    Exclusive: Sandra Bland’s mother speaks

    As the investigation into Sandra Bland’s death continues, Rev. Sharpton talks exclusively to Bland’s mother. Hear what she had to say about the case and the fight to get justice for her daughter.

    NBC video.

    Scribes at the Movies: Good Burger, just a fun dialogue on movies and actor from the ’90s.

    Jesse Williams has exactly 24 things to say about the Sandra Bland case

    He’s been very vocal about the #BlackLivesMatter movement and before he became an actor, he was a teacher, so, it came as no surprise that he decided to literally school his Twitter followers this week by dropping his thoughts on the Sandra Bland case. Bland died in police custody after being arrested following a minor traffic violation. Her death has been ruled a suicide, but her family is not convinced.

    Neither is Williams, who went on a total tweetstorm, breaking down his thoughts on race, bias and police brutality in an epic 24-tweet rant. So much scrolling… (Warning: There is some NSFW language sprinkled in.)

    It’s 24 tweets, not a tweetstorm. Doesn’t even count as a full-length article.

    6 Things We Know About Brian Encinia, The Texas Trooper Who Arrested Sandra Bland

    1. Brian Encinia’s Career As A State Trooper Is Fairly New

    Encinia ventured into police work after a career in agriculture. He attended Texas A&M University and graduated in 2008 with his bachelor’s in agricultural leadership and development. After working as an ingredient processing supervisor at Blue Bell Creameries for six years (2008-2014) he worked as a chief in the Brenham Fire Department from 2009 to 2013.

    He began working for the Department of Public Safety in Waller County as a state trooper and has held the position for a little over a year.

    2. Preliminary Investigation Revealed Encinia Violated “Courtesy” Protocols

    Texas Department of Public Safety officials informed reporters this week that Encinia violated several traffic stop and courtesy protocols. A DPS spokesman didn’t state what exactly the officer did wrong, but legal experts claim his alleged abrasive behavior could be a factor.

    Texas Commission on Jail Standards also slammed the Waller County Jail for inconsistent training and failing to actively check on inmates every hour face-to-face.

    Bland’s rights were also violated during the arrest. Citizens are allowed to remain silent after handing over their license and proof of insurance.

    3. Key Details About His Initial Encounter With Sandra Bland Were Left Out

    After footage of Encinia and Bland’s encounter was released to the public, suspicions of editing and Encinia’s own account of the incident were called out. In the police report, the officer says he asked Bland to exit the vehicle to continue with his investigation.

    The video shows he actually opened the door to Bland’s Hyundai after pulling out his stun gun. He also argued with her about her cigarette, another factor leading to their confrontation.

    Three more things at the link.

    In jail voicemail, Sandra Bland said she was ‘at a loss for words’: report

    In a voicemail left for a friend, Sandra Bland said from jail that she was at “a loss for words” after a traffic stop in Texas ended in her arrest, according to a report.

    KTRK, an ABC affiliate in Houston, said it obtained the short voicemail message and verified it with a local judge.

    Bland, a 28-year-old African American woman, died in the Waller County Jail on July 13, three days after her arrest.

    “Hey this is me,” Bland says in the message, according to KTRK. “I’m, um, I just was able to see the judge. I don’t really know. They got me set at a $5,000 bond. I’m still just at a loss for words honestly, about this whole process, how switching lanes with no signal turned into all of this, I don’t even know. But I’m still here, so, I guess call me back when you can.”

    Waller County Judge Trey Duhon told ABC News that Bland also placed calls to a sibling and a bondsman on the same day she left the voicemail for her friend.

    I know, some of this is old, old news. :P Sorry.

    Kim Kardashian West Voices Outrage Over Sandra Bland Tragedy

    Many celebrities have used their platform to speak up in support for Sandra Bland, a 28 year old Chicago woman who was found dead in a jail cell after being taken into police custody following a routine traffic stop.

    Support for Bland only intensified when dash cam footage was released earlier this week that showcased the Texas state trooper’s aggressive attitude. Grey’s Anatomy actor and activist Jesse Williams brilliantly encapsulated the privilege white people have when interacting with law enforcement, and how that privilege doesn’t translate to minorities in a series of tweets.

    However, reality star Kim Kardashian West, an unlikely of sources, took to Twitter Thursday evening (July 23) to voice her concern in front of her nearly 38 million followers, with what she, and many Sandra Bland supporters feel is a massive cover up.

    Since the July 10th arrest of Bland, Texas prosecutors have ruled her death a suicide by hanging, to the dismay of many who suspect foul play.

  149. rq says

    Did Sandra Bland Have a Right to Film Her Arrest?

    The dashcam footage of Sandra Bland’s arrest is disturbing for a number of reasons—including trooper Brian Encinia’s apparent use of excessive force in subduing Bland. But for civil liberties advocates, a less dramatic moment of the footage is nearly as disquieting. When Bland attempts to film the encounter on her cellphone, Encinia demands that she “get off the phone.” When Bland insists that she has “a right to record,” Encinia repeatedly barks, “PUT YOUR PHONE DOWN!” Eventually, she does. It’s clear she had no choice.

    Encinia seems extremely confident that he could force Bland to stop recording her own arrest. He should not be, because his command was almost certainly illegal. The overwhelming majority of federal courts to consider the issue have held that the First Amendment protects an individual’s right to record the police in public. That right very likely extends to one’s own arrest.

    Encinia claimed that he arrested Bland for assaulting him. But in the video, it is Encinia who is most likely breaking the law.

    Although the Supreme Court has never squarely held that the First Amendment protects a “right to record,” four federal circuit courts—as well as myriad districts courts—have affirmed that we all have a free speech right to record police in public. In a 2012 case called American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois v. Alvarez, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cogently explained the logic behind this theory, writing that the “act of making” an audiovisual recording is “a corollary of the right to disseminate the resulting recording.” The unquestioned “right to publish or broadcast” the recording “would be insecure, or largely ineffective,” if the state could ban the act of the recording in the first place. As an analogy, the court noted that the state surely couldn’t ban individuals from taking notes or photographs in public without violating free speech. Why should it be allowed to ban cellphone videos?
    […]

    Texas currently has no law against filming police officers in public (though some Republicans would like to pass one). Still, without an unambiguous ruling to the contrary, most officers will probably assume that shutting down filming is within their power during an arrest. It is not, and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (which encompasses Texas) should say so soon. Had Bland been allowed to exercise her right to record, we might have footage of the key confrontation—which occurs just beyond the dashcam’s scope—when the encounter grew violent. Bland, and the public, had a right to that information. We are all worse off for its absence.

    Storytellers’ Guide to Storytellers, Part 1

    Part of our mission at Seven Scribes is to showcase content from young storytellers of color. We want to provide you with the best possible editorial guidance and assistance in your journey from idea to draft to readership. That mission extends beyond just those who do work with us to the greater community of budding creatives looking to figure out just what comes next. Over the next few weeks we’ll be releasing a few guides on just how to get your stories out, from the basics to the complex. This first guide is for social commentators, opinion journalists and essay writers.

    So you wanna be the next Ta-Nehisi Coates, huh? Well, join the club. The path between knowing you have something to say and finding your writing voice is a long, but vital one. The Internet and social media have broken down many of the barriers between hardcore reporting, opinion writing, and the shades in between, so pitching a story to an outlet, whether it involves interviews, research, data analysis, or an insightful view largely boils down to the same basic mechanics. Here’s a few steps to get you started.

    1 Know your outlets. Can’t stress this enough. Your first priority should be protecting your byline, and while many of us get our starts blogging or on sites that aren’t exactly the New Yorker, you don’t do yourself any favors by writing at places that have ethics or stances in direct contradiction to your own. Sure, starting out may require a little, let’s say, flexibility in just who you write for and the voice you use, but remember that this is the internet, and the things you write follow you. Reading the outlets where you want to write regularly and thoroughly also helps you identify the stories they haven’t run, what they’re most likely to publish, their editorial style and demographics. These are all very important considerations in any pitch.
    2 Come up with a good question to answer. We’re not sure if this is easier than it sounds or harder, but it’s the most basic element at play here. Good ideas help you steer clear from bullshit, and good ideas, even with inexperienced writing, are easier to shape into good content than half-baked ideas from expert writers. Don’t feel pressure to write on a hot topic if you can’t find a new angle or question that everyone else hasn’t already covered. Find the things that matter to you. Your mind is beautiful. Figure out the unique ways it views things and find questions to answer based on that.
    3 Do your Googles. Not just for research, but for figuring out just how unique your idea really is. Common scenario for me (fivefifths): I do some browsing, scroll past a headline or skim an article with a great idea and then I forget it. Then in the shower next day I have a great idea, only to Google it and remember where it came from. That’s the way the human brain works, especially if you’re following rule one and being a voracious reader. We pick up things unconsciously and they shape our perspectives. Also, the internet is vast, so many writers may have the same idea as you already. Sometimes, unique angles may prove to be not-so-unique, and checking out the literature before you send a pitch is always a good way to stay ahead of the crowd and catch editors’ eyes.
    4 Find where and how to pitch it. Most sites have specified instructions or places on where and how to send pitches or submissions. Save yourself the headache and locate this first before you spend the time sending something the publication won’t run. Most times, you’ll find this in the “Contact Us” section or somewhere near. Also, now’s the time to lean on any connections you have. Most everyone in writing has gotten a story somewhere because of a friendship. Don’t be afraid to ask friends that do write for help or connections with editors. Just try not to take it personally if they have to decline.

    Six more pieces of advice can be found at the link!

    New details, questions as another gun is found in a Baltimore police station

    As police investigate how a handgun was smuggled into the holding cell of a police station this week, newly released documents show that a man who committed suicide in another police station last year not only had a gun but also a lighter, knife and more than $1,000 in cash.

    The incidents raise fresh questions about policies and procedures at police stations. Officials had promised to review security measures in January after a man walked into a station with a loaded handgun, marijuana and cocaine and told officers he was working for Black Guerrilla Family gang leaders to test police security.

    “It certainly begs a really large question: How safe is it to be in a police station that such an occurrence can happen, now multiple times?” said City Councilman Carl Stokes, an East Baltimore Democrat.

    Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and police officials promised to investigate and take steps to prevent future security breaches.

    “We cannot go on allowing incident after incident like this to occur and endanger the lives of our officers as well as those in police custody,” said Kevin Harris, a spokesman for the mayor.

    “The mayor has instructed interim Commissioner [Kevin] Davis to be as transparent as possible in explaining how these incidents occur, and more importantly, all the steps being taken moving forward to protect our officers and the public.”

    The Police Department said in response to this week’s incident that “all circumstances … will be thoroughly examined to make sure this does not happen again.”

    The department’s headquarters downtown has a front-entrance metal detector, police said, but the district stations do not. Police have said they have clear policies requiring that anyone taken into custody or transported be searched for weapons.

    Exclusive: Feds Regularly Monitored Black Lives Matter Since Ferguson

    The Department of Homeland Security has been monitoring the Black Lives Matter movement since anti-police protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri last summer, according to hundreds of documents obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request.

    The documents, released by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Operations Coordination, indicate that the department frequently collects information, including location data, on Black Lives Matter activities from public social media accounts, including on Facebook, Twitter, and Vine, even for events expected to be peaceful. The reports confirm social media surveillance of the protest movement and ostensibly related events in the cities of Ferguson, Baltimore, Washington, DC, and New York.

    They also show the department watching over gatherings that seem benign and even mundane. For example, DHS circulated information on a nationwide series of silent vigils and a DHS-funded agency planned to monitor a funk music parade and a walk to end breast cancer in the nation’s capital.

    The tracking of domestic protest groups and peaceful gatherings raises questions over whether DHS is chilling the exercise of First Amendment rights, and over whether the department, created in large part to combat terrorism, has allowed its mission to creep beyond the bounds of useful security activities as its annual budget has grown beyond $60 billion.

    The surveillance cataloged in the DHS documents goes back to August of last year, when protests and riots broke out in Ferguson the day after the shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. According to two August 11th, 2014 reports, a DHS FEMA “WatchOps officer” used information from Twitter and Vine to monitor the riots and reproduced a map, originally created by a Reddit user, of conflict zones.

    This sort of information gathering was not confined to Ferguson. A few days after rioting and protests there, a DHS email forwarded another message reporting on the “National Moment of Silence,” nationwide silent vigils planned in response to the shooting. The original email listed the cities with planned vigils and noted that they were being spread on social media with the hashtag #NMOS14. It also mentioned that NYPD’s counterterrorism intelligence organization would be “monitoring the situation.” The DHS email forwarding that information said the data was provided “for your situational awareness.”

    Officer Indicted For Lying On Warrant Application That Led To Toddler Being Burned By Flashbang Grenade. See, indicted for lying – probably for the lying being discovered – not for actually causing immense bodily harm to that toddler.
    Fucked up.

  150. rq says

    Sandra Bland autopsy report, which has raised questions.

    I was told that black funeral homes are called for black folk. But the Waller Sheriff called his friend at a white funeral home for Sandra.
    There is speculation that the Sherriff called his friend to handle #SandraBland’s body in order to allow for tampering to support suicide.

    One can access the inside of the Waller County jail from the back, where there are no cameras. #SandraBland
    And the fence that is up around the back of the Waller County Jail has an entrance gate. #SandraBland
    Someone could easily have entered #SandraBland’s cell w/o notice and harmed her, and no camera would’ve recorded it.

    So many questions still floating about. Probably never going to answer all of them to everyone’s satisfaction.

  151. rq says

    The Mission: The Creative Sampling of Marvel Comics, Hip-Hop, and the All-New Gambit.

    On Tuesday, July 14, Marvel Comics unveiled the first image from its hip-hop cover variant event, which will run from October 2015 to February 2016, coinciding with their “All-New, All-Different Marvel” relaunch of between forty-five and sixty new monthly titles.

    The juxtaposition of those two things, and the inequity of writers of color featured within the mainstream American superhero comic book industry, sparked a conversation online, through various columns and articles, and thousands of postings on social media.

    One such article was written by me, and while the hip-hop cover event was one of three subjects discussed, the culminating subject of which was the need for diversity boards within comic book publishers, it was the hip-hop cover event which seemed to get the most attention and interest.

    After that article ran, I had off-the-record correspondences with two people at Marvel Comics, from different levels within the company’s hierarchy, and decided to devote an entire column to this subject.

    The issue is that “hip-hop,” a culture and genre primarily created by Blacks and Latinos, is being profiled by a publisher that, to public knowledge as of this writing, does not have any announced notable Black writers on monthly, ongoing titles.

    The irony of this, made clear by the cover event coinciding with a relaunch which has revealed 45 titles so far with no Black writers, cannot be ignored.

    What is notable and significant is that various artists of color are involved in the hip-hop cover event, and I spoke with some of them to get their viewpoints on the event, their feelings, and the import of a Marvel Comics/hip-hop mashup homage.

    A range of perspectives at the link.

    Committee to hold hearing on jail, police issues in wake of Bland death. Not quite an independent review, but…

    The same day Waller County officials released results of Sandra Bland’s autopsy report, state lawmakers announced they will meet next week to discuss jail standards and police relations.

    Members of the House County Affairs Committee, chaired by Houston Democrat Garnet Coleman, on Thursday will discuss “jail standards, procedures with regards to potentially mentally ill persons in county jails, as well as issues stemming from interactions between the general public and peace officers.”

    Sandra Bland, a Chicago native in town to take a job at her alma mater Prairie View A&M, was pulled over in Waller County on July 10 for failing to signal a lane change.

    Dash cam video of the interaction between the 28-year-old and Department of Public Safety Trooper Brian Encinia shows a tense situation quickly escalate out of control after Bland balked at the officer’s request that she put out her cigarette. He quickly ordered – and then dragged – Bland out of her car, pointing a taser at her and yelling, “I will light you up!”

    A struggle ensued off-camera, and Bland ultimately was arrested for assaulting a public servant and booked into Waller County Jail. Three days later, she was found dead in her cell.

    Officials ruled the cause of death suicide by hanging. Autopsy results released Friday corroborated that determination, and jail staff confirmed Bland had divulged on at least one intake form that she had attempted suicide in the last year after a miscarriage and suffered from depression.

    Bland’s arrest and death quickly became a national and international story, with civil rights leaders here and abroad calling for answers and greater dialogue around police racial profiling, treatment of minorities and use of force.

    In that moment, she was the 24th person to kill herself in a county jail in the greater Houston area in the last five years, and one of the 140 people to take their lives in Texas county jails since regulators began tracking jail suicides in 2009. That number does not include the 21 people who have killed in municipal jails run by towns or cities and which are not under the purview of the jail commission, or inmates who have killed themselves in federal or state prisons across the state.

    The Texas Commission on Jail Standards conducted an investigation after Bland’s death and determined that the jail was non-compliant in two areas.

    The jail commission did not cite the jail for its failure to place Bland on a more aggressive observation watch, as required with potentially suicidal inmates, even though the answers she gave during her screenings raised “several red flags,” according to the commission’s director, Brandon Wood.

    “The form was filled out in its entirety,” Wood said, explaining why the jail was not faulted for that reason. “It’s a subjective form. And the final question regarding ‘does the screener suspect mental illness’does say no.”

    “If we had more resources, to conduct more trainings, so as to ensure jailers were aware of forms and recommendations out there, it would benefit all involved,” Wood said, adding that he’d already been notified about the hearings.

    And here is where #SandraBland was arrested. Waller County, TX.

    A YEAR LATER: A look at what’s changed, what we’ve learned, and the road ahead. A bit before the year, but still. A stack of links at that link with all kinds of good reading.

    Feds Seize Emails, Phones In Kendrick Johnson’s Gym Mat Death Investigation. So yeah, it’s taken them two years to get that far. How much longer will it take?

    The investigation into the mysterious death of a Georgia teen found rolled in a gym mat two years ago received new life when federal marshals seized emails from the sheriff’s office this week, CNN reports.

    Kendrick Johnson was found dead in a Valdosta high school gym in January 2013, a death Lowndes County sheriff’s investigators ruled an accident. While reaching for a shoe at the center of a rolled up gym mat, Johnson got stuck and died of “positional asphyxia,” investigators initially said.

    But Johnson’s family believed otherwise, commissioning a second autopsy that showed the teen died of “unexplained, apparent nonaccidental blunt force trauma.” On Tuesday and Wednesday, more than two years after the high school basketball player’s death, U.S. Marshals presented a warrant to Lowndes County IT offices to seize emails and phone records related to the teenager’s death.

    At this point, the contents of the emails and records are unclear.

    Johnson’s parents haven’t given up the fight to determine what happened to their son on that January day two years ago. Earlier this year, the parents filed a $100 million lawsuit that accuses two former schoolmates, who are brothers, and their father, who is a local FBI agent, of wrongful death, CNN reports.

    Orlando police kills suspect after chase, altercation

    A man is dead after being shot by an Orlando police officer following a foot chase and altercation during the overnight hours.

    Orlando police officers were dispatched to the Watauga Woods Apartments around 1:02 a.m. Friday in reference to several people fighting near the pool area of the complex.

    The first officer that arrived to the area made contact with one of the individuals, who ran away from the scene after the officer arrived.

    The officer was able to catch up with the suspect, identified as Albert Joseph Davis, and what Chief John Mina described as a “violent struggle” took place between the two, a report states.

    Mina said at one point the officer did use his Taser on Davis, but it did not stop the struggle. The officer’s Taser, hat and other items were found strewn on the ground. Mina said that showed how violent the struggle was.

    The officer fired his agency-issued weapon during the altercation. Orlando police did perform CPR before Davis was taken to the hospital, where he died.

    The police officer wasn’t injured.

    Article contains information on Davis’ past criminal record.

  152. rq says

    On the Death of Sandra Bland and Our Vulnerable Bodies

    I AM tired of writing about slain black people, particularly when those responsible are police officers, the very people obligated to serve and protect them. I am exhausted. I experience this specific exhaustion with alarming frequency. I am all too aware that I have the luxury of such exhaustion.

    One of the greatest lies perpetrated on our culture today is the notion that dash cameras on police cruisers and body cameras on police officers are tools of justice. Video evidence, no matter the source, can document injustice, but rarely does this incontrovertible evidence keep black people safe or prevent future injustices.

    Sandra Bland, 28 years old, was pulled over earlier this month in Waller County, Tex., by a state trooper, Brian T. Encinia. She was pulled over for a routine traffic stop. She shouldn’t have been pulled over but she was driving while black, and the reality is that black women and men are pulled over every day for this infraction brought about by the color of their skin.
    […]

    Each time I get in my car, I make sure I have my license, registration and insurance cards. I make sure my seatbelt is fastened. I place my cellphone in the handless dock. I check and double check and triple check these details because when (not if) I get pulled over, I want there to be no doubt I am following the letter of the law. I do this knowing it doesn’t really matter if I am following the letter of the law or not. Law enforcement officers see only the color of my skin, and in the color of my skin they see criminality, deviance, a lack of humanity. There is nothing I can do to protect myself, but I am comforted by the illusion of safety.

    As a larger, very tall woman, I am sometimes mistaken for a man. I don’t want to be “accidentally” killed for being a black man. I hate that such a thought even crosses my mind. This is the reality of living in this black body. This is my reality of black womanhood, living in a world where I am stripped of my femininity and humanity because of my unruly black body.

    There is a code of conduct in emergency situations — women and children first. The most vulnerable among us should be rescued before all others. In reality, this code of conduct is white women and children first. Black women, black children, they are not afforded the luxury of vulnerability. We have been shown this time and again. We remember McKinney, Tex., and a police officer, David Casebolt, holding a young black girl to the ground. We say the names of the fallen. Tamir Rice. Renisha McBride. Natasha McKenna. Tanisha Anderson. Rekia Boyd. We say their names until our throats run dry and there are still more names to add to the list.

    During the ill-fated traffic stop, most of which was caught on camera, Mr. Encinia asked Ms. Bland why she was irritated and she told him. She answered the question she was asked. Her voice was steady, confident. Mr. Encinia didn’t like her tone, as if she should be joyful about a traffic stop. He told Ms. Bland to put her cigarette out and she refused. The situation escalated. Mr. Encinia threatened to light her up with his Taser. Ms. Bland was forced to leave her car. She continued to protest. She was placed in handcuffs. She was treated horribly. She was treated as less than human. She protested her treatment. She knew and stated her rights but it did not matter. Her black life and her black body did not matter.

    And the closing sentences:

    Nonetheless, increasingly, as a black woman in America, I do not feel alive. I feel like I am not yet dead.

    @deray #DarriusStewart #JusticeForDarrius rally/march today. #BlackLivesMatter

    A sign for Sandra Bland: ‘Signal lane change or sheriff may kill you’

    The sign was homemade, all but two words written in black on white strips of paper attached to a wrought iron fence facing University Drive, the gateway to Prairie View A&M University.

    “Signal lane change or sheriff may kill you,” it said. “Kill you” was written in
    red.

    Sandra Bland had come to the area from Chicago for a job interview on July 9 at Prairie View, a historically black school that was her alma mater. She was stopped the next day by a state trooper for failing to signal near the entrance on University Drive and then arrested on suspicion of assaulting the officer.

    For some, the sign struck a chord.

    “It was a comment about what happened,” said Mike James, 54, the former video coordinator for the Prairie View football team.
    […]

    A photograph of the sign went viral after it was posted online Tuesday, retweeted thousands of times, often with comments. “Wow, is that sign really there? Faith in humanity,” wrote Tish, or @DonaRozeW. “Worth repeating,” wrote Keegan Stephan. “Driving while black is dangerous in Texas!!” tweeted Yvette Rani of Austin, Texas.

    But later Tuesday, the sign had disappeared.

    “I don’t know why they took it down,” James said. But then he added, “This is a Democratic, black area surrounded by white Republican people. They’re afraid of the political repercussions.”

    The home behind the fence where the sign was posted is like many in the surrounding leafy Alta Vista subdivision: a battered single-story brick ranch house. The driveway was cluttered with a tangle of children’s bicycles, a basketball hoop, fishing gear, baseball helmets, a grill and a deep fryer.

    The young African American mother who answered the door Friday had red eyes and said she had grown tired of dealing with the sign. She did not want to give her name, worried about retaliation.

    When the sign first appeared a week after Bland’s death, she feared for her family’s safety. She was upset at whomever put it there, saying she thought: “You just put a target on our backs.”

    She pulled it down. By Tuesday, someone had posted the sign again.

    “So I cut it down,” she said.

    More at the link.

    Prosecutor investigating Sandra Bland’s death has troubling history of racial bias — just like the sheriff. A repost, I believe.

    Sandra Bland: suspicion and mistrust flourish amid official inconsistencies , so if the PD starts talking about regaining trust, etc.? I doubt they ever had it. And their transparency is shit.

    As he posted a video clip to Facebook on Thursday night, the Chicago rapper Lil Bibby claimed to have startling new evidence in the case of Sandra Bland, who was found dead last week at the county jail in Hempstead, Texas, from what authorities said was a suicide.

    “She looks dead in the video already,” he said of the footage, which showed a black woman cuffed at the hands and feet being pulled out of a police car and dragged lifelessly across a parking lot to jail by a white officer. The post was shared more than 260,000 times.

    But the clip in fact dates from October 2013. The man seen in uniform is not Texas state trooper Brian Encinia, who aggressively arrested Bland following a 10 July traffic stop, but a police officer from Tampa, Florida. And the homeless woman being manhandled, who had been detained on drugs charges, survived her ordeal.

    Lil Bibby’s was only the latest in a series of outlandish claims fuelling allegations that an official cover-up is masking the true story of Bland’s death. The assertions have laid bare the full extent of mistrust for the police that has grown sharply around the US in the year since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old, in Ferguson, Missouri.

    “The case of Sandra Bland is an exclamation point on the reasoning of why it is that black Americans feel disdain and distrust for police,” said Jamal Bryant, a Baltimore pastor and activist who was on the scene in Texas this week and delivered the eulogy in his city at the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old who died from a broken neck in police custody in April. “People simply do not believe them.”

    Speculation has circulated that Bland must have already been dead and lying on her back when police photographed her for a mugshot, because her head was tilted slightly back and the grey wall behind her appeared to match the floor of her cell.

    Police point to a standard second booking picture, taken from Bland’s side, as evidence there was no foul play. Bland died in jail three days after the traffic stop, having been held on a charge of assaulting a public servant. An autopsy report released on Friday ruled Bland’s death a suicide and said investigators discovered wounds on her neck consistent with hanging.

    A recording by the dashboard camera of Encinia’s cruiser, which was decidedly unflattering to the officer, was dismissed by Bryant and thousands of other activists online as a selectively edited piece of police propaganda, because the footage contained a series of unusual jumps and cuts. Police insisted a technical glitch was to blame.
    […]

    Errors made and inconsistencies in information released by the authorities have compounded the wariness of activists and supporters of Bland’s family. Jail bosses were swiftly censured by Texas authorities for failing to check on prisoners frequently enough and for a lack of mental health training.

    One booking document purportedly showed Bland had answered “no” when asked if she had thoughts of killing herself during the past year, yet also said she had tried to kill herself earlier in 2015. Officials said she had given differing responses when asked the same questions on arrival at the jail and three hours later.

    Moreover, a puzzling statement by the Waller County district attorney, Elton Mathis, that preliminary toxicology tests indicated that Bland had “swallowed a large quantity of marijuana or smoked it in the jail” was met with ridicule by campaigners, who have accused authorities of seeking to smear Bland with a steady drip of information about subjects such as her mental health.

    “The family is fairly troubled by the piecemeal trickling out of information that seems to only serve the purpose of negatively characterising Sandy,” Cannon Lambert, the family’s attorney, told the Guardian.

    He said that holding a press conference the day before the release of the autopsy report was “an unusual method of releasing information. Ordinarily you have a full, complete report and you release the report or you don’t. It’s not common that you release certain information and then hold that other information.”

    Lambert said Waller county officials had “not made contact with me at all except when we were advised that they wanted the possibility of re-examining Sandy”.

    More at the link. Also, worthy of note: the medical examiner appears to be married to the DA. Is this true?

    Confederate Memorials as Instruments of Racial Terror

    The Confederate-flag-waving white supremacist charged with murdering nine African-Americans in a Charleston, S.C., church in June demolished the fiction that the flag was an innocuous symbol of “Southern pride.” This barbaric act made it impossible for politicians to hide from the fact that the Confederate banner has been a rallying symbol embraced by racists, night riders and white supremacy groups dating back to the 19th century.

    This long-denied truth applies as well to Confederate memorials that occupy public space all over the South. Most were erected in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the Southern states were eagerly dismantling the rights and liberties that African-Americans had enjoyed just after the Civil War, during Reconstruction. These states unleashed a racialized reign of terror and shored up white supremacy by rewriting their Constitutions to disqualify African-Americans from full citizenship.

    As nonpersons in the eyes of the state, black people had no standing to challenge the rush of Civil War nostalgia that led the South to stock its parks and public squares with symbols that celebrated the Confederate cause of slavery and instilled racial fear. Only in recent decades have black elected officials and some whites started to push back against the Confederate narrative of Southern civic life.

    In the wake of the Charleston massacre, for example, the parks and recreation board of Birmingham, Ala., voted to explore a proposal that would remove a 52-foot Confederate memorial from the entrance of a prominent park and place it with a Confederate heritage group.

    Not all monuments warrant that kind of challenge. But those honoring the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest deserve the backlash they have generated. Forrest presided over the 1864 massacre of Union soldiers, many of them black, at Fort Pillow in Tennessee. He was also a prominent slave trader and served as the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

    Apologists argue that his involvement with the Klan was unimportant because he later adopted more enlightened views. But as the Forrest biographer Jack Hurst writes, by lending his name to the K.K.K. even temporarily, the general accelerated its development. “As the Klan’s first national leader,” Mr. Hurst writes, “he became the Lost Cause’s avenging angel, galvanizing a loose collection of boyish secret social clubs into a reactionary instrument of terror still feared today.”

    Also more at the link, arguments in favour of removing (most) confederate memorials and symbols.

  153. rq says

    Dylann Roof Wasn’t Charged With Terrorism Because He’s White, against a background of Lafayette.

    Federal charges against Dylann Roof, who allegedly massacred nine people at a historically black church in South Carolina, came swiftly.

    Just over a month after Roof committed what is, arguably, the most heinous act of anti-black terrorism since the days of the civil rights movement, a federal grand jury issued a 33-count indictment for federal hate crimes and firearms charges.

    “Hate crimes are the original domestic terrorism and we feel that the behavior that is alleged to have occurred here is archetypal behavior that fits the federal hate crimes statutes and vindicates their purpose,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch told reporters during a press conference on Wednesday.

    Roof’s intentions were clear. He wanted to murder black people at a black church in order to advance his anti-black agenda as well as to intimidate a civilian population — the latter goal being a key factor that, under U.S. terrorism laws, denotes whether a particular act of violence constitutes terrorism. He also planned the attack several months in advance and chose Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church because of its historical and political significance. So why wasn’t Roof indicted on terrorism charges?
    […]

    Since 9/11, many Americans seem to believe that only Islamic extremists commit terror attacks, even though the data don’t support this notion and these days, local U.S. law enforcement agencies are actually more concerned about the activities of right-wing extremists.

    A study released by the New America Foundation last month showed at least 48 people have been killed stateside by right-wing extremists since the Sept. 11 attacks — almost double the number of those killed by self-identified jihadists in that time frame. Most of these attacks were carried out by radical anti-government groups or white supremacists.

    It’s possible that Roof was not charged with terrorism because he acted alone, rather than in concert or inspired by an organization that the federal government has formally designated as a terrorist group. Also, multiple definitions of terrorism exist, making it difficult to say what exactly is and isn’t terrorism. Then, one has to consider that U.S. terrorism laws are heavily focused on foreign threats carried out or influenced by terrorist organizations. They also emphasize bombings and plane hijackings as opposed to shootings.

    As far as we know, Roof doesn’t meet any of these criteria. He didn’t belong to any designated terrorist organization. He didn’t use a bomb, which could have qualified as a “weapon of mass destruction” under federal law. He opted for a .45-caliber Glock and hollow-point bullets. And, outside of nine black lives, he didn’t hijack anything.

    But still Roof’s attack was, by his own words, politically motivated and intended to strike fear in a specific group of people. Sounds like terrorism.

    Former Attorney General Eric Holder told The Huffington Post that the shooting was “clearly an act of terrorism” and should serve as a “wake-up call” to the American public regarding domestic terror threats.

    “We have a young man who apparently becomes radicalized as the result of an incident and becomes more radicalized as a result of what he sees on the Internet, through the use of his computer, then goes and does something that by his own words apparently is a political violent act,” Holder said. “With a different set of circumstances, and if you had dialed in religion there, Islam, that would be called an act of terror. It seems to me that, again on the basis of the information that has been released, that’s what we have here. An act of terror.”

    FBI Director James Comey, on the other hand, had a less confident response when HuffPost asked whether the Charleston shooting would be called terrorism if Roof’s manifesto had indicated it was inspired by the Islamic State, instead of white supremacist rhetoric.

    “I’d investigate it I think probably just as we’re investigating now, to understand what his motivation was and whether it was designed to coerce a civilian population,” Comey said. “So we’d investigate it the same, and then in deciding what charges to bring, we’d look at it through the framework of the individual statutory provisions to see whether they’d apply.”

    Whether senior law enforcement officials do or do not consider the Charleston massacre to be terrorism, many other people won’t. Some Americans — mainly white ones — simply don’t see race as political. Couple this with the public’s very narrow understanding of who the terrorists are — which can be attributed in part to how such cases are often framed by authorities and the media — and most Americans probably won’t look beyond Muslims.

    “Al Qaeda killed almost 3,000 people on 9/11. The United States’ subsequent military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq — and more limited counterterrorism operations in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen — have meant the US public has spent over a decade imagining the enemy to be a foreign Muslim man with an AK-47 or a suicide vest,” Timothy McGrath wrote for the GlobalPost. “Combine that with a 24-hour news cycle that privileges simple narratives over nuance, and with policymakers who have too often shown a lack of knowledge about the history, politics, and cultures of the places where the US wages war and sees threats — and you’re looking at some entrenched, perpetually reinforced stereotypes about Muslims, Islam and terrorism.”

    More at the link.

    Baltimore prosecutors to seek sanctions against police officers’ defense team

    Prosecutors plan to seek sanctions against the defense attorneys for six Baltimore police officers charged in Freddie Gray’s death, accusing them of “factual mendacity and legal malarkey.”

    “Courts may justifiably recoil when a lawyer refers to opposing counsel as liars, and the State does not do so here, but what term is a lawyer to use to describe their deliberate falsehoods?” Chief Deputy State’s Attorney Michael Schatzow wrote in a motion filed in Baltimore Circuit Court.

    Prosecutors accuse the defense of abusing the subpoena process when it obtained the cellphone records of an assistant state’s attorney. They also contend the defense crossed the line by accusing prosecutors of “judge shopping” to obtain a search warrant.

    Schatzow’s colorfully written motion begins with a quote from Winston Churchill: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

    Rochelle Ritchie, spokeswoman for Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby, declined to comment. She reiterated the office’s stance that it “will litigate this case in the courtroom, not in the media.”

    The tone of court filings in the Gray case has become increasingly contentious. Defense attorneys lobbed their own accusations this week — saying prosecutors either failed to turn over evidence as required or lied about conducting a thorough investigation into Gray’s death.

    The defense said the huge trove of evidence provided by prosecutors during discovery last month was “completely devoid of any information obtained during the course of the State’s investigation.”

    Mosby has said her office conducted an independent investigation separate from the police probe. Prosecutors have said that they turned over all the evidence that the defense is entitled to under the state’s discovery laws.

    Jose Anderson, a professor of law at the University of Baltimore, said the legal jostling will only continue — and that the volatile tone struck by both sides is not surprising in such a high-profile case.

    Wait, ‘malarkey’ is an official legal term?

    At Sandra Bland Funeral, Mourning a Life Cut Short in Texas

    Hundreds of mourners gathered Saturday at the suburban Chicago church that Sandra Bland attended for many of her 28 years, turning out in such numbers that even the overflow viewing room ran out of chairs. From the pulpit, relatives and friends recounted happy memories of Ms. Bland’s faith and social activism, and restated their belief that her death in a Texas jail was no suicide.

    “That baby did not take herself out of here,” said Geneva Reed-Veal, Ms. Bland’s mother, during the funeral here at DuPage African Methodist Episcopal Church.

    Ms. Reed-Veal spoke at length, telling mourners about a recent road trip she had taken with her daughter. On their way to visit relatives in Tennessee, Ms. Reed-Veal said, Ms. Bland told her she had found a calling and planned to pursue it by returning to Texas, where she had attended college.

    “Her purpose was to stop all injustice against blacks in the South,” Ms. Reed-Veal said at the funeral.
    […]

    “The authorities in Waller County are going to discover something that I learned and each of us learned at our mother’s knee,” Mr. Miller said from the pulpit. “You can disrespect a strong black woman if you want, but you’re going to pay for that.”

    Speaker after speaker encouraged mourners to continue to use social media to seek justice. Twitter hashtags used by activists were printed in the funeral program and displayed by a handful of people on T-shirts. Ms. Reed-Veal also asked that supporters take cues from her and her lawyer on how the family wanted to proceed. She said protesters should not demonstrate outside the home of Brian T. Encinia, the trooper who arrested Ms. Bland.

    “We want to do this the right way,” Ms. Reed-Veal said.

    Sandra Bland’s words about herself will end up being somewhat prophetic – though probably not in the way she had imagined.

    After Bland’s death, lawmakers to address jail standards, police interactions, Houston Chronicle.

    POP rally in Newark. #JusticeForSandraBland #SandraBland STOP #policebrutality & murder!

    And somebody doesn’t like DeRay! DeRay McKesson: Leader, Activist, and Unrepentant Conspiracy-Monger

    Few activists in the Black Lives Matter movement have received the sort of glowing accolades from the left as DeRay McKesson. The Huffington Post has declared him “among the most widely recognized and respected young black civil rights activists.” Fortune declared him among the “World’s Greatest Leaders,” The Los Angeles Times hailed him as one of the “new civil rights leaders,” and New York Magazine gave him a fawning profile. Even Hillary Clinton invited him to her campaign (re-re-)launch.
    ADVERTISEMENT

    At the same time, few activists have provoked the ire of the right wing to the extent DeRay has. His announcement that he would visit Charleston after the racist murder of nine people spawned thousands of tweets with the hashtag #GoHomeDeray. National Review‘s Ian Tuttle nicely summed up the gist of conservative opposition with a piece calling him “The Next Generation of Race-Baiters” modeled after Al Sharpton.

    Argue all you want if DeRay is indeed a “race-baiter” or the next Martin Luther King Jr., but one thing’s for sure: he is an unrepentant conspiracy-monger with no qualms about smearing innocent men with accusations of murder.

    The circumstances of Sandra Bland‘s death in police custody ought to have been sufficiently scandalous for anyone. A white Texas police officer pulls over a black woman for a routine traffic stop, and ends up throwing her in jail. Video of the arrest shows that the officer escalated the situation after she declined to put out her cigarette (which is perfectly legal). Bland is thrown in a jail which appears to have ignored several regulations, and despite indicating a history of suicide, is thrown in a cell by herself with a plastic black bag that she uses to hang herself.

    It was an outrage and a tragedy, plain and simple. But for a select group of deranged individuals, it wasn’t enough that police negligence led to Bland’s death. Instead, they concocted a conspiracy theory that she was murdered in cold blood, which was then covered up by the police. Presumably the killers were the police themselves.

    The article goes along in that vein. Nothing flattering.

  154. rq says

    Students allege excessive force used during arrests

    Deidra Reid and Reginald Lane Jr. went to The Retreat at Orlando apartment complex Monday to see a friend and hang out by the pool. They left in handcuffs after an encounter with the young son of an Orange County deputy sheriff, who was working as an off-duty courtesy officer at the complex.

    “This is someone who used his badge to bully Deidra,” said Natalie Jackson, an Orlando lawyer representing Reid. “It’s fine for him to be concerned about his son, but you don’t get to use your badge and the power of the law to bully a citizen.”

    Reid, 21, and Lane, 20, both Valencia College students, were by the pool with friends, one of whom lives in the complex. Late in the afternoon, the group decided to go into the clubhouse near the pool. The door locks automatically at 6 p.m., and their friend, who had the key fob to open it, was a little behind them, Lane said. They knocked on the door, Lane said. Inside, they could see a young boy, who did not open it for them. Their friend walked up a few moments later and unlocked the door. The boy was still inside.

    Reid told the boy that he was rude not to let them in, and that he should have been more respectful of his elders, according to Lane and the incident report. The boy ran to tell his father, Sgt. Brett Parnell, who was working in the complex as a courtesy officer, records show. And that’s when the situation started escalating.

    “I was currently in the gym area of the clubhouse when I was approached by my son, who was in tears,” Parnell wrote in his report. “…I asked what had happened and was told by my son that an unknown black female had entered the clubhouse and began yelling at him.”

    Parnell, who was not in uniform, walked over and asked Reid whether she lives in the complex, according to the arrest affidavit. Reid said she was visiting a friend. Parnell demanded that she and her friends leave the complex.

    The argument became heated, and at least two more deputies were called. It ended with Reid being forced to the ground and handcuffed, according to video recordings and the incident report. Her shoulder was dislocated in the process, Lane said.

    Friends shot video of the confrontation. In it, Reid is lying on her stomach, screaming in apparent pain as Deputy Richard Nye restrains her.

    Reid was charged with trespassing after warning and resisting an officer with violence. Lane was charged with resisting an officer without violence. Both were taken to Orange County Jail and have since bonded out. Reid’s arm is in a sling in her booking photo from the jail.

    Swimming pools.

    I’m a Black Wrestling Fan, and I’m Not Totally Sure Why

    A transcript of wrestler Hulk Hogan expressing racist opinions has surfaced, causing World Wrestling Entertainment to disassociate itself from him in ways they haven’t done since Chris Benoit committed suicide after murdering his wife and son. Though the WWE is attempting to bury the Hulkster’s history with the company, it can’t keep people from dredging up the racist stereotypes and storylines the company has trafficked in for years. And it has caused me to once again face the fact that I’m a black man who patronizes a company that doesn’t seem to regard its black characters or fans as more than broad, usually offensive stereotypes.

    Since I’ve been a wrestling fan, I’ve watched racist characters and storylines come and go: The White guy who went by “African Dream” and jive-talked his way to the ring; Virgil, the Million Dollar Man’s butler who shined his boss’s shoes; Papa Shango, the witchdoctor who practiced voodoo on his opponents. Let’s not forget the time Roddy Piper wore half-blackface during a WrestleMania match. Or Shelton Benjamin’s momma. Or the black tag team that went by the name Cryme Tyme (I’m not making that up). Or the good guy wrestlers going to the ring in blackface to mimic the black bad guy group.

    Shall I continue?

    Calling wrestling’s “history” racist is a misnomer because so much of wrestling’s present is drenched in racist (and misogynist—please let’s not disregard this segment of their storytelling) stereotypes and stories. In just 2005, Vince McMahon called John Cena “my n*gga” live on a WWE pay-per-view. Every time I see black wrestlers, I prepare myself for the good chance that they’ll be involved in some sort of degrading storyline to “set us back” a few years. What else should I expect from a company that now employs a writer who used to wrestle with a confederate flag-painted face and called a wrestler the N-word?

    Despite all of this, I still watch. I watch Monday Night RAW on Hulu every Tuesday and consume hours upon hours of wrestling on the WWE Network every week. And I’ve never stopped, even when it feels like I’m betraying parts of myself. Sometimes, I feel like a contradiction when I rally against movies like Exodus in between live-tweeting about Monday Night RAW episodes. I feel like a sellout sometimes when I try to combat how the media portrays Black America only to turn around and buy a pay-per-view showing black wrestlers as thugs and thieves.

    I honestly can’t tell if I have a legitimate reason to watch wrestling despite its racism or if my conviction as a proud black man isn’t strong enough to trump my desire to see Brock Lesnar take someone to Suplex City. But here’s as honest of a reason I can come up with: I still watch wrestling because, despite the racist storylines and gimmicks black wrestlers are usually anchored with, I can still feel immeasurable pride in the black wrestlers themselves. To me, watching a black wrestler in the WWE isn’t much different than watching a black person in America—saddled with stereotypes and odds that he or she won’t ever truly succeed, but still somehow managing to be great. I can still watch wrestling because I love seeing Sasha Banks become a superstar (and one of the three best wrestlers in the company, in my opinion) even when the WWE feels like she is best served next to other women of color simply because of their ethnicities. I can still cheer for the New Day, who turned a shucking and jiving gimmick into one of the most entertaining aspects of RAW every week. I can still feel pride when Titus O’Neil gets on commentary and talks circles around people who try to call him uneducated. I feel proud of Booker T, who became an all-time great even after a “G.I. Bro” gimmick. And let’s not forget Junkyard Dog, The Rock*, Ron Simmons and other black wrestlers before him.

    Man Arrested and Convicted for Using Washable Chalk at Police Protest, audio. … Isn’t all chalk washable?

    Barack Obama tells African states to abandon anti-gay discrimination, the POTUS spreading the word.

    Emmett Till, born 74 years ago today. We remember you, Emmett. July 25, 1941.

    16yo #BrandonClaxton, shot & paralyzed by @SLMPD July 11, is moving his legs a bit. #STL #Ferguson #BlackLivesMatter

  155. rq says

    Atlanta College Ends Professorship Tied To Bill Cosby

    Spelman College spokesperson Audrey Arthur told BuzzFeed News Saturday via email that the college had discontinued the William and Camille Olivia Hanks Cosby Endowed Professorship. The funds related to the position have been returned to a Cosby foundation, Arthur added.

    The announcement came just a week after a decade-old deposition surfaced in which Cosby detailed drug use and various sexual liaisons with women. The deposition was part of a lawsuit filed by a woman who accused Cosby of drugging and molesting her. Dozens of other women also have accused Cosby of rape, drugging, and sexual assault.

    Spelman began distancing itself from Cosby in December when it suspended the Cosby-funded position. At the time, The Washington Post described the job as “one of the most prized in black academia.

    Booking documents for Sandra Bland in case anyone wants to look through them for inconsistencies or oddities.

    Waller County DA just shared this on Facebook, perhaps due to protest scheduled 2day outside DPS trooper’s home. The right to peaceful assembly does not protect against trespassing charges.

    In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me.

    I got home from the bar and fell into bed soon after Saturday night bled into Sunday morning. I didn’t wake up until three police officers barged into my apartment, barking their presence at my door. They sped down the hallway to my bedroom, their service pistols drawn and leveled at me.

    It was just past 9 a.m., and I was still under the covers. The only visible target was my head.

    In the shouting and commotion, I felt an instant familiarity. I’d been here before. This was a raid.

    I had done this a few dozen times myself, 6,000 miles away from my Alexandria, Va., apartment. As an Army infantryman in Iraq, I’d always been on the trigger side of the weapon. Now that I was on the barrel side, I recalled basic training’s most important firearm rule: Aim only at something you intend to kill.

    I had conducted the same kind of raid on suspected bombmakers and high-value insurgents. But the Fairfax County officers in my apartment were aiming their weapons at a target whose rap sheet consisted only of parking tickets and an overdue library book.

    My situation was terrifying. Lying facedown in bed, I knew that any move I made could be viewed as a threat. Instinct told me to get up and protect myself. Training told me that if I did, these officers would shoot me dead.

    In a panic, I asked the officers what was going on but got no immediate answer. Their tactics were similar to the ones I used to clear rooms during the height of guerilla warfare in Iraq. I could almost admire it — their fluid sweep from the bedroom doorway to the distant corner. They stayed clear of one another’s lines of fire in case they needed to empty their Sig Sauer .40-caliber pistols into me.

    They were well-trained, their supervisor later told me. But I knew that means little when adrenaline governs an imminent-danger scenario, real or imagined. Triggers are pulled. Mistakes are made.
    […]

    When I later visited the Fairfax County police station to gather details about what went wrong, I met the shift commander, Lt. Erik Rhoads. I asked why his officers hadn’t contacted management before they raided the apartment. Why did they classify the incident as a forced entry, when the information they had suggested something innocuous? Why not evaluate the situation before escalating it?

    Rhoads defended the procedure, calling the officers’ actions “on point.” It’s not standard to conduct investigations beforehand because that delays the apprehension of suspects, he told me.

    I noted that the officers could have sought information from the apartment complex’s security guard that would have resolved the matter without violence. But he played down the importance of such information: “It doesn’t matter whatsoever what was said or not said at the security booth.”

    This is where Rhoads is wrong. We’ve seen this troubling approach to law enforcement nationwide, in militarized police responses to nonviolent protesters and in fatal police shootings of unarmed citizens. The culture that encourages police officers to engage their weapons before gathering information promotes the mind-set that nothing, including citizen safety, is more important than officers’ personal security. That approach has caused public trust in law enforcement to deteriorate.

    It’s the same culture that characterized the early phases of the Iraq war, in which I served a 15-month tour in 2006 and 2007. Soldiers left their sprawling bases in armored vehicles, leveling buildings with missile strikes and shooting up entire blocks during gun battles with insurgents, only to return to their protected bases and do it all again hours later.

    The short-sighted notion that we should always protect ourselves endangered us more in the long term. It was a flawed strategy that could often create more insurgents than it stopped and inspired some Iraqis to hate us rather than help us.
    […]

    That’s a problem, because law enforcement officers need the cooperation of the communities they patrol in order to do their jobs effectively. In the early stages of the war, the U.S. military overlooked that reality as well. Leaders defined success as increasing military hold on geographic terrain, while the human terrain was the real battle. For example, when our platoon entered Iraq’s volatile Diyala province in early 2007, children at a school plugged their ears just before an IED exploded beneath one of our vehicles. The kids knew what was coming, but they saw no reason to warn us. Instead, they watched us drive right into the ambush. One of our men died, and in the subsequent crossfire, several insurgents and children were killed. We saw Iraqis cheering and dancing at the blast crater as we left the area hours later.
    […]

    Domestic police forces would benefit from a similar change in strategy. Instead of relying on aggression, they should rely more on relationships. Rather than responding to a squatter call with guns raised, they should knock on the door and extend a hand. But unfortunately, my encounter with officers is just one in a stream of recent examples of police placing their own safety ahead of those they’re sworn to serve and protect.

    Rhoads, the Fairfax County police lieutenant, was upfront about this mind-set. He explained that it was standard procedure to point guns at suspects in many cases to protect the lives of police officers. Their firearm rules were different from mine; they aimed not to kill but to intimidate. According to reporting by The Washington Post, those rules are established in police training, which often emphasizes a violent response over deescalation. Recruits spend an average of eight hours learning how to neutralize tense situations; they spend more than seven times as many hours at the weapons range.

    Of course, officers’ safety is vital, and they’re entitled to defend themselves and the communities they serve. But they’re failing to see the connection between their aggressive postures and the hostility they’ve encountered in Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and other communities. When you level assault rifles at protesters, you create animosity. When you kill an unarmed man on his own property while his hands are raised — as Fairfax County police did in 2013 — you sow distrust. And when you threaten to Taser a woman during a routine traffic stop (as happened to 28-year-old Sandra Bland, who died in a Texas jail this month), you cultivate a fear of police. This makes policing more dangerous for everyone.

    I understood the risks of war when I enlisted as an infantryman. Police officers should understand the risks in their jobs when they enroll in the academy, as well. That means knowing that personal safety can’t always come first. That is why it’s service. That’s why it’s sacrifice.

    Funny, comparing policing in Iraq with policing in USAmerica… Funny. But it fits.

    Mapping Hate: Pro-Confederate Battle Flag Rallies Across America, an update.

    Interlude: Music! Listen To A New Mixtape Of Soul, Jazz & Funk From Erykah Badu

    okayplayer.
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    Posted 3 days ago by Scott Heins 11 Comments
    Listen To A New Mixtape Of Soul, Jazz & Funk From Erykah Badu

    Erykah Badu, Joey Bada$$, Oshun + More Define Organic Vibes At DC’s Broccoli City Festival 2015 [Photos + Recap]

    Erykah Badu seems well aware that it’s been another long week marred by bad news. Anyone feeling wounded by the reports of Sandra Bland‘s gruesome autopsy or Thursday’s deadly shootings in a Lousiana movie theater has full right to look at the world and wonder “Is there anything yet worth celebrating?” At least one clear answer remains: the simple joy of music.

    Ms. Badu shared a brand new mixtape of some of her favorite recordings, describing the set as “carefully and lovingly selected high frequency tones for the soul.” What that entails is a set of mostly-vintage funk, soul and jazz, including Gary Bartz NTU Troop’s “Drinking Song,” a bit of RAMP, a touch of slowed-down Eddie Kendricks (aka a proper J Dilla nod), and much, much more. Erykah had this to say about the mix–which she’s entitled FEEL BETTER, WORLD! … LOVE, MS.BADU–when she uploaded it Friday evening:

    ALL OVER THE GLOBE…KEEP WALKING TALL BROTHERS AND SISTERS. SOMEDAY WE WILL ALL BE FREE. THE WORLD IS IN NEED OF HEALING…. I CAREFULLY AND LOVINGLY SELECTED HIGH FREQUENCY TONES FOR THE SOUL…. PLEASE LISTEN FROM TOP TO BOTTOM.
    LOVE, ms. badu

    Listen to it in full below. And from all of us to Badu: thank you.

  156. rq says

    Everyone Has the Right to Mouth Off to Cops

    Police response to perceived disrespect is not unusual, as the tragic case of Sandra Bland, who died of a reported but disputed suicide in a Texas jail, has reminded us this week. Bland was driving when she was pulled over on July 10, and a video from arresting State Trooper Brian T. Encinia’s dashcam released this week shows that the officer appears to have escalated a simple traffic stop into a violent arrest—all because he didn’t like that Bland admitted that yes, she was annoyed at being pulled over.

    Being rude to police, however, is protected by the First Amendment. And it doesn’t even seem that Bland was particularly rude. Rather, she just honestly responded to his statement: “You seem very irritated.” That should have come as no surprise.

    “Newsflash: people don’t like getting pulled over,” says Jason Williamson, staff attorney with the ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project. “People don’t enjoy interactions with police if they can avoid it.”

    Encinia’s reaction, however, didn’t surprise him either.

    “The police officer in the Sandra Bland case and police officers everywhere often respond in kind when they think people are being disrespectful to them,” says Williamson.

    Such police responses can be dangerous. Bland’s offense appears not to have been rudeness but rather her failure to be sufficiently deferential to Encinia’s authority and ego. In short, she did not grovel. Bland was well within her right to speak out. And Trooper Encinia’s escalation of the situation appears to have been in retaliation for her exercising that right.

    “The police officer is supposed to be the professional in this situation and he could have very easily deescalated that encounter, and we would’t be talking about this today,” says Willamson. Instead, “he took it to another place.”

    The right to be rude to cops is well established.

    “People generally have a right to mouth off to (or give the finger to) members of law enforcement, as long as they do not interfere with (i.e., obstruct) ordinary law-enforcement operations,” emails Ira Robbins, a professor at American University’s Washington College of Law and the author of the law review article, “Digitus Impudicus: The Middle Finger and the Law.” “This doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a wise thing to do, however, as many police officers are thin-skinned and have not been trained well enough to let these slights roll off.”

    And that is the fault of the officers and their training forces, not of the citizens they happen to stop.

    Last Sunday a 23yo Oakland man died during a police chase after a traffic stop. #RichardLinyard #JusticeForRich

    Drake responds to Meek Mill with new diss track “Charged Up” — listen, more music.

    Since being accused by Meek Mill of using a ghostwriter, Drake has remained noticeably quiet. That was until tonight, however, as Drizzy used his Beats 1 Radio program to debut a diss track called “Charged Up”.

    With each line comes a new jab directed at his one-time collaborator. “I did some charity today for the kids/ But I’m used to it cause y’all charity cases/ Six God is watching, I’m just hoping you prepared to face him,” Drake begins. “Niggas snitching on us without no interrogation/ I stay silent ‘cause we at war and I’m very patient/ Six God is watching, I just hope you’re prepared to face him/ I’m charged up, i’m charged up.”

    In the next stanza, he raps, “I see you niggas having trouble going gold/ Come and live all your dreams in OVO/ No woman ever had me star struck/ Or was able to tell me to get my bars up/ I’m charged up.”

    Listen below.

    VIdeo at the link.

    Muslims Raised Over $100,000 To Help Rebuild Black Churches In The South

    Three Muslim organizations have raised over $100,000 to rebuild black churches in the South.

    In the days following the shooting of nine people inside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, a string of church fires at black worship centers in the South raised alarm on social media.

    Authorities have not indicated that the fires are connected to Charleston, but the blazes made headlines in the wake of what many believe to have been the worst incident of racist terrorism in years. The Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative, the Arab-American Association of New York and Ummah Wide wanted to make sure these churches were restored as soon as possible.

    The organizations joined forces to launch the “Respond With Love” campaign on July 2, stating on their fundraising page that “ALL houses of worship are sanctuaries, a place where all should feel safe.”

    The fundraiser started off with a goal of $10,000, but they hit that target within hours, Linda Sarsour, executive director of AAANY, said to HuffPost in an email. They increased the target amount a few more times, and the support kept flooding in.

    The campaign closed on July 18, just after the end of the holy month of Ramadan, with a final total of $100,470.

    Well done. I just wish this kind of news concerning muslims had a farther reach than all that terrorist claptrap.

    A Black Man Was Shot in the Head by a White Campus Police Officer During a Traffic Stop – I read these headlines, and I wonder, which one? Samuel Dubose, in this case.

    Dubose was missing a license plate on the front of his car, according to police officials, university police chief Jason Goodrich told the Guardian. Dubose allegedly refused to provide a drivers’ license and instead pulled out a bottle of alcohol. The pair struggled briefly before the campus officer shot Dubose once in the head, Goodrich said. The force of the shot knocked Tensing to the ground, and Dubose’s car rolled forward before coming to a stop. Tensing’s clothes were reportedly ripped, and his legs bruised.

    Tensing had been working for the university since April 2014 and previously had approximately 5 years experience with law enforcement, according to Goodrich. Dubose had 13 children and 60 arrests, CNN reports.

    Prosecutors have said they are “rapidly investigating” the case and, as of Tuesday, the Cincinnati Police Department had taken over the investigation at the university’s request.

    “This incident didn’t involve a Cincinnati Police Department officer, but it happened in our city, and it is our job to ensure this investigation is handled with the attention it deserves,” City Manager Harry Black told NBC Tuesday. “This is a serious situation and I will do everything necessary to ensure the investigation is handled as such.”

    “Our hearts grieve for his loss,” University president Santa J. Ono said in a statement. “We also know that police officers risk their lives every day, and when their efforts to protect themselves and our community result in a death it is a tragedy. No matter the circumstances, it is a time of unimaginable sadness for all involved.”

    Jay Z, Will Smith to tackle Emmett Till’s racially motivated 1955 murder for HBO

    As race relations continue to be a hot topic of discussion in the United States, celebs Jay Z and Will Smith aim to educate the present by looking at the past.

    The two are teaming with noted TV producer Aaron Kaplan to develop an HBO miniseries about Emmett Till, a black teenager who was brutally murdered in 1955 after he allegedly flirted with a white woman. The project reunites Smith and Jay Z after their successful collaboration on 2014’s big screen remake of Annie.
    […]

    The Variety report confirming the news doesn’t say how much of the story the miniseries will explore, though it’s expected to run for six hours. There’s no writer yet, but Smith and Jay Z reportedly “jumped” at Kaplan’s pitch.

  157. rq says

    A mix of past and future. Hologram Performance by Chief Keef Is Shut Down by Police

    A performance by the Chicago rapper Chief Keef — or rather, his likeness, beamed live via hologram from California — was shut down by the police on Saturday night in Hammond, Ind., after warnings from the mayor’s office that the performer could not appear, even digitally, promoters said on Sunday.

    The surprise appearance of Chief Keef at Craze Fest, a hip-hop festival in Hammond, about 25 miles outside of Chicago, was scheduled after a series of canceled hologram performances by the rapper, born Keith Cozart. Last weekend, a Chicago theater called off a similar show after representatives for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office deemed Chief Keef “an unacceptable role model,” whose music “promotes violence” and whose presence via hologram “posed a significant public safety risk.”

    Chief Keef, who has rapped in the past about his gang affiliations, was previously sentenced to home confinement as a juvenile for pointing a gun at a police officer, and later served time in jail for violating his probation in that case.

    More recently, the rapper has said he’s changed. Chief Keef, 19, had billed the performance as a “Stop the Killing” benefit concert, meant to raise money for Marvin Carr, a fellow Chicago rapper who died in a shooting this month, and Dillan Harris, a 13-month-old child killed by a vehicle fleeing the scene of that shooting. The rapper opted not to appear in the Midwest in the flesh, citing outstanding warrants for his arrest, stemming from two child support cases.

    Ahead of Saturday’s concert, Chief Keef’s team defiantly teased a live appearance by the hologram in downtown Chicago that night. “The location is being kept secret because of past efforts by city officials to keep the charity event from happening,” a spokesman said in a news release. A promotional video boomed: “Banned by the mayor of Chicago: Chief Keef, from a secret Chicago location.”

    But as showtime approached, Chief Keef posted on Instagram that the show would be held just over the Illinois border at the Pavilion at Wolf Lake in Hammond, the site of Craze Fest. Despite some subsequent misdirection, a representative for the rapper confirmed the location soon after. Malcolm Jones, a promoter for Craze Fest, said the Hammond police and a representative from the mayor’s office visited him on site after 7 p.m. on Saturday. The authorities asked if Chief Keef was present, or if his voice or music would be played. “I said his music had been playing all night,” Mr. Jones, 22, said. “His voice has been here since the beginning.”

    Mr. Jones said he told the police that Chief Keef would not be featured onstage. “No one ever gave me a reason why they didn’t want the hologram to appear,” he said. “They didn’t have a real reason. They believed that it would start trouble, but the first thing Chief Keef said via hologram was: ‘Chicago, we need to stop the violence. Let our kids live.’ ”

    “It was for a really good cause, but sometimes the authorities can’t see that,” Mr. Jones continued. “They’re not our age.”
    […]

    “I know nothing about Chief Keef,” Mayor McDermott, 46, said. “All I’d heard was he has a lot of songs about gangs and shooting people — a history that’s anti-cop, pro-gang and pro-drug use. He’s been basically outlawed in Chicago, and we’re not going to let you circumvent Mayor Emanuel by going next door.” (The Chicago mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

    So. He’s a risk to public safety.

    ‘I Was Almost Another Dead Black Male’

    Alex Landau, who is African American, was raised by his adoptive white parents to believe that skin color didn’t matter. That all changed at 19, when he was pulled over by the Denver police for making an illegal left turn. In this StoryCorps animation, Traffic Stop, Landau recalls how police officers pulled him out of the car, began to hit him in the face, and threatened to shoot him. It took 45 stitches to close up the lacerations in his face alone. In this short film, which will premiere tonight at storycorps.org/animation, he and his mother, Patsy, remember that night and how it changed them both forever. “For me it was the point of awakening to how the rest of the world is going to look at you,” Landau says. “I was just another black face in the streets.”

    Traffic Stop will make its national broadcast premiere on PBS’s documentary series POV alongside Don’t Tell Anyone (No Le Digas a Nadie), a film by Mikaela Shwer, on September 21, 2015.

    Video at the link.

    Attorney General Lynch: Sandra Bland’s death highlights black Americans’ concerns about police. At the very least.

    Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Sunday that the in-custody death of Sandra Bland in Texas and the recently released dash-cam video of her arrest underscores long-held fears many black Americans have about interactions with police.

    “It highlights the concern of many in the black community that a routine stop for many members of the black community is not handled with the same professionalism and courtesy that other people may get from the police,” Lynch, the first African American woman to serve as attorney general, told ABC News’ Pierre Thomas.
    […]

    “We have a situation where many minority communities for so long have felt that law enforcement was coming in essentially to enforce laws against them, not to protect them.” Lynch said. “I do think that what has been a important part of the debate in Miss Bland’s death has been the discussions that we’ve seen from community members and police leaders alike…about the importance of training and deescalating incidents.”

    New SWAT Documents Detail the Brutal Reality of U.S. Police Militarization

    Massachusetts SWAT teams made headlines last year when they refused to grant a public information request to the ACLU, claiming they were “private companies” and, therefore, exempt from such inquiry. The ACLU subsequently sued, and last month, it received access to the documents it requested. The documents confirm that broad overreach, unnecessary and overblown tactics, and an eagerness to attack are increasingly present in law enforcement establishments around the country.

    The NEMLEC, or Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, encompasses multiple SWAT teams across that region of the state. According to the documents it tried to suppress, NEMLEC conducted 79 SWAT raids from August 2012 to June 2014. Though the NEMLEC (along with SWAT teams around the country) claims SWAT teams are only used for “active shooters, armed barricaded subjects, hostage takers, and terrorists,” the data reveals a different story.

    Though the NEMLEC touts its operations as reserved for “critical” situations, only one of the 79 incidents actually involved a terrorist attack: SWAT teams were deployed to assist in the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. In that same 2012 to 2014 time period, there were no active shooter situations, no hostage situations, and only 10 cases of barricaded subjects.

    According to The Intercept, half of the remaining cases were for everyday policing activities, including “executing warrants, dealing with expected rioting after a 2013 Red Sox World Series game, and providing security for a Dalai Lama lecture.”

    That leaves 37 of 79 raids that were either drug-related, initiated by local police, or responses to suicidal individuals. The use of SWAT teams for drug raids has been widely criticized as superfluous and outside the duties of SWAT. Professor Pete Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University, who specializes in police militarization, told The Intercept that

    “It is really significant to remember that SWAT teams prior to the 1980s drug war were confined strictly to reactive, dangerous situations,…But in our research today we find that over 80 percent of the time police departments are using SWAT teams for proactive cases. These deployments are generally targeted at low-level drug dealers … and usually they’re just doing it for collecting evidence — not necessarily to even arrest a well-known, armed, dangerous drug dealer.”

    Of the 21 drug raids conducted, only 5 yielded actual contraband, according to the NEMLEC reports. They averaged 36 officers and more than half were conducted in the middle of the night, while 14 were granted judicial authorization for “no knock” entry—meaning SWAT agents were allowed to break the door open to enter. These methods are exceptionally controversial and have resulted in countless cases of needless violence, injury, and death—for both subjects of raids and the officers themselves.

    More info at the link.

    Denver Sheriff Whistleblower: ‘I Was Ordered To Destroy Videotape’, story from May 31.

    “Between the World and Me”: Ta-Nehisi Coates Extended Interview on Being Black in America, might also be a repost. He had so many interviews.

  158. rq says

    An alternate view of Sandra Bland’s arrest:
    Black Lives Matter killed Sandra Bland (@VibeHi)
    Black Lives Matter killed Sandra Bland (Pt. 2) @VibeHi
    There’s a bit of Dear Africa within. Among other things. But worth a listen.

    Exclusive: Feds Regularly Monitored Black Lives Matter Since Ferguson, repost?

    Somebody hacked @979TheBox Smfh. Racist fucks.
    #NoPlaceForHate … Saluting our staff and listeners for immediate help in addressing the hack that occurred earlier this evening.

    At Sandra Bland’s Funeral, Celebration and Defiance, by Charles M Blow.

    Funerals are often predictably somber — a cloistering and culminating of grief and pain. Not Sandra Bland’s funeral. (Everyone called her Sandy, by the way.) Sandy’s was simultaneously celebratory and defiant.

    Bland was the 28-year-old Illinois woman arrested after a traffic stop in Texas who died in a county jail. Her funeral was held Saturday at DuPage African Methodist Episcopal Church in Lisle, Ill., just outside Chicago.

    Bland’s casket was white. Many in the family wore white. The pastor wore a white ministerial robe. This was not to be a dark day. The joyous music of the choir seemed to vibrate everything in the building. Bland’s mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, danced every time the choir sang. One of Bland’s cousins performed a praise dance, a choreographed dance set to religious music.
    […]

    What I did hear during those interviews and during the funeral itself were words and phrases like these used to describe Bland: “Fearless.” “Activist.” “Life of the party, in a good way.” “Vibrant and full of life.” “Passionate.” “A strong woman; a strong black woman.”

    It was abundantly clear to me that the people who knew and loved her loved her fierce-ly and loved her fierce-ness.

    That was not to say that Bland didn’t have her ups and downs the way many young people do. But rather, she wasn’t afraid to admit it and wanted to use her testimony to help others. I spoke to a woman with whom Bland was working to start a women’s empowerment forum online, who said that Bland told her that she wanted to share her travails because “it takes a lot of will and resilience when you’re going downhill to stop yourself.”

    The Rev. Theresa Dear, who spoke to me on the family’s behalf, said that sure, Sandy was a “mouthy person” and that she could imagine her “raising you know what” in her Texas jail cell.

    But, like Bland’s other friends, Dear described this in ways that seemed less acerbic than courageous, less Sister Souljah than Sojourner Truth.

    As Dear put it: “Everybody in their lives needs a Sandy Bland posture, a Sandy Bland voice.”

    Bland didn’t demur and knuckle under. Some have criticized her for her stance during the traffic stop, suggesting that if she had behaved differently, with more respect for the officer, she might have avoided arrest.

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    Maybe. But, it must always be remembered that the parameters of “respectable behavior” are both raced and gendered. The needle moves to differing positions for different people. That is, I believe, one of the reasons that this minor traffic stop so quickly escalated.

    How dare a woman not present as a damsel? How dare a black person not bow in obsequiousness?
    […]

    The pastor extolled those gathered to “go online and shut down the Justice Department’s website, asking for a federal investigation.” Indeed, Senator Dick Durbin and Representative Bill Foster both said at the funeral that they’d each sent letters to Attorney General Loretta Lynch requesting such an investigation.

    And both Bland’s mother and Pastor Miller took swipes at the media’s portrayal of Sandy.

    Miller demanded that responsible media stop showing images of Bland’s scarred body, “lining your pockets with the blood of our child!” As Miller said, “You have stepped on the cat’s tail.”

    Then he seemed to, for comedic and theatrical purposes, catch himself, musing out loud, “They want me to sit down because I’m going to get us in trouble.”

    But he quickly followed: “I was born black in America; I was born in trouble.” The mourners signaled their agreement.

  159. rq says

    Snoop Dogg vows never to return to Sweden after being detained by cops

    Sorry, Swedish hip-hop fans. It seems Snoop Dogg and your country can’t mix.

    The rapper posted several videos detailing an interaction with Swedish police Saturday night, after he played a concert. According to Snoop, and confirmed to Yahoo News by Swedish Police, he was pulled over on suspicion of being under the influence and then forced to take a urine test at the local police station.

    While most of Snoop’s fans may not be surprised by the rapper’s apparent perma-pot haze (the man has his own line of rolling papers, for crying out loud), Swedish authorities were probably less amused. That’s because the country has some of the strictest drug laws in the world; it’s even illegal to be high there. Police are allowed to administer a urine or blood test on anyone suspected of being intoxicated from illegal substances.

    Snoop uploaded videos to his Instagram account of the whole ordeal, from the arrest to when he was released later that night.

    Some of the protestors for #SandraBland protest at home of Trooper #BrianEncinia @HoustonChron
    The scene in front of me – #SandraBland protest at home of Trooper #BrianEncinia

    Bland’s image goes far beyond dash-cam video

    Bland, 28, was booked into the Waller County jail a short time later on July 10, accused of assaulting a public servant during her arrest for failing to step out of her car. Three days later she killed herself in her cell, authorities said. When news of her death spread across the country, Sandra transformed into a symbol, the latest example of what can happen when confrontations involving African-Americans and law enforcement officers escalate out of control.

    But the Sandra of the dash-cam video was not the Sandy that her friends and relatives knew. Their Sandy was a devout Christian who earlier this year had announced a personal mission to promote racial reconciliation and justice. She was the ever-smiling face of “Sandy Speaks,” a series of 29 self-shot videos posted on her Facebook page that bear messages of hope and purpose.

    “Laugh all you want to, but I am here to change history,” she said in one of them.

    In those extemporaneous videos, which range from two to eight minutes and were recorded with her phone, Bland talks about the importance of white and black people being able to openly discuss racism. She faults white people for failing to grasp the more subtle racism that African-Americans deal with every day. She also chides black parents for allowing their children to be distracted by social media and pop culture trends instead of focusing on education and raising respectful citizens.

    She talks about her belief in God and the need to love all people, even those who show racial animosity.

    “I truly think the ultimate test in this life that God has placed on us is … being able to show love to somebody who can hate you for no very reason,” she said in a video posted in March.
    […]

    In perhaps the most poignant video, posted on March 1, Bland is open about her struggle with depression and how she sought to cope with it through prayer. Autopsy results have concluded that she died of asphyxia by fashioning a plastic trash can liner into a noose. They also said there was evidence of self-inflicted cuts to her arms that were healing.

    “I’ve been really stressed out over these last couple weeks,” Bland said. “I’m a human. So if there are any of you dealing with these same things, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, it’s OK to talk about it. I think that those illnesses are something that the African-American culture likes to turn a blind eye to and act like they don’t affect us. And they do. They really do.”

    The last video was posted April 10. In it she described her growing sense of mission to be someone who brings more racial unity. “When it comes to the history of America, it is not good when it comes to black and white people,” she said. “I want us to try to get past that.”

    Friends said she had recently moved back to Houston from the Chicago area. Eager to make some major changes in her life, she landed a job at Prairie View A&M University, her alma mater.

    “She got here one day, interviewed the next, and they called her back saying she got the position,” said longtime friend Kyal Webster. “She was elated because she felt like she had been blessed.”

    The article is an excellent portrait of Sandra Bland the person, not the symbol. Without the usual victim-blaming.

    O’Malley sees criminal justice reform as defining issue

    Prosecuting gun crimes and assaults as a young Baltimore lawyer in one of the city’s most violent districts helped drive Martin O’Malley into public office.

    Now the Democratic presidential contender hopes that resume, along with his time as the city’s mayor and governor of Maryland, will convince Iowans he’s the best candidate to reform the U.S. criminal justice system.

    It’s a system marked by high incarceration rates and increasing community mistrust of police and has gained attention leading up to the 2016 presidential election.

    “We have two problems that are intertwined and distinguish us in a bad way from other nations,” O’Malley said in a 40-minute one-on-one interview with The Des Moines Register Saturday. “One is that far more of our citizens lose their lives to violent crime than virtually any other advanced nation on the planet. And related to that is the fact that we incarcerate more of our citizens than any other nation on the planet, which seems counterintuitive for a free people.”

    Scaling back on mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes and boosting programs to help prepare prisoners to return home will be major parts of a policy proposal O’Malley’s campaign plans to roll out soon. From his time in Baltimore and as Maryland’s governor, O’Malley believes he has the most “on-the-ground experience” dealing with public safety issues of any presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican.

    But O’Malley will be one of several candidates that Iowans who want changes to the system will have to choose from when they decide which candidate to support in the caucuses, said Guy Cook, a Des Moines lawyer and former assistant U.S. attorney.

    “Federal sentencing has to be reformed,” Cook said. “And everybody’s talking about it.”

    And some sad news: Bobbi Kristina Brown Has Died at 22: ‘She Is Finally at Peace in the Arms of God,’ Says Family.

  160. rq says

    VIDEO: RTA officer uses pepper spray on protesters near Cleveland State University

    It became a dramatic showdown between police and protesters near Cleveland State University on Sunday.

    Transit authority police said one of their officers used pepper spray on a crowd outside a Black Lives Matter conference that was just letting out at the university at East 24th Street and Euclid Avenue just after 5 p.m.

    One of the conference attendees said people locked arms, blocked the street near the police cruiser and chanted. Police said the officer resorted to pepper spray when the crowd wouldn’t allow a cruiser with a suspect in the back seat leave the scene.

    Witnesses told newsnet5.com’s Jonathan Walsh a 14-year-old boy was accused of being drunk on a bus when he was approached by officers.

    At the same time across the street, a convention for The Movement for Black Lives was being held at Cleveland State University.

    Multiple witnesses tell newsnet5.com officers used pepper spray on several people. Video in the player above purports officers using pepper spray on protesters.

    The 14-year-old boy was treated by EMS and released into the custody of his parents.

    Greater Cleveland RTA statement available at the link.

    Tension in Cleveland outside of ‘Black Lives Matter’ conference after officer pepper sprays crowd. I think Mano had an article on this, too. I’ll check tomorrow when I’m at work.

    A tense incident occurred outside the first ever “Black Lives Matters” conference in Cleveland on Sunday when a transit officer pepper sprayed a crowd who was protesting the arrest of a 14-year-old boy.

    According to a report from ABC 5 in Cleveland, the incident began when police arrested a 14-year-old boy for allegedly having an open container of alcohol, during which, “Witnesses said the officers slammed the teen to the ground.”

    The boy was among a group of departing conference attendees who were waiting for buses at stops outside Cleveland State University where the conference was held this weekend. After the boy was in custody, demonstrators were shown blocking the ambulance he had placed into. Tweets by demonstrators indicate the boy was later released.
    […]

    A call by Mashable to the Greater Cleveland RTA went unanswered but this evening the RTA did release a statement, saying, the boy appeared to be too drunk to care for himself so the officers followed “normal procedure, which is — after police collect pertinent information, juveniles are transported to police headquarters to await release to a parent or legal guardian.”

    Within minutes, a large crowd had gathered. For the safety of the juvenile, Transit Police moved him from the open shelter area into a police cruiser. The crowd then surrounded the car, and attempted to remove the juvenile from the car. By this time, several other law enforcement agencies had also responded.

    The crowd kept the police car from leaving the area. A Transit Police officer used a general burst of pepper spray in an attempt to push back the crowd, to no avail.

    The conference, called The National Convening of the Movement for Black Lives, kicked off in Cleveland on Friday at Cleveland State. Over 1,200 attendees pre-registered for the event with more expected to have attended throughout the weekend.

    Lots of pictures and tweets in the link, same with the previous.

    Sandra Bland Was Murdered, Rolling Stone’s strong headline.

    So news broke yesterday that authorities in Waller County, Texas, have “full faith” that Sandra Bland committed suicide. They said there was “no evidence of a struggle” on the body of the 28-year-old African-American woman who was ludicrously jailed last week after an alleged lane change violation.

    In related news, the Texas Department of Safety ruled that Brian Encina, the officer who arrested Bland, pulled her from her car, and threatened her with a Taser, had merely violated the state’s “courtesy policy.” The state said there was “no evidence” yet of criminal behavior on Encina’s part.

    So barring something unexpected, we know now how this is going to play out in the media.

    Many news outlets are going to engage in an indirect version of the usual blame-the-victim game by emphasizing the autopsy finding of suicide, questioning Bland’s mental health history, and by highlighting the reports of marijuana found in her system.

    Beyond that, we can expect a slew of chin-scratching “legal analyses” concluding that while there may have been some minor impropriety on officer Encina’s part, the law governing police-motorist encounters is too “complicated” to make this anything more than a tragic accident.

    Media scandals are like criminal trials. They’re about assigning blame. Because Bland may have technically taken her own life, the blame is now mostly going to fall on a woman with a history of depression and drugs, instead of on a criminal justice system that morally, if not legally, surely murdered Sandra Bland.
    […]

    It was simple, they explained. There’s no police corruption problem. The real issue is that there are too many people who don’t know how to behave during a car stop. Don’t want to get murdered by police? Be polite!

    A writer named John Hawkins took on the subject for TownHall.com in a piece last year carrying the not at all joking headline “How to not get shot by police.” After revealing that his only real experience in this area involved speeding tickets, Hawkins lectured readers that “the first key to not getting shot” is to not think of the police as a threat:

    “They’re really not going to randomly beat you, arrest you or shoot you for no reason whatsoever. It’s like a bee. Don’t start swatting at it and chances are, it’s not going to sting you.

    “In fact, when a cop pulls you over, you should have your license and registration ready, you put your hands on the steering wheel so he can see them when he arrives, and you say ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir.'”

    It’s hard to wrap one’s head around the absurdity of someone like Hawkins imagining to himself that black America has not already tried using the word “sir” as a strategy to avoid beatings and killings. But over and over again, we heard stuff like this from the Fox/Real Clear crowd, which as time passed flailed around with increasing desperation in search of a non-racial explanation for all of these violent episodes.
    […]

    But nobody yet has dared to say Sandra Bland would still be alive today, if only she’d used her blinker. That’s a bridge too far even for TownHall.com types.

    Suddenly even hardcore law-and-order enthusiasts are realizing the criminal code is so broad and littered with so many tiny technical prohibitions that a determined enough police officer can stop and/or arrest pretty much anybody at any time.

    Bland was on her way to a new job at Prairie A&M university when she was pulled over for failing to signal when changing lanes, something roughly 100 percent of American drivers do on a regular basis. Irritated at being stopped, she was curt with Encina when he wrote her up. He didn’t like her attitude and decided to flex his muscles a little, asking her to put out her cigarette.

    She balked, and that’s when things went sideways. Encina demanded that she get out of the car, reached for his Taser, said, “I’ll light you up,” and eventually threw her in jail.

    Many editorialists following this narrative case suddenly noticed, as if for the first time, how much mischief can arise from the fact that a person may be arrested at any time for “failing to obey a lawful order,” which in the heat of the moment can mean just about anything.

    But this same kind of logic has underpinned modern community policing in big cities all over America for decades now. Under Broken Windows and other “zero tolerance”-type enforcement strategies, police move into (typically nonwhite) neighborhoods in big numbers, tell people to move off corners, and then circle back and arrest them for “loitering” or “failing to obey a lawful order” if they don’t.

    More at the link.

    The Cleveland PD is out in force today, with approximately 30 police cars and 75 officers. They arrested a 14 y/o near the conference.

    Using tear gas against protesters on #blacklivesmatter protesters in Cleveland now

    #BlackLivesMatter: Liberal Activists Shift 2016 Endorsement Rules

    Democracy for America, a progressive grassroots network, will change its candidate endorsement process in response to a Black Lives Matter protest in Phoenix last weekend.

    After a racial justice protest halted a meeting with Democratic presidential candidates on Saturday, the one-million-member network will now include candidates’ proposals for addressing racism among the central criteria for DFA’s endorsements, according to an advance copy of the announcement obtained by TIME.

    The criteria apply to candidates from local elections to the presidential level.

    Additionally, in its questions of candidates in local races, DFA will ask how candidates will support the Movement for Black Lives and confront racism and our “culture of white supremacy,” according to the DFA announcement.

    “We want the candidates we endorse to not only say that #BlackLivesMatter, we want these candidates to know that progressives—including those in organizations with largely white memberships and staff like DFA—expect them to stand up to, name, and address systemic racism as fundamental and foundational to the movement to end income inequality,” wrote Charles Chamberlain, DFA’s executive director, in a note likely to appear on the group’s website next week.

    DFA represents an important bloc of activist progressive voters, many of whom give small-dollar donations to candidates, canvass and make telephone calls before the elections. Founded by Howard Dean in 2004, the group can be a barometer of Democratic enthusiasm and has played an important role in mobilizing liberal voters in recent elections.

    DFA is weighing endorsing a Democratic candidate in the primary but has not yet committed to throwing its support behind a candidate before the general election. Its new rules may have the greatest impact on state and congressional races.

    Zewy interesting!!

  161. rq says

    #SandraBland Jail footage independently analysed. #JusticeForSandraBland

    I’m Not Distracted: Why Consciousness Cops Are Ruining Social Media

    Today, New York Magazine released a piece featuring 35 of Bill Cosby’s accusers discussing their sexual assaults at his hands. The article is a stunning and disturbing account of the dozens of women that Cosby so cavalierly drugged, sexually assaulted and raped over the past half-century. It is a visceral account of trauma.
    Yet, a curious amount of Twitter’s commentary deemed the story a mere “distraction” from the the mysterious death of 28-year-old activist Sandra Bland. In other words, people are somehow convinced that it is not only not possible but not important to be focused on both stories.
    Of course, this “distraction” narrative isn’t limited to gender violence. In the last two weeks of July Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift, Drake and Meek Mill have also been involved in drama deemed “distractions” from the latest story of police brutality or racial injustice.
    Stories are often pit against each other online, whether it’s by self-righteous soapboxers on social media or conspiracy sites playing the “agenda” card. It wasn’t long ago that Rachel Dolezal’s madness and Caitlyn Jenner’s trans-awakening were being deemed “distractions” from Akon’s “AkonLightingAfrica” initiative or former cop Eric Casebolt’s needless assault of a 14-year-old girl in McKinney, Texas.
    A Twitter search of the aforementioned names and “distraction” showcases users imploring us to #staywoke and pay less attention to one story or another, but that’s nothing new. Just about any search of a controversial name and “distraction” will aggregate the social mediasphere’s all-too rampant paranoia. Yet there is a logical failure in the implication that a person’s interest in the trivial indicates their disinterest in the serious.
    It’s easy to tell someone’s priorities by what they deem irrelevant. If over 40 women getting drugged and raped is a “distraction” then you need to wrestle with your sexism and indifference to sexual violence. Like the sly transphobia that followed Caitlyn Jenner, the current marginalization of Cosby’s accusers is indicative of a problematic, bigoted perspective. Perhaps those who call the NY Magazine piece a distraction should actually read it and understand how the cops who beat and possibly killed Sandra Bland are not that different from Bill Cosby. Both are perpetuating violence against women, both are pathologically controlling, and both seem to enjoy abusing women. You can care about both without being asleep at the metaphorical wheel. We can talk about it all.
    Why can we not call for justice for both Sandra and for Cosby’s victims? Why is the story considered more about the destruction of his image then his alleged destruction of women’s peace of mind? Additionally, just what bearing does Drake or Meek Mill’s frivolous “beef” have on either of these serious stories?
    It’s not just Cosby and it’s not just rappers. News about celebrities is always fodder for “distraction” cries, as their every move engenders a swarm of commentary. It was a Paper Mag article about “socialite” Kim Kardashian that created the “break the internet” term, and a 2014 Huffington Post piece pondered whether she was in fact a “distraction from terrorism”.
    I don’t think she or any celebrity can “distract” anyone with a normally functioning brain. Nevertheless, in my time on Twitter I’ve seen too many patrolling their social feeds like consciousness cops, juxtaposing the celebrity hysteria against assaults on social justice, implying society at large doesn’t care for the latter. When scrolling down my timeline and seeing these comments, I wonder if they consider that some use social media as a vacation from the crippling fear these incidents are causing. Online activism is powerful, but for some, Twitter is simply a venue to live tweet shows and laugh at Drake.
    The suffering of oppressed groups is frequently ignored by the mass media, but it’s flawed to assume individuals are doing such just because they discuss multiple issues. If I had a dollar for every time I saw a derivative of “everybody’s’ talking about A, but no one is talking about B” on social media, I’d be rich enough to buy everyone a plasma wall to ensure we’re all watching everything at once. In a world where social justice movements are aligning across racial lines and intersectional feminism is a growing force, there should be little doubt in humanities’ capability to concentrate on more than one thing at once.

    I think we’ve heard a lot on the subject here, too. More at the link.

    Ralkina Jones: Woman who died in CLE HTS jail was arrested for attacking ex-husband, smashing car

    Cleveland Heights police are investigating after a woman died at the city’s jail.

    The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office reported that they responded to the jail over the weekend.

    The body of 37-year-old Ralkina Jones was recovered Sunday.

    A release from police states Jones was checked by medical professionals three times within six hours from Saturday evening into Sunday morning.

    Police stated at about 7:15 p.m., an officer noticed Jones acting sluggish and called the Cleveland Heights Fire Department.

    Paramedics took Jones to HealthSpan where she was evaluated and released back to the jail at about 10:40 p.m.

    Paramedics were called to the jail again at about 12:45 a.m. on Sunday to check on Jones.

    Police said her vitals were determined to be normal at the time.

    Officers observed Jones overnight through routine jail checks and she was later found unresponsive on the bed at about 7:30 a.m. on Sunday.

    According to the medical examiner’s office, the autopsy was completed on Monday and it showed no suspicious injuries.

    The exact cause of death will be determined by the Medical Examiner pending further investigation.

    Police stated Jones was being treated for several medical conditions that were documented during her intake process and she was given her prescribed medication as directed.

    So just a mysterious death. Okay.

    Colorado Cops Arrest Mom for Confederate Flag Arson. Should probably thank her instead.

    It was an hour before midnight on July 22 when a cop knocked on the door of local Black Lives Matter activist Patricia Cameron. She was asleep at home with her 8-year-old son. The officer called out her name and asked her to come outside. Cameron wasn’t dressed, so the cop told her to put on some clothes— he had something for her to sign.

    For the past four years Cameron has lived in the small, hippy-dippy mountain town of Manitou Springs just outside Colorado’s second largest city. She’s a vocal presence in the local media and runs a blog and a Twitter feed where she discusses topics she feels get ignored in Colorado Springs, a very white, heavily Republican Christian-conservative military city. As a young black woman, she says her encounters with police in the area haven’t always gone well. She’s filed at least one complaint against officers here.

    “I was petrified,” she says when she found a uniformed cop at her door at 11:00 at night. The name of Sandra Bland, a young black woman who was found dead July 13, hanging from a trash bag noose in a Texas jail cell days after a traffic stop, flashed through her mind. In the hallway of Cameron’s apartment building, the officer told her he was there to serve her with something, and handed her what looked like a ticket. He asked her to sign it, saying it had to do with an incident on July 4. The document was an arrest summons accusing her of fourth degree arson.

    Two weeks prior, the single mom, local political activist and EMT had organized an Independence Day public burning of a Confederate flag in a local park as a form of peaceful protest. Online, photos had been spreading of accused killer Dylan Roof posing with Confederate flags before police say he carried out his attack on nine black parishioners in a Charleston, SC church. In announcing her plans days before the event, Cameron told a local alt-weekly reporter the demonstration was “simply us getting together and reiterating the fact that black lives in fact matter.” She’d alerted the local police department about what she’d planned to do, tagging them in a post on Facebook, though a police spokesperson says the department never saw it. The police chief had also gotten an anonymous e-mail about the event. (Weeks prior, the county sheriff’s office had been on alert when a local biker club held a pig roast to protest the Islamic holiday of Ramadan.)

    Not many people showed up on the day Cameron and a handful of others held their flag burning under a park pavilion that doesn’t allow barbecuing. There, she squirted lighter fluid on a large Confederate flag, someone else lit it, and a third man held the pole as the flag burned on a charcoal grill. With an American flag bandana covering her nose and mouth, Cameron clapped as others waved signs reading “Black Lives Matter” and “Who is burning black churches?” The local paper dispatched a summer intern to the scene. A video went up on YouTube. Some local TV stations carried the news.

    Now, nearly three weeks later, an officer was standing in Cameron’s hallway asking her to sign an arrest summons that accused her of arson. She was not formally arrested and taken to jail. “I was confused,” she says about how it all went down, especially so late at night— and so long after the very public incident.

    Took them three weeks to charge her. Fuckers.

    NK Jemisin: the fantasy writer upending the ‘racist and sexist status quo’, and may she continue doing so for many years to come.

    Her novels are anything but monochromatic. The first, titled The Killing Moon, is set in a multicultural sort-of alternate Egypt, where a patriarchal monarchy committed to order and peace, and a semi-egalitarian oligarchy, vie for power in a complicated web of shifting alliances and dreams. That story got her an agent, but didn’t sell initially – because, Jemisin says, “a fantasy novel set in something other than medieval Europe featuring an almost entirely black cast, is considered risky”.

    Jemisin was undeterred. In 2010 she published her first novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, a sweeping story about a wide-ranging, heterogenous empire whose ruling family has enslaved the gods – at least for the moment. It was nominated for most of the major laurels in the industry: a Hugo, a Nebula and a World fantasy award.
    […]

    “As a black woman,” Jemisin tells me, “I have no particular interest in maintaining the status quo. Why would I? The status quo is harmful, the status quo is significantly racist and sexist and a whole bunch of other things that I think need to change. With epic fantasy there is a tendency for it to be quintessentially conservative, in that its job is to restore what is perceived to be out of whack.”

    She adds: “I think our society right now is enduring change in a painful and bloody way that is not necessarily a war.” She points to the incident at the McKinney pool in Texas, where police officers manhandled and arrested black teens at a white swimming pool. The white woman who started the incident by yelling racist slurs was quickly identified on Twitter, and lost her job as a teacher.

    There’s danger in using Twitter to shame people, Jemisin said, “especially for women. You end up with threats and harassment and so forth.” But in a racist society, she believes, there are few other avenues for holding the woman accountable for traumatising and threatening the lives of black youth. “I see a revolution in that,” Jemisin added. “I see unorthodox change and I see it being effective. And that gives me additional material to possibly write with.”

    *applause*

    WATCH: Policeman’s son on a ride-along attacks man filming his dad making an arrest. Watch how kids learn. Above? It was a kid not letting others into a locked door. This is how they learn.

    Police in Evansville, Indiana, are reviewing their ride-along policies after the son of an officer — who was accompanying him for the evening — attacked a man filming his dad making an arrest, reports the Courier-Press.

    In the June 28 incident, Officer Bryan Underwood noticed he was being filmed as he was addressing a man lying in the back of a police cruiser at a gas station complaining that he had been shot in the stomach. Asking the cell phone user to step back and stop filming him, Underwood noticed the man was smoking a cigarette and criticized him, telling him it was dangerous to have a lit cigarette so close to the gas pumps.
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    The man flipped the lit cigarette to ground while continuing to film, leading Underwood to criticize him further before demanding his ID, saying he was going to write him up for littering. The man then retreated to his car, and an argument ensued with the filming man and a woman with him demanding Underwood’s name while criticizing him for shooting the wounded man in the cruiser.

    “You just shot him, you just shot him twice, he’s in handcuffs,” the man can be heard saying, to which Underwood replied, “I didn’t do anything. Don’t worry about me.”

    With the couple both demanding Underwood’s name and badge number, the police officer gave them his business card before turning away.

    At this point a man identified as Underwood’s son, 21-year-old Brock, began arguing with the man filming the action over whether there was a shooting or not before snatching the cell phone away and trying to break it.

    Evansville Police Chief Billy Bolin said what happened was unacceptable and that the department is reviewing its policies, but that he doesn’t want to discourage family members from also becoming police officers.

    “I don’t want to be knee-jerk,” explained Bolin. “Many family members decide to become police officers after a ride-along.”

    Bolin banned Brock Underwood from ever participating in a ride-along again, before stating that Officer Underwood would undergo counseling on how he might better handle such situations in the future.

    And it’s not even a kid but an adult, but it’s obvious where he learned.

  162. rq says

    Link to Sandra Bland’s toxicology report, to anyone who’s interested. The link won’t work for me, maybe it will for someone else.

    REEFER MADNESS:
    Marijuana Didn’t Kill Sandra Bland

    Was Sandra Bland under the influence of marijuana, and did this lead to her arrest and/or suicide? Waller County officials have suggested as much in statements given to the media. The county has come under intense scrutiny for racial discrimination and racialized police brutality following the death of Bland, who was taken into custody following a minor traffic violation that escalated into an altercation with White trooper Brian Encinia.

    Sounds familiar? That’s because it is. Two summers ago, George Zimmerman’s lawyers argued that Trayvon Martin attacked him in an aggressive and paranoid rage fueled by Martin’s marijuana intoxication. And last summer, St. Louis County officials floated similar arguments to justify the killing of Michael Brown by White police officer Darren Wilson. Of course, the scientific evidence almost never supports these fantastic distractions. Yet, the “drug-crazed Black person” myth continues to be revitalized decade after decade by racists parading as public servants.

    As a neuroscientist who has spent nearly 20 years studying the neurophysiological, psychological and behavioral effects of marijuana, I find this line of reasoning insulting and offensive. It seeks to misuse the science of behavioral pharmacology to excuse reprehensible acts perpetrated by the state or state proxies. As part of my research, I have given thousands of doses of marijuana to people and carefully studied their immediate and delayed responses. And I have never observed a marijuana-induced violent and self-destructive attack or anything remotely similar to the reefer madness put forth by desperate public officials.
    […]

    Given that it is highly unlikely that marijuana consumed three days prior contributed to Bland’s death, let’s further speculate that Bland managed to conceal substantial amounts of the drug during her arrest and consumed it while incarcerated. Assistant DA Diepraam laid out the theory that marijuana is a “mood amplifier” and may have exacerbated Bland’s depressive disorder causing her to commit suicide. (By the way, to my knowledge she had never received a formal diagnosis for such a disorder.) Bland would have had to consume a substantial amount of marijuana for this conjecture to be plausible. The drug would have caused her to behave conspicuously bizarre and would have undoubtedly impaired her motor performance, increasing the likelihood that jailers would have noticed her and decreasing the likelihood that she would have constructed a perfect slipknot as an instrument to hang herself. One does not need to be a neuroscientist to see the absurdity of the theories peddled by Waller County officials.

    There is no evidence indicating that marijuana is to blame for the death of Sandra Bland and those of you who tend to be critical of weed smokers need to understand how destructive this sort of propaganda can be. Think back to Chappelle’s Show and “sprinkle a little crack on him”–this is no different than what was done to Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown and now, Bland. It’s high time we called out racists when they employ the “drug-crazed Black person” myth to justify Black death.

    How Slavery’s Legacy Affects the Mental Health of Black Americans

    On July 22, in announcing the federal indictment of Charleston killer Dylann Roof, Attorney General Loretta Lynch commented that the expression of forgiveness offered by the victims’ families is “an incredible lesson and message for us all.”

    Forgiveness and grace are, indeed, hallmarks of the Black Church.

    Since slavery, the church has been a formidable force for the survival of blacks in an America still grappling with the residual effects of white supremacy.

    This was eloquently illustrated in the aftermath of the Charleston church massacre. Americans rightly stood in awe of the bereaved families’ laudable demonstration of God’s grace in action.
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    But what about the psychic toll that these acts of forgiveness exact?
    […]

    In his seminal book, Mighty Like A River, the Black Church and Social Reform, sociologist Andrew Billingsley asserts that the black church is the only African American institution that has not been reenvisioned in the image of whites.

    His research illuminates the role of religion in building the resilience that allows blacks as a people to overcome the various forms of terrorism and oppression endured over centuries that sustain doctrines of white supremacy.

    Indeed, in his analysis of the African American family, Billingsley concludes that it is “amazingly strong, enduring, adaptive and highly resilient.”

    But as we pay homage to church and family in buffering blacks against the full effects of white racism, we must not obscure or diminish racism’s impact on the mental health that few blacks—irrespective of educational, social, or economic status—will escape.

    There is increasing evidence that repressing feelings associated with acts of white racism may be psychologically damaging and lay the foundation for future mental health problems and behaviors symptomatic of post-traumatic stress syndrome.
    […]
    Not enough is known about the relationship between clinical depression and race. But there are extensive findings (including reports by the Surgeon General) that attribute racial disparities in mental health outcomes for African Americans and whites to clinician bias, socioeconomic status and environmental stressors (such as high rates of crime and poor housing). And there is evidence of a link between perceived racism and adverse psychological outcomes such as increased levels of anxiety, depression and other psychiatric symptoms.

    The numbers tell a story. According to the Minority Health Office of the Department of Health and Human Services, black adults are 20 percent more likely to report serious psychological distress than white adults and are more likely to have feelings of sadness, hopelessness and worthlessness than do their white counterparts.

    And yet there continues to be reluctance to forthrightly confront the impact of racism on mental health. Some of my colleagues, for example, say that content on race and racism is the most challenging content for them to teach. Authentic dialogue on race is constrained by the fear of being “politically incorrect.” It takes less effort to promote the more inclusive liberal view that we live in a “color-blind society.”

    It may be easier to allow everyone to remain in their comfort zone. But today as the U.S. faces what would appear to be an epidemic of race-based attacks committed by whites, it is time to examine how our history of racism affects the mental health of African Americans as well as that of whites.

    Texas prosecutor names committee to review Sandra Bland case

    A committee of outside attorneys will assist the Texas district attorney investigating the death of Sandra Bland, the black woman who authorities say hanged herself in her jail cell three days after a traffic stop by a white state trooper.

    Authorities also released an initial toxicology report for Bland on Monday, a report that two experts who reviewed it for The Associated Press said raises the possibility that Bland may have used marijuana while in custody.
    […]

    The panel will have full access to all evidence in the case and the authority to subpoena witnesses, according to White and another member of the committee, attorney Darrell Jordan of Houston.

    The committee will make recommendations on possible criminal charges to Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis, White said. If Mathis disagrees with them, the lawyers on the panel will have the authority to present their findings to the grand jury reviewing Bland’s death, he said.

    Two other lawyers are expected to be appointed soon. Both White and Jordan are black, and will be dealing with a case that has received international scrutiny and questions about whether Bland was treated differently due to her race.

    At a news conference announcing the committee, Mathis declined to comment on the toxicology report, saying final findings were still being prepared.

    Still not a lot of questions being definitively answered at this time.

    Georgia men with Confederate flags crash black child’s birthday party, threaten to ‘kill y’all n****rs’

    Witnesses at a birthday party in Douglasville, Georgia over the weekend said that festivities were interrupted when men waving Confederate flags threatened them and used racial slurs.

    Cell phone video obtained by the Atlanta Journal Constitution shows police officers holding back people attending a birthday party as white men in trucks with Confederate flags and other flags drive by yelling at them.

    “This is a child’s birthday party!” one woman shouts back.

    According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the woman who posted the video on Facebook said that the men were armed and were on her property. She said that they threatened to “kill y’all n****rs.”

    “I don’t mind them riding with their flags but I don’t want them going around threaten[ing] people in their yard like they did mine or harassing folks either,” the woman explained in her Facebook post.

    Douglasville Police Chief Chris Womack told the paper that his department would release details about the incident later on Monday.

    Md. National Guard reviewing, passing along lessons from Baltimore riot deployment – and what lessons, let children go home?

    The leaders of the Maryland National Guard began updating plans to respond to a civil disturbance before Michael Brown was shot last summer by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo.

    Their preparations paid off in April, when Gov. Larry Hogan ordered more than 3,000 soldiers and airmen into the streets of Baltimore to help calm a city in flames over the death of Freddie Gray — the Maryland Guard’s first such deployment in 47 years.

    Now, after supporting police and providing security without significant injuries or incidents, Maryland Guard leaders are fielding questions from their counterparts around the country, who are bracing for the possibility of disturbances in their states.

    “It could really happen anywhere,” said Maj. Gen. Linda Singh, the commander of the Maryland National Guard. “It’s not that these are bad places or anything. It only takes one issue that can really get people upset and for that to spiral.”

    Singh has briefed the commanders of the other 53 state and territorial guards on Operation Baltimore Rally. Maryland Guard leaders, meanwhile, are reviewing the deployment in preparation for the possibility of similar missions in the future.

    The last time the Maryland Guard had been called to calm Baltimore was 1968, when the city erupted after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. But leaders had begun to prepare for a civil disturbance early last year as part of a larger effort to develop contingency plans for a range of possible emergencies.

    Heh.

  163. rq says

    New details, questions as another gun is found in a Baltimore police station – in another case of black people being magic.

    As police investigate how a handgun was smuggled into the holding cell of a police station this week, newly released documents show that a man who committed suicide in another police station last year not only had a gun but also a lighter, knife and more than $1,000 in cash.

    The incidents raise fresh questions about policies and procedures at police stations. Officials had promised to review security measures in January after a man walked into a station with a loaded handgun, marijuana and cocaine and told officers he was working for Black Guerrilla Family gang leaders to test police security.

    “It certainly begs a really large question: How safe is it to be in a police station that such an occurrence can happen, now multiple times?” said City Councilman Carl Stokes, an East Baltimore Democrat.

    Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and police officials promised to investigate and take steps to prevent future security breaches.

    Apparently Waller County has a few things to look into as well, if Sandra Bland managed to smuggle in piles of marijuana in a maxi dress.

    Transit police union criticizes response to Baltimore riots, so I guess not everything as smooth as the National Guard.

    In a letter, AFSCME Local 1859 President Jerome Damon called on the Maryland Transit Administration to investigate the agency’s handling of the April 27 unrest, noting that four officers dispatched without protective gear to a West Baltimore subway station had to be rescued by an armored vehicle after crowds set two MTA police vehicles and the nearby CVS pharmacy ablaze.

    Archer Blackwell, another union representative, said Thursday that the union’s complaints, including a lack of protective gear, have largely gone unaddressed. More equipment arrived after the riots, but officers still have not been trained to use it, he said.

    The union concerns come to light weeks after the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3, which represents the city’s rank-and-file officers, made similar complaints about officer safety and the lack of protective gear in its scathing review.

    The concerns — which MTA officials say are being addressed in various ways, including training and the creation of an MTA Police Mobile Field Force Team — also add to a growing list of unanswered questions about city and state officials’ handling of the unrest.

    Through new interviews, as well as radio transmissions, emails and video obtained by The Baltimore Sun through the Maryland Public Information Act, a clearer picture of the events is emerging.

    More at the link.

    The Afro-Diasporic Fantasy Art Of Nigerian-American Illustrator Odera Igbokwe

    Odera Igbokwe is a Nigerian-American illustrator who explores the intersection of identity and imagination through racebent character archetypes, Afro-diasporic mythologies and magical girl transformation sequences. The Brooklyn-based creative, who recently featured in our story on Mikael Owunna‘s Limit(less) photo series, tells us their work is also very much about celebrating the African diaspora and all its narratives, mythologies, and metaphysical memories.

    “Sometimes it is as simple as seeing our people present and represented in the realm of fantasy art,” the artist told us over e-mail. “As a child, the characters I drew were not black unless it was Storm from X-Men, or an actual real person. One day around the age of fifteen or so, I just noticed that none of these original fantasy characters I was drawing looked like me or my family. By the time I went to college, I unplugged myself from that system of white supremacy that allowed for none of my characters to be black.”

    The Maplewood, New Jersey native, who was raised as the youngest of five, spent nearly every childhood summer in Nigeria. “My parents took us back to Nigeria every single summer for more than fifteen years,” Odera shared. “I remember being kind of miserable there but I’ve grown to value the lessons they taught me. It really forced me to delve into my imagination and always generate creative energies. Back then it was just playing lots of Crash Bandicoot and Final Fantasy 9, and learning Aaliyah dance routines with my sister.”

    After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Illustration, Odera continued on to Brown University to study movement-theater and West African dance. The visual storyteller counts Oumou Sangare, Zaki Ibrahim, Beyoncé, Solange, Janelle Monaé, Erykah Badu, and Zap Mama among their musical influences.

    More on the artist at the link, but go and see the amazing art!!

    Texas County’s Racial Past Is Seen as Prelude to Sandra Bland’s Death

    When Sandra Bland enrolled in 2005 at Prairie View A&M University, the historically black institution founded here almost 140 years ago, its students were still waging a civil rights war that had ended elsewhere decades before: a legal battle, against white Waller County officials, for the right to vote in the place they lived.

    It took years and a federal court order, but the students won. When Ms. Bland returned here the morning of July 9, driving 16 hours from Chicago to interview for a job at her alma mater, the Justice Department had abandoned its court-ordered oversight of students’ voter registration, the campus had its own polling place, and the county had, in one key respect, passed a racial milestone.

    Four days later, Ms. Bland was dead in a county jail cell after a routine traffic stop by a state trooper escalated into a physical confrontation not 500 yards from the university’s entrance. And any talk of milestones gave way to questions about whether the county’s checkered history of race relations had set the stage for a tragedy that the authorities acknowledge might never have happened had they followed their own rules.

    Prairie View now joins a list of places — Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore, Cleveland, New York and others — where African-Americans have died after encounters with the police, and where assumptions about progress in race relations have been challenged, if not dashed. But here, in a county where most blacks and whites are still buried in separate cemeteries, those assumptions have been especially shaky.

    “The caste system still exists here,” said LaVaughn Mosley, a former counselor at Prairie View A&M who had been friends with Ms. Bland since her undergraduate days. “There is a whole race of people here who are treated like second-class citizens.”

    Local officials disagree, of course.

    Cincinnati promises reform after Samuel Dubose’s death but a family demands justice and answers – the fuck it takes death for them to even start considering reform?

    Philly Cop Punches Handcuffed Suspect in Face, Social Media Catches Officer Planting Weapon – let’s hear it for cops behaving badly!

  164. rq says

    Hasselbeck: Could Sandra Bland Have Attacked Cop with Her Cigarette? Because the stupidity has no end.

    37-Year-Old Woman Found Dead in Cleveland Jail: Update

    According to Cleveland Heights police officials who spoke with the news station, Jones reportedly broke her ex-husband’s car window and tried to break his windshield with a tire iron. Jones allegedly hit the man, identified only as “Brandon,” in the arm with the tire iron. Jones then reportedly hopped into her car and came very close to running over Brandon and a friend of his. According to the news station, Jones’ 12-year-old child was in the backseat of the car at the time of the incident.

    Police told the news station that Jones “seemed lethargic when they checked on her in jail.” She was taken to the hospital around 7:15 p.m. Saturday and given medication for a prior health condition. She was released from the hospital and taken back to jail around 10:40 p.m. Saturday, CBS 5 reports.

    According to the news station, Jones was last checked around 12:45 a.m. Sunday and her vitals were recorded as fine. Police officials told the news station that they continued to monitor her with random checks thoughout the morning. Jones was found dead in her cell around 7:30 a.m. Sunday.

    Baltimore Police Blocked Rihanna From Performing a Free Concert to Benefit Freddie Gray. I guess she’s a security threat.

    During the Baltimore uprising that occurred in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray, various performers wanted to lend their voices in an effort to show solidarity with the residents of Baltimore and the protesters. Prince held a Freddie Gray benefit concert that raised money for various nonprofit organizations in Baltimore. But one singer attempted to put on a concert, and even protest with the city’s residents, but wasn’t allowed.

    According to the Baltimore Sun, Rihanna contacted the city’s higher-ups in hopes of being able to put on a free concert for residents, as well as participate in protests. In emails between the former head of media relations for Baltimore Police Capt. Eric Kowalczyk and an officer, dated May 1, a conversation was outlined about Rihanna’s request.

    “Rihanna wants to walk with the protesters as well as perform a free concert,” the officer wrote. He added that she would be arriving by plane and, in an effort to divert press and media, she would be traveling to the city by train (or car, if necessary).

    “[He] stated that they had hoped to secure some extra police security and was directed by the governor’s office to seek assistance through Communications,” the emails went on to detail.

    The concert was supposed to be held at Penn and North avenues, but Rihanna was not allowed to perform. Although there was no reason given as to why a permit wasn’t granted, one could assume it was because of the extra security from Baltimore police that would be needed.

    In the end, Prince was the only artist who performed in Baltimore, and he subsequently raised $35,000 with the help of Tidal, which streamed the concert.

    I don’t see why she couldn’t have just participated in protesting anyway. Contacted an organization or something like that, instead of the police.

    Woman dies in Cleveland Heights jail, another on Ralkina Jones.

    Man killed by police at Arby’s in Plymouth was shot in head, authorities say

    The man fatally shot during an altercation with police in a fast-food restaurant in Plymouth was identified Sunday as a 31-year-old who lived a mile from the scene of the shooting.

    Derek R. Wolfsteller was fatally shot in the head Thursday night at the Arby’s on Hwy. 55 just west of Hwy. 169, according to the Hennepin County medical examiner’s office.

    Wolfsteller had been suffering from a mental health crisis shortly before his death, according to sources with knowledge of the case. Wolfsteller called police from the restaurant about 8:20 p.m. saying he needed help dealing with a crisis, sources said. At the same time, an Arby’s employee called 911 about a disturbance at the restaurant.

    Officer Amy Therkelsen responded and received information while on the way that Wolfsteller had a weapon and was in the restaurant, according to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety (DPS). When she arrived, two people were attempting to subdue him.

    When he did not immediately follow Therkelsen’s commands, she deployed her Taser, but it proved ineffective. She attempted to subdue Wolfsteller physically, and a fight ensued during which he tried to remove her weapon from its holster, the DPS said.

    Therkelsen gained control of her gun and fired at Wolfsteller, killing him, according to the preliminary investigation. No other weapons were recovered from the scene.

    Plymouth Police Chief Michael S. Goldstein said his department has had previous contact with Wolfsteller. The chief declined to elaborate.

    Proceed with the criminal history of the dead man, sure. I’m fine with the story up to the mental health crisis. Not so sure about the reaching-for-the-gun bit.
    Sadly, it may very well be true, but I’m not likely to believe it just like that.

    Y’all, the death threats, etc are real. It’s not a game. re: Pausing the #BaltimoreLunch and #STLLunch programs due to security fears.

  165. rq says

    Puppies Go to Prison to Become Dogs That Save Lives. The article focusses on the puppies, but I can imagine the beneficial, therapeutic effect this program can have on the actual people living in the prison, too. Companionship, company, contact, all of that.

    At emotional hearing, LAPD officer gets 36 months in jail in assault caught on video. 36 months for kicking a woman and then ignoring her while she fell unconscious and died. Fuck that shit.

    “Collective Healing” at Nat’l Black Lives Matter Convergence Ends with Police Pepper-Spraying Teen,

    More than a thousand Black Lives Matter supporters converged in Cleveland, Ohio, this weekend for a historic conference to raise national attention about police brutality and other pressing issues, including immigration rights, economic justice and LGBTQ rights. During the opening ceremony, family members of more than 20 African Americans killed by police took to the stage to speak about why they continue to fight for justice. Democracy Now!’s Messiah Rhodes was on the ground in Cleveland, Ohio, and spoke to several conference participants who say it was “a learning space, a healing space, a politicizing space, a radicalizing space.” The event ended with a stark reminder of how much work remains to be done. On Sunday, a crowd of participants witnessed a police officer attempting to arrest a 14-year-old boy for alleged intoxication. The Black Lives Matter participants blocked the squad car and tried to get the child out. One of the officers then began pepper-spraying the crowd. The video has since gone viral.

    Transcript at the link (Democracy Now).

    This infographic shows how likely different races are to go to prison

    The criminal justice system in America is racially skewed, and as incarceration rates continue to climb, studies have found that African-Americans are disproportionately affected to a significant extent.

    This illustration from the Sentencing Project shows exactly how stark the racial disparity is in the U.S. justice system.

    For Black men, the likelihood of incarceration over an individual’s lifetime is 1 in 3. Compare that to the odds of a white man landing in prison—1 in 17—and you begin to understand the inequity of this institution.

    “The rise in the institutionalized population among black men without a high school diploma has been even more dramatic. By 2010, nearly a third of black, male high school dropouts aged 25-29 were imprisoned or otherwise institutionalized. This is higher than the employment rate for the same group, which was less than 25 percent,” the Washington Post reported.

    There’s more at the link, including infographics.

    As the world watches, Waller sheriff invites change in wake of Bland’s death. I bet they were all ‘that would never happen here’ until it did.

    With the national spotlight on Waller County after the suicide of Sandra Bland and questions surrounding her treatment at the jail, Sheriff R. Glenn Smith said Friday his department has nothing to hide – and he will prove it.

    Calling for an independent civilian panel to review his office and make public recommendations, he said the five-member committee, led by Houston defense attorney Paul Looney, will have all the access it desires, from walking cell blocks to scouring files from his own desk or even riding shotgun with deputies.

    “The whole nation, the whole world is looking at us,” Smith said. “If there is something we can do different, some way to improve, then we are going to do it.”
    […]

    Waller County, which is approximately 58 percent white and 29 percent black, was once home to an agency of the Freedmen’s Bureau, a federal agency established to help slaves in the South during Reconstruction. After they were emancipated, the area’s then-mostly black population became active in local politics. But in recent decades, county officials have limited how students attending the state’s oldest historically black college can vote in Waller County, sparking legal challenges.

    In 1971, after the 26th Amendment made 18 the voting age, Waller County officials prohibited Prairie View A&M University students from voting in the county unless they or their families owned property in the county. A three-judge panel ended the practice in 1979. Then, in 1992, a county prosecutor indicted Prairie View students for illegally voting, dropping the charges after a Department of Justice challenge.

    In 2003, a Prairie View student ran for commissioners court. The district and county attorney threatened to prosecute students for voter fraud based on the antiquated domicile requirement. The NAACP filed suit, and the county changed its practices. The student won.

    District Attorney Elton Mathis said he’s aware of his county’s racial past. When he was elected nine years ago, his staff had to ensure Prairie View students had equal access to elections after a federal judge found local officials had tried to disenfranchise them. But things have changed, he said, noting the Commissioners Court has been completely replaced.

    “The voters are finally paying attention, and they are demanding accountability,” he said. “I’ve been trying to show that those days are going away. … We’re going to change this place. We are.”
    […]

    On Friday, Smith said serving four decades in law enforcement means inevitably not everyone will always be happy.

    “I am not a racist, nor have I ever been,” he said. “Everyone you deal with is not going to be happy. … The only way you can treat that is to flat-out say it is not true. People who know me know better than that.”

    Waller County Commissioner Jeron Barnett, the lone black and Democrat on the governing board, recalled running against Smith when he was vying for sheriff just months after being ousted as Hempstead’s top cop in 2008. He said politics was at play in his termination.

    “There was a real strong political atmosphere at the time,” he said. “To say that there wasn’t anything political behind it, I think it would be unjust.”

    He noted Smith still won the sheriff’s election, adding, “If people thought the allegations were that serious then they should have spoken.”

    The former police chief said he’s never received any complaints from his constituency about racial incidents involving the sheriff’s office.

    Nevertheless, he said there is a perception in the area that law enforcement officers stop African-Americans more often and unfairly and that there is room for improving race relations. He praised the sheriff for calling a civilian review panel and said it would be valuable “for transparency, if nothing else.”

    Looney, the lawyer who will lead the panel and pick its members, said the sheriff sees this as a time to change things for the better.

    “In a time period of great tragedy, there is also a great opportunity for growth, and he doesn’t want to miss that opportunity,” Looney said. “I don’t intend to be kind. The people I include on the committee will not be kind. We intend to be constructive.”

    Nope, no racism there. So much work to be done.

    The terror from within: What drives a ‘perfect’ boy to kill? Not going to cite, but if you read, can you try and imagine something similar being written about a black person accused of a similar crime?

  166. rq says

    Dozens protest outside Katy home of state trooper, and lookit at the protection he gets!

    Gesturing with his arms in the heat, Patrik Bernard told deputies in front of him that he felt compelled to leave his house and protest, acknowledging that as a citizen, doing so might cost him his job.

    “I don’t care,” said the 42-year-old insurance agent. “Yeah, it’s the most dangerous thing to do, to protest. I’m not protesting against you. I’m protesting against the action of a cowardly officer.”

    Bernard was among the people in Katy Sunday to attend a rally organized by activist Quanell X in front of what they believed to be the residence of Brian Encinia, the Texas Department of Public State trooper who pulled over Sandra Bland in Waller County on July 10.

    “Had this police officer’s behavior had not been what it was, and many of us believe his behavior was illegal, this sister perhaps today would still be alive,” said Quanell X, speaking outside a restaurant on Southmore Boulevard. “So he is complicit in the murder of sister Sandra Bland, and that’s why we’re going to his house. And many have said, ‘well why go to his house?’ Because these devils have been coming to the black community, raiding and destroying black children and black families for decades. So now it’s time for us to let them know that when you murder our kids in cold blood, we will also come to your neighborhood and let you know: hands off of our children, hands off of our women.”

    Roughly two dozen deputies were posted in front of the apartment complex Sunday afternoon, including eight on horses.

    Another Black Woman Dies While In Police Custody, BuzzFeed on Ralkina Jones.

    So now we’re “Paranoid Twitter”? I actually can’t believe you’re a staff writer at @NYMag. See attached text.

    Please mark under Holy Shit!: Cleveland police union raffling gun to benefit officer involved in shooting

    Cleveland’s police union is raffling off a pistol and other items to raise money for an officer who is on restricted duty after he shot and killed an unarmed man.

    Since Alan Buford shot to death 18-year-old Brandon Jones outside the convenience store Jones had burglarized March 19, the 18-year department veteran has been restricted to desk duty. The restriction also bars him from working overtime or part-time jobs.

    Many officers depend on extra income from those jobs, and Buford is having trouble paying his bills, Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association President Steve Loomis said.

    So the union decided to throw Buford a fundraiser. On Aug. 8, they will raise money by raffling off a Glock 26 pistol and a 40-inch smart TV. The event is advertised on a poster that was hanging on the sixth floor of the Cuyahoga County Justice Center on Monday.

    The poster includes a photograph of a Glock 26, a model carried by some of the department’s detectives, next to the police union’s logo. The department issues most patrol officers either a Glock 17 or a Glock 19, Lt. Ali Pillow said.

    Paul Cristallo, a civil rights and personal injury attorney representing Jones’ family, took issue with the union raffling a gun similar to the one that Buford was carrying when he shot and killed Jones, who had just burglarized a convenience store at Parkway and Primrose roads.

    “It’s grossly offensive. Simple as that,” Cristallo said. “Whether it was a mindless mistake or a sick joke, it’s still offensive.”

    Nah, it’s just cops, the best of the best, doing what they do best.

    Death Of Paul Castaway Highlights Denver’s Overlooked Police Brutality Problem

    In a conversation with MintPress News last week, Lynn Eagle Feather told MintPress that she wanted police to force her son to calm down and rethink his actions. She says she never intended to risk his life.

    “Usually I can control him, and talk him down,” Eagle Feather said by phone last week. That night was different, though. Paul Castaway seemed especially haunted. Eagle Feather snuck out of her house and called 911, because, she said, “I thought if I filed charges, he’d understand that he can’t act like this.”

    Not only did she inform the officers and 911 of his mental illness, but Eagle Feather also added that police in her district had encountered him before and should have been familiar with his condition. She also denied police claims that Castaway stabbed her. She said officers saw her neck that night, which didn’t require medical care and shows no sign of injury today.

    Castaway fled from police into a neighboring trailer park and became trapped. Eagle Feather witnessed the moments that led to her son’s death on a security camera video, shown to her by the manager of the Capital City Mobile Home Park. She says the owner of the trailer park told its manager to stop cooperating with Eagle Feather and the media soon after her viewing, and the video has not been released to the public.

    “He came out and put the knife to his own neck. And he stood there,” Eagle Feather recounted. “He stood there and he kind of stumbled toward the police and they shot him four times at close range. The cops were right in front of him, at the most six feet away.”
    […]

    When MintPress spoke with Eagle Feather, she was making arrangements to bury her son — our interview was interrupted at one point by a call from the funeral home. She said she tries to focus on memories of the loving man she knew in day-to-day life, who was father to a young son. She recalled him as an avid fan of the Denver Broncos, who “never missed a game” and was looking forward to the upcoming start of football season. She praised his intelligence and his pride in his Native American heritage.

    She remembered Castaway’s generosity. She recently gave him two jackets for Denver’s rainy weather, only for him to give them away to the homeless.

    “Even though he battled his demons, he had a very big heart,” she said, later adding: “When he was little he used to bring home stray animals, and when grew up he’d bring me home stray people, people on the street, and he’d say, ‘Mom can you make them something to eat?’”

    For Eagle Feather and others MintPress spoke with, Castaway offers a painful example of the ways police brutality often targets the mentally ill.

    “I want justice and better training for police,” Eagle Feather said. Along with the frequent shootings of unarmed minorities, several cases of police killing mentally ill individuals with knives have come to light recently — police in Austin, Texas, shot a man to death during a mental health welfare check just one week before Castaway’s killing. Additionally, multiple activists we spoke with highlighted how Castaway’s case recalls the 2003 shooting of Paul Childs, a 15-year-old with developmental and learning disabilities, as well as epilepsy, who police said was armed with a knife. According to a timeline of events compiled by Inclusion Daily Express, a disability rights website, not only was the officer not charged with a crime but he even received a promotion two years later.

    Race also plays a factor in cases like this one, Eagle Feather said. Statistics seem to agree: “With less than 1% of the population, Native Americans comprise nearly 2% of police killings,” according to an Al-Jazeera America report based on data from the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice. These and similar ones from the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics suggest that young Native Americans are killed at a higher rate than almost any other demographic in the U.S. except African Americans aged 20-24, and at a far higher rate than the national average.

    More at the link.

    #KindraChapman’s family is saying that they do not believe she committed suicide, contrary to initial (mis)reports.

  167. rq says

    (A lot of this, by the way, is still catch-up.)
    Black South Carolina Trooper Explains Why He Helped a White Supremacist

    What the black state trooper saw was a civilian in distress. Yes, this was a white man, attending a white supremacist rally in front of the South Carolina State House. And yes, he was wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with a swastika.

    But the trooper concentrated only on this: an older civilian, spent on the granite steps. Overcome, it appeared, by an unforgiving July sun and the recent, permanent removal of a Confederate flag from state capitol display.

    The trooper motioned for help from the Columbia fire chief, who is also black. Then, with a firm grip, he began walking the wilted white man up the steps toward the air-conditioned oasis of the State House. As they climbed, another state employee snapped a photograph to post on Twitter, where it continues to be shared around the world.

    The meaning of this image — of a black officer helping a white supremacist, both in uniform — depends on the beholder. You might see a refreshing coda to the Confederate flag controversy; a typical day for a law-enforcement professional; a simplification of racial tensions that continue. But what does the trooper see?
    [..]

    Mr. Smith said he was taken aback by the worldwide attention but hoped the image would help society move past the recent spasms of hate and violence, including last month’s massacre of nine black people in a church in Charleston. Asked why he thinks the photo has had such resonance, he gave a simple answer: Love.

    “I think that’s the greatest thing in the world — love,” said the burly, soft-spoken trooper, who is just shy of 50. “And that’s why so many people were moved by it.”

    Now if only the white supremacists could see the same.

    Sandra Bland Wasn’t The Only Woman Abused By Male Cops In Texas

    To get a sense of how common such encounters are, The Huffington Post analyzed over 100 pages of complaints made by women against cops in Dallas, which is about three hours away from Waller County. The documents, which cover a two-year period, include only those reports for which at least one allegation was sustained — or judged as valid — by authorities. Some of the complaints describe officers smashing a woman’s car with a baseball bat, stalking a former girlfriend and being arrested for domestic violence. Other cases sound like Bland’s: male cops resorting to violence on the job.

    Below is a sample of these cases along with the disciplinary penalties the officers received. (The dates listed are when the incident occurred.) None of the reports showed the cops losing their jobs.

    The earliest is from 2012, but I’m pretty sure that’s not when it started.

    Cleveland agency will investigate pepper spray incident, in another case of investigating themselves.

    A Cleveland law enforcement agency says it will investigate Sunday’s incident, in which a 25-year-veteran of the region’s transit police department used pepper spray on a group of “Black Lives Matter” conference attendees.

    The officer, whom officials named Monday as Sgt. Robert Schwab, has been placed on administrative duties until the investigation is complete, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA) said Monday.

    In its statement, the RTA said Schwab unleashed the pepper spray after a crowd surrounded a police car, which was escorting an “intoxicated 14-year-old male” to a nearby bus shelter.

    That crowd, which included a group of attendees from the first ever “Black Lives Matter” conference, had reportedly tried to free the boy from RTA’s custody by blocking police vehicles and an ambulance, prompting Schwab to unleash pepper spray “in an attempt to push back the crowd,” the RTA said.

    The incident was particularly striking as it took place among the “Black Lives Matter” backdrop, where activists gathered to protest police violence against blacks. Cleveland itself has been central to the movement, especially following the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice last year.

    Incident report available at the link.

    Under the Bridge “The Crime of Living Without a Home in Los Angeles”.

    In the last couple of years there has been a significant increase in homelessness around Los Angeles. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the city, with its Mediterranean climate and 300 days of a sunshine a year, is second only to New York City when it comes to its population of people without homes. Since 2013, the number has increased by at least 12 percent across Los Angeles county, according to a biannual count conducted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. In the areas served by the authority, 41,174 people are homeless, only a third of whom live in shelters or transitional housing. In the city itself, 9,535 people are homeless.

    “There’s clearly a crisis,” said Maria Foscarinis, founder and executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. It is not one confined to Southern California. Nationally, according to her organization, “at least 2.5 to 3.5 million Americans sleep in shelters, transitional housing, and public places not meant for human habitation” each year; another 7.4 million Americans have lost their homes and are living precariously, “doubled-up with family or friends.” On any given night, at least 578,000 people sleep on the street, according to federal numbers. As the number of people living in poverty jumped nearly 20 percent over the last decade, the country lost about 10,000 units of affordable public housing annually.

    These figures are sobering, but in Los Angeles advocates for the homeless point to an even more disturbing trend: the increasing criminalization of people without homes. Public officials and business leaders “are looking for a quick fix,” Foscarinis told me, and while imprisoning a homeless person may cost more than securing his or her housing, hauling someone away and out of sight creates the appearance of doing something. On June 16, the city council voted 14-1 to make it easier to confiscate the possessions of homeless people, reducing the three-day notice currently required to 24 hours (and subjecting bulky items, such as mattresses, to immediate removal). The move was finalized a week later, with the support of Mayor Eric Garcetti, though on July 22 he called for these measures to be enforced compassionately. Responding to the complaints of property owners in Venice, the city is also looking to reinstate a ban on living in vehicles.

    “The de facto policy on homelessness in L.A. is enforcement and criminalization,” said Eric Ares, an organizer with the Los Angeles Community Action Network, a group on skid row that advocates for the homeless. Ares sees the mayor’s call for compassion as empty rhetoric that distracts attention from what the city could be doing. “At this point it’s no secret what the solution is: it’s housing and services,” Ares said. “But what we’re seeing is — and this has been going on for at least 10 years, particularly in the gentrifying parts of Los Angeles — a blank check for policing.”

    More at the link.

    “If u wanna change the system u need to be a part of the system!” But take a look at the picture attached.

    Ralkina Jones Dies In Jail In Cleveland Suburb, from the Huffington Post.

  168. rq says

    #RecallTheMayor Rally Jul 28th 3pm #Ferguson City Hall. CC meeting at 7pm. Meet the Interim City Manager! That was yesterday. They’re still trying!

    Black Lives Matter protesters have closed part of Eglinton Ave. W. at the Allen to protest the shooting death of Andrew Loku. #CBCTO Some people I know were there. Couple articles coming up. Well done.

    The Alderman Sounds Off, about Antonio French.

    Antonio French, one of 28 aldermen in the city of St. Louis, took to the streets of Ferguson in protest the day Michael Brown was killed. French became the point man for social media reporting and a ubiquitous presence when national media wanted a young, black politician who was in the thick of the scene. A year later, French still represents the 21st Ward adjacent to O’Fallon Park. His North Campus project, started with $30,000 of donated funds, is transforming an empty storefront on West Florissant in his ward into a place for after school and summer programs for students as well as a business incubator for entrepreneurs. French remains active on social media, with more than 120,000 followers on Twitter and more than 4,000 Facebook friends. With the noises of rehabbing in the background at his North Campus project, French answered questions about what’s transpired in the last year and what he thinks remains to be done.

    Interview at the link. Excerpt:

    What has changed since last August?
    Not enough. As a region, we’ve taken the short cut. Between August 2014 and August 2015, the narrative has somehow become Michael Brown got killed because of parking tickets and speeding tickets. That’s not what it’s about. We think that by fixing the speeding ticket situation in North County that will stop situations that led to the death of Mike Brown. I think that is a mistake. That is what happens when you take a top-down approach. Too often we take the top-down in St. Louis in solving our big problems.

    I think there is work to be done. If we see more of what we saw last August, it’s because we did not deal with those situations, and we took the easier route.

    Isn’t systemic change harder to accomplish?
    It is, but what I find to be the biggest obstacle is no one wants to accept any amount of blame, so people become real defensive when you talk about the structures that exist, because they’ve been in charge of these structures for so long. They’ve benefitted from these structures, and they rely on these structures. A certain amount of blame leads to defensiveness and that stops progress.

    The fact is, the racial disparity that we see in economics, in the criminal justice system, and in education, these are not coincidences. The issue of race permeates almost everything in St. Louis.

    March, civil disobedience planned next month in Ferguson

    A silent march and a day of civil disobedience are among the events being planned for next month in Ferguson to mark the first anniversary of the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old by a white police officer, an event that galvanized the “Black Lives Matter” movement.

    Organizers are calling it the “Ferguson Uprising Commemoration Weekend.” Plans announced Monday include a silent march starting at 11 a.m. Aug. 9 from Canfield Drive, where Michael Brown was killed, to Greater St. Mark Family Church.

    The agenda from the Ferguson Action Council includes an art event, rap and rock concerts. It calls for Aug. 10 to be a “Day of Civil Disobedience and National Call to Action.” Messages seeking clarification about what sort of civil disobedience is planned were not returned.

    The Ferguson Action Council brings together several groups active in protests — the Don’t Shoot Coalition, Hands Up United, the Organization for Black Struggle and others.

    “The racial disparities in police shootings have caused our community to take a stand for black lives,” Kayla Reed of Organization for Black Struggle said in a statement. “One year later we continue to grow and organize to transform a system that has for too long oppressed people of color.”

    Funny to notice how a year has already passed.

    American Racism in the ‘White Frame’

    This is the next installment in a series of interviews on race that I am conducting for The Stone. This week’s conversation is with Joe Feagin, a sociologist, and a leading researcher of racism in the United States for more than 40 years. He teaches at Texas A & M University and is the author of more than 60 books, including the forthcoming “How Blacks Built America: Labor, Culture, Freedom, and Democracy.”

    Interview at the link.

    Talib Kweli, ASC Mark Ferguson Anniversary with Free Show

    Talib Kweli’s Action Support Committee, made up of artists, organizers and activists, will be hosting “Ferguson Is Everywhere”, a free concert taking place August 9th at Fubar in St. Louis, MO. The event marks the one year anniversary of 18 year-old Michael Brown’s death, and will be hosted by Tory Russell, co-founder of both Hands Up United & Youth Lead Organization. Performances are set to include Talib Kweli, Kendra Ross, M1 (Dead Prez), Tef Poe, Bun B, Jasiri X, Immortal Technique, Pharoahe Monch & DJ Needlez.

    It’s been asked that people bring canned goods for donations to Hands Up United’s Food Pantry, donations will also be taken for the family of Michael Brown.

    Kweli was quick to get involved after the death of Michael Brown, launching the crowdfunded Ferguson Defense Fund on IndieGoGo in support of activists protesting in Ferguson. The campaign closed with over $112k, well over 400% of the $25k goal, towards “money for jail, bail & life” with the assurance that a partnership with Tef Poe & Tory Russell would make sure the funds received were distributed where they are needed most.

    The Action Support Committee (ASC) is a committee of activists, organizers and artists established by musician Talib Kweli.

  169. rq says

    Family of Sandra Bland Seeks Answers With Multiple Inquiries Into Case Underway

    Ms. Bland’s death — from hanging using a plastic trash-can liner, jail officials said — has sparked outrage and raised a host of questions from friends, family and supporters around the country, including why she was arrested in the first place and why jail officials failed to monitor her closely after she told them she had attempted suicide, probably last year. At Ms. Bland’s funeral on Saturday in Lisle, Ill., her mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, said she did not believe she had killed herself, even after a Texas prosecutor said an autopsy concluded that her injuries were consistent with suicide.

    The Texas state trooper who arrested Ms. Bland, Brian T. Encinia, has been criticized by the Texas authorities for his behavior in the episode and placed on administrative duty pending an investigation. A dashcam video released last week shows how the mundane stop escalated rapidly when Trooper Encinia, who is white, asked Ms. Bland, who was African-American, to extinguish a cigarette and she declined. Trooper Encinia ordered her out of the car, threatened her with a stun gun and forcefully arrested her.

    Her family, along with at least two members of the Illinois congressional delegation, have called for the Justice Department to open an investigation into her death. On Monday, the Waller County district attorney, Elton Mathis, said he had begun forming an independent oversight committee that includes two criminal defense lawyers to review his office’s work as it considers criminal charges in Ms. Bland’s death, according to The Associated Press. And the Waller County sheriff, R. Glenn Smith, has also asked a local lawyer to form an outside commission to review his office’s policy and procedures, after a state commission faulted the jail after Ms. Bland’s death.

    The State Department of Public Safety and the F.B.I. are also investigating Ms. Bland’s death.

    “We have always said that we wanted a full, thorough and fair investigation, and we were prepared for whatever the outcome may be,” Ms. Cooper said in the interview. “But it’s not enough for you just to tell us at face value, you have to show us. And unfortunately, we haven’t been shown.”

    She said the family had hired a Texas doctor to conduct an independent autopsy, which might be available in several weeks. That doctor will also be reviewing the toxicology report; a preliminary version released Monday showed Ms. Bland had evidence of marijuana in her body.

    Cannon Lambert, the family’s lawyer, said Ms. Bland’s family was not aware that she was taking epilepsy medication — as Ms. Bland told jailers, according to records — or ever had a clinical diagnosis of depression. Jail records also show that Ms. Bland had attempted suicide after a miscarriage. Ms. Cooper confirmed that her sister had miscarried a child in 2014, but said she was “doing great” recently and had just helped organize a women’s prayer luncheon at her suburban church.

    Here in Illinois, relatives and friends recalled Ms. Bland as an upbeat, confident woman who served on church committees and had big plans for the future. Ms. Cooper said her family had been overwhelmed and heartened by the outpouring of support on Twitter, where hashtags invoking Ms. Bland’s name have increased in recent days. She said she hoped her sister’s legacy would be one of an educated woman who knew her rights and was willing to speak up for them.

    “Was she assertive? Absolutely,” Ms. Cooper said. “Was she unapologetically confident? Absolutely. There’s just nothing wrong with that.”

    .@deray Out here shutting it down in Toronto. Solidarity! #BlackLivesMatter #JusticeForAndrew #JusticeForJermaine

    Pell Grants to Be Restored for Prisoners. Needs a subscription to read all of it, but it’s probably a good thing?

    Study Finds Stark Racial Disparities in Missouri Death Penalty from the Equal Justice Initiative.

    After Selling More Albums Than You Can Count, Mariah Carey Will Receive A Star On The Hollywood Walk Of Fame – congratulations!

    Tyrese Says Mainstream Radio Is Racist and Won’t Play His No. 1 R&B Hit Song ‘Shame’. Is it racist because of that? Is that what we’re supposed to conclude?

    If you turn on any urban radio station at any given time of the day, you’ll probably hear Tyrese’s song “Shame,” from his new album Black Rose, which is currently the No. 1 R&B song on the charts. This time last year, or the year before, if you turned on any urban radio, you’d also hear Robin Thicke and Sam Smith belting away with their blue-eyed soul music. You’d also hear those same artists on every mainstream or pop-music radio station, too. But right now you’d be hard-pressed to hear Tyrese on those same airwaves.

    The R&B singer expressed exactly how he feels about mainstream radio stations in an interview with TMZ.

    “I have an issue with mainstream radio. I don’t create limits for myself. I don’t appreciate mainstream radio not playing my song. When I think about Sam Smith, Robin Thicke and Justin Timberlake when they’re singing R&B soul, their songs are being played on all formats of radio, including urban radio. We don’t say because they’re white, they should only be played on the white stations,” Tyrese stated.

    This isn’t the first time the R&B singer has criticized mainstream radio for not playing his music. Recently he called out radio personalities Ryan Seacrest of KIIS FM and Z-100’s Elvis Duran in an open letter posted on Facebook.

    More at the link.

  170. rq says

    Protesters gather, play Olympic theme song outside mayor’s home

    It was quite a wake-up call at Mayor Marty Walsh’s home, with the Olympic theme song playing.

    Member of the Black Lives Matter and Safe Hub Collective gathered outside the Mayor’s home to protest the Olympics coming to Boston.

    The incident occurred at about 4 a.m. on Wednesday.

    The mayor was not home at the time.

    I keep thinking how much more powerful the Spiderman origin story would be if

    Peter Parker was an African American kid, whose Uncle Ben was shot by police while being arrested for a minor parking infraction. There is no formal investigation, and Peter decides to put himself on the line to prevent it happening again. He tackles the white crimes that go unpunished, punishes POC criminals fairly. He is the leveler, always fighting to be without bias, to be just. To protect people like his uncle.

    This not only mirrors so much of what’s happening in America, but feeds right into the complex relationship between Spiderman, the authorities and the media.

    Peter Parker is a brilliant student, awkward, a nerd, but is branded a thug, a gang member, a criminal, because of his appearance. The media latch on to that and misrepresent him totally.

    The police, humilitated by the fact that he refuses to work with them and often punishes cops themselves for brutalizing innocent people, or guilty people who still deserve better treatment than they get, attempt to hunt him down.

    There’s some excellent sample drawings as responses to that tumblr post.

    #SandraBland street art is popping up around the world and its beautiful. via @blakcollectiv

    Today in 1917, 8,000+ black folks marched down 5th Ave in New York’s first mass civil rights protest. #nytoday

    Death Of Paul Castaway Highlights Denver’s Overlooked Police Brutality Problem, same story as before, different source.

    OH U DONT BELIEVE ME ON HOW MUCH THE MOVIE INDUSTRY LOVES TO FAVOR WHITE PPL???? See attached photos.

  171. rq says

    Lawyer for Freddie Gray’s family asked Batts to stop talking about meeting

    As anger permeated Baltimore following Freddie Gray’s death in police custody, then-Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts told reporters that he met with the 25-year-old’s family.

    But on April 24, William H. Murphy, Jr., the attorney hired by Gray’s family, sent a terse letter to Batts.

    “It has come to our attention that you made statements claiming to have met with the family of Freddie Gray, Jr. about the investigation into his death,” Murphy wrote. “These statements are not true. Stated succinctly, you have not met with Mr. Gray’s family. Please cease and desist making such statements.”

    Murphy also told Batts that any meeting with the family would be facilitated by lawyers at the firm. Murphy also copied Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on the letter.

    Asked about the email Monday, Murphy said, Batts “did not meet [Gray’s] mother, stepfather, father or his siblings. He was giving the impression that he did.”

    Batts said Tuesday that he and other police officials, including then-Deputy Commissioner Kevin Davis, were deceived about the circumstances that triggered the meeting.

    “I was lied to, Kevin Davis was lied to,” Batts said.

    The meeting was scheduled after a police official made contact with a man who said he was a member of Gray’s family. “I said I was open to meeting any family members,” Batts said.

    Batts and some police department leaders met with the man and a few others, including a pastor.

    “We had a conversation about keeping the peace … about making sure the community knew the facts about what was going on,” Batts said.

    Later, Batts said, he and other police leaders learned that the man was not a member of Gray’s family. Batts said he did not recall how he found out.

    It’s all so convenient.

    Officials combed social media for information as violence flared

    City officials compiled a spreadsheet listing suspicious Twitter and other social media postings from the day rioting broke out (April 27), newly released documents show.

    Information circulating on social media claiming high school students would take place in a “purge” — or period of lawlessness — helped fuel tensions ahead of that Monday’s violence, and the documents show that someone in city government continued to keep a close eye on people’s Internet postings.

    The document lists 71 posts described as either “threats” or “chatter.” It is not clear why posts were included on the list, who added them to the list or how the information was used.

    Some posts include information officials believed was inciting violence against police officers — next to one Twitter message, the document notes the use of a gun emoji pointing at a policeman emoji. An Instagram picture of a news article about police saying gangs had teamed up to attack officers posted with an approving comment was also flagged.

    But the reason why others were tracked is less obvious. One post includes a link to quick medical procedures for protesters, for example, but in a column on the spreadsheet for “violation” the description “rebellion” is given.

    Some people appear to have singled out one officer in particular. A number of postings on the list link to images showing a purported Facebook message in which the female officer calls protesters “animals.” Another post includes what claims to be the officer’s contact information.

    Rumors continued to circulate on social media in the days following the violence. One email officials released includes an attached Instagram picture claiming a second purge would take place on April 28.

    Baltimore officer shoots man in face during traffic stop. “Rammed and pinned” the officer with his car. And yet the officer is uninjured. Apparently there is some disparity between witness statements and the police narrative.

    Officials closely watched Malik Shabazz during Freddie Gray protests

    Officials in Maryland worried that out-of-town protest leader Malik Shabazz would incite violence at a protest planned the weekend after rioting wracked Baltimore, newly released documents show, and had been monitoring his activities in the city for a week.

    Shabazz, the president of Washington-based Black Lawyers for Justice and former leader of the New Black Panther Party, came to Baltimore to help lead protests, and his activities were closely watched by city officials, the documents show.

    A bulletin sent out by the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, a group that circulates information between federal and local law enforcement, warned police officers to be on their guard ahead of a planned protest led by Shabazz on May 2.

    “Based on over a generation of violent and anti-law enforcement rhetoric attributed to the NBPP and Shabazz specifically, representatives from law enforcement and homeland security agencies providing support in Baltimore should maintain a heightened awareness for intentional acts of violence committed during events associated with Shabazz,” the May 1 Officer Safety Bulletin reads.

    “Until 2013 Shabazz served as the chairman of the NBPP, a prominent black separatist group that espouses violence and criminal activity to further separatist, racist, anti-Semitic agenda, according to the FBI.”

    They were really keeping a tab on things, weren’t they.

    Bland case draws threats to Waller County officials

    Waller County leaders said their office has been flooded with violent threats following a deluge of national attention in the case of 28-year-old Sandra Bland, who was found dead in their jail three days after being arrested on a routine traffic stop.

    Sign-in required to read the rest.

    Newark, NJ, Mayor Ras Baraka Likened to Gorilla in Reported Facebook Exchange Between 2 Cops – nope, no racism here!

    Newark, N.J., police are investigating an alleged Facebook exchange between a onetime city police officer and an active-duty city police lieutenant in which “Ras Baraka, the city’s African-American mayor, is referred to as a gorilla,” the Star-Ledger reports.

    According to the Star-Ledger, the reported incident, a screenshot of which was sent to police officials, violates the department’s social media policy.

    “What’s particularly disturbing about this incident is that this police official has been on the job for many years and has some amount of influence over the rank and file in the department,” Police Director Eugene Venable, who was sent a screenshot of the conversation, told the newspaper.

    Both the active and retired officers’ names have been withheld because the Star-Ledger reported that it was unable to independently verify the incident.

    The exchange starts with a picture of a gorilla and the caption: “Lmfao….How’s your mayor?”

    The current police lieutenant reportedly replies, “Exactly!!!!”

    “It’s unfortunate that this happened, and we will not tolerate an atmosphere of bigotry and intolerance anywhere in this administration,” Baraka said in a statement, adding, “I still believe we have the best police force in the state of New Jersey.”

    Venable told the Star-Ledger that a strict social media policy was put in place to prevent matters like this from happening.

    Well, something’s not quite working right, then.

  172. rq says

    Last August, I said we were trying to “turn this moment into a movement”. #Ferguson woke up a lot of people. https://youtu.be/EguAe6VVlr4?t=4m41s …

    Between the World and Me: Black American Motherhood, third in a series of responses to Coates’ book. I think this is a great idea. What would be even greater is if these respones (and others) could be compiled into a book of their own!

    Several years ago, Ta-Nehisi Coates took his son, not yet 5, to see a movie on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. As his son made his way off the escalator, a white woman pushed him and said, “Come on!” Chaos ensued. There was a black parent’s rage and a white man’s threat to have the black parent arrested. Coates narrates the incident in cool, steady prose. Ultimately, he writes of the regret he carries: “In seeking to defend you I was, in fact, endangering you.”

    More than the murders remembered in Between the World and Me, more than Coates’s searing and precise analysis of the world in which we live, more even than the bold, gorgeous narrative itself, it is this scene that stays with me. And not the scene itself as much as what is left for the reader to imagine, which is what it was like for the small brown boy to feel the hand of an angry adult on him, a stranger’s hand, without warning, without reason.

    There was a time when some of us believed our daughters were safe. “At least you have girls,” a white colleague said to me after Trayvon Martin was murdered. Her flippant comment ignited a rage mingled with guilt and shame I felt at having soothed myself with the same thought. This was before Renisha McBride, Sandra Bland, before all of the videos, before the writers, witnesses, and recorders in this Age of Ferguson, as I like to call it, left us no place to hide.

    Hiding is a temptation for me these days. I want to protect myself as well as others from the beast of my rage. It’s always there, that rage, crouched in a corner, ready to spring. Sometimes I worry that what my daughters will grow up to fear more than police violence, or white violence, is their mother’s rage about such violence.

    I read Between the World and Me from the perspective of a black mother of splendid twin 9-year-old brown-skinned girls. Black American motherhood in the Age of Ferguson is relentless. It follows me into the classroom where, in a discussion of a news story about Renisha McBride, I asked my students, “What do I tell my daughters? That they shouldn’t ask white people for help?” My students were white. The room went silent.

    Black motherhood is not only relentless, I believe, it also engenders a split-screen view of the world that makes it possible for me to sit in my living room and placidly put together a cupcake jigsaw puzzle while listening to my daughter Isabella’s sweet, soothing voice as she reads to me from Little Women, and at the same time think thoughts that Marmee, the novel’s matriarch, surely never thought, such as: Whoever hurts her, I will destroy.
    […]

    Coates is suspicious of hope. He begins his book with a scene in which a newscaster asked him about hope, which he calls “specious,” a symptom of the disease of the Dream, which is itself “the enemy of all art, courageous thinking, and honest writing.” I am drawn to his argument intellectually, but in the deepest part of me, I believe in hope. Even more, I believe that Coates hopes, too. For it must be hope that sets his pen to paper, a hope that his words will reach and transform his readers, and provide them with the relief of knowing that they are not alone. A commitment to struggle is what his letter is meant to inspire in his son. But I believe that hope is not the enemy of, or even separate from, struggle. Hope is what galvanizes the struggle itself.

    Hope is what keeps me from hiding. It is hope that enables me, finally, to go out into the “terrible and beautiful world” that Coates describes. Hope is what inspires me to let go of my daughters’ hands and watch them uncurl their tiny fists. Hope is what makes me determined to let go of my rage and believe in their freedom.

    ‘The video is not good’: Cincinnati braces for footage release in campus cop killing of Sam Dubose. The more they hold out, the more everyone will be bracing.

    Multiple media outlets have sued Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters to force the release of body cam video of the incident recorded by Tensing — but the prosecutor flatly stated that he would not do so without a court order until he has presented the case to a grand jury, which could happen this week.

    “Unless I’m ordered to by the Ohio Supreme Court, and I doubt I will be, they’re not going to get it,” Deters said.

    But Cincinnati’s police chief said he had seen the video, and he said “the video is not good.”

    “It’s not a good situation, I think that’s clear, and it will become evident once that video is shown,” said Chief Jeffrey Blackwell, of Cincinnati police. “We’re just trying to do our best to be prepared for whatever might come out of it.”

    The city manager said he had not seen the video, but he told WLWT-TV that the contents had been described to him.

    “It was not a good situation,” said City Manager Harry Black. “Someone has died that didn’t necessarily have to die, and I will leave it at that.”

    The University of Cincinnati has suspended off-campus police stops and will hire an independent external reviewer to examine the campus police department’s policies, procedures and practices.

    Dubose’s family has hired attorney Mark O’Mara, who defended George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

    “The family wants two things,” O’Mara said. “First, they want dignity for themselves and for Sam and his death, and they want transparency. They want to know what happened to what happened to him — first the ‘what’ and then the ‘why.’”

    More at the link.

    Alternatively, County Judge: Waller Co. releasing 3 dys of raw video to dispel claims #SandraBland was dead or harmed during booking More on that later.

    The Devil Finds Work: A Killing In Mississippi

    They came to celebrate his life and to condemn the way he died. In a case that has paralyzed tiny Stonewall, Miss., a deeply impoverished town that was named after Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, in early July a black man was choked to death by a white police officer. Just over a week ago, the victim’s family gathered to eulogize 39-year-old Jonathan Sanders and to issue a clarion call for justice.

    Sanders was not a suspect fleeing custody. He was unarmed and had committed no crime. His senseless death, at the hands of a police officer, has made few national headlines. Notably, there are no cable news anchors here, no talking-point-ready pundits sweating under studio Klieg lights. But for a smattering of brief and hastily written stories, Sanders joined a chorus of the quietly dead.

    However, the people of Stonewall—many of whom have lived here since the slave-era—are having their say.

    “When you put heat to the kettle, the pressure begins,” said Dennis Evans from the pulpit. “When you turn up the heat, the water starts to boil. And finally when the pressure gets too high, the kettle whistles. That’s us whistling, now, calling for justice for Jonathan.”

    The congregation leapt to its feet.

    It is easy to get distracted by the racist ramblings of a washed up professional “wrestler.” It is all too convenient to recall out-of-context quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King in a press for grace and forgiveness. It is too comforting to lull ourselves into believing that we are now living tidily in a post-racial society. After all, for the first time, there is a black man in the White House and an African American woman leads the Justice Department—facts that have made little difference in reforming our criminal justice system in any substantial way.

    For all of our progress, people are still living and dying under the strictures of race and class. There is no purely economic solution, as some presidential hopefuls would like to suggest. There are no cultural questions driven by the so-called immorality inherent among black and poor people to be posited, as conservatives might have you believe.

    While we bask in the delusion that racial animus is a product of days gone by, and that people only need obey the law and pull themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps, mourners stuffed themselves into the pews deep in the heart of Mississippi to say goodbye to Sanders.

    More at the link.

  173. rq says

    ‘Quit faking’: Police ignored Native American woman’s pleas for help before she died in jail

    The deaths in police custody of women like Sandra Bland and Rekia Boyd have drawn national attention to the potentially lethal threats posed to women of color by racist police.

    On Tuesday, Indian Country Today reporter Sarah Sunshine Manning wrote about the July 6 death of a 24-year-old Lakota woman named Sarah Lee Circle Bear of Clairmont, South Dakota.

    Circle Bear was jailed on a bond violation at the Brown County Jail in Aberdeen. On Sunday, July 6, she was found unresponsive in a holding cell.

    According to KELO, Circle Bear was taken to a nearby hospital where she died later that same day.

    Witnesses said that when Circle Bear was transferred to the holding cell, she told guards that she was in excruciating pain. Jail personnel reportedly told her to “quit faking” and “knock it off” before lifting her partway off the floor and dragging her to the cell where she was later found unconscious.

    Do they really see so many faked medical emergencies that they have to pretend that everyone is faking? Is this really a thing, or a police myth that happened that one time to everyone’s supervisor and got passed on as fact?

    Equal Pay for African American Women, pdf file on a new hashtag.

    Women overall working full time, year round in the
    United States are paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts.1 But the wage gap is even larger or African American women who work full time, year round—they are paid only 64 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men.2 This gap, which amounts to a loss of $18,650 a year, means that African American women have to work nearly 19 months—until almost the end of July—to make as much as white, non-Hispanic men did in the previous
    year alone.

    Lots more to read up on at the link.

    they defaced a mural of sandra bland & sprayed “all lives matter” so if all lives matter why disrespect a dead woman?

    Fetty Wap Becomes First Rapper Since Eminem To Score Three Top 20 Tracks

    One-hit wonder, what?

    As mentioned time and time again, Fetty Wap is neither a one-hit wonder nor is he a rising star anymore. Nowadays, the word ‘hitmaker’ has become the appropriate moniker for the New Jersey-bred sensation. And if that wasn’t already clear, then Billboard’s latest report about the “Trap Queen” star’s latest feat makes it apparent in big and bold letters.

    According to Billboard, Fetty Wap is now the first rapper since Eminem to score not one, not two, but three songs in the top 20 of the Hot 100 chart. This week, Fetty’s “My Way” single rose from No. 87 to now No. 7 on the chart — the largest 80-spot leap since Katy Perry’s “Roar” jumped from 83 to 2 in 2013 — while singles like “679” and “Trap Queen” occupy the 6th and 18th slots on the chart, respectively.

    This new accomplishment makes Fetty Wap the first male rapper with three songs in the top 20 since Eminem held down the No. 2 spot with “The Monster” (with Rihanna), “Rap God” at No. 13 and “Bezerk” at No. 19 back in late 2013.

    “I just feel blessed to be here,” Fetty told REVOLT in an interview last month about his fast rise. “I didn’t expect everything was going to happen this fast, but for it to be happening how it is and everything, it just feels good.”

    UPDATED Suspended Lawyer Craig Washington — a Bold/Weird Choice for the Sandra Bland Review Committee. “Bold” and “Weird” are interesting adjectives to use.

    We were surprised to read this morning that former U.S. Representative Craig Washington, whose law license is suspended, is part of the committee of non-suspended attorneys comprising the Waller County Sheriff’s review committee in the death of Sandra Bland.

    Why are we surprised? Well, for one thing, we just wondered if it really looks good to have a dude on this very important committee who opened fire on two teenagers who tried to park in a Midtown lot he owned in 2009. The teens were unharmed, and Washington received two years probation. (He claimed he feared for his life because the kids tried to run him over.)

    OK, OK — stuff happens. We get it. Sometimes there’s a miscommunication and you wind up shooting at people. But then Washington sued the two illegal-parkin’-punks for $600,000 each, which would have more than covered the $600,000 the IRS claimed he owed in back taxes at the time.

    Alright, alright — sometimes people forget to pay taxes. And as labyrinthine as the federal tax code is, it’s easy to see how a person could fall six figures behind without even realizing it. Happens to us all the time.

    But then, in January 2015, the State Bar of Texas suspended Washington’s law license. As we wrote then:

    The case that ultimately got Washington suspended dates back to 2006. That year Michael Gobert hired Washington to represent him while he was fighting to keep his mother’s house from being transferred to her live-in boyfriend in a Montgomery County court. According to court records, Gobert paid Washington $10,000 for his services. In return, Washington failed to tell Gobert about a pre-trial hearing the week before his case was set to go to court. When the case was called, neither Gobert nor Washington showed up, and Gobert’s case was dismissed (Gobert’s had no luck on appeal).

    It wasn’t Washington’s first disciplinary action. Again, as we’ve previously written:

    Complaints that Washington screwed over clients led to at least two other public reprimands, according to state bar records. One reprimand stems from a 2004 case in Brazoria County involving Pamela Williams, who sued a department store and the College Station Police Department after she was wrongly arrested and accused of stealing. In 2007, Washington settled the case for $8,000 dollars. When Williams wanted records and accounting from Washington to make sure he withheld the correct amount in attorney’s fees (seems even Washington’s client didn’t trust Washington), Washington refused to turn over any records, according to court documents. Washington then failed to respond to inquiries from the state bar’s Client-Attorney Assistance Program after Williams filed a complaint.

    He was also accused of branching out to screw over clients in other states:

    State bar records show that Washington was also reprimanded for his work in the case of a man who was ultimately convicted of shooting a cop during the chaos of post-Katrina New Orleans. Around November 2005, months after Jamil Joyner and three others were arrested and charged with attempted murder of a police officer, Joyner’s mother contacted and hired Washington to represent the group, court records show.

    Despite being paid $40,000 to represent the four defendants, it’s unclear what actual work Washington ever did on the case. Washington wasn’t licensed to practice in Louisiana, so he told Joyner’s family he’d hired a New Orleans attorney as co-counsel. When Joyner was eventually called into court hearings, none of his attorneys showed, according to disciplinary records filed in court. The state bar’s complaint against Washington claims that Joyner, left without Washington’s help, went almost a whole year in lockup without being arraigned.

    So what gives? We asked attorney Paul Looney, who picked the review committee members, why a suspended attorney was selected.

    “He’s not serving as an attorney, he’s serving as a civil rights icon,” Looney told us. “He’s serving because he’s been involved with civil rights fights all of his life.”

    Will have to look into him more, I’m getting a distinct anti-SJW vibe.

    Brittany Packnett with Hillary Clinton, C-Span video from the end of June. Unfortunately, Packnett is now getting flack from the Black Lives Matter organization for speaking to Clinton as a representative of the Black Lives Matter movement. It feels like everyone’s infighting right now.

  174. rq says

    I’ve been posting articles from this site, now they’re looking for support: Help Support Diversity in Media: Fund @sevenscribes on Kickstarter! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1394424784/seven-scribes …
    They also have a Patreon page somewhere for regular donations. They’re doing a good thing.

    New site, collection of info on Sandra Bland: WhatHappenedToSandraBland.

    There are many questions remaining about the death of Sandra Bland and I’ve attempted to lay the questions out here. Like you, I’m hoping to find out what happened to Sandra Bland.

    There’s a list of categories (The Arrest, General, etc.) with inconsistencies listed, using all available public information.

    Sheriff Where Sandra Bland Died Says There’s No Racism In His County – was it Knowles who said that in Ferguson shortly before the DOJ released its report?

    Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith, who oversees the jail where Sandra Bland died, insists there’s absolutely no racism in this Texas county where lynchings were once rampant.

    “The average citizen goes about their life seven days a week enjoying it, everybody working together, eating in restaurants together and socializing,” he told The Washington Post in a story published Monday. “I just don’t think it exists.”

    “Black lives matter to Glenn Smith,” added Smith, who likes to refer to himself in the third person.
    […]

    Just because restaurants are no longer segregated doesn’t mean there’s no more racism in Waller County.

    In 2007, the predominantly black Hempstead City Council voted to suspend Smith, who was then Hempstead police chief, for two weeks without pay following allegations of racism against him and four other white officers.

    Waller County is still one of 28 counties in the country monitored by the Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act, and Hempstead still has separate cemeteries for white and black residents. It also had a disproportionate number of lynchings in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

    In 2007, DeWayne Charleston, then a Waller County judge, told a black funeral home to help bury an unidentified white woman. There was an outcry over his order, and activists said officials intervened to make sure the white woman wouldn’t be buried next to black people.

    “This is the most racist county in the state of Texas, which is probably one of the most racist states in the country,” Charleston told The Guardian.

    Cleveland cop caught pepper-spraying Movement for Black Lives protesters suspended

    The Cleveland transit officer who pepper-sprayed a crowd leaving the Black Lives Summit has been placed on administrative leave.

    Robert G Schwab, a sergeant with the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, used the irritant spray during a confrontation over the seeming arrest of a black teenager. A video of the white officer spraying the crowd on Sunday quickly went viral.

    Schwab – described as a 25-year veteran of the force – was being assigned to administrative duties while the agency investigated the incident, said GCRTA spokesman Jerry Masek, who did not know how long that investigation would take.

    Earlier social media had mistakenly identified Lieutenant Sean O’Neil as the police officer involved. O’Neil, who is white, successfully sued the GCRTA for discrimination when a black candidate with lower test scores was promoted and he was not.

    The confrontation provided an ironic ending to a conference birthed from protests over police violence. More than 1,200 black activists spent a weekend organizing and discussing police use of force and other social just issues.

    According to a GCRTA statement Schwab and his partner had taken the intoxicated 14-year-old off the bus and were questioning him at a shelter at the edge of Cleveland State University, where the conference was held.

    When the crowd gathered the officers moved the youth to the car for “the safety of the juvenile”, the statement said. Protesters surrounded the car and blocked it from leaving.

    According to the statement Cleveland police reported a tip that “four armed individuals were en route to the scene in a white Oldsmobile”. The GCRTA and Cleveland police departments are separate agencies.

    Schwab began spraying after the crowd began chanting. The teenager was treated by paramedics and released to his mother.

    No shots were reported fired, nor was anyone arrested.

    U.S. Mayors Say Ferguson Could Happen To Us

    Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/americas-mayors-ferguson-could-happen-to-our-cities-120685.html#ixzz3hHxqB6O1, an article on survey results. I wonder how many of them are enacting meaningful change before a tragedy occurs in their city or town.

    The leaders of America’s cities have serious concerns about race relations, minority communities and policing issues as the nation approaches the one-year anniversary of last year’s unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, a POLITICO Magazine survey finds. And urban public schools—widely identified by experts as the key to improvement of neighborhood conditions, racial equity and social mobility—won’t offer a solution anytime soon, according to large majorities of mayors who also expressed deep dissatisfaction with the state of their city’s public education systems, citing lack of funding, high drop-out rates and racial segregation as their leading causes of concern.

    Fully nine out of 10 mayors surveyed expressed concern about the state of race relations and police in their city, according to the survey, with nearly a third describing themselves as “deeply concerned” about race and policing in their cities. The revelation illustrates the intensity and seriousness with which mayors have taken up the issue, as cities from Baltimore to New York City to Ferguson have dealt with public unrest over the last year.

    The findings were part of POLITICO Magazine’s second quarterly national Mayors’ Survey, conducted over the course of July as part of the magazine’s award-winning “What Works” series, which heard from 31 mayors spanning the country from Philadelphia to Tampa to San Francisco to New Orleans to Anchorage. While not scientific—the large majority of respondents were Democrats, 77 percent, as well as three independents and four Republicans—the survey represented a diverse range of cities from across the nation and showed clear trends across cities of varying sizes, political traditions and geographic regions.

    Debates and flare-ups around alleged police misconduct have seized cities as disparate as Philadelphia, Madison and Houston—each governed by mayors who participated in the POLITICO Magazine survey—and across the nation, mayors have begun to lead efforts to repair community trust and broach policy discussions about department conduct.

    Still, experts have suggested that the most fundamental improvement departments can adopt still remains the simplest: creating a police force that resembles the citizens it’s sworn to protect. However a majority of the mayors surveyed—56 percent—said that their police departments did not accurately reflect the racial makeup of their cities, and fully 13 percent said their force was “extremely” different than the racial makeup of their cities, underscoring that communities like Ferguson—which received harsh criticism in the wake of last year’s protests for its largely white police force overseeing a majority black city—are nationally less the exception than the rule.

    More at the link, with graphs and infographics. A lot of information.

  175. rq says

    Ugh. Politico did its subtle link-drop to put previous into moderation.
    Baltimore officials discussed ‘riot’ an hour before first brick was thrown

    The worst of Baltimore’s unrest began unfolding at Mondawmin Mall around 3 p.m. on the Monday Freddie Gray was laid to rest.

    But city officials — many of them made aware of a possible student protest earlier in the day — began discussing a “riot” before 2 p.m.

    In an email marked “URGENT” sent at 1:52 p.m., Olivia D. Farrow, a deputy health commissioner, said the agency had “received reports that children will possibly riot after school starting at 3p down from Mondawmin to North Ave and to downtown. Staff at Druid becoming concerned. May need to close early. Waiting to see if rumor or if something seems to begin happening.”

    Minutes later, another health official wrote to the city’s labor commissioner, saying, “There is a desire to close druid because of the children rioting on the West Side. When will you hear back from City Hall?”

    Other city officials expressed frustration with a perceived lack of communication among city officials as the unrest unfolded.

    The riots began at Mondawmin about 3 p.m., when students fresh from school threw rocks and water bottles at police in riot gear. The chaos spread to the intersection of Pennsylvania and North avenues, where a crowd burned and looted a CVS pharmacy, and to spots around the city, where looters breached businesses and set fires.

    At 4 p.m., top officials believed police would be able to control the unrest without the help of the National Guard.

    Kaliope Parthemos, the mayor’s chief of staff, resisted calls for the Guard, writing “State troopers have been assisting. National guard is only when there is a state of emergency.”

    Rawlings-Blake called Hogan about 6:30 p.m. and asked him to deploy the Guard.

    And from history, How the media covered major race riots 96 years ago

    On July 27, 1919, Eugene Williams, an African-American teen, was swimming in Lake Michigan at 25th Street beach in Chicago. He inadvertently drifted towards a de facto border at 29th Street that separated the “black” beach from the “white” beach. In response, a white man began throwing rocks at Williams, ultimately hitting him and leading to Williams drowning. Fights broke out on the beach and consumed large swaths of the city in a horrendous race riot that kicked off what historians now dub “Red Summer” due to the number of race riots that occurred that summer between whites and blacks.

    After five days, the riot in Chicago ended, leaving 38 dead (23 of them African-American), over 500 injured (about 60% of them African-American), and over 1,000 African-American families homeless because of arson.

    The media coverage at the time varied between the major metro papers and the black papers but looking at these papers now it’s very clear that not all that much has changed in the past 96 years.

    [samples of headlines that, really, are not all that different, save a few quirks of language]

    The weirdest bit of coverage we could find though was this editorial published in the New York Times the day after Williams drowned. The editorial points to evidence in the Times‘ initial story that Bolshevism had crept into the African-American community and that was the “real” cause of the tension and fighting. It’s wild and deserves to be read in full.

    Umm, it blames German propaganda (of the WWI kind) and Bolshevism amongst the Negroes as reasons for rioting. Um… Interesting.

    Sandra Bland’s death divides Texas county with ugly history of racism – the wording on that could have been a mite clearer.

    Bland’s death earlier this month is shining a national spotlight on a small corner of Texas that was already facing an uncomfortable struggle to come to terms with an ugly history of racism. Lynchings were once rampant in Waller County. And as recently as 2004, Mathis’s predecessor was arguing that students at historically black Prairie View A&M University did not have the right to vote locally.

    Mathis casts himself in the vanguard of efforts to change the place, even as he battles charges of racism himself and his staff endures death threats. At 39, he is one of the state’s youngest district attorneys, and he claims to be part of a more “progressive” generation.

    “The county’s in growing pains,” Mathis said in an interview. “You have a newer generation that sees things different than possibly our grandparents did. . . . We’re trying to get rid of a lot of those vestiges of the Old South that are negative.”

    Above all, Mathis said, that means resolving questions about Bland, who was found dead in a jail cell July 13, three days after a Texas state trooper pulled her over for failing to signal a lane change then jailed her on charges of assault. Officials have said Bland committed suicide by hanging, but family and friends have questioned that finding, saying the young woman was delighted by the prospect of working at the university here, where she graduated in 2009.

    To Bland’s friends, her arrest was a classic case of “driving while black” and her death further proof that talk of a more progressive Waller County is just that — talk.

    “The difference between now and then is then white people didn’t hide or deny what they did,” said Holice Cook, 37, an old friend who was looking forward to playing pool with Bland. “In this county, they’ve been hanging and killing Negroes since the Civil War.”

    That past is available for all to see in a display cabinet at Prairie View A&M, where a caption below a grainy black-and-white photo explains that the college sits on the site of a former plantation.

    The land was purchased in 1878 to educate “colored youth,” while elsewhere in the county African Americans were still being treated distinctly differently. Between 1877 and 1950, Waller County was among the Texas counties with the highest number of lynchings, according to a report by the Equal Justice Initiative.
    […]

    Back at the courthouse, Mathis, too, acknowledged troubling behavior. Last year, he sent a text message to the Rev. Walter Pendleton, a black pastor in Hempstead, after Pendleton sought a breakdown of county prosecutions by race.

    “My hounds ain’t even started yet dumb ass,” Mathis wrote. “Keep talking. When I talk people will listen. Keep talking and I will sue your ass for slander. It works both ways. ‘Dr.’ Take your fake Dr. ass and jump off a high cliff.”

    Mathis defended the text, claiming Pendleton had not made a neutral request for statistics but had argued he did not “prosecute white people,” which riled him.

    “I was angry when I sent those,” he said. “I’m entitled to be human and to have emotion and defend myself.”

    Still, Mathis insisted that the county has made progress. Hempstead now has its third black mayor, and Mathis has set up a hate crimes task force to ensure minorities have a “champion” in the criminal justice system, he said.

    “Have I seen racism here? Of course I have,” Mathis said. He said he has heard elderly white people “use the n-word” and African American people “make negative statements” about whites.

    The county still has “de facto separate funeral homes, separate barbershops, separate cemeteries,” he said, choices “that blacks and whites both make.”

    Changing such habits takes time, Mathis said, adding that he can do little to speed the process. So he presses forward on the Bland case, set on proving that her death, while tragic, bears no connection to Waller County’s darkest days.

    And if investigators conclude Waller County was somehow responsible for Bland’s death?

    “That would be a huge setback,” Mathis said. “For everyone that lives here — and the progress I feel the community has made.”

    Interesting, the charge of reverse racism within his words back there.

    Black Lives Matter protesters shut down Allen Rd.

    Hundreds of protesters shut down a portion of Allen Rd. for nearly two hours Monday evening to call for justice in the cases of two local black men killed by police in the past year.

    The protest, organized by Black Lives Matter Toronto, started as a “day of action” rally around 5 p.m. at Eglinton Gilbert Parkette. The parkette, near Eglinton Ave. W. and Caledonia Rd., is steps from the building where Andrew Loku, a 45-year-old man from South Sudan, was fatally shot by Toronto police in early July.

    From there, protesters walked east to Allen Rd., and a line of protesters, accompanied by another 150 or so people, linked arms to block the southbound ramp to Eglinton around 7:30 p.m.

    “We’re here as part of a larger campaign to ensure that justice is met for Jermaine Carby, for Andrew Loku, and to call an end to anti-black practices and police brutality against black populations,” said Janaya Khan, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto, after the blockade.

    Carby was shot dead by Peel police in Brampton during a traffic stop last September.

    Last week, the Special Investigations Unit, a provincial watchdog that investigates deaths and injuries involving police officers, announced it would not be pressing charges in Carby’s death.

    Khan noted a disproportionate number of federal inmates — about 10 per cent — are black, even though blacks make up less than 3 per cent of the Canadian population.

    “Those numbers are astronomical. We’re calling for a larger look at what the systemic issues are that are causing black Canadians to be streamlined to federal prisons,” she told the Star.

    Khan also pointed to “carding,” the controversial police policy of purportedly random street checks that a Star investigation revealed to be applied disproportionately to black Torontonians.

    “We will continue to agitate and we’ll continue to stand in solidarity with the families until justice is done,” she said.

    in light of hulk hogan’s scandal, i made new posters you or your local library can use to replace his old ones

    An open letter to everyone who thinks having a black family member exempts them from racism

    It was a Thursday night after 8, and just like every Thursday night after 8, we sat in the presence of poetry. That week, there was soap, hand-crafted by one of our members and passed from hand to hand to hand, grazed by fingertips, absorbed. This was our writing prompt.

    The bar of soap fell into my palm. On it read the words “They washed their hands of us.”

    I immediately thought of the repeating history of oppressors washing their hands of marginalized peoples. I thought of how my great, great, grandmothers — Black and Jewish — were the dirt under the nails of oppressors who tried, but could not rid themselves of our resilience.

    I thought about how here, in America, the justice system has left the faucet running. About how we have reached a time as critical as any for each of us to join in yelling “Black Lives Matter.” To deem it unacceptable that America is trying to drown the importance of black voices, black lives. For each of us to proclaim, “you may not wash your hands of us.”

    As Jews, we have said never again. We have an obligation to shut off the faucet, to not let the persecuted go unheard. A responsibility we value, however tedious. Our faith demands that we recognize Black Lives Matter as a Jewish issue, and our humanity should too. This is what it would mean to understand the words inscribed early in the book of Genesis: we are our brothers’ keepers.
    […]

    An Open Letter to my white, Jewish Family from a biracial, black Jew,

    In the wake of the two recent verdicts not to indict, I have turned to writing and conversation in an aim to grieve, cope, understand and make use of my anger. One of the most important messages I am receiving, and am in complete support of, is that we must make noise. We must make noise and not stop until everyone is saddened and disgusted into action by the current state of our justice system, until America is in agreement that Black Lives Matter. I am here to make noise with all of you, to share my thoughts, to encourage you to make noise with me, so that I can feel I have the support of my family.

    The deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner are not isolated cases. This is an issue of race.

    I urge you to have these conversations at your dinner tables, with each other, with your colleagues and in communities that you feel connected to. I urge you to have these conversations with your children. I understand that these topics are scary and that there is more to grapple with than any of us are capable of. I am scared. My brother is scared. Other young black and brown people I know are scared. Not one of us has the privilege to choose to avoid these conversations. It is imperative that your children know what is going on. That you are able to voice and have discussions centered around the ingrained and systemic racism that has allowed for these recent murders to occur, and for the killers to go untried. It is important that you are able to bring experienced voices into the conversations that you choose to have, to not discount the voices of those for whom this hits closest to home, the voices of black people, when navigating these dialogues.

    To not put these conversations on the table, to not make them your primary concern, is to perpetuate the problem. If you do not voice what is happening, and the historical roots that have enabled the continued occurrence of these acts, how will others know to ask? How will your children, friends, colleagues — who are not asking these questions — know that there are questions they need to be asking and conversations they need to be engaging in. It is each of our responsibilities to make sure these conversations are not tabled until there is justice. [bolding in text]

    I am not accusing anyone of staying silent, of not doing their part, of perpetuating the institutionalized racism of our justice system and our country. My goal here is simply to share my belief that this noise is vital. That until we all raise our voices, until we all care equally about black lives, black people will continue to be murdered in this country with no regard to their humanity.

    If you have not been having these conversations, I hope that this makes you consider things in a new light, and that you take this as an opportunity to start. If you have been, continue, and not just in the spaces where you feel comfortable doing so. None of these realities are simple, and as such, none of these conversations are simple. Lean into the discomfort. Educate yourselves. Make noise by asking what you can do and asking others what they can do.

    I have stepped well outside my comfort zone with this email. We are all nervous, we are all scared, we all have the ability to lean into, embrace and work through that discomfort.

    Sincerely,

    Amani

    I pressed send and I listened to the silence that followed, unafraid. It was this feeling, settled in my own discomfort, that enforced what I already knew: The words I had written needed to be said. And still need to be said, even now, words outdated by the terrorist attack in Charleston that violently claimed nine black lives, the murders of nine trans women thus far in 2015 (many of them women of color), and other racially motivated assaults. It is clear our collective voice is needed more than ever, that I must demand my family see the recent killings of black and brown bodies for what they were: the product of a carefully designed, centuries-old call for the mass murder of my people — one that was to be carried out by a system whose institutions reflected a structure of violence, oppression and anti-Blackness.

  176. rq says

    Just a quick update via Mano’s posts of relevancy:
    The Bland case is a wakeup call that we can all find ourselves in jail;
    Death because of ‘contempt of cop’;
    Update on Cleveland pepper-spraying incident;
    Mandatory minimum sentences.

    And CBC:
    Black Lives Matter demands Toronto police apologize for Andrew Loku’s death

    A community organization wants the city and its police force to be held accountable for the fatal police shooting of Andrew Loku.

    Toronto’s Black Lives Matter coalition, a group “working in solidarity with communities seeking justice from state-sanctioned violence,” according to its Facebook page, issued a list of demands to Mayor John Tory and police Chief Mark Saunders on Monday in response to Andrew Loku’s death.
    […]

    “Andrew Loku’s murder by the police is a traumatic experience for black people in Toronto,” said Black Lives Matter representative Sandy Hudson in a news release. “We are enraged.”

    The group is calling for charges to be laid against the officers involved in the shooting. It also wants the officers to be identified, and video footage of the incident to be made public.

    The demands, which the oganization wants fulfilled by Wednesday afternoon, also include monetary compensation for Loku’s family and public apologies from the mayor and police chief.

    Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) — an independent civilian law enforcement agency that investigates cases of death, serious injury or sexual assault involving police — is looking into the incident. The SIU’s probe also limits what Toronto police can say about the incident.

    However, Mayor John Tory’s office has already commented on the case.

    The mayor’s office issued the following statement Monday:

    “The mayor is deeply concerned any time someone is killed or seriously injured during an interaction with police. He is very sorry for the family of Andrew Loku … Before we jump to any conclusions, we should let the SIU complete its work. The mayor is hopeful that once the SIU has completed its investigation Mr. Loku’s family and the community will have their answers they seek.”

    The SIU said its investigation into Loku’s death is ongoing.

    University of Cincinnati police officer charged with murder of black man. So they did it.

    University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing has been charged with murder in the shooting death of Samuel DuBose, a 43-year-old black man.

    “I just thank god that everything is being revealed — I know that he loved my child,” DuBose’s mother, Audrey, told reporters.

    Tensing, who is white, is accused of fatally shooting DuBose after pulling him over because his vehicle was missing a front licence plate.

    “He purposefully killed him,” prosecutor Joe Deters said Wednesday. “He should never have been a police officer.”

    Deters said during a news conference Wednesday that he thinks Tensing lost his temper.
    The prosecutor’s office released body-camera video footage Wednesday of the July 19 shooting near the University of Cincinnati. Deters told reporters he was “shocked” after viewing the recording.

    The footage Deters played for reporters shows Tensing and DuBose talking. Tensing asks for DuBose’s licence, but DuBose says he doesn’t have it on him. A gunshot is heard, then Tensing is seen running after DuBose’s slowly rolling car, not being dragged by the car as the officer had reported.

    “I’ve been doing this for 30 years. This is the most asinine act I’ve ever seen a police officer make, totally unwarranted,” Deters told reporters after meeting with DuBose’s family.

    Deters also said Tensing failed to issue simple, non-violent commands.

    “He wasn’t dealing with someone who was wanted for murder,” Deters said. “He was dealing with someone who didn’t have a front licence plate. This is, in the vernacular, a pretty chicken crap stop.”

    More at the link: voluntary manslaughter appears to be the charge.

  177. rq says

    CBC’s The Current on Sandra Bland and Black Lives Matter, audio.

    Sandra Bland jail footage released

    Texas authorities on Tuesday released jail footage of Sandra Bland, the woman found dead in her cell three days after her controversial arrest during a traffic stop.

    Several hours of raw CCTV footage from the jail were released to the media, and clips from the footage were played at a press conference.

    “The reason we are doing this is because of the misinformation that has been put out both through social media and the mainstream media that has led to the rumours that Sandra Bland was in some way deceased or harmed or not well when she was brought into the Waller County Jail,” Waller County Judge Trey Duhon said during a news conference in Hempstead, Texas.

    The clips, which had no audio, showed several scenes, including Bland’s arrival at the jail, her making calls at a central desk and her sitting in a cell.

    The clips played for reporters are part of a lengthier video, which was captured by motion sensitive cameras triggered by movement, Duhon said.

    Here’s hoping it’ll bring at least some clarity.

    New Mexico 911 operator tells caller to ‘deal with it yourself’ after shooting – because she said ‘fucking’. Seriously.

    A New Mexico firefighter, Matthew Sanchez, has resigned from the city’s dispatch centre after telling a 911 caller who was trying to keep alive a gunshot victim to “deal with it yourself.”

    “An internal investigation has been initiated,” Albuquerque Fire Chief David Downey said Monday in a statement. “I am taking the allegation very seriously.”

    The call was made after Jaydon Chavez-Silver, 17, was shot in June as he watched other teens play cards at a friend’s house in Albuquerque. He later died. Police have not named a suspect and have made no arrests.

    ‘I am keeping him alive!’

    In the recording obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, the panicked caller snaps at the dispatcher for repeatedly asking whether Chavez-Silver is breathing.

    During the call, the female says, “I am keeping him alive!”

    Sanchez asks, “Is he not breathing?”

    The caller responds, “Barely!”

    She is then heard frantically encouraging Chavez-Silver to keep breathing.

    “One more breath! One more breath!” she is heard telling the teen. “There you go Jaydon. One more breath! There you go Jaydon. Good job! Just stay with me, OK? OK?”

    The dispatcher then asks again, “Is he breathing?”

    The female responded, “He is barely breathing, how many times do I have to (expletive) tell you?”

    “OK, you know what ma’am? You can deal with it yourself. I am not going to deal with this, OK?” the dispatcher says.

    It seemed from the tape that Sanchez hung up on the caller in mid-sentence.

    “No, my friend is dying ..,” she said as the call ended.

    A spokesman for Jaydon’s family said they’re astonished at the call, but want to focus on finding their son’s killer.

    I don’t want to think that Jaydon died because of the dispatcher hanging up, but that is some of the most insensitive, unprofessional shit I have heard in a while. I mean, among all the other disgusting, insensitive, unprofessional shit that occurs on this thread.

  178. rq says

    Day 14. Waller County Jail. #WhatHappenedToSandraBland
    Still playing catch-up.

    A physical manifestation of the psychic violence you do when you rebutt with “All Lives Matter”.

    We blame minority groups for individual crimes. Why do white conservatives get a pass?

    When will we start holding racism and misogyny accountable for the violence they rationalize and inspire?

    The man who opened fire in a Lafayette, La., movie theater showing of the arguably feminist film “Trainwreck” was, by all accounts, a far-right ideologue. “He was anti-abortion,” a radio host who knew shooter John Russell Houser said. “The best I can recall, Rusty had an issue with feminine rights.” He reportedly encouraged “violent” responses to abortion and the idea of women in the workforce. A bar Houser owned reportedly flew a Nazi flag out front as an anti-government statement. He lashed out against “sexual deviants.” He posted comments against immigrants and the black community. Plus, he ranted against social service programs and “had lot of anti-tax issues,” another person who knew Houser said.

    Houser was steeped and stewing in right-wing xenophobic, homophobic, misogynist and racist hate. He was obviously crazy. It’s generally safe to assume everyone who commits mass murder is. But Houser was crazy and held some beliefs that were variations of more mainstream conservative beliefs. The roots of some of Houser’s political views are hard to distinguish from ideas espoused by many, if not most, of the candidates running for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

    I want to be very clear here: I am NOT saying any of them would endorse or remotely condone Houser’s violence or the extremities to which he took his beliefs. Period, full stop.

    Still it’s naïve, not to mention counterproductive, not to acknowledge that what ensnarled Houser’s singular mind grew from seeds of a widely sowed ideology. Houser was a bad seed, of course. And he fell far from the tree. But he was of it.

    Look at Donald Trump saying that Mexican immigrants are mostly rapists and drug dealers. Or Rand Paul saying paying taxes is tantamount to slavery, or Mike Huckabee calling gay marriage a “perversion” and Ben Carson calling women who take birth control “entitled.” Not to mention the GOP repeatedly encrusting anti-gay and anti-woman policies into its official platform while consistently working to block everything from comprehensive immigration reform to basic non-discrimination laws to equal pay. Again, to say this rhetoric causes tragedies like those in Lafayette would be too simplistic. But to say there’s no connection at all is downright stupid.

    More at the link, need more of this kind of article. Just want to pull these two paragraphs:

    Black Americans are presumed to bear blame as a group even when they’re the victims of violence. This weekend, after a national gathering in Cleveland, leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement were tear-gassed by police. Some online instantly implied that the activists must have done something to provoke the police — reflecting the inherent bias about which Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in warning to his black son that “you must be responsible for the worst actions of other black bodies, which, somehow, will always be assigned to you.” We automatically pathologize all black people whether they’re perpetrating violence or the victims, regardless of the facts.

    And yet when white men shoot up movie theaters or black churches, they’re given the benefit of individuality. We don’t automatically assume that they represent some disease within all, or even a subset of, other white men. Even in the face of evidence such as espoused racist, misogynistic views and participation in organized hate groups, we still resist drawing any broader conclusions about any white men other than the shooter. Meanwhile, most mass shooters are white men. Communities of color or of minority religions, as a whole, are rarely given the benefit of the doubt of collective innocence. White men, and white people in general, always are. That white privilege extends even to white mass murderers shows just how insidious it is.

    Watts riots, 50 years later: What has L.A. learned, and done? Another anniversary coming up.

    There is so much that is depressingly up-to-date about the violence that was then known as the Los Angeles riots (the event has since been mentally compartmentalized into the Watts riots, even though it took three days for the violence to reach Watts). There was the traffic stop of a black driver by a white Highway Patrol officer, followed by an arrest, then anger, uprising, armed clash. Revelations about long-standing police practices; denial; promises to investigate. Much of the narrative of those August days could easily have been pulled together from news reports written any time over the last five decades but especially in the last year, from Ferguson, Mo., to Baltimore to New York and back to Los Angeles.

    Fifty years is the better part of a lifetime, and people who lived in Los Angeles in 1965 and are still living here today see many of the same circumstances that led, beginning on the hot evening of Aug. 11, to six days of violence. So what do we do now? How do we observe the coming anniversary?
    […]

    The path through government investment, on the one side, and community self-determination, on the other, was laid down poorly. It must be re-mapped and re-walked before the generation that grew up in the aftermath of the Watts riots can say it has completed its business.

    The process is under way at the new Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, set for its ceremonial reopening next month but already serving patients under a governance structure separate from the county and with employees who are not part of the county civil service system. Locke High School is now Alain LeRoy Locke College Preparatory Academy and is run by charter school operator Green Dot rather than by the school district. Jordan Downs is in the midst of a remake, with its residents part of the planning process.

    It may be tempting to see some magic in the formula for transforming failed institutions into programs that work. A little private sector, a little public, a little community control, a little public oversight, in just the right amounts. But reinvention and redemption are seldom that simple. Besides, they cannot work in a vacuum — not without dealing with racism, segregation, over-incarceration and other societal problems. Meanwhile, these institutions, and others like them and still others yet to be created, require support and examination if they are to avoid the spiral of failure.

    This Teen Died After A 911 Dispatcher Hung Up On A Caller Who Swore At Him, BuzzFeed on that terrible dispatcher. I know it’s not specific to this thread, but it’s more an issue of the attitude of law-and-order enforcement agencies towards those they are supposedly serving: an unwillingness to realize that these are ordinary citizens with no training in high stress situations… where they themselves (in this case, the dispatcher) should have the better knowledge and the calmer demeanour – and they hang up because of cuss words. So there will be a couple more articles on this, because I find it emblematic of other attitude issues in people with uniforms.

    Pictures of the protest for #SamDubose who was fatally shot during a traffic stop by Ray Tensing #blacklivescincy

  179. rq says

    A Native American Activist Died in Police Custody and Nobody Is Talking About It – Sandra Bland was also an activist.

    This summer, we have witnessed numerous deaths of people in police custody, some prompting suspicion of foul play and law enforcement complicity. Sandra Bland, 28, in Waller County Texas, and Kindra Chapman, 18 in Homewood, Alabama, were both found dead of alleged suicide in their respective jail cells earlier this month, drawing widespread attention to police maltreatment of black women and girls.

    But Henry’s case conjures another overlooked disparity: Police violence against Native Americans. Mic reported previously that indigenous people in the United States have been killed by police at nearly identical rates as black Americans since 1999. Yet anti-indigenous state violence — much like anti-black state violence, until very recently — remains a topic many are loath to seriously address.

    This violence does not always take the form of a gun to the head, either. From a very young age, Native peoples face some of the starkest health and quality of life disparities of any group in the country, from high poverty, high school dropout and substance abuse rates to some of the most staggering youth suicide figures in the country. Cumulatively, these gaps all stem from a long and ongoing history of government sanctioned murder, land theft, forced relocation and racial abuse.

    Rexdale Henry’s death also assumes extra significance considering the history of Neshoba County, where he died. In 1964, James Chaney, a black Mississippian civil rights activist, and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, two white New York civil rights activists, were found murdered and discarded in an “earthen dam” near Philadelphia after a Neshoba County sheriff’s deputy arrested and released them, chased them down and then turned them over to the local Ku Klux Klan chapter. The incident went down as one of the defining chapters of Freedom Summer.

    The day before Henry was arrested, 39-year-old Jonathan Sanders, a black man, also died after being choked for 20 minutes by a police officer in nearby Clarke County. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is looking into both his and Henry’s deaths.

    “At a time when the nation is focused on the terrible circumstances of the brutal death of Sandra Bland, it is critical to expose the many ways in which Black Americans, Native Americans and other minorities are being arrested for minor charges and end up dead in jail cells,” Syracuse University professor Janis McDonald, who is helping Henry’s family through the inquiry, said in a statement, according to the Jackson Free Press.

    Ralkina Jones: Another Black Woman Dies in Police Custody, article from Colorlines. Still no new news on her, besides that she supposedly died of natural causes. More later, I think.

    Why the city doesn’t want video of Laquan McDonald’s shooting released – that’s in Chicago, a similar attitude to Cincinnati. However, Cincinnati did better (as we shall see).

    Laquan McDonald, 17, is walking west in the middle of Pulaski Road at 40th Street. He has a knife in his right hand.

    He is not running.

    He is not lunging.

    He is walking.

    Two Chicago Police officers jump out of a Tahoe with their guns drawn.

    McDonald is still walking west toward the sidewalk with a full lane of traffic separating him from one of the officers.

    When the officer begins shooting, the first shots spin McDonald around. The officer continues to fire from a distance of between 12 and 15 feet.

    McDonald falls.

    The only movement is the puffs of smoke coming from the teen’s torso and his head.

    The police officer comes into view and kicks the knife out of the boy’s right hand.

    Neslund and his partner, Michael D. Robbins, represent McDonald’s mother, Tina Hunter.

    “I certainly expect that the officer will be indicted, and not just the officer, but any officer, supervisor or lieutenant who took part in covering this up and justifying what cannot be justified,” Neslund told me.

    “This was an execution of a young man that should have been — and could have been — avoided,” he said.

    Cincinnati has been waiting to release the #SamuelDubose video because they are afraid of the ensuing unrest.
    And remember, Chicago will not release the #LaquanMcDonald video either, for fear of unrest.
    (This is what brought up that article.)

    WATCH: New Video Shows Sandra Bland Being Booked Into Jail, mostly to dispel rumours that she was dead in her mugshot.

    New video showing Sandra Bland being booked into the Waller County Jail has been released by authorities who say they want to clear up rumors being spread on social media.

    The videos were shown during a press conference, and posted to YouTube by Waller County.

    Officials said they’ve received death threats and threats to their facilities through email and by phone based on the idea that Bland was dead when she was brought to jail. Authorities said that is completely false. County Judge Trey Duhon said he does not believe Bland was mistreated while at the jail.

    Video showing Bland being photographed has also been released to show that she was alive when her mug shot was taken, dispelling another social media rumor.

    The new footage, captured on jail surveillance cameras over three days, was not previously released because county officials said they didn’t know they could cut it into clips and take it from their system. The video also shows Bland filling out booking forms, being taken to and from a holding cell and making calls while trying to post bail.

    Waller County posted the clips in several different YouTube posts. There is no sound in any of the videos.

    It has been noted that despite her alleged suicide risk (which the jail now cites), she was placed alone in a cell. And monitored via intercom, not face-to-face, as policy would have it.

  180. rq says

    Do you remember the man who was charged for getting his blood on officers’ uniforms as they beat him, in Ferguson? He sued, and had to go to court to even be allowed to sue. U.S. court rules lawsuit by man beaten by Ferguson police can proceed

    A federal lawsuit against three white police officers in Ferguson, Missouri, accused of beating a handcuffed black man and then complaining that the man’s blood dirtied their uniforms can go forward, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday.

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit said that the district court in St. Louis erred in dismissing the claims of Henry Davis who was beaten by police in a jail cell following a September 2009 arrest, according to court records.
    […]

    In the lawsuit, Davis named the city of Ferguson and three police officers as defendants. He claimed that the officers beat and kicked him even though he was subdued and handcuffed and that one of the officers later filed false complaints that Davis had committed “property damage” for blood that got on the officers’ uniforms.

    Davis had been stopped for speeding on Sept. 20, 2009, and was arrested for driving while intoxicated. Court records state that when the police officers transferred Davis into a jail cell, he resisted and a fight ensued. One of the police officers suffered a broken nose while Davis suffered a concussion and a scalp laceration.

    Davis filed suit in 2010. A lower court dismissed his claims, including the claim that the three officers used excessive force.

    But the appeals court ruling on Tuesday disagreed and reversed the dismissal of claims of excessive force and state law assault and battery claims.

    The court let stand, however, the dismissal of Davis’ complaints that the police erred in charging him with property damage for the blood on their uniforms.

    Davis’ attorney James Schottel Jr. said he was pleased with the court ruling and would pursue a settlement with the city or retry the case.

    “I’m pretty happy with the results,” Schottel said.

    A lawyer representing the city and the police officers did not respond to a request for comment.

    See that? The district court dismissed his suit because the officers were reasonable. I just don’t get it.

    Woman arrested on shoplifting charge found dead in holding cell

    Police in Westchester County said a woman under arrest was found dead in a holding cell.

    Mount Vernon Mayor Earnest Davis said 44-year-old Raynetta Turner had been arrested Saturday on a shoplifting charge for the third time recently. She was found unresponsive and lying on her side on a wooden bench in her holding cell Monday afternoon.

    According to Davis, Turner reported various medical issues at the time of her arrest, and she was taken to Montefiore-Mount Vernon Hospital. She was then released back to police custody Sunday evening.

    Here’s the timeline of events, as per a news release from the city:
    * Saturday afternoon: Turner arrested, taken to hospital
    * Sunday 10 p.m.: Turner returned to cell after being released from hospital
    * Monday 2 a.m.: Turner removed from cell for fingerprinting, returned a short time later
    * Monday 2 p.m.: Officers tried to wake Turner for her court appearance, and she was unresponsive. EMS was called and pronounced her dead a short time later

    The mayor said Turner previously had bariatric surgery and a history of hypertension.

    Mount Vernon police, the Westchester County Medical Examiner, the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office and the New York State Attorney General’s Office are all investigating.

    US Police Kill More People in Days than Other Countries Kill in Decades

    American police increasingly face criticism from the rest of the world for its aggressive—and often cruel—tactics. Though supporters of police often argue they are “just doing their jobs” and chide critics to “call a crackhead” the next time they need help, a new analysis of state-sanctioned shootings around the world shows just how skewed American police murder rates actually are.

    The Guardian, which claims to keep the most comprehensive record of American police killings, reported last month that “US police kill more in days than other countries do in years.”

    The Guardian recorded 59 fatal police shootings in the United States in the first 24 days of 2015 while, in the United Kingdom, there were 55 fatal police shootings in 24 years (1990-2014). Similarly, in Australia police killed 94 people between 1992 and 2011. In the United States, police fatally shot 97 people in March of 2015 alone. This means that in less than a month, American police killed more people than British police killed in decades.

    To further illustrate the problem, the Guardian compared the city of Stockton, CA to the entire country of Iceland (their populations are 298,118 and 323,764, respectively). The numbers show that while Icelandic police have killed one person in 71 years of existence—a worldwide headline that evoked grief among Iceland’s population— Stockton police killed 3 people in the first five months of 2015. In a similar example, police forces in the entire country of Canada kill about 25 people per year while police in the state of California have killed 72 in 2015 (their populations are 35.2 million and 38.8 million, respectively).

    Another side-by-side analysis reveals the well-documented racist tendencies of American police. Whereas “15 citizens of any race, armed or unarmed, [were] fatally shot in two years from 2010-2011” by German police, 19 unarmed black men were shot and killed by American police in the first five months of this year.

    In a final example, the Guardian compared the number of bullets shot by Finnish police to those of American police. In 2013, police in Finland fired a total of six bullets. In a single incident in Pasco, Washington in February, police killed a man “armed” with rocks, which he was throwing at a police car. The officers fired 17 bullets.

    While these numbers are distressing, there are caveats to the side-by-side comparisons. With a population of 316.1 million people, it is inevitable that the scale of police murders will be higher. Further, the United States has a higher homicide rate than the countries it was compared to, perhaps explaining at least some fatal incidents.

    Even so, when comparing an entire country—such as Iceland—to a single American city with a similar population (or Canada to California), American police shootings still dwarf those of other nations. Further, while the homicide rate in America is higher, it remains that many of the people killed by police in the “land of the free” were unarmed.

    Denver PD arrests Paul Castaway protesters, not the driver who hit them – and I can’t understand if this is again or still the first incident.

    On July 20, 2015, demonstrators convened outside a hotel where Colorado police chiefs were staying during a conference in Denver.

    Among the group were family and friends of Paul Castaway, a Native American man who was recently killed by Denver police officer Mike Lee Traudt.
    […]

    At the point in the demonstration this video begins the DPD had just started arresting people – starting with a local videographer who was targeted out of the group and violently arrested.

    The police officers then order the demonstrators back across the street. This puts them in harms way, as the street had not been closed off.

    Shortly after, an angry driver, who was distracted because he’d paused to yell at other demonstrators and didn’t look up before hitting the gas, rams his SUV into two women.

    Immediately after this, rather than take interest in the man who just hit two people with his car, or the safety of the two victims, the DPD protect the driver and instead violently arrest a well-known activist. She suffered a concussion and other injuries. As far as I know the driver was not ticketed or otherwise charged.

    Not long after this, the DPD arrested me as well – for the second time in just a few months.

    Worse yet, they arrested one of the women hit by the SUV. They literally took her from an ambulance to handcuffs, to the back of a police car and to jail.

    Denver police, always looking out for your safety!

    Manning: Sarah Lee Circle Bear Died While in Police Custody; Family Seeks Justice, text is same as above in article about her.

    Boulder police fatally shoot naked knife-attack suspect believed to be on LSD – he had a hammer, so they shot him.

  181. rq says

    The #SandraBland mural that was defaced tonight at Slater and Bronson in Ottawa, is now near repaired.

    Kansas City hotel manager hangs black doll from doorway in office to mock Sandra Bland – TW on this.

    This, ladies and gentlemen, is your America.

    A white hotel manager of the Adams Mark Hotel in Kansas City hung a black slave doll from the doorway of the office with a garbage bag in an apparent mocking of the death of Sandra Bland.

    In searching for eloquent words to explain this bullshit, I have few.

    American racism is deep, sick, and flagrant.

    In your mind, I dare you to rewind to the moment in which this asshole, a white supervisor with black employees no less, conceived the idea, gathered the materials, and proceeded to act on his instinct to do such a thing.

    It’s sick and this man should be charged with a federal hate crime. Termination is not enough.

    Our country, sadly, is either regressing, or the outer facade is just being torn away and we’re starting to see the deeper, uglier soul of this nation. Below are some of the first tweets covering the incident.

    Sandra Bland: A Black Woman’s Life Finally Matters. She did promise she would change the world.

    For the past two weeks, I have carried Sandra Bland with me everywhere I go. At first, it was a smiling image of her that haunted my thoughts; she is dressed in what looks to be a black blazer and white blouse, one of her baby locs creeping out of place and sitting squarely on her forehead. She’s wearing big earrings, the sort that you get from an African fair. Here, Sandra (I can’t refer to her as “Bland,” we are too intimately connected now) looks like she makes #BlackLivesMatter videos and goes to sorority chapter meetings in serious heels that replace flats at the door and that don’t stick around long after adjournment. She is one of us, one of ours, absolutely.

    Then there is the infamous mugshot, subjected to one of the most horrific theories I have encountered in my adult life: What if Sandra was already dead? What if these devils—these unconscionable, uneducated beasts of the South, these proud sons of the purveyors of lynching and Jim Crow segregation—killed this woman, purposefully, or by accident of their abuse, and then propped her body up to stage a photograph? I immediately reject this theory, not because it is ridiculous—because I put absolutely nothing, nothing past police departments and the various institutions that work to ensure their right to destroy black lives without consequence—but because I cannot even bear to think about it.

    Yet, this broken, battered image of Sandra is the one my brain defaults to now, despite my efforts to replace it with the one I know to be true. In my head, we are friends. We would have talked about her videos. I would have asked her quite seriously, “Do you want to put your ideas out there for the world like this,” and warned her about the backlash, the sexist, racist trolls who don’t exist online outside of their sworn duty to terrorize outspoken women of color. She would’ve said “Yes.” This I know.

    Sandra’s death has touched me in a different way than any of the black men and women who have been taken from us recently. I worked hard to stifle my feelings about Trayvon Martin until, months later, I had a near breakdown in a department store. I went to Ferguson the week after Michael Brown died, but didn’t allow myself to feel a thing until much later; it was the sight of a writer friend sobbing that pushed humanity to the surface. Taneshia Anderson brought rage, throwing things in my house rage. Tamir Rice was, and still is, almost unspeakable.

    But Sandra, Sandy, she was a girl like me. Three years my junior, figuring things out, with plans to begin working at the HBCU she graduated from—something many of us black-college grads dream of doing, because they are the rare space in which black lives are consistently centered, affirmed, and protected. Leaving Howard University—a place that didn’t define or explain my blackness fully, but allowed it to flourish in peace— after my own graduation was a decidedly somber occasion, marked by a knowing that I would likely never be ensconced in the protective bosom of All Black Everything again.

    Sandra defended our people in her #SandySpeaks videos and she defended herself against a ridiculous arrest from an overly aggressive officer. Watching that dashcam video, which I avoided as long as possible, I recognized that tone of voice—the universal language of “this white man got me fucked up,” that audacious blackness demanding to be treated like a human, like an equal, like someone who isn’t supposed to be dragged and slammed and arrested for having agency. Sandra didn’t resist arrest, she resisted the notion that she was supposed to submit to a cop like he was her overseer or master.

    Article continues at the link. It’s Jamilah Lemieux, and it’s excellent.

    Lights over the river from @ChiLightBrigade for #SandraBland #SayHerName
    RT @joemacare: #SandraBland memorialized on Michigan Ave bridge in Chicago. #SayHerName

    New jail footage shows Sandra Bland ‘alive and well’. I’ll go with ‘alive’ since I doubt she was ‘well’.

    The video released shows her arriving at the jail, being questioned by a jailer filling out forms, making phone calls, getting her mug shot taken, sleeping in her cell and being taken in and out.

    She’s calm when she arrives at the jail, sometimes smiling and at one point putting her head in her hands. The jailer let her use the phone at the booking desk instead of the pay phone in her cell, and she was seen talking with animation during some of the calls. The video has no audio.

    Authorities have said Bland – a black 28-year-old from suburban Chicago – hanged herself with a garbage bag, a finding that her family has questioned, saying she was happy. She was in custody for allegedly assaulting the white state trooper who pulled her over for an improper lane change.

    Her sister, Sharon Cooper, did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press seeking comment on Tuesday.

    The death has garnered national attention amid increased scrutiny of police treatment of blacks in the wake of several high-profile police-involved deaths.

    The article goes into the mind-altering properties of large amounts of ingested marijuana, but I’d rather not.

  182. rq says

    Percent and number of newsroom employees by minority group – table format. Apparently there are less this year than last year, at least in major studios. How does this impact reporting?

    At Least 5 Black Women Found Dead In Jail Since Mid-July, and, really, July isn’t over yet.

    The mayor has since explained that Turner’s medical history included hypertension and bariatric surgery. No official cause of death has been determined.

    But her death follows at least four other deaths of black women in police custody since July 13, shining an even brighter spotlight on the plight of black women in the criminal justice system and fueling the Black Lives Matter movement. On that date, Sandra Bland was found hanging in her cell, three days after she was violently stopped for failing to signal a lane change in Waller County, Texas. The next day, 18-year-old Kindra Chapman committed suicide in an Alabama prison. She was arrested for stealing a cell phone. Joyce Curnell was arrested on shoplifting charges and found dead in her cell on July 24. On July 26, officers found Ralkina Jones dead in the Cleveland Heights City Jail, two days after she was arrested for a physical dispute with her husband. Like Turner, she was brought to a medical facility after a staff member observed Jones was lethargic — then returned to the jail. Prison officials say they conducted several check ups on the night she returned, but found her unresponsive around 7:30 the next morning. An investigation is currently underway.

    Q: Would it help white people remember #BlackLivesMatter if we pictured all the dead black people as #CecilTheLion instead of fellow humans?

    Here’s a shout-out to diversity, via Greta Christina: More Atheist Leaders Who Aren’t Dawkins or Harris: Alix Jules

    This week’s profile/interview: Alix Jules. Jules is President of Black Non-Believers of Dallas (BNOD), an organization created to provide networking opportunities for nonbelieving peoples of color. It is open to everyone; however, its focus is to provide a safe space for godless black and brown nonbelievers. They provide a southern beacon to our friends in shared disbelief, reminding them they’re not alone. Jules is also Board Member/Treasurer of Secular Avenue, a 501(c)(3) organization formed to help secular people in need to achieve safety, stability, and autonomy. The initial focus of Secular Avenue is SAFE, a program to assist people who are unsafe at home due to leaving religion, religious extremism, domestic abuse, or coming out as LGBTQ. He occasionally contributes to writing projects, blogs, podcasts, rallies, protests, etc.

    Help Support Seven Scribes: We’re Kickstarting! Previously seen via tweet.

    Just four months ago we launched this site with the goal of producing content from young creators of color that could stand its own in the hectic online space. We wanted to abide by certain principles, and always make sure that we put our consumers first and made a fair space for creators, especially folks just starting out with telling their stories. So far, we’ve been able to do just that.
    […]

    Now we start a new phase which will be expanding our site, adding new content (like podcasts!), and most importantly compensating all of these wonderful people for their wonderful voices and hard work-without intrusive and invasive ads. To do that we need your help.

    We’re raising $10,000 on Kickstarter to get us started. Please contribute what you can! We have awesome gear from pens to shirts and Moleskine notebooks, depending on contribution. And whether you can or can’t support us monetarily, please support us by reading the site and by sharing our crowdfunding links! It’ll take all we got to make this dream a reality.

    We’re also please to be able to offer pay-as-you-will subscriptions on Patreon to help support us as well. Basically, you can pay as little or as much as you want per month to help us on the mission. We have goodies for subscribers too!
    We’re so grateful to have you as readers at Seven Scribes, and we’re excited as we continue on this journey to feature amazing voices from the margins and provide you with more great content. And we’d love to have you as partners on this journey with us. So spread the word and stay tuned.

    Links to articles and more info at the link. I would recommend supporting them, so far I’ve been enjoying their content very much.

    Ta-Nehisi Coates, David Brooks, and the Master Narrative of American History

    I love Ta-Nehisi Coates. David Brooks…not so much. Biases disclosed, their squabble—if one can even call it that—exposes a more general interpretive haze that envelopes most popular understandings of American and African American history.

    Brooks’s missteps hardly need recounting. The American Dream is bullshit. Heaping piles of lies smothered in a thick mythology and built upon the backs of enslaved peoples. And yes, Mr. Brooks, that mound of filth is by design. One cannot begin to explain the American Dream without full sight of the American Nightmare. As both a country and an ideal, America is a thoroughly poisoned tree. The very idea of the Dream has never existed without the deeply rooted evil that created and sustains it. Here, Coates is absolutely right. Systemic, violent injustice has underwritten both America and its Dream. The ever mounting debt to black people continues.

    Embarrassingly, scholars have known about this central organizing dialectic for decades. Edmund Morgan’s highly influential article “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox” (1972) is now all but gospel for any serious historian working on the topic today. Coates has successfully distilled Morgan’s foundational paradox into clear and succinct prose. Historians could have (and should have) done this a generation ago. The very notion of American freedom (much less its limited exercise) necessitated the enslavement of African peoples as a matter of historical fact. Slavery was not an accident. It was not an oversight. It was not a superfluous ‘product of its time’. It was a conscious choice where several less evil options existed. For Morgan’s colonial America, there was simply no freedom (real or imagined) without slavery.

    This truism functions as both an ideological reference point and a material reality. Slaves not only had their bodies ground into tobacco, sugar, and cotton to fuel industrialization in Europe. They also provided the cognitive baseline for what constituted un-freedom in the Atlantic world. White colonists in America used this fear of a ‘liberty under threat’ in their attempts to shed the governance of the British crown. Whites didn’t want to be “slaves” to King George—like the real slaves they knew all too well were laboring under their power. Whites wanted to be free. Rhetorically and materially, slaves enabled that freedom in more ways than one. The actual manual labor extracted from slaves gave whites (both slaveholders and non-slaveholders) the precious time to attend political meetings, develop new industries, eat surplus calories, and most importantly fantasize about how great life would be if a permanent, racialized, unpaid labor force could be made to do all the hard work while white America kept all the profit. If the King of England didn’t get his cut, so much the better. Freedom didn’t exist in spite of slavery. It existed because of slavery. Put another way, as Coates has done so many times with his trademark clarity, white supremacy “is not a bump along the road. It is, in fact, the road itself.”

    More at the link, on scholarship and its interpretation, and, incidentally, a large list of historical reading.

  183. rq says

    Ugh, I wanted to point out these two paragraphs in the last link previous comment:

    While Coates relies heavily on scholars (particularly historians) and credits them in a way that few popular writers do, his implicit critique of them is that he feels the need to translate, condense and synthesize them at all. If we were doing our jobs as writers, scholars, and teachers the supposedly revelatory, newsworthy arguments of Coates/the academy would have been accepted as common wisdom decades ago. Coates is succeeding where scholars have failed. He is shouting from the mountaintop because we have not. Much like Key and Peele’s anger translator says the things that the fictional Obama wishes he could say, Coates is consciously acting as an academic interpreter, clarifying complex ideas that academic prose tends to obfuscate. He is our generation’s synthetic genius. A postmodern vessel of truth capable of mixing, sampling, cutting and pasting the world’s chaos it into something altogether fresh. And terrifying.

    Even as scholars will nod their heads to the familiar tones that Coates is so eloquently laying down, those of us with similar life experiences (academics or not) will also find his codification of the rules of the street equally on point. This is a rare combination. “The great danger that haunted every visit to Shake & Bake” (p.25) may have taken place at a Del Taco for some of us West Coast residents, but the threat of violence and the rules that governed it ring remarkably true from L.A. to Baltimore. While the ideas of Hannah Arendt (p. 8), Winthrop Jordan (p. 7), Walter Johnson (p. 104), Edward Baptist (p. 101), and David Blight (p.102) are all dealt with implicitly by Coates, that one glorious footnote to Thavolia Glymph (p.105) should leave historians cheering aloud. I just KNEW that quote came from Glymph the moment I saw it! While it took Eric Foner 690 pages to synthesize a mere 14 years of American history, Coates has done 400 years in 152. Granted, he doesn’t have Foner’s footnotes or academic credentials (and, yes, I have my criticisms of Between the World and Me as a history), but one can’t help but think that Coates read everything that Foner read and then some. Many marvel at Coates’s writing. I, for one, marvel at his reading.

    Black police officer after ambush: ‘Doesn’t my life matter?’

    With more than a hundred homicides already this year, St. Louis is no stranger to gun violence. On July 14, a St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department sergeant was ambushed while working a second, security job in the early hours of the morning. The officer survived thanks to a bulletproof vest, and four suspects have been arrested in connection with the shooting.

    We independently confirmed the identity of the officer with the St. Louis Police, but have granted him anonymity out of his concern for the safety of his family in order to hear his perspective on the situation.

    He spoke with St. Louis Public Radio’s Durrie Bouscaren. Here is a transcript of the highlights.

    “Deal With It Yourself”: 911 Operator Hangs Up On Caller While Teen Dies, Gawker.

    Some of the crowd braving the humidity at this rally for #SandraBland by Michigan Ave bridge. #SayHerName

    Therapy is not just a white person’s occupation — why we need more black psychologists

    A few months ago we ran an article that addressed the sources of the stigma against mental health and therapy in the black community, which can be found here. I talked about how it can be an additional burden to face in our already difficult lives to admit we need outside help. Another point was that our communities might also make us feel like we’re not being strong by going to therapy, or like we’re wasting money that could be used on something else.

    These feelings are justified because, historically, the mental health system hasn’t really given us a reason to trust them or consider therapy an option. Part of this mistrust comes from the fact that there are not many therapists of color available in the field. The American Psychological Association has only 1.5 percent African-American members. With microaggressions and subtle forms of racism so present today, it’s understandable that we might want to discuss very personal details of our lives and feelings with someone who understands our struggle.

    In order to explore some of the reasons why more black people don’t practice therapy, and, by extension, why more black people aren’t receiving therapy. I had the privilege of speaking with licensed psychologists Dr. Sandra Levy and Dr. Robert Samuels about their insights into this topic, and with additional research, we found that exposure to the field, affordability and quality of therapeutic services contribute to holding our community back from receiving help. As you read, you’ll see how these factors seem to be out of our hands, making it all the more important for us to support each other.
    Exposure to the Field

    Recognizing you’re feeling unusually upset is the first step toward seeking help. Symptoms for diagnosis are not common knowledge amongst the general population though, and for African Americans who carry stigma against mental illness, there’s even less understanding. This combination makes it so that it can be difficult to even know when or where to look.

    This also extends to choosing psychology as a field of work. Some of us might not have ever heard about psychology in our communities (or we have family who criticize it) so it’s not even an option. Regarding the two psychologists I spoke with, Dr. Sandra Levy, who is white, was supported in her career because she’d attended therapy for family issues as a child. Dr. Robert Samuels, a black therapist, was supported in a similar way, but there seemed to be less of an openness about family issues – he mentioned that he didn’t find out his mom attended therapy until he was in college and it came as a surprise. There also weren’t a lot of figures for him to look up to in this career. There weren’t any black public figures speaking openly about therapy and when he was attending Princeton, there was only one black psychologist on staff.

    On a better note, African Americans might not be visible in psychology because we’re more present in social work, as seen at the very top and bottom of this chart from the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics [chart]

    In 2004, we made up only 4 percent of social workers. This field can be more appealing because it’s more community focused, which meshes well with the values of the black community, as well as being a more cost-effective program. While this increase is surely a positive, we still need black therapists who can give more personal attention and care to the individuals who are the backbone of the community.

    The article continues by looking at additional characteristics of mental health care, like affordability and cultural competency (in this case, a lack thereof).

    The Univ. of Cincinatti has cancelled classes at the Upton & Medical campuses as of 11am today, anticipating the #SamuelDubose vid release.
    And I’ve heard that the #SamuelDubose video will be released concurrently with an indictment of the officer, hoping to stop unrest.
    So yes, that.

  184. rq says

    Blackness and the Media: The Pitfalls of Colorblindness

    “I’m not African-American,” Raven said, in the now-infamous interview with Oprah, “I’m an American.”

    Initially I, as many others on #BlackTwitter, jumped to calling Raven foolish, simple, or naive for shrugging off her blackness as if it played no part in who she is. While she’s lived in the Hollywood Bubble for virtually her entire life, she was still a major player in arguably one of the most important programs in black history, The Cosby Show. However, as I writer I began to understand why she’s so afraid (or possibly just tired) of being identified as a Black actress on Black TV shows.

    In our white society, blackness can be limiting; it can swathe one in this indelible musk until it leaves nothing. In a sense, as Clover Hope noted in her Kendrick Lamar article for The Muse, blackness can be “overwhelming.”

    But, isn’t “overwhelming blackness” inherently good? Yes and no. Overwhelming blackness can be considered good when it’s self-imposed and embraced as a facet of oneself; it can become the framework for who a person is without totally defining themselves as such. When a black person describes themselves as a such, they fully recognizes that this does not limit their personhood. Inversely, too often when a non-black person sees a black person as Black, they are forever seen as Black and nothing more. It suddenly becomes difficult to discern Blackness from multifaceted personhood. In an effort to seem less racist, many Americans embraced “colorblindness” because if they can’t fathom that a Black Person might enjoy Tchaikovsky or—better yet—be sentient, the concept of race itself must be the problem.

    Raven seems to want to stray away from overt blackness in fear that it could and would shroud the entirety of her personality and flexibility as an artist. Despite popular belief, this is a valid fear perfectly encapsulated by ‘90s film and television, arguably the peak of inadequate racial representation and all-around bad screenwriting. I recently rewatched the famous teen flick She’s All That on Netflix.

    (I have a slight fetish for incompetently-made-yet-widely-beloved teen movies, and She’s All That provided the relatively pleasant trip down memory lane I’d been hoping for.)

    This time I noticed the same major flaw I’d noticed in Cruel Intentions, The Craft, and 10 Things I Hate About You. Nearly every black character was the token black guy.

    More specific analysis and examples at the link.

    #BlackWomenEqualPay Raises Awareness About Wage Disparity Between Black Women and White Men

    In terms of wage disparity, most of the time people talk generally about women versus men. But unfortunately, there’s an even larger disparity when it comes to whose paycheck is looking smaller than someone else’s.

    Nonprofit group Atlanta Women for Equality is raising awareness online about the disparity between the wages of black women and white men. According to its research, black women make 64 percent of the average pay of white men. In order to to earn the same amount a white man earned in all of 2014, a black woman would have to work an additional 208 days into 2015.

    The group has declared Tuesday #BlackWomenEqualPay Day, and the hashtag has been a trending topic on Twitter all day. As part of the group’s effort, it has encouraged people to clock out of work at 2:07 p.m. Tuesday—64 percent into a 9-to-5 workday—and post selfies as a call to action to bring this issue to the attention of the world.

    According to Atlanta Women for Equality, over a career spanning 40 years, black women lose $775,000 because of the wage gap and would need to work an additional 23 years to catch up to white men.

    On Twitter, participants have posted selfies and other statistics relevant to the disparity in wages for black women. The organization provided a printable time card for social media users to use along with their selfies.

    Sadly, somewhere on the Internet, a white man is typing similar words about the hashtag and is making more money. #BlackWomenEqualPay is real.

    Photo Series “We Are Queens” Reminds Us of Black Women’s Inherent Royalty, for the photos.

    “Rediscovering the Scientist” Looks at Erasure of People of Color in Western Science

    “People could not heal if they did not know the truth,” declares Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu early in filmmaker Lydia Hicks’ new documentary-in-progress, Rediscovering the Scientist. Indeed, healing by way of seeking truth is the major driving force of this absorbing new film, which critically examines erasure of people of color in science history and highlights multicultural contributions to the field.

    By fixing her lens on the oft ignored or actively silenced voices of black and brown people, Hicks brings an empowering, more pluralistic narrative to the forefront; one that acknowledges modern western science owes a debt (whether it is willing to admit it or not) to countless unnamed and uncredited black and brown people globally.
    Vividly animated and moving deftly through the ages, Rediscovering the Scientist charts a young woman’s journey from disillusionment with an exclusionary narrative to a proactive confrontation with it. Hicks reaches into history, unflinchingly exploring such things as the inception of racism and childbirth-as-industry while engaging the present through interviews with such luminaries as Dr. Vandana Shiva, Dr. Molefi Asante, and Max Dashu.

    This important film successfully claps back at racist and sexist mythologies by highlighting and dismantling their origins. With Rediscovering the Scientist, Hicks has created a buoyant reclamation of the ingenuity of those in the margins, the kind of truth that will surely lead to necessary healing.

    The project is in its final stages. You can help to bring it to completion by making a donation here.

    #BlackLivesMatter co-founder: Does Bill O’Reilly want a country where police kill black people daily? Does he actually care?

    A co-founder of the #BlackLivesMatter movement said on Wednesday she was “mortified” by the accusations thrown at her by Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.

    “What’s unfortunate about Bill O’Reilly is that it’s pundits like him that fuel anti-black racism,” Patrisse Cullors told HuffPost Live host Marc Lamont Hill. “It’s pundits like him that allow for folks like Dylann Roof to have more ammunition. So I think we need to hold him accountable.”
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    On Tuesday, the Factor host said that the movement wanted to “tear down the country,” and said they only appeal to “real fringe nuts,” a description Cullors called “unhelpful.”

    “We are challenging our government,” she argued. “We want true democracy in this country, and that doesn’t exist right now. We see that with Sam DuBose case, where an officer killed him within a matter of minutes. That sounds like a police state. That sounds like police terrorism to me. I challenge Bill O’Reilly: does he want to live in a country where black folks die on a daily basis at the hands of law enforcement and not challenge it?”

    Contrary to O’Reilly’s rhetoric, she said, none of the 26 chapters in the group’s network are receiving money from billionaire George Soros, though she did confirm that Jay-Z and Beyonce have donated.

    “We put out a framework,” Cullors explained. “But people are doing amazing work every single day that aren’t a part of the #BlackLivesMatter network.”

    According to her, the chapters have members who are both longtime activists and people who became active following the August 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

    “This is vibrant. This is new,” she said. “People are developing a new political analysis as they join this movement. We aren’t a front group for another organization. This is a grassroots effort.”

    Video of interview at the link.

    ‘Deal with it yourself,’ 911 dispatcher tells panicked caller with dying friend, Washington Post takes on that story.

  185. rq says

    Rapper 50 Cent presenting donation in Ferguson Tuesday afternoon

    50 Cent will present a donation to the St. Louis Area Foodbank in Ferguson Tuesday afternoon.

    The rapper will be presenting a donation provided by Beam Suntory and Major Brands, and made in partnership and administered through the United Way of Greater St. Louis.

    The St. Louis Area Foodbank provided more than 28 million meals to families throughout 26 counties in Illinois and Missouri last year.

    American Indian mother of two dies in police custody after her repeated pleas for help ignored

    The ugly American secret has been exposed. All across the country, women and men are dying in police custody and have been by the thousands every year.

    Four days before Sandra Bland was arrested in Waller County, Texas, a 24-year-old American Indian woman of the Lakota tribe, Sarah Lee Circle Bear of Clairmont, South Dakota, was arrested on a simple bond violation.

    Witnesses stated that before being transferred to a holding cell, Circle Bear pleaded to jailers that she was in excruciating pain. Jail staff responded by dismissing her cries for help, telling her to “knock it off,” and “quit faking.” Inmates cried out for the jail staff to help Circle Bear, to which they eventually responded by picking her up off of the floor, dragging her out of the cell, and transferring her to a holding cell. Circle Bear was later found unresponsive in the holding cell.

    This is completely despicable. It’s worse than that—the actions (or inaction) of the jail directly caused Sarah’s death. The American justice system is full of so many egregious human rights violations that it truly needs to be shut down and rebooted from scratch.

    Sarah was a mother of two babies. The entire trajectory and quality of their lives will be forever changed by this. Ralkina Jones, another beloved mother of young children, died in police custody in Cleveland under very similar circumstances.

    What we now know is that American Indians, relative to their size of the population, actually make up three of the five most likely demographics to be killed by police in America. In other words, while many of us think of the deep injustices faced by our indigenous sisters and brothers as historic, they are actually very present and current.

    As we have done for Sandra Bland, we must now demand answers and evidence in the death of Sarah Lee Circle Bear.

    It appears that Cincinnati is attempting to quickly indict the university officer that killed #SamuelDubose in order to avoid any unrest.

    It’s Time to Be Smart About Crime, in STL.

    For the last six months, several members of the Public Safety Committee have been calling upon the Chief of Police and the Mayor of the City of St. Louis to create a comprehensive public safety plan. Such a plan must be just that — comprehensive.

    It’s easy and politically advantageous to add 160 police officers and think that we will be safer. What’s hard is to admit that without addressing the root causes of crime in our city, lack of access to education, poor economic opportunity, and substandard living conditions, we cannot count on crime to decrease. The Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy cites that there is little evidence to suggest that increasing the size of a police force actually reduces crime. St. Louis City already has 28% more officers than an average city our size. Simply adding officers, without a strategy, engagement of the community, and addressing the root causes of crime, will not decrease our crime rates.
    […]

    We must admit that crime is a multifaceted problem, and, therefore, solutions must include both long-term and short-term efforts to improve the quality of life issues that contribute to crime in our city. One-third of our City budget is dedicated to public safety. We need to use current funding effectively before we add additional tax burdens to the people of St. Louis. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy offers a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of crime reduction strategies. This needs to be used as a guide to ensure that our practices are producing the best outcomes for the City of St. Louis. A comprehensive plan must be research based, grounded in best practices, and include at minimum:

    1) Developing a uniform policing strategy,

    2) Creating mechanisms to keep low-level offenders out of jail,

    3) Favoring drug treatment over incarceration,

    4) Decreasing the amount of guns on our streets,

    5) Addressing the root causes of crime through social service programs with proven crime reducing results, and

    6) Raising the minimum wage to lift more people out of poverty.

    This list is by no means exhaustive, and it’s a starting point for a larger conversation about all of the aspects of public safety that must be addressed.

    More at the link.

    This menacing tweet by @deray was also on the Baltimore PD’s “threat” matrix, more on that threat matrix coming up.

    St. Louis region still among worst in nation for black-white economic disparity, says report

    African-Americans in the St. Louis region are more than three times as likely to be in poverty as whites here, giving the region one of the highest racial-economic disparities of any major urban area in America, according to a new report.

    Responding to the report, released Wednesday by the East-West Gateway Council of Governments, St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger said he will seek additional information about the St. Louis County data in particular.

    “The racial disparity . . . that’s really troubling. It does show that we have a long way to go in that regard,” said Stenger, who is a member of the council’s board of directors. “I’d really like to dig down a little further into this information. My staff will be contacting their staff.”

    The report compares the situation in the bi-state St. Louis region to other population centers nationally on education, housing, land use, health, crime and other topics.

    While the St. Louis region does well in areas like education and housing, it stood out negatively in data regarding income differences between its white and black residents.

    “Racial disparity continues to be a problem,” says a summary accompanying the 124-page report, which ranks the region fifth-highest in racial disparity for poverty among the nation’s 50 most populous regions.

    “The median household income of black households in St. Louis is $31,200, compared to $61,200 for white households,” states the summary. The unemployment level for blacks in the St. Louis labor force is 2.8 times higher than it is for whites, which puts St. Louis eighth-highest in that category.

    The report also found a huge disparity in the St. Louis region in infant mortality, which is more than three times higher among blacks here than among whites. Nationally, the ratio is just over twice as high among blacks as whites.

    In those and every other measure considered, “the St. Louis region has much higher gaps [between blacks and whites] than the United States average,” Medora Kealy, one of the report’s authors, told the council in a downtown St. Louis meeting at which the report was released Wednesday.

    Other studies have previously identified racial economic disparity as a growing problem. One 2013 report by the St. Louis County Department of Planning found that not only were African-Americans more impoverished overall, but that they were far more likely than whites to live in areas of “concentrated poverty.”

  186. rq says

    Here’s the transcript of Ray Tensing & #SamDubose’s interaction (as seen in body camera video) @JasonLawNews @WCPO
    Note the moment at the end there where Tensing asks Dubose to remove his seatbelt, and Dubose justifiably panics but not by attacking or becoming aggressive, but by trying to get away.
    And still it got him NOTHING.

    The incident report itself. As written by one of the later-arriving officers. Full of lies. He shot him in the fucking head.

    ‘You won’t believe how quickly he pulls his gun’: Video shows campus cop kill Sam Dubose, link contains the bodycam footage of the shooting.

    Authorities have released a body camera video that shows the events leading to the fatal shooting of an unarmed black motorist by a University of Cincinnati police officer.

    Officer Ray Tensing was indicted for murder Wednesday in the death of 43-year-old Sam Dubose during a traffic stop.
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    The city manager and Cincinnati police chief both warned before the video’s release that it was “not a good situation,” and the Hamilton County prosecutor said it showed Tensing “should never have been a police officer.”

    Video of the incident shows Tensing approach the car July 19 and ask Dubose for his driver’s license, but the driver does not do so.

    Dubose insists he has a license and asks the officer to check his name to confirm, but he does not offer any explanation for why he cannot show his license.

    Tensing asks about a bottle he can see inside the vehicle, and Dubose hands him a bottle of gin.

    The officer asks him to be honest and admit if his license is suspended, but Dubose insists that his license is valid.

    Tensing then asks Dubose to unbuckle his seat belt and step out of the car, and the driver starts to do so.

    As he turns to unbuckle the seat belt, he apparently takes his foot off the brake, causing the car to move slightly.

    The officer then draws his weapon and fires immediately, killing Dubose.

    “He didn’t do anything violent to the officer, he wasn’t dragging him, and he intentionally pulled out his gun and shot him in the head,” said Prosecutor Joe Deters.

    The officer told 911 dispatchers immediately after the shooting that he fired one shot, fatally striking Dubose in the head, because he was “almost run over” during the traffic stop. Tensing said in the incident report that he was “dragged” by the vehicle.

    “He was making excuses for the purposeful killing of another person,” Deters said. “I’m not saying he’s smart, I’m saying that’s what I think he did.”

    A warrant was issued for Tensing’s arrest, and the prosecutor said he was treating the officer as a murderer and repeatedly called for the university’s police department to be disbanded.

    “He lost his temper because Mr. Dubose wouldn’t get out of his car,” Deters added. “When you see this you won’t believe how quickly he pulls his gun. Maybe a second — it’s incredible.”

    “We have to stop having officers that think it is better to cover other officers than it is to tell the truth.” #SamDubose

    Prosecutor on indicted University of Cincinnati officer: ‘He purposely killed him’

    In a time marked by a series of deadly confrontations between African Americans and police, a white University of Cincinnati officer was indicted Wednesday on a murder charge in the shooting of an unarmed black motorist near the campus, with the county prosecutor calling it a “senseless act.”

    The city had braced for possible fallout as the Hamilton County grand jury weighed the evidence in the case of Officer Ray Tensing, who on July 19 stopped Samuel DuBose for a missing front license plate.

    DuBose, 43, was shot and killed during the encounter, which was captured on video by the officer’s body camera. The video was released Wednesday by Hamilton County prosecutor Joe Deters.

    “He purposely killed him,” Deters said of Tensing. “He should never have been a police officer.

    “I have been doing this for 30 years, and this is the most asinine act by a police officer I have ever seen,” he said. “This type of senseless act, this doesn’t happen in the United States, maybe in Afghanistan, but not in the United States. ”

    The murder charge, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, comes after a string of incidents in which blacks have died at the hands of police officers in the last two years, including in Ferguson, Mo., New York’s Staten Island, Cleveland and Baltimore.

    He honestly doesn’t believe this kind of thing happens in the US of A? Where’s he been living, under which rock?

    Ferguson Prisoner Beaten by Cops Has Won His Appeal

    The Ferguson cops charged Henry Davis with destruction of property because he bled on their uniforms when they beat him.

    Then, as if fearing it might be outdone in ridiculousness, a federal district court ruled that Davis could not sue the cops for violating his Fourth Amendment rights because they had not injured him badly enough as he lay handcuffed on the jailhouse floor, a working man arrested on a traffic warrant in a case of mistaken identity.

    “As unreasonable as it may sound, a reasonable officer could have believed that beating a subdued and compliant Mr. Davis while causing only a concussion, scalp lacerations and bruising with almost no permanent damage did not violate the Constitution,” the district court ruled in tossing out the case.

    Davis appealed and his attorney James Schottel responded to absurdity with legal reasoning. He argued that the decisive factor was not the seriousness of Davis’s injuries but the nature of the officers’ actions.

    The district court had ruled that the officers enjoyed “official immunity” because they “acted within their discretion and caused only de minimis [slight] injuries.”

    Schottel contended that official immunity “does not apply to discretionary acts done in bad faith or with malice.”

    The appeals court could not have been clearer in its response on Tuesday.

    “We agree.”

    The court went on to say, “That an officer’s conduct caused only de minimis injuries does not necessarily establish the absence of malice or bad faith as a matter of law.”
    […]

    The appeals court then summarizes the lower court’s contention that “a reasonable officer” could believe that in beating their handcuffed prisoner they were not violating the Constitution.

    Here, too, the appeals court could not have been clearer in its response.

    “We disagree.”
    […]

    In the uproar following Brown’s death, the Ferguson police department came under scrutiny. The beating of Davis reached public attention.

    So did Tihen’s role in the incident.

    And that may have been part of her reason for not seeking a second term.

    Three people campaigned for the seat. The victor was a high-energy, goodhearted black woman named Ella Jones, who won after spending weeks canvassing from house to house.

    “Every door that’s in the First Ward,” she told The Daily Beast.

    A black man named Wesley Bell won a seat in the Third Ward, which made the City Council three and three race-wise.

    Ferguson also got a black police chief.

    And on Tuesday, the court of appeals reversed a lower court’s ruling and said Davis could go ahead with his excessive-force suit.

    His lawyer, Schottel, reported in the afternoon that his client Davis had not yet heard the good news.

    “He’s at work,” Schottel said. “He’ll probably be the last to know. He’s a hard worker.”

    Congratulations to Mr Davis. Which seems such a silly thing to say.

  187. rq says

    This is a very important point: RT @PhilipBrownJr: A reporter asked if #SamDubose had a criminal background and this guy said, “Not that I’m going to share with you today. This guy = the prosecutor. Wow.

    Prosecutor: UC officer ‘purposefully killed’ DuBose, local Cincinnati press.

    A University of Cincinnati police officer went to jail on a murder charge Wednesday after his own body camera video showed him shooting an unarmed motorist in the head during a traffic stop.

    Ray Tensing is the first officer in Cincinnati to face murder charges for killing someone in the line of duty.

    The video proved to be crucial evidence to the grand jurors who indicted Tensing, and it stunned city officials, prosecutors and the relatives of shooting victim Samuel DuBose.

    It also was a reminder that video, whether captured by witnesses on smart phones or by police officers themselves, is transforming the way fatal encounters involving police are investigated and perceived around the nation.

    “It’s an absolute tragedy that anyone would behave in this manner,” Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said after publicly releasing the video. “It was senseless. It’s just horrible.

    “He purposefully killed him.”

    I believe they are finally using Tensing’s mugshot in articles, not his patriotic police officer uniform portrait.

    University of Cincinnati police officer who shot man during traffic stop charged with murder

    A University of Cincinnati police officer was indicted Wednesday on a charge of murder for fatally shooting an unarmed black man during a traffic stop earlier this month.

    The violent episode added Cincinnati to the list of cities where fatal encounters between police and civilians have drawn national attention amid an ongoing debate over how officers use lethal force.

    In Cincinnati, a city not far removed from the violent riots that erupted in 2001 after a white officer shot an unarmed black man, officials said called the episode a tragedy and said they were prepared for any potential unrest.

    “It was so unnecessary for this to occur,” Joe Deters, the Hamilton County prosecutor, said at a news conference.

    July on pace to be the deadliest month of 2015 for people killed by American police. What an anti-record.

    As of this writing, on the afternoon of Wednesday, July 29th, 2015, we know of 111 people who have been killed in fatal encounters with police across the United States. The previous high for 2015 was this past March when 115 people were killed. With 3 days left, and an average of about 4 people killed per day, it is almost certain that July will be the deadliest month of the year and will come close to surpassing the all-time record of 125 people killed by police from June of 2013.

    Beyond the obvious reality that it is outrageously disturbing that so many people are killed by American police, three additional thoughts need to be noted.

    First off, none of these numbers reflect people who’ve died in police custody in jails or holding cells – including women like Sandra Bland, Sarah Lee Circle Circle Bear or Ralkina Jones, who all died in police custody this month. Certainly, all three of them would be alive and well had they not encountered law enforcement.

    Secondly, these numbers aren’t even official. While we are 100% sure at least this many people died after fatal encounters with police, these are just crowdsourced from news articles and would likely be even more accurate if police properly reported their numbers.

    Lastly, in spite of more attention and media coverage on police brutality and violence than we’ve ever had in this country, all indications are that the problem is not getting better, but is getting worse. We are organizing, we are advocating, a few policies are being enacted, but we’ve yet to see the progress trickle down in a way that actually impacts these numbers with a meaningful decline.

    Pro-Police Rally Disrupted by Coffee Not Cops Denver, video.

    On July 20th in Denver a pro police rally was held for the general public at Civic Center Park one week after Paul Castaway was gunned down by the Denver Police Department. A local anti-police brutality group, Coffee Not Cops, decided to attend.

    Media is already filming on West Florissant in Ferguson. A few weeks before the anniversary, the circus has begun.

  188. rq says

    Press release (pdf) on bodycams in New Jersey.

    A Mom Called the Police on My 3-Year-Old Son After a Playground Accident. This is where it starts. And that mom’s kids learn that it’s okay to call the cops like that.

    Here’s the short version: A mother called the police after my son and her daughter collided in a playground accident. That really happened. He’s 3.

    The longer version is this: I was sitting on a bench, in a spot where I could see the entire circular track the kids scoot and ride their bikes around. When my son didn’t complete his lap in a timely manner, I stood up to look for him and saw him standing with a family including several children. He’s extremely social and often stops to talk and make friends, so I assumed he was just chatting with them.

    A minute or so later I heard him yelling “Mommy, Mommy.” I ran over to find two children sobbing hysterically, a little girl and my son.

    A woman sitting nearby volunteered, “I saw the whole thing! They ran into each other. They’re both just scared.” I gathered my son into my arms and comforted him, telling him it was OK, that it was an accident.

    “I didn’t mean to knock her over,” he sobbed. He then repeatedly tried to apologize to the little girl and her mother, who ignored him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he sputtered over and over.

    “Is she OK?” I asked the little girl’s mother. She told me her tooth was wiggly and bleeding. My son was still hysterical, so I picked him up and started to move to another corner to continue calming him down.

    The other mother motioned to me not to leave.

    “What do you want from me?” I asked her. “It was an accident.”

    I didn’t mean it in a sarcastic way at all — I wasn’t sure if she wanted money, or my contact info, or in what way she expected me to help. I was (probably stupidly) prepared to do what she asked for. The last thing I expected was what she said next.

    “I called the police.”

    “YOU CALLED THE POLICE?” This is the point at which I have been mentally punching this woman for days now.

    “Your son hit my daughter,” she said. “I called the police.”

    At that moment, my internal Mama Bear rose up to her hind legs and bared her claws. “He’s 3 YEARS OLD. It was an accident,” I snarl/yelled. I have never in my life felt a sense of assertiveness so strong for my own self, but when it came to my kid, I felt an unprecedented sense of agency and strength. I knew I would stand up for my child in absolutely any way needed to protect him.

    “She’s crazy,” shouted the witness. “I saw the whole thing. They ran into each other. It was a total accident.”
    […]

    When the family was on their way, I asked the police officers if they needed my information or anything. They said no. “She wanted to press charges,” he told me. I’m not sure if he meant against me or my pre-schooler.

    “I can see the woman over there telling everyone the story…” I began.

    “Yeah, he’s a maniac, right?” the police officer said winkingly, before he and his partner headed on their way.

    It’s been a few days since this happened, and my son seems to be fine. He got a scare, but he’s back on his scooter and hasn’t mentioned the incident again. He’s always been very conscientious about watching out for pedestrians while on his scooter, but it can’t hurt for him to be even more so. We haven’t yet been back to the area of the park where the collision happened, but I think that’s more because of my fear than his.

    Because while he’s fine, I’m not. I’m furious. And I’m scared. My black son just had his first police interaction at age 3.

    I have tried to be understanding of the panic the other mother probably felt when her daughter was hurt. My son knocked his teeth back into his gums in a fight with a slide and had to be held down in the ER while he got stitches where he bit through his own tongue. I know how it feels to be scared for your injured child. I feel terrible, as did my son, for the little girl who was hurt.

    It’s still hard for me to understand how a fellow mother could call the police on a sobbing 3-year-old. But I want to believe that she simply didn’t know what to do, and called the police out of fear and confusion. I even want to believe that she was trying to lay the groundwork to sue me, that she wanted money. I want to believe those things more than some things I could believe.

    I’m glad the police were reasonable and straightened things out. Perhaps in this instance, it was best they were there to handle what was obviously a touchy situation. In this instance. This time.

    But to be the mother of a black son is to be scared for them, constantly. Black mothers know this better than me, have known it for a long time. I am not the person to tell that story.

    I don’t know if there was a racial component to what happened this time, but I can’t help but flash forward to someday when someone may wrongfully point their finger at my son again, someday when he’s not an adorable 3-year-old, someday when I’m not there to speak for him.

    And I think that’s why my guts are still roiling days later, why I am still feeling emotional about an incident that everyone seems to agree was crazy, but over now. That I shouldn’t let it get to me. It got to me. I’m not over it. I wish I was.

    But if nothing else, I am glad I felt that Mama Bear rise up inside me. I am glad that I knew, in that moment, without a shadow of a doubt, that I would and will always do anything, ANYTHING to protect my son. Because, unfortunately, he lives in a world where he needs a little extra protection.

    TW on this for physical violence. When Cops Get Caught Sanitizing And Flat-Out Lying About Brutality

    Few aspects of policing attract more scrutiny than an officer’s use of force. And as people around the nation continue to voice concerns about the sometimes contentious relationship between citizens and law enforcement, it’s become clear that police and the policed often have drastically different interpretations of the same incidents.

    In some cases, this disagreement may stem from an honest difference of opinion. Police violence — and violence in general — typically looks repulsive, whether you’re watching it unfold in person or on video. It regularly leads to questions about whether a situation truly called for the level of force used, and whether anyone’s civil rights were violated in the process. But when the question of what’s “excessive” is left to an internal review process that tends to give officers a great deal of leeway, what might appear improper to the average citizen is often found to be justified in the eyes of the law.

    [This story includes videos that contain explicit language and graphic depictions of violence. They may be upsetting for some readers.]

    A number of high-profile cases over the past few years suggest that something even more disturbing can happen when police are given the responsibility of self-reporting violence. The instances below offer clear evidence of cops — and in some cases, their superiors — attempting to sanitize, mischaracterize or simply lie about the use of force. They raise disquieting questions about what might have happened if videos of the incidents had never surfaced — and how many similar incidents never become known to the public.

    This is a very violent article. Very.

    #SamDubose pulled over for doing exact same thing #Ferguson Mayor Knowles does. Sam is dead.

    Some of you haven’t seen these maps of how racially segregated Ferguson, McKinney, Fairfield, and Charleston are.

    At #chicago City Hall right now: community protesting the closing of Bronzeville’s last open enrollment HS #saveDyett

  189. rq says

    Another anniversary coming up, only a year. The Brief Life And Baffling Death Of John Crawford III, a portrait. From October of last year.

    Mother at funeral: ‘I want justice for my son’

    For 87 minutes Tuesday, anger stayed on the other side of the church door.

    Instead family and friends of Samuel Vincent DuBose shared laughter and poetry, Scripture and songs. They shed tears. And they, too, summoned strengthen.

    They remembered DuBose not as the unarmed man shot and killed by University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing during a traffic stop on July 19 in Mount Auburn, but as a father, a son, a brother, a cousin, a grandfather. He was as well a lover of music, a rapper, the founder of a black motorcycle gang and the kind of man whose smile lit up a room.
    […]

    “Despite all the things going on outside, we are not going to dismiss that,” said the Rev. Ennis Tait during the start of funeral services for DuBose at Church of the Living God in Avondale. “But for a few minutes we are going to celebrate the life of Samuel DuBose. It’s not about religion today. It’s about unity. Today is about solidarity … About coming together today.”

    Tate called for the congregation to celebrate DuBose’s life and to support his family:

    “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon. Fill this house with love.”

    And they did.

    To a first cousin, he was the man who had the heart of a lion and who was a protector.

    To Al Jenkins, he was the founder of “The Ruthless Riders,” a motorcycle club. He was Big Dude. He was the guy in the room “who on your worst day is going to make you smile.”

    To his mother, Audrey DuBose, he was her complicated, challenging oldest son, her second of five children.

    “He loved life. He loved freedom. He was impossible,” she told the congregation as they nodded in agreement and laughed. “But he brought me so much joy. As much aggravation as he brought, he brought joy.”

    The crowd that sat shoulder-to-shoulder in the standing-room-only sanctuary seemed to appreciate that one man can be many things in life.

    Audrey DuBose shook her head as she recounted how he harped about folks valuing the wrong things, materialistic things. “But he was just as materialistic.”

    But what the father of 10 and grandfather of four loved most was family.

    “He brought all his babies home to me … He was going to make sure someone was left here for me,” she continued. “Praise God!

    “I loved my son, God knows I loved my son,” she said. “But I’m going to be all right. Sam is already all right.”
    […]

    Tuesday was meant for burying her son, Audrey DuBose said. But it was clear she wants answers.

    “I don’t know anything. I haven’t been told anything,” she told members of the media. She said she wants to see an indictment in the death.

    “I want them to go to jail. I want them locked up. There is no justice if someone can get away with murder and walk away.”

    Her daughter and DuBose’s older sister, Terina Allen, added: “We don’t want riots. We are peaceful.”

    Before the doors opened to let the congregation head outside and while Tate still had the pulpit, he offered one final message:

    “God has called us,” he said microphone in hand. “The time for you to speak the truth about injustice is now. No more excuses. There is no reason we shouldn’t be standing together.

    “If we can stand together in here, we must stand together out there.

    “If we can be united in love and peace in here, we can be united in love and peace out there.”

    I hope there is justice in this case, and may it pave the way for more justice for more families in the future.

    Now, the University of Cincinnati is creating the spectacle by themselves with these evacuations. #SamuelDubose Yep, they evacuated prior to the announcement and release!
    UC Police officers are blocking off streets into campus.
    The University of Cincinnati is not simply closing, it is being evacuated. #SamuelDubose (see attached tweet)
    The University of Cincinnati has canceled classes on the Uptown and Medical campuses today. #SamuelDubose

  190. rq says

    Univ. of California Academic Workers’ Union Calls on AFL-CIO To Terminate Police Union’s Membership

    United Auto Workers Local 2865, the union representing 13,000 teaching assistants and other student workers throughout the University of California, called on the AFL-CIO to end its affiliation with the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA) in a resolution passed by its governing body on July 25.

    The resolution came in the wake of a letter written by the UAW’s Black Interests Coordinating Committee (BICC). The group formed in December 2014 in response to the acquittals of police officers in the deaths of Mike Brown and Eric Garner and is largely inspired by recent actions in the Black Lives Matter movement. With the letter, BICC aims to “start a really difficult conversation that the labor movement has had in the past and needs to continue to have around the intersections of race and labor, economic privation and racial disparity,” according to BICC member Brandon Buchanan, a graduate student currently studying Sociology at UC Davis who serves as Head Steward.

    The letter charges that police associations operate in ways that are antithetical to the mission statement of the AFL-CIO, particularly its stated goal “to fulfill the yearning of the human spirit for liberty, justice and community; to advance individual and associational freedom; [and] to vanquish oppression, privation and cruelty in all their forms.”

    It provides historical evidence to its allegations, saying, “Police unions in particular emerge out of a long history of police intervention in labor politics and its complicity in racial violence,” before referencing deadly disputes with activist workers in the 19th century, the defense of Jim Crow segregation, the lobbying that enabled the circumstances of Freddie Gray’s death and the crackdown on the Occupy movement across the country as examples of American police acting as a “violent supressive force.”

    The full letter is linked to at the article.

    It is anticipated that the killing of #SamuelDubose may force the University of Cincinatti PD to adopt the reforms of the Cincinnati PD.

    ‘I’ll put a hole right through your head,’ Mass. police detective tells driver, in another incident of police aggression.

    security firm ZeroFox provided a threat assessment on 4/27, citing @deray and @bmorebloc https://www.dropbox.com/s/0nt4n86c83g707n/07329.pdf?dl=0 … – that’s for Baltimore.

  191. rq says

    On black men and traffic stops. These tweets each link to an article about the incident in question.
    Cop kills black man in GA last yr, claims he was “dragged” during traffic stop. No video recording. Ruled justified.
    Officers claim Kashad “attempted to back up into police car.” They fired 15 shots.
    Dominique Lewis allegedly sped off during traffic stop. Officer fired at him “fearing for his life.”
    Tommy Yancy beaten to death by 5 officers last May for not having a license plate.
    Tyrone Davis killed by police last yr for “refusing to comply” during traffic stop.

    The police are preparing to fight black mourners instead of fighting a system that has killed 3 black people in 2 months. #SamDubose
    I understand nothing much happened – the prosecutor’s performance was pitch-perfect. (Yes, he said a lot of necessary things, but I do somewhat question his motives. Even if they do lead to a more satisfying result.)

  192. rq says

    Black Lives Matter protestors and others stand at Hamilton County Courthouse for justice for Samuel DuBose. @WCPO

    University of Cincinnati reacts to former officer indictment – wait, he’s a former officer already??? Thought he was just on paid leave!

    Leaders at the University of Cincinnati decided to exercise caution ahead of Wednesday’s decision and canceled all classes after 11 a.m. in the morning. A release from the school said, “We realize this is a challenging time for our university community.” Things were quiet on the UC campus but earlier in the day some people were caught by surprise as a heavy police presence arrived on the Clifton campus. CLICK HERE to read UC President Santa Ono’s statement. Nearly two dozen Ohio highway patrol troopers arrived on the UC campus late Wednesday morning just prior to the campus closing for the day. Along with the troopers was a special response team equivalent to a SWAT unit. Their arrival on campus came just hours before the Hamilton County prosecutor announced charges filed against former UC police officer, Ray Tensing. Barricades were set up at the entrance to the UC safety department. UC officials said they closed the campus early with an abundance of caution. UC spokesman Greg Vehr said it was best to inconvenience some than put safety in jeopardy. Following news of the indictment student reacted to the charges filed against the UC police officer. The UC closures do not affect the medical center or the Blue Ash or Clermont campuses.

    Huh, no paragraph breaks have transferred.

    Say Her Name: Protesters in Chicago Demand Justice for Sandra Bland

    This week, from Dallas to San Diego to the Midwest, activists and community members around the United States are answering a national call to demand justice for Sandra Bland, a Black woman and activist who died in police custody on July 13.

    In Chicago, protesters lifted up Sandra Bland’s name on Michigan Avenue on July 28, as hundreds of protesters lined a bridge over the Chicago River, urging those who believe Black lives matter to “say her name.” While a great deal of public discourse has focused on whether or not Sandra Bland committed suicide, or died as a result of police brutality, participants in Tuesday night’s event carried a broader message – that the system was responsible for Sandra Bland’s death regardless of the specifics of her death. In the words of organizer Mariame Kaba, “I don’t care about the CSI version of how she died. The system killed her. The rest is superfluous.”

    Attendees loudly stated – through speech, song and imagery – that Sandra Bland’s unlawful arrest was, in of itself, an act of violence and a manifestation of a culture of anti-Blackness in US policing. Connections were also drawn between Black and Indigenous struggles, with the name of Sarah Lee Circle Bear – an Indigenous woman who recently died in a jail cell – being called out alongside that of Sandra Bland and Rekia Boyd, an unarmed Black woman shot down by police in Chicago, whose family continues to seek justice.

    As the crowd marched over the bridge carrying lights large and small, echoes of “This Little Light of Mine” could be heard along the shoreline. As more pictures of solidarity actions emerge in the coming days, and Black August events kick off nationwide, organizers here in Chicago and around the country hope that more people will take to the streets to say the names of the fallen, and demand a world where arrests like Sandra Bland’s are unthinkable. In the words of local organizer Page May, “I just want to live. I just want to be free.”

    Dallas. 7/29. #SamuelDubose. 8pm.
    #SamuelDubose. University of Cincinatti. 7/29. 9pm. Protest.

    University of Cincinnati Officer Indicted in Shooting Death of Samuel Dubose

    A University of Cincinnati police officer was indicted Wednesday on a murder charge in what a prosecutor called “a senseless, asinine shooting” of an unarmed man during a minor traffic stop. Officials say it was the first time such a charge had been leveled against an officer in the county.

    The Hamilton County prosecuting attorney, Joseph T. Deters, released a much anticipated video of the shooting of Samuel Dubose taken by the officer’s body camera that he described as crucial evidence that Mr. Dubose did not act aggressively or pose a threat to Officer Ray Tensing, and that Officer Tensing had lied about being dragged by Mr. Dubose’s car. A grand jury, Mr. Deters announced, indicted the officer on a murder charge, punishable by life in prison, and a voluntary manslaughter charge.
    Continue reading the main story
    Related Coverage

    Questions After Unarmed Ohio Man Is Killed in Traffic StopJULY 22, 2015
    A police officer in University City, Mo., at the scene of a protest marking 100 days since the death of Michael Brown in August.
    Fatal Police Shootings: Accounts Since FergusonAPRIL 8, 2015
    In hundreds of police departments across the nation, the percentage of whites on the force is more than 30 percentage points higher than in the communities they serve.
    interactive
    The Race Gap in America’s Police DepartmentsSEPT. 4, 2014

    “It was a senseless, asinine shooting,” Mr. Deters said at a news conference, using stark terms to denounce the July 19 killing, the officer’s claims and the officer himself. “This doesn’t happen in the United States, OK?” he said. “This might happen in Afghanistan. People don’t get shot for a traffic stop.”
    Photo
    Officer Ray Tensing Credit Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office

    “This office has probably reviewed 100 police shootings, and this is the first time we’ve thought, ‘This is without question a murder,’ ” he said.

    In an interview with an Ohio television station, a lawyer for Officer Tensing, Stew Mathews, disputed Mr. Deters’s comments and said that other video of the shooting would tell a different story. He said his client cried when he heard of the indictment.

    The county prosecutor’s office said that no law enforcement officer in Hamilton County — whose county seat is Cincinnati — had ever before been indicted on murder charges for use of force while on duty. At the news conference, Mr. Deters said Officer Tensing “should never have been a police officer,” but he declined to elaborate.

    Asked if he thought Officer Tensing, 25, had tried to mislead investigators, Mr. Deters said, “Yeah, yes, I think he was making an excuse for the purposeful killing of another person.”

    Mr. Deters added, “I think he lost his temper because Mr. Dubose wouldn’t get out of his car.”

    So that’s at least the official story now.

  193. rq says

    Texas House hearing to look into Sandra Bland death

    A Texas House committee will hear testimony Thursday about the circumstances surrounding the arrest and death of Sandra Bland, a black woman who was found dead in a Waller County Jail cell three days after her car was stopped by a white state trooper.

    The House County Affairs Committee hearing also will examine jail standards, including procedures for dealing with potentially mentally ill prisoners in county jails, and issues related to how the public and police interact, according to Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, chairman of the committee.

    Thursday’s hearing, in Room E1.026 in the Capitol Extension, will begin at 2 p.m.

    Police chief: ‘Justice was served’ in charge against Tensing, video.

    Cincinnati Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell reacts to the announcement that University of Cincinnati police officer Raymond Tensing has been indicted on murder charges in the death of Samuel Dubose.

    A Dream Undone, on voting rights.

    After a few weeks, Frye drove over to the Board of Elections in Rockingham, the county seat, to complain. An official told him to go back and try again. This time a different registrar, after asking if he was the fellow who had gone over to the election board, handed him a paragraph to copy from the Constitution. He copied it, and with that, he became a voter.

    But in the American South in 1956, not every would-be black voter was an Air Force officer with the wherewithal to call on the local election board; for decades, most had found it effectively impossible to attain the most elemental rights of citizenship. Only about one-quarter of eligible black voters in the South were registered that year, according to the limited records available. By 1959, when Frye went on to become one of the first black graduates of the University of North Carolina law school, that number had changed little. When Frye became a legal adviser to the students running the antisegregation sit-ins at the Greensboro Woolworth’s in 1960, the number remained roughly the same. And when Frye became a deputy United States attorney in the Kennedy administration, it had grown only slightly. By law, the franchise extended to black voters; in practice, it often did not.

    Advertisement
    Continue reading the main story

    What changed this state of affairs was the passage, 50 years ago this month, of the Voting Rights Act. Signed on Aug. 6, 1965, it was meant to correct “a clear and simple wrong,” as Lyndon Johnson said. “Millions of Americans are denied the right to vote because of their color. This law will ensure them the right to vote.” It eliminated literacy tests and other Jim Crow tactics, and — in a key provision called Section 5 — required North Carolina and six other states with histories of black disenfranchisement to submit any future change in statewide voting law, no matter how small, for approval by federal authorities in Washington. No longer would the states be able to invent clever new ways to suppress the vote. Johnson called the legislation “one of the most monumental laws in the entire history of American freedom,” and not without justification. By 1968, just three years after the Voting Rights Act became law, black registration had increased substantially across the South, to 62 percent. Frye himself became a beneficiary of the act that same year when, after a close election, he became the first black state representative to serve in the North Carolina General Assembly since Reconstruction.

    In the decades that followed, Frye and hundreds of other new black legislators built on the promise of the Voting Rights Act, not just easing access to the ballot but finding ways to actively encourage voting, with new state laws allowing people to register at the Department of Motor Vehicles and public-assistance offices; to register and vote on the same day; to have ballots count even when filed in the wrong precinct; to vote by mail; and, perhaps most significant, to vote weeks before Election Day. All of those advances were protected by the Voting Rights Act, and they helped black registration increase steadily. In 2008, for the first time, black turnout was nearly equal to white turnout, and Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first black president.

    Since then, however, the legal trend has abruptly reversed. In 2010, Republicans flipped control of 11 state legislatures and, raising the specter of voter fraud, began undoing much of the work of Frye and subsequent generations of state legislators. They rolled back early voting, eliminated same-day registration, disqualified ballots filed outside home precincts and created new demands for photo ID at polling places. In 2013, the Supreme Court, in the case of Shelby County v. Holder, directly countermanded the Section 5 authority of the Justice Department to dispute any of these changes in the states Section 5 covered. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, declared that the Voting Rights Act had done its job, and it was time to move on. Republican state legislators proceeded with a new round of even more restrictive voting laws.

    All of these seemingly sudden changes were a result of a little-known part of the American civil rights story. It involves a largely Republican countermovement of ideologues and partisan operatives who, from the moment the Voting Rights Act became law, methodically set out to undercut or dismantle its most important requirements. The story of that decades-long battle over the iconic law’s tenets and effects has rarely been told, but in July many of its veteran warriors met in a North Carolina courthouse to argue the legality of a new state voting law that the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School has called one of the “most restrictive since the Jim Crow era.” The decision, which is expected later this year, could determine whether the civil rights movement’s signature achievement is still justified 50 years after its signing, or if the movement itself is finished.

    A long history follows.

    This Prosecutor Took Cincinnati’s Black Community By Surprise After Charging A Police Officer With Murder. See how you can make an officer indictment into a clickbait headline?

    Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters was scathing in his assessment of a University of Cincinnati police officer charged Wednesday in the death of an unarmed black man. “This is the most asinine act I’ve ever seen a police officer make,” Deters said, excoriating officer Ray Tensing for the “totally unwarranted” fatal shooting of Samuel Dubose during a traffic stop on July 19. “He should have never been a police officer.”

    After a year of high-profile cases around the nation involving police relations with the black community, news of the indictment — and Deters’ harsh words — quickly made headlines. But in Cincinnati itself, the news was greeted with relief, and surprise, by black community leaders.

    “Deters has historically been at odds with the black community,” Aaron Roco, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Cincinnati, told BuzzFeed News. “We’re no fans of Joseph Deters. We’re happy with what he’s done today, but that may be the only thing.”

    Deters, a Republican, has represented Hamilton County as prosecuting attorney since 2004. He also previously held the position from 1992 to 1999, before serving as Ohio’s treasurer. His office did not respond to a request for an interview with BuzzFeed News for this article.

    During his tenure, Deters’ opponents have criticized him for having a brash manner — and accused him of using his office to pursue political vendettas and saying inflammatory things about black defendants in the press.

    “The relationship between the black community and Joseph Deters is strained, at best,” Janaya Trotter Bratton, criminal justice chair for the Greater Cincinnati Chapter National Action Network, told BuzzFeed News. “The press conference he gave today is usually the press conference he gives on day one with a black defendant.”

    More at the link, but another reason why I think his presentation may have been a performance for the benefit of the public, and not necessarily a sign of justice to come.

    5 Black Women Have Been Found Dead in Jail in the Last Month, Alternet.

    Whatever the case, black women are finally getting the media attention activists have long called for. It will be interesting to see how this new attention will play out in the presidential campaign when candidates begin seeking black votes. Farah Tanis, executive director of Black Women’s Blueprint, wrote in an email that black women have long been a transformative political force in the black community.

    “Within the past eight years, the political imperative and influence of black communities has grown exponentially, and black women’s political culture and political agency has been a revolutionary force,” she said. “Black women voted in record numbers in the last two elections, carrying the first black president of the United States to victory in 2008 and 2012. Black women’s groups and organizations, leaders and foot soldiers have sprung up everywhere.”

    Pew Research Center reports that black women had the highest voter turnout rate in 2008. In 2012, the black voter turnout rate surpassed white voters for the first time in history. Again, this milestone was achieved through the participation of black women.

    Without question, black women carry with them enormous political leverage that has the potential draw policymakers’ attention the abuses that they experience in the criminal justice system.

    How presidential contenders will deal with this in conversations about police brutality in the black community remains to be seen. What is clear is that the issue of state violence against black women is one that is becoming more impossible to avoid than ever before.

    Teen: As off-duty trooper shot at us, ‘we were afraid for our lives’

    The state attorney general’s office says its preliminary investigation has found an off-duty state trooper fired three shots from his personal gun as three teens fled his street in a car early Sunday morning — an account that’s largely consistent with what one of the teens has told NJ Advance Media.

    But not entirely consistent.

    Both say the teens knocked on the trooper’s Whispering Woods Lane door late at night after mistaking his home for a friend’s. Both say the trooper came downstairs with a gun — the AG’s office says it was his personal handgun. What the AG’s office describes as a “verbal exchange through the door,” teen Jesse Barkhorn, 18, describes as yelling and cursing by the trooper.

    And both say that as the teens got in their car and fled, the trooper entered the street with the gun.

    Where they notably differ: According to the AG’s office, the trooper says he identified himself as a trooper and pursued the teens on foot as they fled. Barkhorn says the trooper never identified himself.

  194. rq says

    University police officer charged with murder for shooting of Samuel DuBose

    A white police officer who gunned down an unarmed black man in Cincinnati, Ohio, has been indicted for murder by a grand jury, as the county prosecutor described the shooting as the “most asinine act” he had ever seen committed by a police officer.

    Samuel DuBose, 43, was killed on 19 July by a single shot to the head fired by University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing during a routine traffic stop, in which DuBose was pulled over for not having a front license plate.

    Tensing had maintained he was “dragged” by Dubose’s vehicle after the two entered into a physical altercation and was forced to shoot, but Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph Deters said body-camera evidence completely contradicted this account.

    In a frank assessment of the officer’s conduct, Deters said Tensing had “purposely killed” DuBose and that he “should never have been a police officer”.
    […]

    Deters, who was visibly angered at points during the press conference, continued: “He [Tensing] wasn’t dealing with someone who was wanted for murder, OK? He was dealing with someone who didn’t have a front license plate. This is, in the vernacular, a pretty chicken-crap stop, all right? And – I could use harsher words.

    “I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” he added. “This is the most asinine act I’ve ever seen a police officer make, totally unwarranted.”

    Deters also said the death reflected poorly on the university police department and had advised Cincinnati police chief Jeffrey Blackwell that the force be disbanded and replaced with a new city police precinct on campus.

    More at the link.

    The crowd is now taking this courthouse protest to the streets and to #Cincinnati police headquarters. #SamDubose #BlackLivesMatter But altogether things were peaceful.

    NYCLU Will Appeal Garner Grand Jury Transcript Decision

    In response to the Appellate Division, Second Department’s decision to keep secret records from the Grand Jury which failed to indict an NYPD officer in the death of Eric Garner, the New York Civil Liberties Union issued the following statement.

    “The New York Civil Liberties Union is going to appeal this decision,” said NYCLU Legal Director Arthur Eisenberg. “We argued that disclosure of the Grand Jury records is necessary to inform the community and its representatives in the legislature and allow for an informed debate regarding the issue of Grand Jury reform in cases involving lethal behavior by police officers. The governor and the legislature have been considering how to address the problem of alleged misbehavior by police officers and the apparent conflict that arises when a district attorney is called upon to prosecute the police. In order to address such issues it is important to know how and why the Grand Jury reached the decision that it did. The Eric Garner case presented a special circumstance for Grand Jury disclosure to advance the need of an informed electorate. The court’s opinion didn’t even consider that crucial question.”

    The NYCLU in December petitioned a Staten Island court to release to the public the Grand Jury’s transcript, as well as the evidence presented and instructions the jury was given. In March, Judge William E. Garnett rejected the request from the NYCLU, as well as requests from the Legal Aid Society, the public advocate’s office and the NAACP. The NYCLU appealed this decision last May.

    “The need for transparency to ensure fairness remains paramount,” said NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman. “The appointment of a special prosecutor is an important step but it is neither permanent nor sufficient. When a Grand Jury makes a decision about whether or not to indict an officer in the killing of a New Yorker, the public has a right to know why. There is a deep and well-founded suspicion of the criminal justice system partly because no one has been accountable for the death of Eric Garner and the community doesn’t know why.”

    How The ‘Best Place To Live In America’ Treats People Of Color When They’re Pulled Over, an article on McKinney, Texas.

    After the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the Department of Justice stepped in and conducted a thorough investigation of the city’s policing and municipal court practices to determine if the civil rights of its majority African-American population had been violated. One primary criticism included in the scathing DOJ report was the failure of Ferguson’s Municipal Court to function as “neutral arbiter of the law,” instead using “…its judicial authority as the means to compel the payment of fines and fees that advance the city’s financial interest.” The report went on to state that these court practices violated the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as imposed “unnecessary harm overwhelmingly on African American individuals, and run counter to public safety.”

    The situation in McKinney doesn’t rise to the extraordinary resource extraction and policing-for-profit scheme uncovered in Ferguson, most likely due to the above average economic success of most of its residents. But we did find an unequal application of the law when it came to the issuance of traffic tickets, arrest warrants and subsequent incarceration rates.

    There were a total of 10,216 traffic tickets issued in McKinney between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2014. For the two-year period, African Americans were ticketed at 4.77 percent above their population of 10.5 percent within the city, while whites were ticketed at 6.86 percent below.

    Every racial group except for African Americans were ticketed below their respective population representation, according to data provided by McKinney. African Americans were 2.27 times more likely to receive a warrant than their white counterparts overall. Hispanics were 1.4 times more likely to receive a warrant than whites.

    Together, all minority groups received 44.8 percent of warrants issued in the two-year period while only making up 33.9 percent of the population, revealing an astonishing 10.9 percentage point disparity. For white residents, the story is exactly the opposite. They make up about 55 percent of all warrants issued — about 20 percent below their population. Another way to think about it is that minorities are in general 1.73 times more likely to have a warrant issued after getting a ticket than a white person.

    African-Americans are 4.11 times more likely to be incarcerated after being issued a traffic ticket than whites. After a warrant was issued, African-Americans were 1.8 times more likely to be incarcerated than whites and 1.65 times more likely than Hispanics. African-Americans were still 1.63 times more likely to be incarcerated after a ticket was issued compared to whites and Hispanics put together.

    Arthur Fleming, president of the NAACP Dallas chapter, saw a bigger pattern in the McKinney disparities. “McKinney is one example of the everyday black experience in the United States,” he told ThinkProgress. “These numbers lay bare the ruthlessness of the oppressive system put in place brick by brick for over 400 years.”

    “The review of the aforementioned numbers leads me to believe that this police department is in need of a DOJ investigation immediately,” he added.

    Extrapolation to locations outside of McKinney included.

    At Least 5 Black Women Have Died in Jail This Month — Here Are 10 Facts You Need to Know, Mic.

    With the death of Ralkina Jones on Sunday, the number of known black women who’ve died in law enforcement custody in the United States this month rose to five.

    The first two caused a national stir. Sandra Bland’s alleged suicide by hanging in a Waller County, Texas, jail cell on July 13 sparked suspicion of foul play from her family members and advocates, prompting the hashtags #WhatHappenedToSandraBland, #SayHerName and #IfIDieInPoliceCustody to trend on social media. Bland was 28 years old.

    The following day, Kindra Chapman died under similar circumstances. The 18-year-old’s death by asphyxiation in a Homewood, Alabama, jail cell was ruled a suicide Monday by a Jefferson County coroner — a conclusion with which Chapman’s family agrees, despite some outside suspicion.

    Joyce Curnell, 50, was found dead in a North Charleston, South Carolina, jail cell on July 22, reports local television station WCBD. She was arrested for an outstanding bench warrant for shoplifting, and was seen at a local hospital the day before her death.

    Ralkina Jones died Sunday by yet undetermined means at a Cleveland Heights, Ohio, jail. Police said she’d looked “lethargic” in her cell beforehand and was being shuttled back and forth from a local hospital the night she died, according to BuzzFeed. Jones was 37.

    Most recently, officials found Raynetta Turner, a 43-year-old mother of eight, dead in a jail cell Monday in Mount Vernon, New York. Turner, who had been arrested for shoplifting at a food and restaurant supplier, also had multiple medical problems and was taken to a local hospital shortly after her arrest.

    Five women. Five ages. Five different circumstances surrounding their deaths.

    Each woman lost their lives in ways that sparked much-needed discussions around how state violence affects black women, specifically.

    To claim the same factors caused all of their deaths would be a disservice to their individual experiences. But as incarcerated black women in a time when discussions of black death and anti-black violence are largely oriented around black men, what happened to Bland, Chapman, Curnell, Jones and Turner begs our broader understanding of the unique disparities they faced as a demographic — and the myths we need to dispel about them.

    Ten facts about these cases, on stats and the like, at the link.

    The Shooting of Samuel Dubose

    In an exchange with the dispatcher just after the shooting, Tensing said: “I’m not injured. I almost got ran over by the car. He took off on me. I discharged one round, struck the man in the head.”

    Indeed, the information report about the shooting repeats and even amplifies that claim. It reads: “Officer Tensing stated that he almost was run over by the driver of the Honda Accord and was forced to shoot the driver with his duty weapon.” It continues: “Officer Tensing stated that he fired a single shot. Officer Tensing repeated that he was being dragged by the vehicle and had to fire his weapon.”

    The video proves that none of that happened. To watch that video is to be witness to an execution. What kind of person takes another person’s life so cavalierly? How little must an officer think of the person at the other end of the barrel to shoot him in the head when, per the video, there appears to be no threat?

    NBC News reported that an annual review of Tensing described him as “extremely proactive” with traffic enforcement.

    The NBC News report continued:

    “It was unclear whether that was meant to be high praise or an indication that he was overzealous in his policing. But a supervisor said the officer, Ray Tensing, ‘only meets the standards when it comes to community service,’ according to records released by the university. The supervisor wrote that Tensing should interact with the public more outside of traffic enforcement to improve his demeanor.”

    He joined the university police force a year ago and was generally well rated in his reviews.

    There are some blessings in this tragedy.

    The bodycam video was vital, and refuted the officer’s account. Also, the prosecutor moved quickly to charge the officer in the case.

    But, even those steps in the right direction are not fully restorative.

    Body cameras must be made mandatory countrywide. That will help with investigations after the fact, and may indeed alter behavior, but there is no full equipment fix for a personnel problem.

    What is happening between police officers and people of color in this country is a structural issue and must be deconstructed as such. Cameras won’t change basic character.

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    This incident adds to a drumbeat of falling black bodies after interactions with police officers. It adds to distrust about officers’ accounts of what leads to these deaths. It adds to a corrosion of trust in the entire criminal justice system.
    Continue reading the main story
    Recent Comments
    Sonny Pitchumani 4 minutes ago

    I don’t understand why the blacks, when stopped by cops, either resist arrest or try to flee to their death (by the cop, of course). Maybe,…
    Rudolf 4 minutes ago

    For this police man to lie about what happened, then have two of his colleagues lie as well while this whole thing is on camera, sound and…
    Ken 6 minutes ago

    Although African Americans are [sadly] suffering the brunt of the police-precipitated violence these days, no racial group has been exempt…

    See All Comments Write a comment

    Police violence may not be the greatest threat of violence to black lives — community violence, sadly, surpasses it — but the disproportionate use of force by some officers against black and brown people does appear to be a specific — and very real — threat that must be addressed.

    And the very idea that this violence is conducted by people acting as an arm of government, in your name but against your body, is too hard a pill to swallow. How can my taxes pay your salary while your actions drain blood from my body? How is it that I have to be afraid of cops as well as criminals? Whom do I turn to when the cops become the criminals?

    How often must we hear the lamentations for justice emanate from dark faces streaked with tears and burning with a righteous rage?

    Something has to give. The carnage must be abated. Trust must be restored.

    What we are living through cannot continue. People cannot long shoulder this weight — nor should they be required to.

    Samuel Delany and the Past and Future of Science Fiction

    In 1968, Samuel Delany attended the third annual Nebula Awards, presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). At the ceremony that night, “an eminent member of the SFWA,” as Delany later put it, gave a speech about changes in science fiction, a supposed shift away from old-fashioned storytelling to “pretentious literary nonsense,” or something along those lines. At the previous Nebula Awards, the year before, Delany had won best novel for “Babel-17,” in which an invented language has the power to destroy (his book shared the award with Daniel Keyes’s “Flowers for Algernon”), and earlier on that evening in 1968, Delany had again won best novel, for “The Einstein Intersection,” which tells of an abandoned Earth colonized by aliens, who elevate the popular culture of their new planet into divine myths. Sitting at his table, listening to the speech, Delany realized that he was one of its principle targets. Minutes later, he won another award, this time in the short-story category, for “Aye, and Gomorrah . . . ,” a tale of neutered space explorers who are fetishized back on Earth. As he made his way back to his seat after accepting the award, Isaac Asimov took Delany by the arm, pulled him close, and, as Delany (who goes by the nickname Chip) recalled in his essay “Racism and Science Fiction,” said: “You know, Chip, we only voted you those awards because you’re Negro . . . !”

    It was meant to be a joke, Delany immediately recognized; Asimov was trying, Delany later wrote, “to cut through the evening’s many tensions” with “a self-evidently tasteless absurdity.” The award wasn’t meant to decide what science fiction should be, conventional or experimental, pulpy or avant garde. After all, where else but science fiction should experiments take place? It must be—wink, wink—that Delany’s being black is the reason he won.

    On the phone recently, I suggested to Delany that Asimov’s poor attempt at humor—which, whatever its intent, also served as a reminder, as Delany notes in “Racism and Science Fiction,” that his racial identity would forever be in the minds of his white peers, no matter the occasion—foreshadowed a more recent controversy, centered on a different set of sci-fi awards. In January, 2013, the novelist Larry Correia explained on his Web site how fans, by joining the World Science Fiction Society, could help nominate him for a Hugo Award, something that would, he wrote, “make literati snob’s [sic] heads explode.” Correia contrasted the “unabashed pulp action” of his books with “heavy handed message fic about the dangers of fracking and global warming and dying polar bears.” In a follow-up post, citing an old SPCA commercial about animal abuse, he used the tag “Sad Puppies”; what he later called “the Sad Puppies Hugo stacking campaign” has grown to become a real force in deciding who gets nominated for the Hugo Awards. The ensuing controversy has been described, by Jeet Heer in the New Republic, as “a cultural war over diversity,” since the Sad Puppies, in their pushback against perceived liberals and experimental writers, seem to favor the work of white men.

    Delany said he was dismayed by all this, but not surprised. “The context changes,” he told me, “but the rhetoric remains the same.”

    More at the link. Hooray for Asimov’s humour.

  195. rq says

    Previous in moderation.
    ‘Senseless’ and ‘asinine’: prosecutor’s words on Samuel DuBose killing a win for reformers

    Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph T Deters on Wednesday delivered what may be the strongest official condemnation yet of a police shooting since Michael Brown was killed almost a year ago, sparking widespread unrest in Ferguson.

    Deters described the fatal shooting of Samuel DuBose in Cincinnati as “murder” and “so senseless”, adding that officer Ray Tensing “should never have been a police officer”.

    Condemning the University of Cincinnati officer’s actions on 19 July, Deters told reporters: “It was so unnecessary for this to occur.

    “People want to believe that Mr DuBose had done something violent toward the officer. He did not. He did not at all.”

    Deters announced on Wednesday that Tensing had been indicted on murder charges for shooting DuBose after a traffic stop over a license plate violation. Dubose was unarmed.

    In scathing remarks, Deters touched on topics that have been central to the efforts of reformers in the year since Brown was killed. He said he was “shocked” by body-camera footage of Tensing firing his gun after an exchange over DuBose’s missing license plate, and that video of the incident appeared to contradict Tensing’s report that he was dragged by the car before the shooting.
    […]

    Deters’ announcement follows another prosecutor’s condemnation of police brutality earlier this year.

    Baltimore state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby was elevated as a reform champion after she delivered a strongly worded call for criminal charges against the officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray. “I will seek justice on your behalf,” she told a crowd of activists. “This is a moment. This is your moment. Let’s ensure that we have peaceful and productive rallies that will develop structural and systemic changes for generations to come.”

    Mosby’s remarks came as a particular shock to many activists, after a series of prosecutor press conferences and press releases in which law enforcement officials focused on the reputation of the victim, or sought to exonerate the cops. The most prominent was that of St Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch, who demonized the media and Michael Brown in a winding, late-night press conference, even as riots emerged over Brown’s death in Ferguson.

    “The most significant challenge encountered in this investigation has been the 24-hour news cycle and its insatiable appetite for something, for anything to talk about,” McCulloch said last November.

    Activists on Twitter immediately praised Deters’ remarks as perhaps the strongest response yet.
    […]

    Cincinnati erupted in rioting and economic boycotts more than a decade ago, after the death of Timothy Thomas in 2001. Thomas was the 15th black man who died during a police confrontation in a six-year period. A 19-year-old with an infant son, Thomas started running when cops approached him outside a nightclub. Officers initiated a chase that ended with Thomas shot dead. Police said they believed he was armed, but no gun was ever found.

    That incident, the riots that followed, and the police officer’s later acquittal spurred dramatic reform that has since become a model to other departments. “The outcomes of the Cincinnati collaborative agreement were pretty astounding and we were really pleased with them,” Mike Brickner, senior policy director of the ACLU of Ohio, told ThinkProgress. In remarks earlier this year, the US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, held out Cincinnati as a nationwide example.

    The reforms in training, community policing and accountability mechanisms may have affected the rhetoric of local officials such as Deters, as well as the city’s mayor, John Cranley, who condemned the shooting and pledged reform just days after the incident.

    But it may not have directly affected Tensing, who was a University of Cincinnati police officer. The university committed only after this month’s shooting to join the collaborative agreement that had reformed other city entities.

    Even Deters has not spoken out this strongly against other police shootings in the past. In his statement, he explained: “This office has probably reviewed upwards of hundreds of police shootings, and this is the first time that we’ve thought this is without question a murder.”

    To the cops, Jabbar Gibson was just a low-level drug pusher. But to the residents of a New Orleans public housing complex, he’s the man who rescued them from Hurricane Katrina when no one else would.

    In this corner of the old Fischer Projects, they will never forget the swollen drainage ditches, the mounds of tree branches and debris, the relentless mosquitoes, and the heat and darkness of cramped old apartments that no longer had electricity.

    They will never forget the mounting desperation as their neighborhood ran out of food and water. The toilets wouldn’t flush. There was nowhere to refill prescriptions. The only breaks in the silence were the occasional echoes of gunfire and shattering glass. Hurricane Katrina had turned them into prisoners of a drowning city.

    “We all thought we were going to die,” Lavinette said.

    While the memories of their misery are vivid, so are their memories of the lanky young man who saved them: Jabbar Gibson.

    These days, he’s better known as Inmate No. 29770-034 at the Federal Correctional Institution in Pollock, Louisiana. Gibson has been there since 2010 for gun and drug possession, locked away from his people and the Fischer, which has since been razed and rebuilt into a sprawling development of small, pastel-colored homes built on the same sun-baked dirt of the West Bank of the Mississippi.

    Tucked deep in the piney woods of central Louisiana, the prison is a medium-security facility of about 1,600 inmates. Among them are the brother of notorious New York crime boss John Gotti and one of the co-founders of the Black Mafia Family drug trafficking organization.

    Gibson relished the idea that anyone on the outside still remembers him as something more than a low-level drug pusher from New Orleans. “Being called a hero was cool,” Gibson told BuzzFeed News during a May interview at the prison. “I’ve missed out on a lot being up in here.”

    Like a lot of the men serving time in Pollock, Gibson almost seemed destined to end up behind bars.
    […]

    In the early morning hours of Aug. 29, 2005, Katrina came ashore and leveled New Orleans and much of the surrounding area.

    Thousands of local residents followed Mayor Ray Nagin’s orders to evacuate hours earlier. But at the Fischer, populated by several generations of residents who’d survived hurricanes Betsy and Camille, there wasn’t a rush to leave. High winds and surging waters had never done much damage to those bricks.

    They also had no means to leave. Many Fischer residents, including Bernice Gibson, didn’t have driver’s licenses, let alone vehicles. They relied on the city bus and taxi cabs when they had to venture beyond their neighborhood.

    As things grew more desperate, Gibson was willing to take a risk. To escape, they’d have to think big. He’d seen that bus coming down Landry Avenue. He knew the bus lot wasn’t too far away. He’d stolen a vehicle before. Why not now, with their lives on the line?

    “He was like, ‘I’m about to go get a bus and I’m coming back,’” Tranice Gibson said.

    There wasn’t much time to waste — they figured they’d have to beat the rising waters or the police, who might try to stop residents from using stolen buses to escape — to get to safety. Word had already filtered through the gossipy webs of Fischer, and people were lining up to get onto the buses, their meager belongings in tow.

    About 60 people had climbed aboard Gibson’s bus when the police arrived at the scene. The officers made everyone get off the bus. Gibson handed over the keys and fled the scene. Only his mother remained.

    “I stayed on the bus to protect Jabbar,” she said. “He ran because he [saw] the police.”

    He had a reason for running. Nearly two weeks earlier, Gibson had been apprehended after leading New Orleans police on a high-speed chase that ended with a car wreck and four officers suffering minor injuries, according to local media reports. Gibson, who told the Times-Picayune in a 2005 interview that he was known as the “kingpin” of Fischer, also faced a pending charge of possession of crack cocaine stemming from an arrest in June of that year.

    Nonetheless, Bernice Gibson said she managed to convince the officers that giving Jabbar the keys and letting him take control of the bus was necessary to evacuate people who were in dire need of help.

    “It ain’t the police who was helping us” get out of there, she said. The officers relented and handed the keys back to Gibson when he returned.

    “Get on the bus,” Gibson recalled one of the officers telling him, “and don’t stop.”

    People streamed out of the Fischer again, yelling and running in all directions. They crowded onto the bus again. Gibson had no fewer than a dozen family members and nearly as many friends coming along for the ride. Three to four people were crammed onto each seat. Some stood in the middle aisle, while those lucky enough to sit had someone on their laps.

    “We were bunched up all kinds of ways,” Robinson said. But they were thrilled, relieved, almost delirious. “We all were clowning,” recalled Byronisha Crockett, still a Fischer resident today.

    Few people seemed concerned about Gibson’s ability to navigate a lengthy road trip in a wobbly school bus, which, as it turned out later, had been in need of serious repairs, according to the Times-Picayune. They had little choice but to place their fates, if not their very lives, in the hands of this drug-dealing 10th-grade dropout.

    Except his mother. “I couldn’t convince her to come,” Gibson said, the resignation in his voice even today. “She didn’t trust me.”

    “Jabbar didn’t know how to drive no bus,” she said.

    With his mother in the rearview mirror, Gibson pulled the bus onto Landry Avenue, merged onto the West Bank Expressway service road, and headed west out of town.

    Well done, Gibson. More at the link.

    D.A. To Seek Manslaughter Charges Against Nick Gordon In Bobbi Kristina’s Death, which is interesting.

    According to TMZ, authorities are now working to pin involuntary manslaughter onto Bobbi Kristina’s long-time boyfriend Nick Gordon following her death, law enforcement reports.

    The details of the charge include Gordon’s alleged arrangement to obtain the drugs for Bobbi Kristina the day she was found in her bathtub on January 31. Prosecutors have reason to believe that Gordon was aware of Bobbi Kristina’s drug problem, TMZ was told, and of her falling unconscious on other occasions after overusing. However, Bobbi’s injury-free autopsy report does not give the prosecutors’ claims much hope, as medical examiners also concluded that no preexisting medical condition was found that may have contributed to the 22-year-old’s death.

    Gordon did admit that he and Bobbi did drugs that morning however, and authorities now have their eyes set on the person present in the home that day: Max Lomas. The current defendant is being charged with two drug-related felonies in Georgia that are separate from the Bobbi Kristina case, but authorities feel he is a significant component for the prosecution. Even if Lomas is reluctant to talk, a source tells TMZ that he’s been offered immunity in Bobbi’s case and a mere probation on the drug charges if he opens up about what really happened that day Bobbi Kristina was found.

    A member of Bobbi Kristina’s camp, her best friend Bess Beckman, has already come forth about the alleged violent history in Bobbi and Gordon’s relationship. Beckman is working with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) to further investigate the claims. She told authorities that Gordon beat Bobbi several times after she revealed that she had plans to launch her career in L.A. She also added that he had beaten her only several days before Bobbi was discovered unconscious in the bathtub.

    Additional details on Gordon’s defense and the prosecution will become available upon release.

    I see myself in all these drawings. Your work is amazing, @markuspr1m3_ See wonderful superhero pictures attached.

    ‘[Expletive] the police’ programmed onto road construction sign in West Baltimore

    An electronic construction sign that was supposed to warn motorists about a road closure and detour in West Baltimore was programmed Wednesday with another message.
    lRelated
    Three more killings in Baltimore bring July total to 42, matching May’s 25-year high

    Baltimore Crime Beat
    Three more killings in Baltimore bring July total to 42, matching May’s 25-year high

    See all related
    8

    “[Expletive] the police,” read the sign at the northeast corner of Frederick and Warwick avenues. The road sign belongs to a contractor completing work for the city, public works officials said Wednesday.

    “We believe a citizen gained access to the contractor’s sign. Taking steps so signs are more secure. We are sorry for this,” the agency said on Twitter.
    Freddie Gray coverage
    Freddie Gray coverage

    On Wednesday, a new message has been posted. “Respect the police,” flashed on the sign, followed by “Love yourself” and “Have a good day.” It also warned of the closure and detour just north of Frederick Avenue, on Warwick Avenue.

    Better than having the n-word on there.

    Family of Kellom awaits probe of fatal police shooting

    An independent investigation into the April shooting death of 20-year-old Terrance Kellom by a federal agent in Detroit is expected to be completed within a month, according to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office.

    Kellom’s family and residents have held public rallies multiple times in hopes of getting answers, and community activist Ron Scott said Wednesday the months-long wait is insensitive to the family. But attorneys said it’s understandable for police-shooting investigations to take months.

    Police and the attorney representing U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officer Mitchell Quinn have said Kellom came at Quinn with a hammer when a multi-agency task force went to arrest him April 27 at a home on the 9500 block of Evergreen. Kellom’s family has disputed that and said he was shot while kneeling unarmed in the home.

    Karri Mitchell, an attorney representing Kellom’s family, said he’s urging them to be patient.

    “They’re frustrated, but I told them that hopefully the prosecutor is doing a thorough job,” he said. “(Investigators have) been out to the home three times, as recently as a week ago, taking measurements.”

    He said that given the time that’s passed, it appears to him that “there must be some type of culpability on the officer’s part.”

    The prosecutor’s office announced its independent investigation in mid-May. Such investigations are normal procedure for officer-involved shootings.

    More at the link, but I’m disinclined to just believe the police narrative.

  196. rq says

    Three Other Black Men Have Died In Altercations With University Of Cincinnati Police

    Prior to Samuel Dubose on July 19, there was Kelly Brinson, Lorenzo Collins, and Everett Howard — all them black men who have also died in altercations with University of Cincinnati police officers dating back to 1997.

    For family members of the men — whose causes of death were never deemed homicides — Dubose’s death was a painful reminder of how quickly interactions with university police can escalate.

    “This is just like I’m having to relive this situation with my brother all over again,” said Derek Brinson, whose brother, Kelly, died after a confrontation with the University of Cincinnati Police Department. “If something would have happened in 2010, [Dubose] would not have been murdered.”

    The cases were among digital court records that date back to 1997 at the federal circuit — the level where nearly all officer-caused deaths end up as families of the dead, with or without the tail wind of criminal charges, file civil claims against the agencies involved.

    Dubose’s case, recorded on the officer’s body camera, is the only one of the four to result in criminal charges. Officer Raymond Tensing, who police say shot Dubose once in the head, was charged with murder Wednesday.

    But over nearly two decades, the university has paid out nearly $3 million to settle civil claims related to the previous deaths, court records show.

    We Weep For African Lions. But What About Black Lives? “Because, you know, #AllLivesMatter, right?”

    After American dentist Walter Palmer was identified as Cecil the lion’s shooter, outrage — and demand for him to be held accountable — came quickly.

    In less than 24 hours, Palmer’s past felony record was exposed, he was bombarded with criticism on social media, and his dental practice was abruptly shuttered for an undetermined length of time. Palmer has since gone into hiding as the Zimbabwean government says it would like to speak to him. And some people are speculating that he could be extradited to face trial over there.

    Social media response from white Americans has never been this intense for #BlackLivesMatter.

    Laments for Cecil were, sadly, much more heart-rending than the outcries for black lives lost. Uproar over the famous lion’s death almost instantly reached the late-night talk show circuit. On Tuesday, Jimmy Kimmel choked back tears as he discussed the killing of endangered animals on his show. Singer Ariana Grande was equally hurt over the loss.

    It seems like Americans, in general, found it easier to condemn a man who killed a lion than to criticize police officers who abuse their power. It took more than six months to simply bring charges against the Cleveland officer who killed Tamir Rice, an unarmed, 12-year-old child who was shot to death while playing at a park. It took over a year for an off-duty Chicago cop to be charged for Rekia Boyd’s death.

    Remember how, in the first few weeks after Mike Brown was killed, more funds were raised for Darren Wilson than for the dead teen’s family. Now a White House petition calling for Palmer to be extradited has already racked up over 95,000 signatures.

    Listen to the language used to describe Cecil — the black-maned lion was beloved, majestic and a treasure. It’s sad that the death of a lion is bringing more tears than that of many a human being simply because those people weren’t white.

    As Greg Gutfeld, a host of Fox News talk show “The Five,” put it, this is “easy outrage.” No one has to grapple with difficult but necessary questions about how America treats its black citizens. No one is asking what Cecil could have done differently, how he could have avoided this outcome or which of his minor missteps justified a violent death.

    “Sure, wildlife are photogenic and apolitical. Cecil the lion never made a video for #BlackLivesMatter and half of the people in the U.S. aren’t trying to convince themselves that somehow Cecil deserved his fate,” wrote David Ferguson for Raw Story. “And while African lions may be endangered, isn’t it time we admit that here in the U.S., black lives are endangered, too?”

    More at the link.

    The Public Still Can’t See The Eric Garner Grand Jury Records, Court Rules

    The public still can’t look at transcripts from the grand jury investigation into the death of Eric Garner, a New York appeals court ruled Wednesday.

    A four-judge panel from New York’s Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department, upheld a previous decision from a lower court that found no “compelling and particularized need” to release the grand jury records.

    Despite video evidence showing NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo putting Garner into a prohibited chokehold while arresting him for selling untaxed cigarettes in Staten Island last July, a grand jury in December declined to indict Pantaleo. That decision set off massive protests across the city and the country.

    It also prompted New York City Public Advocate Letitia James and four organizations — the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Legal Aid Society, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the New York Post — to file a petition seeking the release of records from the grand jury investigation.

    Grand jury records are typically kept sealed, so it’s largely unknown what evidence Daniel Donovan, who was then district attorney for Staten Island, presented to the jurors. Critics have long argued that local district attorneys like Donovan have a conflict of interest in cases that involve police, with whom they often work closely on other cases.

    Matthew Brinckerhoff, an attorney for James, argued in court last month that there was a “perception of misconduct” in Donovan’s handling of the case — especially after a New York Times investigation found evidence that prosecutors under Donovan didn’t aggressively pursue charges against Pantaleo.

    Looking at the grand jury records, Brinckerhoff argued, would be helpful to James and other elected officials in their efforts to shape grand jury reform.

    But in Wednesday’s unanimous decision, the court ruled that this argument was “unpersuasive.”

    “The appellants failed to establish how or in what manner these grand jury materials would inform legislative debate beyond the facts that are already publicly known of the case, and beyond reform proposals that are already being discussed on their own merits,” the decision reads.

    At least three of the appellants are appealing the court’s decision. The case will now head to the New York Court of Appeals.

    “We are disappointed with the Court’s decision and will continue to fight for the release of this proceeding,” a spokeswoman for the Legal Aid Society said in a statement. “Transparency and accountability are the only way this City can begin to heal from the tragedy of Eric Garner’s death.”

    University of Cincinnati Officer Indicted in Shooting Death of Samuel Dubose, NY Times.

    Grand jury transcript from Eric Garner case to remain sealed, court says, LA Times.

    And guess what? I caught up. Just today’s to sort through.

  197. Saad says

    It’s not a symbol of hate!!

    Confederate battle flags were found Thursday morning on the grounds of Ebenezer Baptist Church and the King Center in Atlanta, police and church officials said.

    Ebenezer Baptist Church is best known as the church where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was baptized and where he, along with his father, served as a pastor. The King Center is a historical site adjacent to the church.

    [. . .]

    Atlanta Police Chief George Turner said surveillance video shows two white males placing the flags. Turner said Atlanta police are working with federal partners, the National Park Service, Joint Terrorism Task Force and Atlanta’s Homeland Security Unit. Police said they may release the surveillance video to the public.

    Described by many as the birthplace of the civil rights movement, the city of Atlanta and the state of Georgia have often been at the nexus of race tensions in America, including a successful movement to remove the confederate battle flag from the state flag which had been put there in the 1950s — many say as a symbol of support for segregation and protest against the civil rights movement. The flag was changed in 2001.

    “It was disturbing and sickening but, unfortunately, not very surprising. This is the church of Martin Luther King, Jr. We’ve seen this type of ugliness before. Not just in the 1960s, but in recent years as well,” said Warnock.

  198. rq says

    PETITION: Terminate any officer that kills an unarmed individual or uses excessive force leading to their death. I’m a little suspicious of the use of ‘terminate’ in the title, but here’s the text:

    As of February 15, only a month and a half into 2015, there has been at least 136 individuals killed by police in the United States since the first of the year. The frighteningly high number averages out to three killed per day, or someone killed every eight hours. While there is no government-run database, Killed By Police has taken it upon themselves to record these alarming numbers of deaths at the hands of officers. All of these deaths have been a result of excessive force, Or unarmed individuals being gunned down. THIS HAS TO STOP! We are asking for the immediate termination and resignation of any and all police officers, peace workers, security guards licensed to carry a weapon whom have displayed excessive force resulting in death or gunned down any unarmed individual. And that all pensions be stripped and put in a fund to assist the victim’s families.

    ‘This is without question a murder’: Officer Ray Tensing indicted in fatal shooting of Sam Dubose, via Raw Story.

    Confederate flags placed around King Center, Ebenezer Baptist Church – that’s an MLK historic site.

    Several Confederate flags were found around the King Center and Ebenezer Baptist Church Thursday morning.

    According to Ebenezer Baptist Church Rev. Raphael Warnock, Atlanta police and the National Parks Association have removed the flags from the campus.

    Atlanta police confirms four small flags were found laying on the property.

    Atlanta police chief George Turner says surveillance video showed two white males placing the flags at the King Center and Ebenezer Baptist Church.

    According to Turner, surveillance video will be released so the public can help identify the two men.

    Warnock called the men “cowardly and misguided individuals” who engaged in activity he called terroristic.

    Atlanta police say the people who placed the flags could face charges including criminal trespassing, terroristic threats and littering.

    The Joint Terrorism Task Force has arrived on the scene and are investigating this incident.

    Warnock said this incident should “get the attention of not only black, but freedom loving people”. He says this act was about hate, and not heritage.

    The superintendent of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site says they got a non-specific threat the day before a shooting inside a Charleston church that killed 9 people.

    The flags were placed below a poster that states “Black lives matter, hands up,” by a garbage can, on the path the historic MLK site and on the corner near the church, according to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.

    I don’t think that’s a microaggression anymore.

    If I ever see another image of #RayTensing in the press, he should be wearing this outfit. #SamuelDubose – as opposed to his uniform and jaunty cap.

    “Racism and Science Fiction” by Samuel R. Delany, which was linked to in the article about Delany I posted yesterday. Read!

    Racism for me has always appeared to be first and foremost a system, largely supported by material and economic conditions at work in a field of social traditions. Thus, though racism is always made manifest through individuals’ decisions, actions, words, and feelings, when we have the luxury of looking at it with the longer view (and we don’t, always), usually I don’t see much point in blaming people personally, white or black, for their feelings or even for their specific actions—as long as they remain this side of the criminal. These are not what stabilize the system. These are not what promote and reproduce the system. These are not the points where the most lasting changes can be introduced to alter the system.

    For better or for worse, I am often spoken of as the first African-American science fiction writer. But I wear that originary label as uneasily as any writer has worn the label of science fiction itself. Among the ranks of what is often referred to as proto-science fiction, there are a number of black writers. M. P. Shiel, whose Purple Cloud and Lord of the Sea are still read, was a Creole with some African ancestry. Black leader Martin Delany (1812–1885—alas, no relation) wrote his single and highly imaginative novel, still to be found on the shelves of Barnes & Noble today, Blake, or The Huts of America (1857), about an imagined successful slave revolt in Cuba and the American South—which is about as close to an sf-style alternate history novel as you can get. Other black writers whose work certainly borders on science fiction include Sutton E. Griggs and his novel Imperio Imperium (1899) in which an African-American secret society conspires to found a separate black state by taking over Texas, and Edward Johnson, who, following Bellamy’s example in Looking Backward (1888), wrote Light Ahead for the Negro (1904), telling of a black man transported into a socialist United States in the far future. I believe I first heard Harlan Ellison make the point that we know of dozens upon dozens of early pulp writers only as names: They conducted their careers entirely by mail—in a field and during an era when pen-names were the rule rather than the exception. Among the “Remmington C. Scotts” and the “Frank P. Joneses” who litter the contents pages of the early pulps, we simply have no way of knowing if one, three, or seven or them—or even many more—were not blacks, Hispanics, women, native Americans, Asians, or whatever. Writing is like that.

    More at the link, but that second paragraph has a nice reading list to look into. I’m certainly willing to check it out! And there’s more at the link.

    Administration would give prisoners access to student grants

    The aid would come in the form of Pell grants, which are for low-income people and do not have to be repaid.

    The Education Department confirmed Tuesday that it would conduct a limited pilot program to give prisoners access to the Pell grants. The official announcement was scheduled for Friday, when Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Loretta Lynch visit the Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup, Maryland. The prison has a partnership with nearby Goucher College.

    Previewing the program, Duncan said Monday that the administration wants to develop “experimental sites that will make Pell grants available” to inmates to help them get job training and secure a productive life after they are released.

    Asked for more details, Duncan told reporters in a call after the speech, “Stay tuned.”

    Department spokeswoman Dorie Nolt declined to disclose any specifics on the length of the program, which prisoners would be eligible and how it would work.

    Congress passed legislation in 1994 banning government student aid to prisoners in federal or state institutions. By setting up the proposed “experimental sites,” the administration would be seeking to get around the ban with a pilot program.

    The experimental sites section of the Higher Education Act of 1965 gives federal officials flexibility to test the effectiveness of temporary changes to the way federal student aid is distributed. The tests could give the Education Department data to support possible revisions to laws or regulations.

    More than 2 million students now receive Pell grants, according to Duncan. The maximum award for the 2015-2016 school year is $5,775.

    On Friday, Duncan and Lynch will visit Goucher College’s Prison Education Partnership at the Jessup facility. More than 70 students are enrolled in Goucher College through the partnership, which began classes for prisoners in 2012 and does not receive public funding.

    The inmates don’t pay tuition, and books and supplies are provided at no cost, according to the partnership.

    “Getting a college education takes an incredible amount of hard work,” Amy Roza, director of the partnership, said in an interview. “The program helps with skills like critical thinking and problem solving.”

    About 70 percent of students in the program are first-generation college students, Roza said.

    Interlude: rapping Dr Seuss. Watch Tyler, the Creator rap the new Dr. Seuss book. It’s about as absurdly fun as it sounds. :D

  199. rq says

    Previous in moderation. Thought a bit more about that last link. It’s just… weird.
    Anyway.

    Yesterday, Tensing was arraigned. #RayTensing reacts to $1M bond during arraignment on #SamDubose murder charge @Enquirer

    Hacked Confederate Facebook Group Becomes Tribute to LGBT Rights, Obama, Judaism – excellent use of hacking skills.

    Virgil Texas is a Brooklyn-based professional funny person who, on Monday, announced that he’d joined a private “Confederate Pride” Facebook group that had left some of its settings unlocked. He then appears to have surreptitiously changed its header picture a few times as a ruse before convincing the group’s administrators to give him the authority to change all its settings in order to “clean out all the trolls” who had been changing the header. (Ingenious!)

    Then he changed the Confederate pride group into the “LGBT Southerners for Michelle Obama and Judaism” group.

    Havoc.

    RT @gq409: Another case of the media using something as simple as photographs to shape public opinion. #SamDubose

    Few Lawyers Volunteer to Serve on DA’s Panel Investigating Sandra Bland’s Death

    Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis, who did not return a call for comment, told reporters this week that the panel will help his office make decisions based on “credible evidence and not rumors.

    “Our charge is to serve as another set of eyes on the Sandra Bland case,” Jordan said.

    The panel is scheduled to have four lawyers on it, but so far, Jordan and Lewis White, a Sugar Land criminal defense lawyer, have not persuaded other attorneys to join them, said Jordan.

    “It’s not the easiest thing to do, to get people to do this,” Jordan said.

    Jordan understands the reason for other attorneys’ reluctance. For starters, the position is unpaid. In addition, “this may not be the best criminal defense career move. The outcome may not be accepted by everyone,” Jordan said.

    The well-known Houston criminal defense lawyer Dick DeGuerin said he would not agree to serve on the panel.

    The idea of the district attorney appointing volunteer lawyers from the community or nearby to serve on an investigating panel “smells of a cover-up,” DeGuerin said, adding, “It’s gonna look like a whitewash.”

    Instead of appointing the volunteer panel of lawyers, the DA should have asked a chief administrative judge for the district courts to appoint a prosecutor pro tem, DeGuerin said. Alternatively, the DA should have appointed himself a special prosecutor who shared no connection to Waller or other nearby counties, said DeGuerin, a partner in Houston’s DeGuerin Dickson Hennessy & Ward.

    “Get somebody from Lubbock or El Paso. Having local people, I don’t care how honorable they are and how much integrity they have, it smells of a cover-up. All the local people are going to have to deal later on with everyone they are going to investigate,” DeGuerin said.

    “Waller County has a very checkered history. If they want to have a truly independent investigation, they have to have someone outside the county,” DeGuerin said.

    RECALL KNOWLES PROTEST tonight 6 PM #Ferguson Community Center #OurSignaturesMatter @MyCivilRights11 @seanjjordan RT. Still going strong.

    Alabama Police Officer Breaks Down on Stand, Admits to Repeatedly Lying to Cover Up for Fellow Cop Beating Handcuffed Man

    An Alabama police officer broke down at the federal trial of a fellow cop, admitting that he lied to internal affairs investigators twice, lied to an FBI agent and lied to a federal grand jury when he was questioned about his colleague brutally beating a handcuffed man and keeping his property as “trophies.”

    Joshua Bates, an eight year veteran of the Huntsville Police Department, testified Tuesday that he lied to cover for fellow officer Brett Russell out of fear of losing his job, but admitted that the incident has haunted him ever since.
    […]

    Following the incident, the officers on the scene reported that Hopkins was combative and defended Russell’s actions. A few days before testifying, Bates contacted the U.S. Attorney prosecuting the case and agreed to tell the truth about what really happened that night in exchange for immunity.

    Well, well. I suppose he was more afraid of actual justice.

  200. rq says

    After Baltimore police shooting, four onlookers were arrested, one tased

    When a driver being pulled over in Southwest Baltimore was shot by a police officer after allegedly reversing his vehicle and pinning the officer in the door of a patrol car, neighborhood residents began pouring out of their homes — “becoming a crowd of onlookers,” according to one officer’s account.

    By the time the scene in the 200 block of S. Augusta Avenue in Irvington was cleared Monday, four of those onlookers had been arrested — one after being tased, according to police records.

    The incident occurred late Monday night, in a city where crime scenes have increasingly drawn large crowds since citizen footage of Freddie Gray’s arrest became crucial evidence in the now-pending criminal case against six officers involved in his arrest.
    […]

    “It’s an emotionally charged moment when a community experiences something as significant as a police-involved shooting,” Interim Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said of the Monday night incident at a news conference the next day. “The fact that people are out certainly doesn’t weigh in, we expect people to be out. But as we’re trying to conduct a crime scene investigation, we have to be able to do that safely, we have to be able to get our detectives and our crime scene investigators into a crime scene so that they can actually do their work.”

    At the time, Davis said he knew of at least two onlookers who had been arrested at the scene, but was not aware of a taser being used. He said all of the arrests and the circumstances surrounding them would be reviewed as part of the broader investigation into the shooting of the still-unidentified driver, who was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

    The officer who fired his weapon — who also has yet to be identified — was “shaken up quite a bit” by the incident, Davis said, and placed on routine administrative leave pending the conclusion of the investigation.

    In response to a request by The Baltimore Sun for records on all arrests made at the shooting scene, police confirmed four men had been arrested and provided statements of probable cause written by their arresting officers, which provided more details about the incident.

    Samuel DuBose killing: officer pleads not guilty as protesters focus on colleagues

    The white former University of Cincinnati police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black man has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and involuntary manslaughter, as questions swirl from protesters over the involvement of his colleagues who arrived at the scene of another officer-involved killing in the US.

    Appearing stone-faced in a prison jumpsuit and handcuffs at his arraignment on Thursday, Ray Tensing was made subject to a $1m bond – to which an audience, including the family of Samuel DuBose, who was killed earlier this month after a routine traffic stop, erupted in clapping and cheers of “Yes, yes!”

    The judge, Megan Shanahan, quickly quieted her court: “Ladies and gentlemen! This is a courtroom. You will conduct yourselves at all times!”

    Tensing, who was fired by the university after the announcement of the charges on Wednesday, uttered only three words during the brief hearing on Thursday. In response to a question from the judge on whether he understood the charges – and that he potentially faces life in prison – he said only: “Yes, your honor.”
    [..]

    A Guardian analysis of the body-cam footage, however, shows the aftermath of the shooting and reveals that on three occasions, two other police officers repeat Tensing’s account that he was dragged by DuBose, and one of the officers claims to have witnessed it occurring.
    Advertisement

    The identity of this officer is not immediately clear. A copy of the University of Cincinnati police division’s information report on the shooting names university police officer Phillip Kidd as a witness to the entire event.

    A second body-cam video worn by another responder – identified by local media outlets as University of Cincinnati officer David Lindenschmit – was released by Tensing’s attorney, Stew Matthews, on Wednesday evening.

    The new video shows Lindenschmit moments after the shooting, according to Fox 19 of Cincinnati. He jumps out of his cruiser and runs to assist Tensing. Later in the video, Fox 19 reports, the group of officers yell “Stay back!” to a group of neighbors who eventually approach to inspect the scene.

    When asked about the involvement of other officers in announcing the charges against Tensing, the Hamilton County prosecutor, Joseph Deters, said on Wednesday that his office was “looking at the issue” at the request of the DuBose family.

    But protesters at rallies organized by Black Lives Matter on Wednesday night said the responding officers should be held accountable – “because they knew”, as protester James Yaacov Delaney put it, that something was amiss.

    “They knew and they had plenty of opportunities to change their story about what occurred and they didn’t,” Delaney said.

    This should be interesting.

    Republican women’s group apologizes for posting photo of a lynched black man hanging from a tree

    Unfortunately, this is real.

    The Oklahoma Federation of Republican Women apologized on Wednesday after they posted an image of a black man being lynched on their official Facebook page. The image included a solitary African American man hanging by a noose from a tree, with the text “The KKK was formed by the Democrats to keep control over black Americans. The Democrats of today just traded ropes for welfare” accompanying the image.

    After KFOR, a local news station, contacted the organization’s president, Pam Pollard, about the image, Pollard deleted the post. She later released a statement saying that she “did not make the post or approve the post and when it was brought to my attention I immediately deleted it.”

    Can you imagine the thinking that went into this?

    Who designed this ad?

    Who conceived it?

    Who approved it?

    Who paid for it?

    The notion that anyone thinks it is acceptable to use an image of a lynched black man hanging from a tree to make a point about politics is sick. And to compare lynching to welfare is about as ignorant as it gets.

    The fact of the matter here is that because people do not value black bodies, dead or alive, using this image in a political ad made sense to them. This is not simply a technical or design error, but reveals a deeper pathology in how lynching and black pain/misery are seen by others.

    Wow, Officer Weibel, who lied on the #SamDubose incident report, is other officer with #RayTensing in this video. https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=gBAqxiAKh6A …

    A peek at Tensing’s violent past: Documents: Tensing used weapon in 2012 traffic stop

    Ray Tensing’s fatal shooting of a man this month wasn’t the first time the now former police officer used a weapon on an unarmed person during a traffic stop, according to new documents obtained by The Enquirer.

    As a part-time officer for Greenhills, Tensing used a Taser on a motorist the officer claimed was resisting arrest and assaulting him during a traffic stop in January 2012. Some details of that incident are included in Tensing’s personnel file from his nearly four years on Greenhills’ police force. The Enquirer obtained the documents Thursday through a public records request.

    Colerain Township also released Tensing’s personnel file from his three-month stint as a volunteer “reserve” officer there in 2012. Tensing received an overall satisfactory performance evaluation with Colerain, much like he did with Greenhills and the University of Cincinnati.

    The documents were released a day after Tensing was charged with murder and fired from his job at UC in the wake of shooting Samuel DuBose in the head during a traffic stop on July 19.

    Tensing’s Greenhills file does not detail the reason he stopped the motorist in 2012 nor the motorist’s name. A motorist who witnessed the 2012 incident said in a statement: Tensing “had suspect at the side of his car. Suspect started hitting officer and trying to get away. I stopped to help officer and grabbed suspect’s leg. Suspect continued to fight. Officer told him to stop or he would get Tazed. Suspect continued to fight so officer Tazed him and took him into custody.”

    Tensing reported that he received bruising and cuts to his right index and middle fingers during the struggle, but few other details are included in the file.

  201. rq says

    Gov. Hogan to announce closure of Baltimore jail

    The Civil War era jail was taken over by the state in 1991, and has a history of corruption and violence. In 2013, federal and state authorities announced dozens of indictments of inmates and corrections officers on allegations of widespread corruption directed by the Black Guerrilla Family gang.

    The jail — which has 1,092 male inmates, including 145 awaiting trial — is part of a larger complex of corrections facilities just east of downtown Baltimore. The complex includes the Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center and the Chesapeake Detention Facility, formerly known as Supermax.

    Following the federal indictments, a state legislative commission endorsed a half-billion dollar plan to knock down the jail and rebuild it. Corrections officials have long pushed for a better jail, laying out designs for a 27-acre downtown jail campus at least as far back as 2004.

    And here I thought they would be thinking of other ways to deal with lowering crime. But no, just another prison.

    TOS Guest Star France Nuyen

    Most Star Trek fans will surely agree: France Nuyen, who played Elaan in The Original Series episode “Elaan of Troyius,” was one of the most strikingly beautiful women ever to appear on the show. As the arrogant, spoiled character, she romanced William Shatner, rocked a Cleopatra-like wig, wore a variety of eye-popping costumes and cried tears that bent the wills of men. It was one of many strong performances Nuyen gave in her career – which also included a turn on Broadway in The World of Suzie Wong, the films South Pacific, Diamond Head and Battle for the Planet of the Apes, TV guest shots on Hawaii Five-O, The Six Million Dollar Man, Knots Landing, etc., a series regular role on St. Elsewhere, and more – but it remains the one with which she’s most associated.

    Nuyen no longer acts, but she remains super-busy. She’ll appear this weekend at The Hollywood Show in Los Angeles, where she’ll sign autographs and pose for photos with fans. In advance of The Hollywood Show, StarTrek.com snagged a rare interview with Nuyen, who filled us in on her life today and talked about Elaan in extensive detail. Here’s what she had to say…

    Interview at the link!

    An atlas of self-reliance: The Negro Motorist’s Green Book (1937-1964)

    Beginning in the 1920s, widespread car ownership opened new opportunities to travel independently and explore. For black Americans, the central paradox of the American automobile age was that it occurred in the middle of the Jim Crow era, which was marked by a system of laws and customs that segregated public spaces and enforced racial inequality. Before the abolition of legal segregation, black Americans with the financial wherewithal turned to private car ownership to escape the indignities of segregated rail and bus travel. Cars allowed African Americans to drive past segregation.

    However, once they pulled off the interstate, the freedom of the open road proved illusory. Jim Crow still prohibited black travelers from pulling into a roadside motel and getting rooms for the night. Black families on vacation had to be ready for any circumstance should they be denied lodging or a meal in a restaurant. They stuffed the trunks of their automobiles with food, blankets and pillows, even an old coffee can for those times when black motorists were denied the use of a bathroom.

    African Americans travelling through the country with their prosperity on display upset the racial order of Jim Crow. As a result, white segregationists pushed back against these demonstrations of black success. For example, segregationists who owned gas stations would take black motorists’ money at the pump, but then deny them use of the bathroom. Though humiliating, that wasn’t the worst that could happen. Black drivers also faced physical dangers. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) kept an active file of incidents of African Americans being accosted while in their cars. In 1948, sociologist Charles S. Johnson uncovered a pattern wherein white drivers would intentionally damage more expensive vehicles owned by African Americans in order to put black drivers back in “their place.” Sometimes, being in the wrong town at the wrong time of day could even be fatal.

    To avoid these dangers, the Negro Motorist’s Green Book offered to help black motorists travel safely across a landscape partitioned by segregation and scarred by lynching. Published in Harlem by Victor and Alma Green, it came out annually from 1937-1964. While the Green Book printed articles about auto maintenance and profiled various American cities, at its heart was the list of accommodations that black travelers could use on their trips. Organized by state, each edition listed service stations, hotels, restaurants, beauty parlors, and other businesses that did not discriminate on the basis of race. In a 2010 interview with the New York Times, Lonnie Bunch, director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, described this feature of the Green Book as “a tool” that “allowed families to protect their children, to help them ward off those horrible points at which they might be thrown out or not permitted to sit somewhere.”

    The inaugural edition of the guide ran 16 pages long and focused on tourist areas in and around New York City. By the eve of U.S. entry in World War II, it had expanded to 48 pages and covered nearly every state in the union. Two decades later, the guide was nearly 100 pages long and offered advice for black tourists visiting Canada, Mexico, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean. As historian Gretchen Sorin describes, under a distribution agreement with Standard Oil, Esso service stations sold two million copies annually by 1962.

    The vast majority of the businesses listed in the Green Book were owned by black entrepreneurs. By gathering these institutions under one cover, Victor and Alma Green mapped out the economic infrastructure of black America. Thus, the Green Book was more than a travel guide; it also described two 20th-century African American geographies.

    At first glance, the Green Book maps the territorial limits of African American freedom. The America that black people lived in under Jim Crow was much smaller than the one in which white Americans lived. After World War II, Americans took their cars on the newly built interstate system and invented the road trip. But this open road wasn’t open to everyone. When Disneyland opened its gates in 1955, the path to the Magic Kingdom was fraught with dangers for most black travelers, compelled to chart their journey from one oasis of freedom to the next using the Green Book as their guide.

    However, the Green Book was also an atlas of black self-reliance. Each motel, auto repair shop, and gas station was a monument to black determination to succeed in a Jim Crow nation. Before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, these businesses represented a source of black economic power that could be used to build a more just America. A number of these black business leaders would join the NAACP and other civil rights organizations in order to translate their economic power into political power and use that to help bring an end to Jim Crow. They used their money to bail protestors out of jail, fund the operations of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and pay for the buses that sent thousands to the 1963 March on Washington.

    Even though the Green Book was never meant to be an explicitly political document, it described the economic infrastructure of the black freedom struggle. Indeed, Victor and Alma Green articulated this hope in the 1948 edition:

    “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment.”

    One could argue that the return of black-owned-business lists is a small return in this direction.

    @deray Somerville, MA

    Thank H.E.R. Now: 6 times Rapsody shined before the “Complexion” verse

    Many people were pleasantly surprised by the final verse of “Complexion (A Zulu Love)” on Kendrick Lamar’s latest album. The verse introduced them to Rapsody, an MC from North Carolina that’s signed to 9th Wonder’s Jamla Records. Her newfound exposure results from a co-sign, but she has worked on her own to receive such exposure. Rapsody has been building a strong following for several years. She’s released mixtapes and EPs, including She Got Game and Thank H.E.R. Now, which feature top-notch rhymes. Here are six prime examples of her genius:

    “Live it Up” ft. Bluu Suede

    1. Making an audio note to self, Rapsody details the benefits of her future success – from luxuries in her travels to support and improved conditions for her family. She captures the ambition that drives many MCs to do what they do.

    “Feel Like (Love Love)” ft. Common

    2. The two artists here are rappers, but they come together with producer Ka$h to make a track as smooth as any R&B song. On it, Rapsody refers to classic movies that showcased black love to describe her relationship. Common brings the track home with a verse that couldn’t fit the beat any better.

    “Betty Shabazz”

    3. Talk about a lyrical barrage. On this track, Rapsody proves that she deserves to be in conversations about the best lyricists – in both the technique and content of her rhymes. She channels the spirit of Betty Shabazz, the educator and widow of Malcolm X and rhymes with plenty of confidence.

    Three more at the link. Nice to see focus on a black woman artist.

    Zimbabwean perspective on Cecil, which we should be suuuper interested in, given our moral outrage. See attached text. And now, to see if you’ve read for comprehension, what’s the difference between ‘hunter’ and ‘poacher’?

  202. rq says

    Lmao. This dude is awesome. Spot on impression. #AllLionsMatter Because why not?

    Sam Dubose and family, not a mugshot or video. See the humanity.

    At Least 5 Black Women Have Died in Police Custody in July; WTF?! via The Root.

    It’s been a little over two weeks since Sandra Bland was discovered dead in her Texas jail cell from what authorities say was a suicide.

    In those 17 days since Bland’s controversial death, which has sparked social media fury and a plethora of unanswered questions, at least four more black women have died while in custody. Most of them were in jail for two days maximum. Most of them were being held on minor charges like shoplifting and were waiting to see a judge. Some of them suffered health issues. All of them should have been going home. All of them were fairly young, and all of them leave behind families and a community with questions, including, “What happened?”

    Information on each of the five at the link.

    Cincinnati Campus Cop Actually Charged With Murdering Black Guy On Camera, Weird, the Wonkette.

    It’s not every day that you see a prosecutor describe a cop’s deadly actions as “a senseless, asinine shooting.” But that’s what Hamilton County prosecuting attorney Joseph T. Deters called the killing of Samuel Dubose, who was shot to death July 19 during a traffic stop. Ray Tensing, the University of Cincinnati campus policeman who shot Dubose, was indicted Wednesday on charges of murder and voluntary manslaughter. And like the shooting of Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina, the murder charges almost certainly wouldn’t have happened had the incident not been captured on video. Guess we have to take back a lot of our fears of Big Brother: The surveillance state is starting to look like the only way white cops will ever be prosecuted for shooting black people.
    […]

    Despite the indictment by a grand jury, some rightwing blogs are spinning the story as yet another innocent white cop being persecuted for merely protecting his life. Stupidest Guest-Blogger on the Internet Kristinn Taylor offered his take at Gateway Pundit, describing the shooting as “the most recent incident of an unarmed Black man being killed by a white police officer while resisting arrest” and telling us what we really see on the video:

    [The] officer started to open the driver side door and ordered DuBose to unbuckle his seatbelt. In response, DuBose pulled the door closed, turned on the car’s engine and stepped on the gas. The officer reached in the car, then fired one shot which hit DuBose in the head as the car pulled away and the officer fell on the ground.

    Taylor is also very careful to quote a local TV station’s rundown of Dubose’s extensive criminal history, which mostly consisted of traffic violations, plus “drug abuse, domestic violence and assault,” which proves he was a thug, though Taylor does acknowledge:

    It is important to note that being charged with a crime does not mean that someone is guilty. In many cases, court documents show Dubose paid his fines. The two assault charges were dismissed.

    Don’t even think about reading the comments, which mostly explain that Dubose needed shooting because he was black and had 12 children, all of whom are certainly on welfare.

    Needless to say, Tensing’s attorney explains that his client feared for his life from the terrifying black man in the stupid-looking hat:

    “The guy jams the keys in the ignition,” Stew Mathews told CNN.

    “Turns the car on, jams it in the drive and mashes the accelerator. He wasn’t slowly pulling away. (Tensing) feared for his life. He thought he was going to be sucked under the car that was pulling away from him. He thought he was going to get sucked under and killed.”

    Let’s just leave aside the tiny detail that you don’t hear the engine rev until after Dubose has a bullet in his head.

    So congratulations, America! For the second time, there may be a police shooting of an unarmed black person that almost everyone agrees was homicidal bullshit. A Washington Post analysis of police shootings notes that in the rare cases when police are actually charged in killings of civilians, prosecutions usually involve extraordinary circumstances: “a victim shot in the back, a video recording of the incident, incriminating testimony from other officers or allegations of a coverup.” Hooray for video — although even with clear video evidence, rightwing bloggers are happy to blame the victim, because while every other aspect of government is always bad, cops never make mistakes, especially when they’re shooting black people.

    Oh, the guy Tensing got arraigned yesterday. One million dollar bond (bail? – I’m still hazy on the specifics of what is what, there). You won’t be surprised.

    Per @PrezOno: UCPD Officers Kidd & Lindenschmidt on paid administrative leave pending investigation. They responded to #SamDubose shooting. This is actually excellent.

    Remember the homeless man nicknamed ‘Africa’ in LA? An L.A. Cop Pressed His Gun Into the Chest of an Unarmed Man And Shot Him Through the Heart. Weren’t no ordinary shooting.

    Five months after the March 1 Los Angeles police killing of an unarmed black man named Charly “Africa” Keunang—a story I reported in-depth for the July issue of GQ—the Los Angeles coroner has finally released the results of its autopsy. They are profoundly disturbing. Two of the six bullets that killed Charly entered his body through what are called “contact gunshot wounds”—which means the muzzle of the officer’s gun was pressed directly against Charly’s body. Like a slaughterhouse killing.

    I’d already reviewed a less-detailed autopsy report commissioned privately by Keunang’s family and had access to leaked body-cam videos and recordings of internal police interviews with several of the officers involved. Even so, the autopsy report is startling.

    There’s a moment in the body-cam video when it appears to me that Officer Francisco Martinez has his hand on Charly’s torso—Charly is on his back after having been wrestled down and tased—with his gun pointed at the body. I didn’t include that detail in my story because I couldn’t be absolutely certain. We still can’t be sure Officer Martinez’s hand is holding Charly down, but now we can be certain: He pressed his gun into the chest of an unarmed man who was lying on his back and pulled the trigger.

    Gunshot wounds #2 and #3, reads the report—the shots are listed arbitrarily—are described as “penetrating, fatal.” One bullet entered above Charly’s right nipple, the other close to the center of his chest. “Yellow gunpowder is present on the skin” in both cases; “soot is present in the wound.” Three examiners, including the chief medical examiner-coroner, inspected these two wounds in particular, and the three examiners concurred: “Range of fire: This is a contact gunshot wound.” Not “point-blank,” the distance at which you can’t miss, which is as much as several feet; contact. The gun pressed into the body, the bullets traveling directly from the barrel into the flesh, no distance in between.

    So we add to what we know one more terrible detail. On March 1, 2015, Officers Martinez and Volasgis confronted Charly, who was unarmed. “Let me express myself, Martinez,” said Charly, trying to reason with the officer, but Martinez would not, and he tased Charly, and several officers tackled Charly to the ground and hit him several more times with a Taser pressed directly to the body. Officer Volasgis said—incorrectly, of that we must be clear—”He has my gun.” He says that he was straddling Charly, and that Charly only let go of his gun after he’d been shot; but the body-cam video, on which we cannot see Charly reach for the gun, shows Officer Volasgis is already on his way to standing at the moment the first shot is fired, his holstered gun beyond Charly’s reach. Officer Martinez pushed his 40-caliber Glock 35 directly into Charly’s body—hard muzzle pressing down into the flesh—and fired.

    That is: Officer Francisco Martinez pressed his gun into the chest of an unarmed man and shot him through the heart.

  203. rq says

    #BREAKING: Former UC police officer Ray Tensing has bonded out of Hamilton County Justice Center #SamDubose So show of hands, who is surprised?

    #raytensing, the one-shot-to-the-head murderer of #samdubose, is out in the world on the $1 million bond that was posted for him today. #fyi This is how fast it happened: not even overnight.

    Tensing pays bond, freed from county jail

    Former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing has bonded out of jail.

    He posted 10 percent of his $1 million bond, according to the Hamilton County Clerk of Courts website.

    Maj. Charmaine McGuffey, of the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department, said Tensing left the jail at about 6:45 p.m. He’d been under suicide watch during his time behind bars, she said.

    People from all over the country offered to help pay the $1 million bond, Tensing’s attorney said Thursday.

    Tensing pleaded not guilty to murder Thursday morning after he was indicted Wednesday for the shooting death of 43-year-old Sam DuBose. Body camera video shows Tensing shoot DuBose in the head during a July 19 traffic stop in Mount Auburn.

    Tensing had to make a mandatory $100,000 surety payment – 10 percent of his $1 million bond – to secure his release until trial.

    “Ever since the bond was set, I’ve received calls from around the country from people wanting to contribute to it,” attorney Stew Mathews said. “I think people feel like he’s getting railroaded here in Cincinnati. You’d have to be blind not to see that.” [bolding mine]

    Mathews said he has received calls from across the nation with offers to help Tensing. He did not disclose the number of calls and offers.

    The attorney said he wasn’t sure if Tensing would accept those offers.

    “I’m not prepared to do anything like that, but there are a lot of people who are prepared to help,” Mathews told ABC News. “His family is attempting to raise it through family members. I’m not sure where we are with it.”

    Mathews said after the arraignment that the $1 million bond was unfair for “the nature of the case,” but hoped Tensing would bond out soon.

    “For a police officer with no prior record who has lived here his entire life and not going to go anywhere, I thought it was excessive,” he said.

    Mathews said Tensing is “not doing well” and “feels terrible about” the shooting. He said his client is already facing death threats.

    “There have apparently been some serious threats made against my client,” he said. “(Tensing) is almost like a zombie. This morning, he asked me several procedural questions, which I answered, and then a minute later, he asks me the same questions like it’s not registering. He’s kind of in a trance.”

    Not really feeling it, not really feeling the sympathy. Note bolded part. He killed a man over nothing. And people feel he’s being railroaded.
    Honestly, I think he feels worse about being actually charged than he does about the death, that’s where I think the trance comes from, he doesn’t understand that his uniform hasn’t saved him. Trouble processing the being-in-trouble part, rather than the trouble he caused itself.
    Note bolded part, also expressions regarding his state of mind, to garner as much sympathy as possible. But Dubose is dead. Can we feel some for him, too?

    Jury finds deputy U.S. marshal guilty of obstruction in 2008 shooting

    A federal jury on Thursday found an off-duty deputy U.S. marshal guilty of obstruction of justice for making misleading statements to police after he shot and killed a man during a confrontation in a Fairfax-area alley in 2008.

    Federal prosecutors argued that Matthew Itkowitz lied about what happened in the alley when he shot 26-year-old Ryan Gonzalez, who intervened in a dispute between Itkowitz and his wife outside the tattoo parlor where Gonzalez worked.

    Itkowitz told Los Angeles police homicide detectives he shot Gonzalez while being attacked, according to audio recordings of the lawman’s interview with the detectives played during the trial.

    Surveillance video of the incident revealed Itkowitz’s account to be untrue, prosecutors argued.

    Unlike Itkowitz’s telling, about a minute elapsed between the end of the men’s altercation and the shooting, according to the video.

    Video of the shooting — played repeatedly during the trial — shows Itkowitz and Gonzalez fighting. After the men exchanged blows, they walked away from each other.

    Itkowitz can be seen removing a gun from the waistband of his pants and holding it behind his right leg as Gonzalez walks away from him.

    And etc. What is nice is that he’s being called out on it. Seven years later.

    Town hall meeting in Ferguson last night. Protest in #Ferguson by activists who want to remove Mayor Knowles;
    Ferguson mayor says protesters who block traffic will “face the consequences” weekend of August 9. Won’t say what consequences are.
    More on this in a bit.

  204. rq says

    John Legend’s Get Lifted Production Company To Executive Produce New Thriller ‘Underground’

    John Legend is throwing his hat in the executive producing ring with the making of a new thriller Underground.

    In partnership with his Get Lifted production company, the film centers around a slave named Noah (Hodge) who crafts an escape plan along with fellow slaves to reach freedom. The synopsis will be based in Macon, Ga.

    “We are excited to join forces with WGN America and Sony and the talented team of writers and producers on this powerful project that we believe will inspire us all,” said Legend in a statement. “This series has a unique opportunity to speak to the passion and courage of those who risked it all as they raced to freedom. We are honored to bring our creative vision to this thrilling project.”

    The star-studded cast will feature Jurnee Smollett-Bell (The Great Debators), Alano Miller (NCIS), Christopher Meloni (Law & Order: SVU), Aldis Hodge (Straight Outta Compton), and Jessica De Gouw (Arrow).

    OOooooooOOOOooo!

    Homeland Security Is Tracking Black Lives Matter. Is That Legal?

    Last Friday, the Intercept released documents revealing that the Department of Homeland Security had been monitoring the Black Lives Matter movement since protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, last August. Emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act showed that the department had tracked the movements of people at a Freddie Gray-related protest in Washington, DC, and had also monitored cultural events like DC’s Annual Funk Parade and prayer vigils in predominately black neighborhoods nationwide. DHS also tracked hashtags and other social media associated with Black Lives Matter.

    Nusrat Choudhury, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Program, says that while this type of surveillance may not be illegal, it may have significant chilling effects that do infringe on people’s rights. “There’s no question at all that the kind of mapping identified by the documents provided to Intercept chills people’s First Amendment-protected activities,” she says. “Of course it makes people feel afraid to go to these kinds of protests because of the impact it might have in terms of law enforcement’s ability to gather intelligence about them.” It may difficult to tell if this has happened, but, Choudhury says, “The line is drawn when that effect takes place.”

    Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies have the legal authority to monitor people and activities in public places. This includes attending, observing, and taking notes on protest activities. However, collecting and storing personally identifiable information on specific individuals is not allowed, with the exception of people suspected of criminal activity. Monitoring tweets and other social media posts, including any geolocation information associated with those posts, is also legal.

    Asked for comment, DHS spokesperson S. Y. Lee told Mother Jones that the department’s National Operating Center did monitor Black Lives Matter for “situational awareness purposes” to “ensure that critical information reaches appropriate decision-makers in federal, state, local, tribal and territorial governments.” According to DHS documents, the NOC’s Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness program does not collect any personally identifiable information, and surveillance is conducted by searching certain hashtags and keywords on social media sites, not by watching particular personal user accounts.

    The ACLU is also concerned that the surveillance of Black Lives Matter could amount to racial profiling. “Because of the predominance of people of color in the Black Lives movement, and the evidence that some of these documents show government surveillance of innocuous cultural events, including music events as well as peaceful protests that take place in historically black neighborhoods, there’s a serious concern that surveillance of Black Lives Matter and cultural events will lead to racial profiling,” Choudhury says. The Department of Justice bans racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies.

    The federal government’s history of surveillance of black civil rights activists in the 1960s and 1970s also adds cause for concern, according to Choudhury. “We have these long-standing concerns that government has engaged in surveillance of people not because there’s evidence of wrongdoing, but because of what they think, what they believe, and what their ideology is, as well as the color of their skin.”

    Determining whether the DHS’s monitoring of Black Lives Matter has had a chilling effect on individuals’ First Amendment rights or a disparate impact on African-Americans would require identifying people whose social media posts were monitored and who attended protests that were watched, and ascertaining the effect of the surveillance on them. “But based on the kinds of things that people interviewed by Intercept were saying, there is real concern that the impact is there,” Choudhury says.

    So, no, it’s not illegal, but it certainly raises all kinds of questions. Can they surveil the cops for a change?

    The Long Legacy of Occupation in Haiti

    I am writing this in Les Cayes, Haiti, where one of the worst massacres of civilians took place on December 6, 1929, during the nineteen-year American occupation of Haiti, an occupation that began a hundred years ago today. The Cayes massacre took place during a demonstration, which was part of a nationwide strike and an ongoing local rebellion. U.S. Marine battalions fired on fifteen hundred people, wounding twenty-three and killing twelve.

    On July 28, 1915, United States Marines landed in Haiti on the orders of President Woodrow Wilson, who feared that European interests might reduce American commercial and political influence in Haiti, and in the region surrounding the Panama Canal. The precipitating event was the assassination of the Haitian President, Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, but U.S. interests in Haiti went back as far as the previous century. (President Andrew Johnson wanted to annex both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Twenty years later, Secretary of State James Blaine unsuccessfully tried to obtain Môle-Saint-Nicolas, a northern Haitian settlement, for a naval base.) By 1915, the Americans were also afraid that an ongoing debt Haiti was forced to pay to France tied the country too closely to its former colonizer; Germany’s growing commercial interests in Haiti were another major concern. So one of the first actions carried out by the U.S. at the start of the occupation was to move Haiti’s financial reserves to the United States and then rewrite its Constitution to give foreigners land-owning rights.

    There is a commemorative banner near the site of the 1929 massacre acknowledging the day—something to show that the town remembers. But it is very hard to figure out what to commemorate, what to remember and what to forget, during a nineteen-year occupation.

    In my own family, there were many stories. My grandfather was one of the Cacos, or so-called bandits, whom retired American Marines have always written about in their memoirs. They would be called insurgents now, the thousands who fought against the occupation. One of the stories my grandfather’s oldest son, my uncle Joseph, used to tell was of watching a group of young Marines kicking around a man’s decapitated head in an effort to frighten the rebels in their area. There are more stories still. Of the Marines’ boots sounding like Galipot, a fabled three-legged horse, which all children were supposed to fear. Of the black face that the Marines wore to blend in and hide from view. Of the time U.S. Marines assassinated one of the occupation’s most famous fighters, Charlemagne Péralte, and pinned his body to a door, where it was left to rot in the sun for days.

    The notion that there were indispensable nation-building benefits to this occupation falls short, especially because the roads, schools, and hospitals that were built during this period relied upon a tyrannical forced-labor system, a kind of national chain gang. Call it gunboat diplomacy or a banana war, but this occupation was never meant—as the Americans professed—to spread democracy, especially given that certain democratic freedoms were not even available to the United States’ own black citizens at the time. “Think of it! Niggers speaking French,” Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan said of Haitians.

    During the nineteen years of the U.S. occupation, fifteen thousand Haitians were killed. Any resistance to the centralized, U.S.-installed puppet governments was crushed, and a gendarmerie—a combination of army and police, modelled after an occupation force—was created to replace the Marines after they left. Although U.S. troops officially pulled out of Haiti in 1934, the United States exerted some control over Haiti’s finances until 1947.

    There’s more at the link. But stepping on dark-skinned bodies just because of power seems to be an official USAmerican trait (when speaking of government-type entities).

    Raynette Turner: Mother of eight becomes fifth black woman to die in US custody this month

    Raynette Turner, a 43-year-old black woman, died in police custody while waiting for her arraignment on a shoplifting charge in a jail cell in Mount Vernon, New York.

    As reported by the New York Daily News, Ms Turner was arrested on 25 July on suspicion of shoplifting at a restaurant supply store.

    Two days later, while waiting to be read her charges in court, she died.

    Her husband, Herman Turner told the paper that he waited all day in the court waiting for his wife’s arraignment, and was told to come back the next day when the court closed.

    He returned home, and the next day two detectives arrived to tell him his wife had died.

    Ms Turner, a mother of eight, was transported to the nearby Monteifore Mount Vernon Hospital from the jail when she told officers that she felt ill.

    Shortly after she was returned to the holding cell, she was found dead.

    Mount Vernon Deputy Commissioner Richard Burke said that “no foul play” was suspected in Ms Turner’s death.

    An autopsy has been scheduled, but Mr Turner said: “Somebody didn’t do their job and my wife died for it.”

    Waiting for justice there, too. Someone should write a darkly humourous play based on Waiting for Godot entitled Waiting for Justice, with all the darkness and sadness that that implies.

    Fight breaks out at Ferguson meeting nearly one year after Michael Brown shooting, some pictures and tweets from that next comment.

    A packed community meeting in Ferguson, Mo., descended into chaos Thursday night after name-calling gave way to an all-out brawl that highlighted the simmering racial tensions still present nearly one year after an unarmed black teen was shot and killed by a police officer.

    At least three people were arrested outside the Ferguson Community Center after an informal question and answer session between locals and Mayor James Knowles III was interrupted by protesters.

    The tense meeting broke up early and Knowles quickly bolted when a physical encounter turned into a fight.

    “If this is their idea of change everything just got worse,” protester and Ferguson resident Tony Rice told the Daily News. “It began when a white lady knocked a cellphone out of a protester’s hand.”

    Knowles set up the town hall-style meeting meant only for residents to discuss any number of issues — from economic to racial — that have arisen in the year since the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown cast a national spotlight on the St. Louis suburb.

  205. rq says

    John Legend’s Get Lifted Production Company To Executive Produce New Thriller ‘Underground’

    John Legend is throwing his hat in the executive producing ring with the making of a new thriller Underground.

    In partnership with his Get Lifted production company, the film centers around a slave named Noah (Hodge) who crafts an escape plan along with fellow slaves to reach freedom. The synopsis will be based in Macon, Ga.

    “We are excited to join forces with WGN America and Sony and the talented team of writers and producers on this powerful project that we believe will inspire us all,” said Legend in a statement. “This series has a unique opportunity to speak to the passion and courage of those who risked it all as they raced to freedom. We are honored to bring our creative vision to this thrilling project.”

    The star-studded cast will feature Jurnee Smollett-Bell (The Great Debators), Alano Miller (NCIS), Christopher Meloni (Law & Order: SVU), Aldis Hodge (Straight Outta Compton), and Jessica De Gouw (Arrow).

    OOooooooOOOOooo!

    Homeland Security Is Tracking Black Lives Matter. Is That Legal?

    Last Friday, the Intercept released documents revealing that the Department of Homeland Security had been monitoring the Black Lives Matter movement since protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, last August. Emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act showed that the department had tracked the movements of people at a Freddie Gray-related protest in Washington, DC, and had also monitored cultural events like DC’s Annual Funk Parade and prayer vigils in predominately black neighborhoods nationwide. DHS also tracked hashtags and other social media associated with Black Lives Matter.

    Nusrat Choudhury, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Program, says that while this type of surveillance may not be illegal, it may have significant chilling effects that do infringe on people’s rights. “There’s no question at all that the kind of mapping identified by the documents provided to Intercept chills people’s First Amendment-protected activities,” she says. “Of course it makes people feel afraid to go to these kinds of protests because of the impact it might have in terms of law enforcement’s ability to gather intelligence about them.” It may difficult to tell if this has happened, but, Choudhury says, “The line is drawn when that effect takes place.”

    Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies have the legal authority to monitor people and activities in public places. This includes attending, observing, and taking notes on protest activities. However, collecting and storing personally identifiable information on specific individuals is not allowed, with the exception of people suspected of criminal activity. Monitoring tweets and other social media posts, including any geolocation information associated with those posts, is also legal.

    Asked for comment, DHS spokesperson S. Y. Lee told Mother Jones that the department’s National Operating Center did monitor Black Lives Matter for “situational awareness purposes” to “ensure that critical information reaches appropriate decision-makers in federal, state, local, tribal and territorial governments.” According to DHS documents, the NOC’s Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness program does not collect any personally identifiable information, and surveillance is conducted by searching certain hashtags and keywords on social media sites, not by watching particular personal user accounts.

    The ACLU is also concerned that the surveillance of Black Lives Matter could amount to racial profiling. “Because of the predominance of people of color in the Black Lives movement, and the evidence that some of these documents show government surveillance of innocuous cultural events, including music events as well as peaceful protests that take place in historically black neighborhoods, there’s a serious concern that surveillance of Black Lives Matter and cultural events will lead to racial profiling,” Choudhury says. The Department of Justice bans racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies.

    The federal government’s history of surveillance of black civil rights activists in the 1960s and 1970s also adds cause for concern, according to Choudhury. “We have these long-standing concerns that government has engaged in surveillance of people not because there’s evidence of wrongdoing, but because of what they think, what they believe, and what their ideology is, as well as the color of their skin.”

    Determining whether the DHS’s monitoring of Black Lives Matter has had a chilling effect on individuals’ First Amendment rights or a disparate impact on African-Americans would require identifying people whose social media posts were monitored and who attended protests that were watched, and ascertaining the effect of the surveillance on them. “But based on the kinds of things that people interviewed by Intercept were saying, there is real concern that the impact is there,” Choudhury says.

    So, no, it’s not illegal, but it certainly raises all kinds of questions. Can they surveil the cops for a change?

    The Long Legacy of Occupation in Haiti

    I am writing this in Les Cayes, Haiti, where one of the worst massacres of civilians took place on December 6, 1929, during the nineteen-year American occupation of Haiti, an occupation that began a hundred years ago today. The Cayes massacre took place during a demonstration, which was part of a nationwide strike and an ongoing local rebellion. U.S. Marine battalions fired on fifteen hundred people, wounding twenty-three and killing twelve.

    On July 28, 1915, United States Marines landed in Haiti on the orders of President Woodrow Wilson, who feared that European interests might reduce American commercial and political influence in Haiti, and in the region surrounding the Panama Canal. The precipitating event was the assassination of the Haitian President, Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, but U.S. interests in Haiti went back as far as the previous century. (President Andrew Johnson wanted to annex both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Twenty years later, Secretary of State James Blaine unsuccessfully tried to obtain Môle-Saint-Nicolas, a northern Haitian settlement, for a naval base.) By 1915, the Americans were also afraid that an ongoing debt Haiti was forced to pay to France tied the country too closely to its former colonizer; Germany’s growing commercial interests in Haiti were another major concern. So one of the first actions carried out by the U.S. at the start of the occupation was to move Haiti’s financial reserves to the United States and then rewrite its Constitution to give foreigners land-owning rights.

    There is a commemorative banner near the site of the 1929 massacre acknowledging the day—something to show that the town remembers. But it is very hard to figure out what to commemorate, what to remember and what to forget, during a nineteen-year occupation.

    In my own family, there were many stories. My grandfather was one of the Cacos, or so-called bandits, whom retired American Marines have always written about in their memoirs. They would be called insurgents now, the thousands who fought against the occupation. One of the stories my grandfather’s oldest son, my uncle Joseph, used to tell was of watching a group of young Marines kicking around a man’s decapitated head in an effort to frighten the rebels in their area. There are more stories still. Of the Marines’ boots sounding like Galipot, a fabled three-legged horse, which all children were supposed to fear. Of the black face that the Marines wore to blend in and hide from view. Of the time U.S. Marines assassinated one of the occupation’s most famous fighters, Charlemagne Péralte, and pinned his body to a door, where it was left to rot in the sun for days.

    The notion that there were indispensable nation-building benefits to this occupation falls short, especially because the roads, schools, and hospitals that were built during this period relied upon a tyrannical forced-labor system, a kind of national chain gang. Call it gunboat diplomacy or a banana war, but this occupation was never meant—as the Americans professed—to spread democracy, especially given that certain democratic freedoms were not even available to the United States’ own black citizens at the time. “Think of it! N*gg*rs speaking French,” Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan said of Haitians.

    During the nineteen years of the U.S. occupation, fifteen thousand Haitians were killed. Any resistance to the centralized, U.S.-installed puppet governments was crushed, and a gendarmerie—a combination of army and police, modelled after an occupation force—was created to replace the Marines after they left. Although U.S. troops officially pulled out of Haiti in 1934, the United States exerted some control over Haiti’s finances until 1947.

    There’s more at the link. But stepping on dark-skinned bodies just because of power seems to be an official USAmerican trait (when speaking of government-type entities).

    Raynette Turner: Mother of eight becomes fifth black woman to die in US custody this month

    Raynette Turner, a 43-year-old black woman, died in police custody while waiting for her arraignment on a shoplifting charge in a jail cell in Mount Vernon, New York.

    As reported by the New York Daily News, Ms Turner was arrested on 25 July on suspicion of shoplifting at a restaurant supply store.

    Two days later, while waiting to be read her charges in court, she died.

    Her husband, Herman Turner told the paper that he waited all day in the court waiting for his wife’s arraignment, and was told to come back the next day when the court closed.

    He returned home, and the next day two detectives arrived to tell him his wife had died.

    Ms Turner, a mother of eight, was transported to the nearby Monteifore Mount Vernon Hospital from the jail when she told officers that she felt ill.

    Shortly after she was returned to the holding cell, she was found dead.

    Mount Vernon Deputy Commissioner Richard Burke said that “no foul play” was suspected in Ms Turner’s death.

    An autopsy has been scheduled, but Mr Turner said: “Somebody didn’t do their job and my wife died for it.”

    Waiting for justice there, too. Someone should write a darkly humourous play based on Waiting for Godot entitled Waiting for Justice, with all the darkness and sadness that that implies.

    Fight breaks out at Ferguson meeting nearly one year after Michael Brown shooting, some pictures and tweets from that next comment.

    A packed community meeting in Ferguson, Mo., descended into chaos Thursday night after name-calling gave way to an all-out brawl that highlighted the simmering racial tensions still present nearly one year after an unarmed black teen was shot and killed by a police officer.

    At least three people were arrested outside the Ferguson Community Center after an informal question and answer session between locals and Mayor James Knowles III was interrupted by protesters.

    The tense meeting broke up early and Knowles quickly bolted when a physical encounter turned into a fight.

    “If this is their idea of change everything just got worse,” protester and Ferguson resident Tony Rice told the Daily News. “It began when a white lady knocked a cellphone out of a protester’s hand.”

    Knowles set up the town hall-style meeting meant only for residents to discuss any number of issues — from economic to racial — that have arisen in the year since the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown cast a national spotlight on the St. Louis suburb.

  206. rq says

    This comment may post twice or more, due to some weird glitch in the system. Perhaps it’s being sent to moderation for reasons unknown (I checked it for bad words!), so apologies in advance if this happens.

    John Legend’s Get Lifted Production Company To Executive Produce New Thriller ‘Underground’

    John Legend is throwing his hat in the executive producing ring with the making of a new thriller Underground.

    In partnership with his Get Lifted production company, the film centers around a slave named Noah (Hodge) who crafts an escape plan along with fellow slaves to reach freedom. The synopsis will be based in Macon, Ga.

    “We are excited to join forces with WGN America and Sony and the talented team of writers and producers on this powerful project that we believe will inspire us all,” said Legend in a statement. “This series has a unique opportunity to speak to the passion and courage of those who risked it all as they raced to freedom. We are honored to bring our creative vision to this thrilling project.”

    The star-studded cast will feature Jurnee Smollett-Bell (The Great Debators), Alano Miller (NCIS), Christopher Meloni (Law & Order: SVU), Aldis Hodge (Straight Outta Compton), and Jessica De Gouw (Arrow).

    OOooooooOOOOooo!

    Homeland Security Is Tracking Black Lives Matter. Is That Legal?

    Last Friday, the Intercept released documents revealing that the Department of Homeland Security had been monitoring the Black Lives Matter movement since protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, last August. Emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act showed that the department had tracked the movements of people at a Freddie Gray-related protest in Washington, DC, and had also monitored cultural events like DC’s Annual Funk Parade and prayer vigils in predominately black neighborhoods nationwide. DHS also tracked hashtags and other social media associated with Black Lives Matter.

    Nusrat Choudhury, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Program, says that while this type of surveillance may not be illegal, it may have significant chilling effects that do infringe on people’s rights. “There’s no question at all that the kind of mapping identified by the documents provided to Intercept chills people’s First Amendment-protected activities,” she says. “Of course it makes people feel afraid to go to these kinds of protests because of the impact it might have in terms of law enforcement’s ability to gather intelligence about them.” It may difficult to tell if this has happened, but, Choudhury says, “The line is drawn when that effect takes place.”

    Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies have the legal authority to monitor people and activities in public places. This includes attending, observing, and taking notes on protest activities. However, collecting and storing personally identifiable information on specific individuals is not allowed, with the exception of people suspected of criminal activity. Monitoring tweets and other social media posts, including any geolocation information associated with those posts, is also legal.

    Asked for comment, DHS spokesperson S. Y. Lee told Mother Jones that the department’s National Operating Center did monitor Black Lives Matter for “situational awareness purposes” to “ensure that critical information reaches appropriate decision-makers in federal, state, local, tribal and territorial governments.” According to DHS documents, the NOC’s Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness program does not collect any personally identifiable information, and surveillance is conducted by searching certain hashtags and keywords on social media sites, not by watching particular personal user accounts.

    The ACLU is also concerned that the surveillance of Black Lives Matter could amount to racial profiling. “Because of the predominance of people of color in the Black Lives movement, and the evidence that some of these documents show government surveillance of innocuous cultural events, including music events as well as peaceful protests that take place in historically black neighborhoods, there’s a serious concern that surveillance of Black Lives Matter and cultural events will lead to racial profiling,” Choudhury says. The Department of Justice bans racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies.

    The federal government’s history of surveillance of black civil rights activists in the 1960s and 1970s also adds cause for concern, according to Choudhury. “We have these long-standing concerns that government has engaged in surveillance of people not because there’s evidence of wrongdoing, but because of what they think, what they believe, and what their ideology is, as well as the color of their skin.”

    Determining whether the DHS’s monitoring of Black Lives Matter has had a chilling effect on individuals’ First Amendment rights or a disparate impact on African-Americans would require identifying people whose social media posts were monitored and who attended protests that were watched, and ascertaining the effect of the surveillance on them. “But based on the kinds of things that people interviewed by Intercept were saying, there is real concern that the impact is there,” Choudhury says.

    So, no, it’s not illegal, but it certainly raises all kinds of questions. Can they surveil the cops for a change?

    The Long Legacy of Occupation in Haiti

    I am writing this in Les Cayes, Haiti, where one of the worst massacres of civilians took place on December 6, 1929, during the nineteen-year American occupation of Haiti, an occupation that began a hundred years ago today. The Cayes massacre took place during a demonstration, which was part of a nationwide strike and an ongoing local rebellion. U.S. Marine battalions fired on fifteen hundred people, wounding twenty-three and killing twelve.

    On July 28, 1915, United States Marines landed in Haiti on the orders of President Woodrow Wilson, who feared that European interests might reduce American commercial and political influence in Haiti, and in the region surrounding the Panama Canal. The precipitating event was the assassination of the Haitian President, Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, but U.S. interests in Haiti went back as far as the previous century. (President Andrew Johnson wanted to annex both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Twenty years later, Secretary of State James Blaine unsuccessfully tried to obtain Môle-Saint-Nicolas, a northern Haitian settlement, for a naval base.) By 1915, the Americans were also afraid that an ongoing debt Haiti was forced to pay to France tied the country too closely to its former colonizer; Germany’s growing commercial interests in Haiti were another major concern. So one of the first actions carried out by the U.S. at the start of the occupation was to move Haiti’s financial reserves to the United States and then rewrite its Constitution to give foreigners land-owning rights.

    There is a commemorative banner near the site of the 1929 massacre acknowledging the day—something to show that the town remembers. But it is very hard to figure out what to commemorate, what to remember and what to forget, during a nineteen-year occupation.

    In my own family, there were many stories. My grandfather was one of the Cacos, or so-called bandits, whom retired American Marines have always written about in their memoirs. They would be called insurgents now, the thousands who fought against the occupation. One of the stories my grandfather’s oldest son, my uncle Joseph, used to tell was of watching a group of young Marines kicking around a man’s decapitated head in an effort to frighten the rebels in their area. There are more stories still. Of the Marines’ boots sounding like Galipot, a fabled three-legged horse, which all children were supposed to fear. Of the black face that the Marines wore to blend in and hide from view. Of the time U.S. Marines assassinated one of the occupation’s most famous fighters, Charlemagne Péralte, and pinned his body to a door, where it was left to rot in the sun for days.

    The notion that there were indispensable nation-building benefits to this occupation falls short, especially because the roads, schools, and hospitals that were built during this period relied upon a tyrannical forced-labor system, a kind of national chain gang. Call it gunboat diplomacy or a banana war, but this occupation was never meant—as the Americans professed—to spread democracy, especially given that certain democratic freedoms were not even available to the United States’ own black citizens at the time. “Think of it! N*gg*rs speaking French,” Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan said of Haitians.

    During the nineteen years of the U.S. occupation, fifteen thousand Haitians were killed. Any resistance to the centralized, U.S.-installed puppet governments was crushed, and a gendarmerie—a combination of army and police, modelled after an occupation force—was created to replace the Marines after they left. Although U.S. troops officially pulled out of Haiti in 1934, the United States exerted some control over Haiti’s finances until 1947.

    There’s more at the link. But stepping on dark-skinned bodies just because of power seems to be an official USAmerican trait (when speaking of government-type entities).

    Raynette Turner: Mother of eight becomes fifth black woman to die in US custody this month

    Raynette Turner, a 43-year-old black woman, died in police custody while waiting for her arraignment on a shoplifting charge in a jail cell in Mount Vernon, New York.

    As reported by the New York Daily News, Ms Turner was arrested on 25 July on suspicion of shoplifting at a restaurant supply store.

    Two days later, while waiting to be read her charges in court, she died.

    Her husband, Herman Turner told the paper that he waited all day in the court waiting for his wife’s arraignment, and was told to come back the next day when the court closed.

    He returned home, and the next day two detectives arrived to tell him his wife had died.

    Ms Turner, a mother of eight, was transported to the nearby Monteifore Mount Vernon Hospital from the jail when she told officers that she felt ill.

    Shortly after she was returned to the holding cell, she was found dead.

    Mount Vernon Deputy Commissioner Richard Burke said that “no foul play” was suspected in Ms Turner’s death.

    An autopsy has been scheduled, but Mr Turner said: “Somebody didn’t do their job and my wife died for it.”

    Waiting for justice there, too. Someone should write a darkly humourous play based on Waiting for Godot entitled Waiting for Justice, with all the darkness and sadness that that implies.

    Fight breaks out at Ferguson meeting nearly one year after Michael Brown shooting, some pictures and tweets from that next comment.

    A packed community meeting in Ferguson, Mo., descended into chaos Thursday night after name-calling gave way to an all-out brawl that highlighted the simmering racial tensions still present nearly one year after an unarmed black teen was shot and killed by a police officer.

    At least three people were arrested outside the Ferguson Community Center after an informal question and answer session between locals and Mayor James Knowles III was interrupted by protesters.

    The tense meeting broke up early and Knowles quickly bolted when a physical encounter turned into a fight.

    “If this is their idea of change everything just got worse,” protester and Ferguson resident Tony Rice told the Daily News. “It began when a white lady knocked a cellphone out of a protester’s hand.”

    Knowles set up the town hall-style meeting meant only for residents to discuss any number of issues — from economic to racial — that have arisen in the year since the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown cast a national spotlight on the St. Louis suburb.

  207. rq says

    Weirdness. Maybe it’s one of the sources.
    Anyway, last night in Ferguson:
    This week I interviewed people in Central Asian dictatorships and in Ferguson about the police. They had the same opinions.

    Ferguson townhall dissolves into chaos as physical fights break out between black and white residents. Everyone is screaming.
    Chaos at Ferguson meeting. The mayor appears to have left. Police breaking up fights and evicting audience. That’s Knowles, always a leader!
    Now the police are arresting people outside the townhall. Rumor is they arrested a child.
    All police and most citizens have cleared out of the Ferguson Community Center. Interesting that Mayor Knowles was one of first to run.

    Ferguson Police calling for help Dellwood, Stl County Bel Ridge Berkeley Calverton Park Police just arrived. @deray

  208. rq says

    The new Ferguson Police Chief, Andre Anderson had no control of the situation today in Ferguson.@deray @ShaunKing
    This lady assaulted a 14 year old & Ferguson Police arrest the 14 year old & let this lady go with an escort @deray
    There were Ferguson children at this meeting absolutely terrified at what transpired. Crying, begging for help. Awful to see.

    I truly believe the police and politicians of STL are being very intentional with escalating & encouraging violence before the anniversary.

    August: anniversaries of Michael Brown killing + Ferguson crackdown and Hurricane Katrina. Anniversaries of betrayal of black America.

    US officer pleads not guilty in black man’s fatal shooting. At least they’ve got around to using his mugshot.

    A white Ohio policeman who shot a black man during a routine traffic stop pleaded not guilty to murder charges as two of his colleagues were suspended.

    The family of Sam DuBose, 43, has said he would have been dismissed as just “one other stereotype” of a violent black man were it not for a body camera video which showed DuBose did nothing to justify the shooting.

    The case comes as the United States grapples with heightened racial tensions in the wake of a series of high-profile incidents of unarmed African Americans being killed by police in disputed circumstances.

    It has also raised concerns about the so-called ‘blue wall of silence’ which prevents police who commit misdeeds from being caught because their colleagues will either not report them or cover for them.

    University of Cincinnati campus police officer Ray Tensing told investigators that he opened fire out of fear for his life after DuBose tried to drive away and dragged the officer along with him.

    One of the officers who responded to the shooting said he saw Tensing being dragged, according to an initial police report.

    But prosecutors said a review of the footage showed Tensing was never in danger during the July 19 incident and only hit the ground after he fired the deadly shot.

    Two of the responding officers were “placed on paid administrative leave because an internal investigation is now underway,” a spokeswoman for the university told AFP.

  209. rq says

    Black Man Bids Tearful Goodbye To Family Before Daily Commute. It’s the Onion.

    Frequently choking back tears, African-American computer technician Michael Shaw bid an emotional goodbye to his wife and 6-year-old son before making his morning commute Thursday, sources confirmed. “I don’t know when or if I’ll see you guys next, so I just want you to know how much I love you,” Shaw said, his voice breaking as he prepared to embark on the 25-minute trip, including a stop at a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru, from which he might not return. “Kevin, you take care of Mommy. Whatever might happen before I get to the office, you have to be strong, okay?” According to sources, Shaw then grabbed his briefcase and his car keys and took one last look over his shoulder before opening the front door and walking down the lawn to the driveway.

    Nneka Speaks Out On Women’s Rights In Africa, via Tony.

    Nneka recently stopped by for a chat and acoustic performance with the The World Bank‘s #Music4Dev program. The Nigerian singer-songwriter, who’s been busy touring and promoting her latest album My Fairy Tales, played a pristine version of her staple “My Home” and shared her opinions about women’s rights and gender issues in Nigeria and Africa in a brief interview.

    “I use my music as a platform to express [such] issues,” Nneka states. “I grew up in… Nigeria where women don’t have that much freedom to express themselves on many different levels, whether it be politically or even within the family. Having been raised in a society where you have to respect the system in fear — where respect is mistaken as fear — I withdrew myself [in order] for me to understand what was going on and for me to re-identify myself as a human being, first of all, and then as a woman.”

    Nneka’s the cultural ambassador of the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) and co-founded the ROPE Foundation (Reach Out, Organize, Practice, Experience), a charity supporting young people who want to express themselves through art, who recently partnered with WAGA Foundation (War Affected Girls and Adults) to help sexually abused women in Sierra Leone. Watch her interview and performance with The World Bank below.

    See the short interview, followed by an absolutely beautiful and emotional song.

    Police release videos after Confederate flags left at Ebenezer Baptist, photos only – from surveillance cameras.

    Passed this on 95 in MD. #SandraBland Truck with giant billboard asking the DOJ to investigate Sandra Bland’s death.

    Cincinnati prosecutor who charged officer: ‘When I indict a murderer, I don’t pull punches’

    To put it simply, Joseph T. Deters, a law-and-order Republican from Hamilton County, Ohio, is not a prosecutor who’s known for sending cops to jail.

    When he announced Wednesday that he had obtained a grand jury indictment for murder against a police officer in the shooting of an unarmed black motorist, Deters, 58, became an instant celebrity.

    His expressions of disgust and dismay at the traffic stop that left a motorist with a fatal gunshot wound to the head spread rapidly across social media.

    But the longtime prosecutor says his recommendation to the grand jury was based on a clear-eyed assessment of the facts.

    “I’ve reviewed probably 100 police shootings. This was bad from the start, and you know, he’s going to have to answer for it — that’s the bottom line,” he said in an interview Thursday, referring to the officer involved. “I think it was a murder… I think we’ll win this case.”

    At a time of increasing tension across the country over the deaths of unarmed African Americans at the hands of police officers, the indictment on one of the strongest possible charges was unusual.

    Officials had feared unrest after the July 19 traffic stop, when Officer Raymond Tensing of the University of Cincinnati Police Department shot Samuel DuBose, whom he had stopped for driving without a front license plate. The school closed its campuses shortly before Deters’ news conference on the grand jury’s decision.

    Then Deters got in front of the cameras and started talking.

    “This is the most asinine act I’ve ever seen a police officer make,” the blue-eyed, silver-haired prosecutor told reporters, before showing Tensing’s body-camera video of the shooting. “Totally unwarranted. It’s an absolute tragedy in the year 2015 that anyone would behave in this manner.”

    With a boldness that has defined his legal career, Deters then called for the university’s Police Department to disband. Tensing, he said, “should never have been a police officer.”

    Across the country, many activists who have taken on the issue of police violence against African Americans seemed to be caught off guard.

    “I have sincerely never seen a white prosecutor in my entire life as outraged as [prosecutor] Deters is right now about this unjustified police murder,” Shaun King, a prominent social-media activist who monitors police shootings, wrote Wednesday on Twitter.

    A top police union official said he was also surprised.

    “Some of the remarks he made were way out of line,” said Jay McDonald, president of the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police, which has 25,000 members and will provide Tensing’s legal defense.

    Maybe he can be clear-eyed in his assessment of the facts in the future, too.

    A REINVESTMENT & REHABILITATION FRAMEWORK FOR AMERICA’S CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM, a pdf of O’Malley’s criminal justice reform plan. Released just in time for his Urban League presentation today.

  210. rq says

    O’Malley notes that he wasn’t endorsed by the Baltimore @FOP3 when running for Mayor of Baltimore. But other than that…

    Death of a Young Black Journalist

    On the night of May 27th, Charnice Milton, a twenty-seven-year-old journalist, was heading home from an assignment. She’d stopped to transfer buses in Anacostia, in Washington, D.C., after covering a neighborhood meeting for a Capitol Hill paper called the Hill Rag. According to police, Milton took a bullet aimed at another passerby, in a neighborhood that’s seen much of the twenty-per-cent increase in homicides in D.C. from this time last year. Her killing remains unsolved.

    At Syracuse University, where Milton received a master’s degree in journalism in 2011, one professor remembered her unusual response to his question of where each student hoped to land in the next ten years. “Some said the New York Times, some said Esquire or Rolling Stone,” he told Syracuse.com. “Charnice said she wanted to be writing stories that mattered in the community where she grew up.” After graduating, she churned out copy as a stringer for the Hill Rag and its hyper-local sister paper, East of the River, covering her native southeast D.C., including Anacostia.

    The most basic instinct of a local reporter is to take the importance of her neighbors as a given. In a community like Anacostia—where more than ninety per cent of residents are African-American, one in two kids lives below the poverty line, and incarceration and unemployment rates are among the nation’s highest—this is another way of saying that black lives matter. Sometimes, for Milton, that meant writing up community meetings, where neighbors protested shoddy development projects or called out the predations of banks. Other times, it meant documenting the impact of mass incarceration block by block. Milton covered the “Ban the Box” campaign to keep employers from freezing out applicants with criminal records, and the launch of a support group to help people leaving prison. She laid out local battles over funding for city fire and emergency medical services and plans to build the city’s first Wal-Mart, on the block where she was later shot.

    Milton’s best work didn’t focus on the neighborhood’s problems, at least not directly. It dipped, instead, into the lives of what her dad called “the geeks of Anacostia.” Milton wrote a profile of a high-school student named Jabari Jefferson, who won a scholarship to study in Beijing. He’d previously been harassed by police, and was mistaken on one occasion for a person suspected of breaking someone’s window. Now, Milton wrote, he’d made a name for himself as someone who could “continue changing others’ perceptions of African-American men in Ward 8.” She covered the ninetieth birthday of Erman Clay, a Second World War veteran who ranked among the first African-American Command Sergeant Majors in the National Guard. And she gave page space to Auntie Oye, a Liberian immigrant who taught Anacostia school-kids to cook healthier meals, dressing them up in little white chef’s coats and employing her best storytelling tricks. Twice in recent years, Milton interviewed the late Marion Barry; his wife told the crowd at Milton’s funeral that her husband had said of Charnice, “This young lady, she’s so different, she’s so thorough.”

    Community papers can do this stuff: they can grill or gild local power, make space for voices outside it, and tell you where to find the chili-pepper festival or the soup kitchen or the voting booth. Milton didn’t romanticize the genre, but she believed in its value and worried about the economic forces stripping it down. On Pinterest, Milton asked her followers, “Traditional Journalism: Is it Old News?,” sharing an infographic full of grim statistics: “Between 2006 and 2011, daily newspaper staffs shrank 25%,” “Between 2005 and 2009, newspaper ad revenue dropped 47 percent.” But from the moment she graduated, she found a way to enlist in what she saw as a cultural movement to keep up grassroots news. She was young enough to speak social media as a second language—she posted her stories on LinkedIn and photos on Facebook. But her mother told me that the work in which she put her faith was shoe-leather, in-the-flesh reporting, bound for print.

    More at the link.

    O’Malley Debuts Criminal Justice Reform Plan [INTERVIEW]

    In the era (or perhaps, the dawn) of #BlackLivesMatter, it is unlikely that a Democratic candidate will be able to carry the critical Black vote without making criminal justice reform central to his or her campaign. Today, Governor Martin O’Malley will present his strategy at the annual conference of the National Urban League in Fort Lauderdale.

    In “A Reinvestment and Rehabilitation Framework for America’s Criminal Justice System,” Governor O’Malley breaks down his plan to “Ensure that justice is delivered for all Americans—regardless of race, class, or place,” while healing the broken relationship between citizens and local law enforcement and also reimagining “corrections” facilities as institutions where incarcerated persons are prepared for their return to society: “We will be stronger as a nation if all of our fellow Americans are able to find jobs, rebuild their lives, and have a stake in our democracy. There is no such thing as a spare American.”

    The ambitious framework addresses many of the oft-repeated challenges African-Americans face in and around the criminal justice system: abuse at the hands of local law enforcement, unfair sentencing, racial disparity in administering the death penalty (which the governor wants to “abolish”), denial of rights to felons, the criminalization of mental illness and drug addiction, the school-to-prison pipeline, the privatization of the country’s prisons, broken immigration policies and the economic despair that brings many Americans into the criminal justice system in the first place. You can read the plan in full here.

    The former mayor of Baltimore and governor of Maryland spoke exclusively to EBONY about why he’s ready to challenge structural racism and how his record of service makes him more qualified than both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to change the culture of American law enforcement.

    Interview follows at the link. Excerpt:

    EBONY: Are you ready to tell the entire country—not just the National Urban League or the NAACP—that you are ready to make addressing racism an important part of your campaign for presidency and, if elected, your presidency?

    MO: Yes, I am and it’s been an important part of my entire calling to public service throughout my life. I think Dr. King summed it up when he said that one day, this generation of Americans will be called [to respond] not only for the evil acts of bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good. I think it’s irresponsible for us as citizens not to find ways to talk about this and I think that’s especially important in the public forum of selecting the next president of the United States. And that’s something that, as the mayor of Baltimore elected when our city had become the most violent in America that I’ve had a lot of experience with. And as governor, we reduced our incarceration rate. It was at a 20 year low and we did it by reducing recidivism by 15%. We restored voting rights to 52,000 people, we eliminated the death penalty and we decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana. So I’ve had a long trajectory over 15 years in a very diverse space of talking about [these things]. And I tend to talk about them in the course of this campaign because this is part of the work we need to do to address what all of us share which is a pretty brutal racial legacy of injustice in our country that’s not limited to crime and punishment. It’s everything in America whether its’ education or housing or other things and I don’t know that we can address it together unless we do find ways to talk about it with one another.

    EBONY: In terms of your law enforcement policy as mayor of Baltimore, is there anything you would do differently?

    MO: I wish that we had been leaders in the newer technology, both in our state and as mayor, [such as] the body cameras and the cameras [in] police cruisers. We were early implementers of putting up public safety cameras to keep public spaces safe. I wish we had been just as early and proactive in the body cameras and cameras in cruisers…I also wish that I had done a better job of institutionalizing some of the practices in terms of policing the police that were implemented during my time, that I wasn’t able to institutionalize to carry on after my time as much as I would have liked…we promised three things: to improve policing, including how we police the police, and we also promised to greatly increase drug treatment funding, which we also did and to greatly improve our interventions in the lives of our most vulnerable young people…I committed to doing 100 reverse integrity screens a year, I committed to increasing the internal affairs division, I committed to a tracking and monitoring with an early warning system that is courtesy and brutality complaints. And I assigned independent detectives for the first time to a civilian review board so they’d had the power to investigate any case independently with the police department’s internal affairs division. And under the pressure of budgets not all of those things continued at the level that they had during our time…we reduced police involved shootings to their lowest levels in modern history. The three years where the lowest level of police involved shootings were during my time as mayor.

    You might want to look into his record as Mayor of Baltimore, and the longer-term results of his policies.

    Officers at Sam DuBose scene involved in death of another unarmed black man – so are they the go-to people called in emergencies like this?

    Two police officers who corroborated a seemingly false account of the fatal shooting of Samuel DuBose in Cincinnati were previously implicated in the death of an unarmed, hospitalised and mentally ill black man who died after he was “rushed” by a group of seven University of Cincinnati police officers.

    Kelly Brinson, a 45-year-old mental health patient at Cincinnati’s University hospital, suffered a psychotic episode on 20 January 2010 and was placed inside a seclusion room at the hospital by UC officers. He was then shocked with a Taser three times by an officer and placed in restraints. The father of one – son Kelly Jr – then suffered a respiratory cardiac arrest and died three days later.

    In court documents obtained by the Guardian and filed by Brinson’s family in a civil suit against UC police and the hospital, all seven officers are accused of using excessive force and “acted with deliberate indifference to the serious medical and security needs of Mr Brinson”.

    According to the lawsuit, before Brinson was placed in restraints he “repeatedly yelled that slavery was over and he repeatedly pleaded not to be shackled and not to be treated like a slave”.

    The documents named University of Cincinnati officers Eric Weibel and Phillip Kidd – the same men who, in a formal report, supported officer Ray Tensing’s claim that he was “dragged” by DuBose’s vehicle on 19 July.

    Tensing’s account that he was “dragged” was used as justification for the lethal use of force. It was later dismissed as an attempt to mislead investigators and as “making an excuse for the purposeful killing of another person” by the Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph Deters, who charged Tensing with murder on Wednesday.

    The revelation that officers Weibel and Kidd provided the corroboration for Tensing’s account of the incident was met with anger by Brinson’s family members, who told the Guardian on Thursday that if both officers had been disciplined correctly in 2010, the death of DuBose might have been avoided.

    “If something had been done in 2010, I don’t think this wouldn’t have happened,” Kelly Brinson’s brother, Derek, said in an interview.

    blind too long. Justice raising the blindfold.

  211. rq says

    Via Mano Singham, a look at Samuel Dubose:
    And another routine traffic stop ends in death (Note: I have mostly seen his name spelled ‘Dubose’, but occasionally I have seen ‘DuBose’, as Mano writes – so I’m not sure which is the most correct version. I’ve run across this issue with other names, such as Deray/DeRay, as one example.)

    Dylann Roof pleads not guilty to hate crimes in Charleston shooting. I fucking hate that picture that they use.

    Dylann Roof, the white man charged in the shooting of nine African Americans at a South Carolina church, entered a “temporary” not guilty plea today to federal hate crime charges in connection to the shooting.

    A U.S. federal magistrate accepted the plea at a hearing in Charleston after the lead attorney for Roof, 21, said he could not advise his client to plead guilty, as he wanted to do, until prosecutors declared whether they would seek the death penalty if the suspect was convicted.

    Roof was indicted on 33 charges earlier this month, including murder, attempted murder, federal hate crimes and firearms charges for killing and attempting to kill African-American parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 17.

    Roof has appeared in photos waving Confederate flags, and survivors told police that he hurled racial insults during the attack.

    Pleading ‘Not Guilty’ because they’re anxious about the death penalty. Anyone else see the irony here?

    And under Similar But Not the Same, Ray Tensing, University of Cincinnati officer in Samuel DuBose shooting, pleads not guilty.

    University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing made his first court appearance Thursday on murder and voluntary manslaughter charges and pleaded not guilty in the traffic stop shooting death of Samuel DuBose, a black motorist.

    Ohio Common Pleas Judge Megan Shanahan set Tensing’s bail at $1 million US (more than $1.3 million Cdn). He was released hours after his plea, according to the Hamilton County Clerk of Courts.

    When the bond was announced, people in the courtroom audience cheered but were quickly rebuked by the judge. Shanahan rejected the defence attorney’s contention that Tensing wasn’t at a flight risk.

    More at the link, including Loretta Lynch’s praise for Cincinnati’s police-community relations, calling them a model for other cities. Hey, you know what happened here? They got a swift, unequivocal indictment! Perhaps other cities and locations can model off of that, too!!!

    Meanwhile, in northern North America, Jermaine Carby taken in under Mental Health Act a month before police shot him dead. Turns out Canadian cops are shit at dealing with people with mental illness, too.

    One month before he was shot dead by a Peel Regional Police officer, Jermaine Carby was apprehended under Ontario’s Mental Health Act after attempting to disarm a Toronto police officer, the Star has learned.

    After he was taken to hospital following apprehension by police, Carby threatened to commit suicide by hanging or injecting air into his veins through a syringe.

    Information detailing Carby’s mental health apprehension was provided to his relatives during a meeting with the Special Investigations Unit last week, after the police watchdog ruled the unnamed officer who killed Carby during a traffic stop last September would not face criminal charges.

    Carby’s family recorded the meeting with SIU officials, including director Tony Loparco, and provided the Star with audio from the meeting. The family has also provided the coroner’s and toxicology reports.

    The information sheds new light on Carby’s mental health challenges — including suicidal tendencies — and raises fresh questions about how much the Peel officers knew about Carby’s background in the moments before he was killed.

    Carby’s family was told at the meeting that the in-car computer Carby’s name was run through would have reported that he had “suicidal tendencies,” “mental instability” and had previously tried to disarm an officer.

    “We’re asking, why wasn’t someone from the mental health unit called? Why didn’t they deal with this information better, being that they knew this?” said La Tanya Grant, Carby’s cousin.

    Well, the computer also showed his previous charges for disarming officers and the like, and I guess some split-second prioritization took place. *sigh*
    Oh, here’s a few more gems from that:

    The details of the Aug. 19 incident would not have been accessible to the officer through the CPIC report on his in-car system. The report would have shown the officer a list of cautions about Carby, including that he was violent, mentally unstable, had suicidal tendencies and was an escape risk.

    It’s not clear, however, how much of the information about Carby’s mental health was seen by the officer who searched his name.

    SIU officials said at the meeting that the unnamed officer who ran Carby’s name through CPIC said he saw the information about the BC warrants and the caution that he had attempted to disarm an officer, but “never said he saw the rest of it,” said an SIU official.

    The officer was not specifically asked by SIU investigators about what information he saw on his in-car computer.
    […]

    A toxicology report from the Centre of Forensic Sciences found Carby’s blood contained methamphetamine and amphetamine in amounts consistent with recreational use, a low amount of THC and a trace amount of the depression medication Citalopram.

    Methamphetamine use is also listed as a contributing factor to Carby’s death, caused by “gunshot wounds of torso,” according to the coroner’s report. During the meeting, Loparco told Carby’s family that the unnamed driver of the Jetta said Carby had been smoking crystal meth previously.

    Victim-blaming, or what? The meth was a contributing factor to his death, which was ‘gunshot wounds’. I’m skeptical about the consistency of these findings. :P A lot about Carby’s past in there, too. Take note, also, of police union stance and attitude. #NotJustUSA

    Accused Charleston shooter Dylann Roof faces court appearance, just the Toronto Star on Roof’s impending court appearance.

  212. rq says

    Note: I will be maintaining this as a high-volume link thread for a few more days, at which point I will be less prolific and will be shifting things here, PZ’s hopefully-permanent racism thread.

    Asian E-Commerce Sites Are Ripping Off Popular Black Jewelry Designer Rachel Stewart

    When you’re a small business trying to make ends meet on the e-commerce streets while designing and making your own products, it can be a slap in the face when larger e-commerce sites blatantly rip off your designs and make a killing by reselling them.

    This is exactly what popular jewelry designer Rachel Stewart says is happening to her. Stewart has been selling her handcrafted jewelry online for almost eight years. She decided to go into business for herself after she was laid off from her job. Stewart wanted to take control of her own financial future and not put it into someone else’s hands.

    Stewart’s designs can be seen worn by the likes of Kim Coles, Nelly Furtado and Beyoncé’s all-female band the Suga Mamas. When you look at Stewart’s products, you get a sense of pride when it comes to black culture. From her Afro pick-design earrings, appropriately named Soul Glo, to her Nola Darling broach, which pays homage to Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It, the products are hand-designed and made by Stewart. But she says because of two larger companies ripping her off and selling products to other boutiques, her livelihood is at stake, her financial future now in the hands of copycats online and those who purchase items from sites like Alibaba and AliExpress.

    In an interview with The Root, Stewart discusses how the blatant plagiarism is affecting her business and may force her to close up shop.

    Interview at the link. Appropriation at its worse.

    Louisiana school official: Naming streets after MLK is just as racist as Confederate flags. Please explain!

    Louisiana school board member is being asked to resign after posting a troubling message on her Facebook page about the Confederate flag.

    Vicki Bonvillain, who sits on the Terrebonne Parish School Board, made the post on July 14 and has since deleted it. According to the Daily Comet, the post read “If this symbol represents racism in America SO DO THESE.” It equated a Confederate flag with symbols of other groups, including the NAACP, Hispanic Scholarship Fund, BET, Black History Month, the Democratic Party and the Black Panthers, among others.
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    “Our ‘elected officials’ want to accommodate our HISTORY to PLEASE some. WELL shouldn’t ALL ‘MLK’ BLVDs be removed nationwide?” Bonvillain wrote in a similar July 9 post, according to the Comet.

    In response to the posts, Terrebonne NAACP chapter President Jerome Boykin has called for Bonvillain to resign and called for a meeting.

    “I don’t think she deserves to serve the public school system with an attitude like that,” Boykin told the Comet. “Slavery was wrong. The rebel flag is disturbing to African Americans.”

    Bonvillain, who has a personal Facebook page which is public, and also one she uses in her role as school board member, mostly posts about her deep Christian faith, but also political views. She likes conservative Allen West and posted that she “stands with Israel.” She also posted a story about a Native American woman’s “fond” memories of her Indian boarding school.

    Bonvillain responded to Boykin on her personal Facebook page. She said she is a “woman Indian minority” and his job technically is to support her, and she would not be honoring his request to meet with her.

    So no real explanation. How typical.

    Bushwick Residents Demand Affordable Units In Forthcoming “Playground For Hipsters”, on the effects of gentrification.

    More than 100 Bushwick residents and advocates crammed into Cathedral of Joy Church of God on George Street last night to demand that developers of a proposed luxury apartment building—rendered to include a dog run, hiking course, fire pit and graffiti wall—provide 30% affordable units to low-income neighbors, in addition to sustainable jobs, and funding for two local elementary schools.

    The meeting felt like déjà vu for many residents, who spent months wringing these same promises out of the address’s first developer, Read Property Group (you might known them as the ones who sold 1209 Dekalb Avenue to Bushwick’s colonizers), back in 2013. Read sold a portion of the land to Rabsky Group last fall, and the new developers have refused to sign off on Read’s commitments—to which they have no legal obligation.

    “A developer’s word isn’t worth so much,” said Bruno Daniel of the neighborhood advocacy group Rheingold Construction Committee (RCC). “Read told us they weren’t going to sell the land, and they did.”

    The proposed luxury building at 10 Montieth Street is part of the former Rheingold Brewery site, a weedy, 6.4 acre industrial lot spanning 10 blocks near the intersection of Bushwick and Flushing Avenues. The neighborhood has changed considerably in recent years, with the addition of bars like Forrest Point and hipster wonderlands like the nearby CastleBraid. The City Planning Commission initially okayed Read to build 977 apartments across two towers, 24% of them “affordable” at 60% of the AMI, or $51,780 for a family of four.

    Martin Needleman, an attorney with Brooklyn Legal Services who is working with the RCC, believes that this zoning would not have been approved if Read hadn’t made so many lofty promises to the neighborhood. “Councilmember Antonio Reynoso would not have approved the rezoning without the support of the community,” he said.

    Read’s good-faith agreement promised 30% affordable units (including a percentage reserved specifically for seniors), plus $250,000 for non-profit legal services, and additional funding for gardens and computer labs at two local public schools. Then there was the promised $75,000 for a jobs training program for locals; 50% rental preference for North Bushwick residents; and $350,000 for renovations at nearby Green Knoll Park. Now residents don’t know where to turn to make sure that these promises are kept—towards Read, or towards Rabsky.

    “It’s a mess, is what it comes down to,” said Daniel.

    They’re great promises and great things. May the promises be kept.

    Grievance filed for Tensing to get job back. YES! He wants his job back, after the prosecutor explicitly said he should never have been an officer in the first place. Police unions at work.

    Local 12 spoke with Fraternal Order of Police senior staff representative Tom Fehr Friday, July 31. He says Tensing asked for the grievance to be filed with the university. According to Fehr, the university had no just cause to fire him and he was not given a predisciplinary conference. The officer also believes he should have been given a copy of any administrative charges that he allegedly violated. The grievance was filed July 29, the same day University of Cincinnati President Santa Ono announced Tensing’s termination and the same day tensing was indicted on the murder charge. Fehr says the university has yet to respond to the grievance. When asked if he seriously thought tensing would get his job back, Fehr said no but that he should. Tensing is currently out of jail on bond. He is due back in front of a judge August 19th.

    Offers pour in from across the country to help pay killer cop Ray Tensing’s bail and legal bills. I’m so fucking disgusted with these people.

    People from all over the country offered to help pay the $1 million bond for the former campus police officer charged with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed black motorist.

    Ray Tensing, who was fired as a University of Cincinnati police officer, posted 10 percent of the bond shortly before 7 p.m. Thursday, about nine hours after pleading not guilty during his arraignment.
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    The former officer’s attorney, Stew Mathews, said he had received numerous calls offering to help pay Tensing’s bail and legal fees, but he wasn’t sure whether his client would accept, reported WCPO-TV.

    “I’m not prepared to do anything like that, but there are a lot of people who are prepared to help,” Mathews told ABC News. “His family is attempting to raise it through family members. I’m not sure where we are with it.”

    Mathews said he would not allow Tensing to speak with the media, and the former officer’s family members have refused to speak with reporters.

    Of course your client will be accepting that help. It’s just assurance that a lot of people believe he did nothing wrong. Makes him feel better. And makes him feel not guilty.
    Asshole.

  213. rq says

    Two other officers at Samuel DuBose shooting scene will not be charged. Yep, it’s okay for them to lie.

    In the footage both Kidd and Lindenschmidt make comments, confirming Tensing’s claim he was “dragged” by DuBose’s vehicle before the officer shot him. An incident report, written by a separate officer, and published two days after the shooting, also carries Kidd’s claims that he witnessed Tensing being dragged. This claim was later dismissed as false by Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph Deters who, after reviewing Tensing’s body camera footage, charged Tensing with murder.

    On Friday, as Tensing was looking to get his job back and questions were being raised by federal officials whether false police reports could constitute obstruction of justice, Deters’ office announced that a grand jury had declined to bring any charges against the other two officers.

    “Two UC officers arrived on the scene as Tensing was reaching into Mr Dubose’s car. Both officers made comments at the scene but later were interviewed in depth by Cincinnati Police Officers about what they had had witnessed,” a statement from the county prosecutor’s’ office said. “In their official interviews, neither officer said that they had seen Tensing being dragged.”

    Deters said on Friday he was in full agreement with the decision.

    “These officers were totally cooperative in the investigation and consistent in their statements,” he said in a statement.

    He added there was “some confusion over the way the initial incident report was drafted” but added the document was “not a sworn statement by the officers” but “merely a short summary of information”.

    “These officers have been truthful and honest about what happened and no charges are warranted,” said Deters.

    It’s entirely possible that in the incident report, they’re going entirely by what Tensing himself said, so there’s no way for them to know any better. Perhaps.

    Two Black Men Took Video Of A Contentious 2014 Traffic Stop With An Officer They Say Is Ray Tensing.

    Pace, 27, a former UC student, told BuzzFeed News that his cousin, who was the driver, was pulled over for having a cracked bumper.

    Pace said he began recording because the UC officer — the only one who appears in the video — was “aggressive” and used “bullying tactics” to try to get him out of the car.

    This week, Pace said he and his cousin, Sexton Henley, recognized the officer after prosecutors released the body camera video showing Tensing pulling over Samuel Dubose for a missing front license plate. Tensing demanded Dubose’s driver’s license, and Dubose said he had one but didn’t have it on him. Tensing then told Dubose to take off his seatbelt and began to open Dubose’s car door. As Dubose appeared to “slowly roll away” in his car, Tensing fatally shot the unarmed man in the head. Tensing has been charged with murder and was fired.

    During the May 2014 incident with Pace and Henley, Pace said, “[Tensing] opened my door like he did in the video of Sam.”

    “I’m 100% sure it was Tensing who pulled us over,” Pace said. Henley told BuzzFeed News that when he saw the Dubose video he knew it was the same officer.

    BuzzFeed News couldn’t independently confirm it was Tensing in the video. The University of Cincinnati did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News’ request to confirm Tensing’s identity.

    Unconfirmed, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

    Why Aren’t There More Women Futurists? Tangentially related because it talks mostly about white men.

    In the future, everyone’s going to have a robot assistant. That’s the story, at least. And as part of that long-running narrative, Facebook just launched its virtual assistant. They’re calling it Moneypenny—the secretary from the James Bond Films. Which means the symbol of our march forward, once again, ends up being a nod back. In this case, Moneypenny is a send-up to an age when Bond’s womanizing was a symbol of manliness and many women were, no matter what they wanted to be doing, secretaries.

    Why can’t people imagine a future without falling into the sexist past? Why does the road ahead keep leading us back to a place that looks like the Tomorrowland of the 1950s? Well, when it comes to Moneypenny, here’s a relevant datapoint: More than two thirds of Facebook employees are men. That’s a ratio reflected among another key group: futurists.

    Both the World Future Society and the Association of Professional Futurists are headed by women right now. And both of those women talked to me about their desire to bring more women to the field. Cindy Frewen, the head of the Association of Professional Futurists, estimates that about a third of their members are women. Amy Zalman, the CEO of the World Future Society, says that 23 percent of her group’s members identify as female. But most lists of “top futurists” perhaps include one female name. Often, that woman is no longer working in the field.
    […]

    Madeline Ashby, a futurist with a degree in strategic foresight who has worked for organizations like Intel Labs, the Institute for the Future, SciFutures, and Nesta, says that another big part of the gender imbalance has to do with optimism. “If you ask me, the one reason why futurism as a discipline is so white and male, is because white males have the ability to offer the most optimistic vision,” she says. They can get up on stage and tell us that the world will be okay, that technology will fix all our problems, that we’ll live forever. Mark Stevenson wrote a book called An Optimist’s Tour of the Future. TED speakers always seem to end their talk, no matter how dire, on an upward-facing note.

    Ashby says that any time she speaks in front of a crowd, and offers a grim view of the future, someone (almost always a man) invariably asks why she can’t be more positive. “Why is this so depressing, why is this so dystopian,” they ask. “Because when you talk about the future you don’t get rape threats, that’s why,” she says. “For a long time the future has belonged to people who have not had to struggle, and I think that will still be true. But as more and more systems collapse, currency, energy, the ability to get water, the ability to work, the future will increasingly belong to those who know how to hustle, and those people are not the people who are producing those purely optimistic futures.”

    “I don’t know if I kind of pick up on the optimism as I pick up on the utter absurdity,” said Sarah Kember, a professor of technology at the University of London who’s applied feminist theory to futurism for years. “And that’s great for me in some ways, it’s been a traditional feminist strategy to expose absurdity. It’s a key critique.” She points out that as someone whose job it is to take a step back and analyze things like futurism from an outside view, a lot of the mainstream futurism starts to look pretty silly. “You’ve got smart bras and vibrating pants and talking kitchen worktops and augmented-reality bedroom mirrors that read the tags on your clothing and tell you what not to wear, and there’s no reflection on any of this at all,” she says.

    Both Frewen of the APF and Zalman of the WFS told me that they were concerned about the gender imbalance in their field, and that they are hoping to help change it. But they also both reminded me that, compared to a lot of fields, futurism is a tiny speciality. And it’s homogeneous in other ways, too. The majority of the WFS members are white, and most of them are 55 to 65 years old. “It is not okay for the WFS, although we care about them, to have only men from North America between the ages of 55 and 65,” Zalman says. “We need all those other voices because they represent an experience.”

    * * *

    Any time someone points out a gender or racial imbalance in a field (or, most often, the combination of the two) a certain set of people ask: Who cares? The future belongs to all of us—or, ultimately, none of us—why does it matter if the vast majority of futurists are white men? It matters for the same reasons diversity drives market growth: because when only one type of person is engaged in asking key questions about a specialty—envisioning the future or otherwise—they miss a entire frameworks for identifying and solving problems. The relative absence of women at Apple is why the Apple Health kit didn’t have period tracking until a few months ago, and why a revolutionary artificial heart can be deemed a success even when it doesn’t fit 80 percent of women.

    Which brings us back to Moneypenny, and all the other virtual assistants of the future. There are all sorts of firms and companies working to build robotic servants. Chrome butlers, chefs, and housekeepers. But the fantasy of having an indentured servant is a peculiar one to some. “That whole idea of creating robots that are in service to us has always bothered me,” says Nnedi Okorafor, a science fiction author. “I’ve always sided with the robots. That whole idea of creating these creatures that are human-like and then have them be in servitude to us, that is not my fantasy and I find it highly problematic that it would be anyone’s.”

    Or take longevity, for example. The idea that people could, or even should, push to lengthen lifespans as far as possible is popular. The life-extension movement, with Aubrey de Gray as one (very bearded) spokesman, has raised millions of dollars to investigate how to extend the lifespan of humans. But this is arguably only an ideal future if you’re in as a comfortable position as his. “Living forever only works if you’re a rich vampire from an Anne Rice novel, which is to say that you have compound interest,” jokes Ashby. “It really only works if you have significant real-estate investments and fast money and slow money.” (Time travel, as the comedian Louis C.K. has pointed out, is another thing that is a distinctly white male preoccupation—going back in time, for marginalized groups, means giving up more of their rights.)

    More at the link.

    Judge rules VA can remove Confederate Flag from license plates. How kind.

    Federal Judge Jackson Kiser has ruled that Virginia can remove the Confederate Battle Flag from license plates, dissolving his 2001 injunction that allowed the flag on specialty plates.

    “This ruling will allow Virginia to remove a symbol of oppression and injustice from public display on its license plates,” said Attorney General Mark Herring.

    Herring argued that state government does not have to endorse the divisive symbol.

    “I appreciate Governor McAuliffe’s leadership in calling for the removal of the flag and those on my team who moved quickly to get it done,” said Herring.

    The 2001 injunction had allowed the Sons of Confederate Veterans to place the confederate battle flag on certain specialty license plates in Virginia.

    The ruling will not be official until Kiser enters his order, addressing whether the decision will only apply to new plates or will also apply to existing ones.

    Be Real Black For Me: A Review of “Dope”, a more light-hearted and fun article.

    Dope is a cute adventure story: it has its moments that are charming and even laugh-out-loud funny. As a teen comedy about drugs and shenanigans, it’s just fine; the biggest gripe to be had with the movie is that it wasn’t content with just being a silly teen romp, but instead felt the need to use this story for a larger thesis statement on blackness.

    You see, Dope is also a movie about the perceived animosity towards the Black Nerd and what it’s like to be a kid who’s “not like the other kids.” This is an attitude that the movie takes a lot of time to spell out for you over and over again. Malcolm and his friends (but Malcolm especially) get teased and beat up consistently for, what the movie colorfully suggests as, their interest in what the narrator calls “white people shit,” like manga, punk rock music, getting good grades and applying to college—this is not labeled as nerd shit, by the way, it is specifically cited as White shit—and not for the simple fact of them just being uncool. Though it’s not explicitly mentioned, you have to believe their fixation on rap music and culture from the 90s is also a tool used to further separate themselves from the herd and highlight their specialness. Your empathy and sympathy for these characters is based on the typical nerd persecution complex of girls not liking them and bullies beating them up for being smart. In fact, education is used as the crux of the us-versus-them logic on display. Everyone who’s meant to be positioned as “different” in the film is so because they’re “book smart” and trying to get into a college. In Nakia’s case, this is her only real character trait.

    This is a high school movie with high school-level thought processes on race that it tries to pass off as enlightened and appeases the sensibilities of existing white liberal ideas on the topic without offering any sort of self-awareness. In this movie you’re either a nerd or a gangster, and the novel idea this film has about gray areas is that, “well maybe you can be a mix of both.” It’s static and lazy thinking, especially coming from the filmmaker, Rick Famuyiwa, who already made one a great coming-of-age film about high school kids, 1999’s “The Wood”. None of the characters in that film would fit in the boxes made in this movie and that was the beauty of it. It just felt like a story about kids growing up.

    Trump adviser deletes his Twitter page after being caught making racially charged posts on Facebook. Hmm, you mean Trump isn’t the only one who holds these ideas?

    Nunberg’s Facebook updates included posts calling President Barack Obama “Muslim” and “Kenyan” as well as one where he wrote about calling Rev. Al Sharpton’s daughter “N—!”

    The deletion of his Twitter page was noted by Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski, who said it appeared “recent” as the page was still showing up in the site’s search feature. Nunberg’s Facebook page is still online.

    A spokesperson for the Trump campaign told Business Insider that Nunberg would be “terminated immediately” as soon as the campaign verified the content of his Facebook posts. The spokesperson also described Nunberg as a “low-level” staffer. According to campaign-finance records, Nunberg, who has worked for Trump since at least 2014, was one of eight individuals paid by the campaign between April and the start of this month.

    In a phone conversation with Business Insider, Sharpton said, “You can’t get more racist” than Nunberg’s remarks.

    Beyonce may star as Glinda the Good Witch in NBC’s The Wiz. Fun!

    Why So Few Black Prosecutors?

    The near-total absence of Black people from their ranks, according to the authors of the report, results in “systemic bias.” Changing the racial demographics among prosecutors, they argue, is the key to making progress on two of the biggest issues in criminal justice: shrinking the American prison population and holding police officers who use improper deadly force against unarmed black people accountable for their actions.

    Why are there so few Black prosecutors? To begin with, there are just not that many Black lawyers: According to the American Bar Association, they accounted for just 4.8 percent of lawyers surveyed in the 2010 census (up from 4.2 percent a decade earlier). The reason so few of them become prosecutors, said Melba Pearson, president of the National Black Prosecutors Association, is that historically, Black law students eyeing the job market with the hopes of helping their communities and combating injustice have believed that their best shot at doing so was to become defense attorneys. In that job, a person could use his or her legal expertise to aid the wrongly accused, fight for leniency on behalf of the accused, and generally act as an adversary to those in power.

    Link to full Slate article at the link.

    St. Louis County Biased Against Black Juveniles, Justice Department Finds – not just adults.

    The Justice Department said Friday that the juvenile justice system in St. Louis County, Mo., treats black youths more harshly than whites and deprives all low-income youths accused of crimes — no matter what race — of their basic constitutional rights.

    In a 61-page report describing serious and routine violations of juveniles’ rights, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said youths accused of a crime are given little or no chance to stay out of detention, dispute the charges against them, or have the help of a lawyer. Among the most fundamental problems in the county’s Family Court is that for a county with one million people, there is just one, overwhelmed public defender for juveniles, who handled 394 cases in 2014.

    “What immediately could they do, by way of a start, is they could add public defenders,” Vanita Gupta, head of the Civil Rights Division, said in a conference call.

    The county — which includes suburbs of the city of St. Louis, but not the city, itself — is the same region that drew international scrutiny for its law enforcement practices last year, after a police officer in the city of Ferguson fatally shot Michael Brown, 18. The shooting spurred weeks of civil unrest, and a scathing Justice Department report.

    Though unrelated to the department’s investigation in Ferguson, the latest report again raises questions about racial discrimination and profiling in the St. Louis area.

    Ms. Gupta said department lawyers had met Thursday with county court and state officials to present the findings before making them public, and hopes to reach an agreement with them on reforms. If that fails, she said, “we certainly have the ability to litigate.”

    Both the state court system and the St. Louis Family Court declined to comment on the report.

    More at the link.

  214. rq says

    Previous in moderation.

    On July 31, 1919, white mobs set over 30 fires in Chicago’s black communities. Hundreds of black residents were left homeless. Anniversary.

    Of Lions and Men: Mourning Samuel DuBose and Cecil the Lion

    When people die in police custody or are killed by the police, there are always those who wonder what the fallen did to deserve what befell them.

    He shouldn’t have been walking down that street.

    She should have been more polite to that police officer.

    He shouldn’t have been playing with a toy gun in a park.

    We don’t consider asking such questions of a lion. We don’t speculate as to why Cecil was roaming the savanna.

    In Cincinnati, there was a news conference on Wednesday to announce grand jury findings in the case of Samuel DuBose. He was an unarmed man, shot in the head on July 19 by a University of Cincinnati police officer, Ray Tensing. Before the news conference, the school shut down for the day, anticipating riots, anticipating human messiness.

    The prosecutor, Joseph T. Deters, was visibly angry during the news conference. “It was a senseless, asinine shooting,” he said.

    And then there was the video. Less than two minutes into speaking to him at a routine traffic stop, Officer Tensing pulls his gun on Mr. DuBose and shoots him in the head. Mr. DuBose is fatally wounded, and the car begins rolling because the man behind the steering wheel is no longer able to control it. Officer Tensing falls, gets up, and absurdly gives chase, shouting unintelligibly.

    It’s a bewildering scene. When Officer Tensing catches up to the car, which has crashed, another officer has arrived. Officer Tensing says he shot after Mr. DuBose began rolling away despite the incontrovertible video evidence. This other officer writes in a report that he, too, saw this thing that did not occur.

    Greetings from an alternate reality.

    I did not want to watch this video but I did. I felt a compulsion. I needed to see what led to such a senseless murder. I hoped this was all a misunderstanding, an accident. I have no idea where such foolish hope comes from.

    Often, when I write about race or gender, people offer apologies.

    They say, I apologize for my fellow white people.

    They say, I apologize for my fellow men.

    I understand this desire to say, “We are not all like that,” or, “I wish the world were a better place.”

    Sometimes, saying sorry is, at least, saying something. It is acknowledging wrongs that need to be addressed.

    These apologies, however, also place an emotional burden on the recipient. You ask the marginalized to participate in the caretaking of your emotions. You ask them to do the emotional labor of helping you face the world as it truly is.

    When we talk about injustice, the conversation always comes back to: What do we do? How do we move forward? How do we create change?

    I don’t have answers to these questions. I don’t think anyone does, but there are actions that would accomplish more than offering an apology to those who cannot provide you with the absolution you seek.

    When you hear, “black lives matter,” don’t instinctively respond that all lives matter, as if one statement negates the other. Instead, try to understand why people of color might be compelled to remind the world that their lives have value.

    When others share their reality, don’t immediately dismiss them because their reality is dissimilar to yours, or because their reality makes you uncomfortable and forces you to see things you prefer to ignore.

    Avoid creating a hierarchy of human suffering as if compassion were a finite resource. Don’t assume that if one person says, “These are the ways I am marginalized,” they are suggesting you know nothing of pain and want.

    Understand that the seemingly endless list of black people who have died at the hands of law enforcement or racist zealots or other bringers of violence is not just a news peg or a matter of “identity politics.” This is the world we live in. The traumatic blur of videos, this stark imagery of how little black life matters, takes its toll. It creates a weariness I worry will never go away.

    It feels impossible to talk about race or other kinds of difference. But if we don’t have difficult conversations, we will be able to reconcile neither this country’s racist past nor its racist present.

    Federal report finds bias in St. Louis County family court , so there’s Salon on the article just above.

  215. rq says

    Sandra Bland arresting trooper’s personnel file obtained by ABC7 I-Team

    The I-Team had requested personnel records for the trooper in the Sandra Bland traffic stop, the incident that resulted in her arrest and jailing. We received the file around 5 p.m. from the Texas Department of Public Safety, under the Freedom of Information Act. Even though trooper Brian Encinia had been on the job for about a year, the records give a glimpse of his background.

    The 30-year old Trooper Encinia is now on administrative duty for violating department policy during this traffic stop. Texas public safety officials say when Encinia pulled over Illinois driver Sandra Bland, he was rude and failed to de-escalate a confrontational situation, at one point threatening her with a stun gun.

    According to his file, Encinia had only one disciplinary mention during his trooper evaluation period for what is termed “unprofessional conduct” during an incident at a school in Austin, Texas; an incident for which he received written counseling and was required to have periodic supervision. The nature and circumstances of the unprofessional conduct are not disclosed.

    Despite this conduct that some believe contributed to Bland’s suicide three days later, Trooper Encinia’s review report cites numerous positive attributes exhibited during his evaluation.

    Under the heading “stress tolerance,” the report states that Encinia “performed effectively and rationally while involved in a pursuit resulting in a firearms discharge.” Again, the circumstances of that police shooting are not detailed.

    And finally, there is this in the evaluation report from last fall: Encinia is characterized as having good problem solving skills and judgement while working patrol.

    Sandra Bland’s jail cell hanging has been ruled a suicide, backed up by jail videos that show no one coming or going prior to her death. But at a Texas State House hearing yesterday, her death was put squarely at the feet of Trooper Encinia. The committee chairman called Encinia’s behavior the catalyst for her death saying, “what he did triggered the whole thing.”

    The full file is available at the link.

    Denver police identify officer who shot Paul Castaway – repost, I think.

    Watch Another Heated Traffic Stop Made by Cop Accused of Killing Samuel DuBose

    The police officer charged with murdering Samuel DuBose during a traffic stop earlier this month reportedly had another controversial run-in with motorists last year that was caught on video.

    The revelation comes as union officials fought to get Ray Tensing’s job back. Tensing was fired immediately after he was indicted on murder.

    It also came as prosecutors announced that two other officers who responded to DuBose’s stop won’t face charges after a grand jury declined to indict them. Prosecutors said they were cooperative and their statements matched footage on Tensing’s body camera.

    In May 2014 — less than a month after Tensing joined the University of Cincinnati Police Department — Tensing was engaged in a heated exchange with two men after pulling their car over because he said their bumper was dragging, according to ABC affiliate WCPO in Cincinnati.

    In the encounter, Tensing asks the passenger, Demetrius Pace, for his name and birthday. When Pace provided his name, but refused to give his birthday, Tensing said he’d charge him with refusing to identify, WCPO said.

    Tensing tells Pace to get out of the car, according to the video, and Pace says, “What’s the charge?”

    “Step out of the car,” Tensing says. Pace asks, “What am I stepping out of the car for?” and Tensing replies, “Because I asked you to.”

    Later in the video, Pace and the driver, Sexton Henley, request a supervisor. They claimed they were being harassed, detained without being told why and not being let go, according to the video.

    Pace asks Tensing, “Are we free to go? Can you write the ticket so we can go?”

    Tensing responds, “You’re not free to go right now.”

    “What are we doing then?” Pace asks, and Tensing says, “You’re being detained right now.”

    Tensing tells them, “You guys wanted a supervisor?” and Pace said, “It don’t matter.”

    Pace and Henley also ask Tensing for his name and tell him they are recording the incident, according to the video that WCPO broadcast.

    When the shift supervisor arrived, the driver, Henley, was given an equipment violation ticket for the bumper, according to WCPO.

    The passenger, Pace, later told WCPO, “I shouldn’t have even been questioned.”

    “He [Tensing] should have dealt specifically with the driver,” Pace said.

    Lawsuit: Black Employee of Cupcake Shop Fired After Reporting White Colleague’s N-Bomb

    Shayden Frazier, an African-American former employee of Jilly’s Cupcake Bar & Cafe in University City, is suing the shop for allegedly firing him after he complained about a white colleague’s use of a racial slur.

    To start at the beginning: Frazier got hired in August 2013 and worked at Jilly’s as a cashier and server.

    Frazier says that a few months after he was hired, a white colleague referred to a black female colleague as “nappy headed and ugly.” Frazier brought it up at a staff meeting and suggested racial sensitivity training, but management declined to arrange for such training.

    Frazier says that during his employment, he was instructed to wear a hairnet and shave his beard, while white employees didn’t have to.

    In April of 2014, Frazier claims, he was written up after calling in sick for two different shifts. But in July, a white colleague showed up an hour and a half late and wasn’t disciplined.

    Finally, Frazier alleges that in July 2014, a black female colleague named Kyron came to him “noticeably upset and shaken.” A white dishwasher named Alan had called her the N-word, she said.

    Frazier says that Jill Segal, the shop’s owner, held a staff meeting later that day. “The meeting got heated,” Frazier wrote in his complaint. Kyron admitted she’d used the term “white boy.” Frazier brought up the dishwasher’s long history of saying words like “bitch” and “Oriental.” Frazier said he felt sick and was sent home. He was fired three days later.

    The Missouri Commission on Human Rights issued him a right to sue in April. Frazier, who now lists a Pearland, Texas address, filed his suit in St. Louis County circuit court on Monday. He’s going after the cupcake shop and its owner, Jill Segal, for discrimination, harrassment and retaliation in violation of Missouri Human Rights law, and asking for at least $25,000 in damages.

    Teen Perfectly Illustrates The Problem With NBC’s Sam Dubose Tweet

    A University of California at Berkeley student called out NBC News on Twitter on Wednesday for its poor choice of photos in a tweet about Sam DuBose, an unarmed black man fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic stop.

    NBC’s headline announced that the officer, Ray Tensing, had been indicted for murder in Dubose’s death. However, the network’s photo choice — a smiling shot of Tensing in uniform and an old mug shot of Dubose from a charge totally unrelated to his death — implied that Dubose was more of a “criminal” than Tensing.

    “Hey @NBCNews, I went ahead and fixed this one for you. Do Better,” Rigel Robinson tweeted, along with a split image of a regular photo of Dubose alongside Tensing’s mugshot.

    “How we tell these narratives is important,” Robinson, 19, told The Huffington Post. “Digging up an old mugshot for the black man that got shot instead of the officer that was just indicted for killing him does a disservice to the memory of Mr. Dubose, it does a disservice to journalism, and frankly, it’s just racist.”

    Robinson was far from the only person to criticize NBC’s photo choice, but his visually striking commentary garnered more than 10,000 retweets.

  216. rq says

    Sandra Bland arresting trooper’s personnel file obtained by ABC7 I-Team

    The I-Team had requested personnel records for the trooper in the Sandra Bland traffic stop, the incident that resulted in her arrest and jailing. We received the file around 5 p.m. from the Texas Department of Public Safety, under the Freedom of Information Act. Even though trooper Brian Encinia had been on the job for about a year, the records give a glimpse of his background.

    The 30-year old Trooper Encinia is now on administrative duty for violating department policy during this traffic stop. Texas public safety officials say when Encinia pulled over Illinois driver Sandra Bland, he was rude and failed to de-escalate a confrontational situation, at one point threatening her with a stun gun.

    According to his file, Encinia had only one disciplinary mention during his trooper evaluation period for what is termed “unprofessional conduct” during an incident at a school in Austin, Texas; an incident for which he received written counseling and was required to have periodic supervision. The nature and circumstances of the unprofessional conduct are not disclosed.

    Despite this conduct that some believe contributed to Bland’s suicide three days later, Trooper Encinia’s review report cites numerous positive attributes exhibited during his evaluation.

    Under the heading “stress tolerance,” the report states that Encinia “performed effectively and rationally while involved in a pursuit resulting in a firearms discharge.” Again, the circumstances of that police shooting are not detailed.

    And finally, there is this in the evaluation report from last fall: Encinia is characterized as having good problem solving skills and judgement while working patrol.

    Sandra Bland’s jail cell hanging has been ruled a suicide, backed up by jail videos that show no one coming or going prior to her death. But at a Texas State House hearing yesterday, her death was put squarely at the feet of Trooper Encinia. The committee chairman called Encinia’s behavior the catalyst for her death saying, “what he did triggered the whole thing.”

    The full file is available at the link.

    Denver police identify officer who shot Paul Castaway – repost, I think.

    Watch Another Heated Traffic Stop Made by Cop Accused of Killing Samuel DuBose

    The police officer charged with murdering Samuel DuBose during a traffic stop earlier this month reportedly had another controversial run-in with motorists last year that was caught on video.

    The revelation comes as union officials fought to get Ray Tensing’s job back. Tensing was fired immediately after he was indicted on murder.

    It also came as prosecutors announced that two other officers who responded to DuBose’s stop won’t face charges after a grand jury declined to indict them. Prosecutors said they were cooperative and their statements matched footage on Tensing’s body camera.

    In May 2014 — less than a month after Tensing joined the University of Cincinnati Police Department — Tensing was engaged in a heated exchange with two men after pulling their car over because he said their bumper was dragging, according to ABC affiliate WCPO in Cincinnati.

    In the encounter, Tensing asks the passenger, Demetrius Pace, for his name and birthday. When Pace provided his name, but refused to give his birthday, Tensing said he’d charge him with refusing to identify, WCPO said.

    Tensing tells Pace to get out of the car, according to the video, and Pace says, “What’s the charge?”

    “Step out of the car,” Tensing says. Pace asks, “What am I stepping out of the car for?” and Tensing replies, “Because I asked you to.”

    Later in the video, Pace and the driver, Sexton Henley, request a supervisor. They claimed they were being harassed, detained without being told why and not being let go, according to the video.

    Pace asks Tensing, “Are we free to go? Can you write the ticket so we can go?”

    Tensing responds, “You’re not free to go right now.”

    “What are we doing then?” Pace asks, and Tensing says, “You’re being detained right now.”

    Tensing tells them, “You guys wanted a supervisor?” and Pace said, “It don’t matter.”

    Pace and Henley also ask Tensing for his name and tell him they are recording the incident, according to the video that WCPO broadcast.

    When the shift supervisor arrived, the driver, Henley, was given an equipment violation ticket for the bumper, according to WCPO.

    The passenger, Pace, later told WCPO, “I shouldn’t have even been questioned.”

    “He [Tensing] should have dealt specifically with the driver,” Pace said.

    Lawsuit: Black Employee of Cupcake Shop Fired After Reporting White Colleague’s N-Bomb

    Shayden Frazier, an African-American former employee of Jilly’s Cupcake Bar & Cafe in University City, is suing the shop for allegedly firing him after he complained about a white colleague’s use of a racial slur.

    To start at the beginning: Frazier got hired in August 2013 and worked at Jilly’s as a cashier and server.

    Frazier says that a few months after he was hired, a white colleague referred to a black female colleague as “nappy headed and ugly.” Frazier brought it up at a staff meeting and suggested racial sensitivity training, but management declined to arrange for such training.

    Frazier says that during his employment, he was instructed to wear a hairnet and shave his beard, while white employees didn’t have to.

    In April of 2014, Frazier claims, he was written up after calling in sick for two different shifts. But in July, a white colleague showed up an hour and a half late and wasn’t disciplined.

    Finally, Frazier alleges that in July 2014, a black female colleague named Kyron came to him “noticeably upset and shaken.” A white dishwasher named Alan had called her the N-word, she said.

    Frazier says that Jill Segal, the shop’s owner, held a staff meeting later that day. “The meeting got heated,” Frazier wrote in his complaint. Kyron admitted she’d used the term “white boy.” Frazier brought up the dishwasher’s long history of saying words like “b*tch” and “Oriental.” Frazier said he felt sick and was sent home. He was fired three days later.

    The Missouri Commission on Human Rights issued him a right to sue in April. Frazier, who now lists a Pearland, Texas address, filed his suit in St. Louis County circuit court on Monday. He’s going after the cupcake shop and its owner, Jill Segal, for discrimination, harrassment and retaliation in violation of Missouri Human Rights law, and asking for at least $25,000 in damages.

    Teen Perfectly Illustrates The Problem With NBC’s Sam Dubose Tweet

    A University of California at Berkeley student called out NBC News on Twitter on Wednesday for its poor choice of photos in a tweet about Sam DuBose, an unarmed black man fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic stop.

    NBC’s headline announced that the officer, Ray Tensing, had been indicted for murder in Dubose’s death. However, the network’s photo choice — a smiling shot of Tensing in uniform and an old mug shot of Dubose from a charge totally unrelated to his death — implied that Dubose was more of a “criminal” than Tensing.

    “Hey @NBCNews, I went ahead and fixed this one for you. Do Better,” Rigel Robinson tweeted, along with a split image of a regular photo of Dubose alongside Tensing’s mugshot.

    “How we tell these narratives is important,” Robinson, 19, told The Huffington Post. “Digging up an old mugshot for the black man that got shot instead of the officer that was just indicted for killing him does a disservice to the memory of Mr. Dubose, it does a disservice to journalism, and frankly, it’s just racist.”

    Robinson was far from the only person to criticize NBC’s photo choice, but his visually striking commentary garnered more than 10,000 retweets.

  218. rq says

    Cincinnati PD stand at Fountain Sq as people march for #SamDuBose #BlackLivesMatter
    Protestors now b[e]ing arrested at #SamDubose rally @Enquirer
    No surprise police started the escalation in Cincinnati tonight at a peaceful protest. #SamDubose

    And for Sandra Bland,
    Black women throw nooses at police after march to jail in solidarity with #SandraBland #SayHerName #BlackLivesMatter
    #SandraBland solidarity action blocks deep in downtown Minneapolis. #SayHerName

    And it’s not so much the police as who is worried. An old ‘friend’. UPDATE: Michael Brown Benefit Concert At The Pageant Postponed

    A Michael Brown benefit concert that was scheduled for next Friday at The Pageant has been postponed.

    Joe Edwards, owner of The Pageant, tells KMOX there was a scheduling conflict among some of the performers for the August 7th event.

    No new date has been set.

    The St. Louis Police union had voiced fears the event might attract “outside agitators” so close to the anniversary of Brown’s death and could have lead to more civil unrest.

    That’s the update. From the original article:

    The St. Louis Police Officers Association is concerned the event could be exploited by outsiders.

    “For God’s sake, don’t sell tickets to a riot, because I’m very, very afraid that that’s what this concert is going to become,” said Association Business Manager Jeff Roorda. “All these outside agitators that gave St. Louis a bad name in Ferguson will be back here, agitating again. As we’ve struggled for resolution, they’re going to be fomenting revolution.”

    The Chosen for Change Foundation, the charity started by Mike Brown Sr. that would benefit from the concert, is aware of the police concerns. The group sent KMOX an email that said:

    “We have been working directly with Capt. Johnson and coordinating with the different police departments. We are working on releasing a statement.”

    The Pageant building is owned by Blueberry Hill founder Joe Edwards. He expressed optimism that the concert will live up to its title — “Heal Our City.”

    “Hopefully people will come together,” Edwards said, “The ‘heal’ part is what everybody hopes for. Why not take the one year anniversary as a time to go forward and not backwards?”

    Yep, that’s Roorda, calling a peaceful gathering of black people a riot, right off the bat like that. I have a feeling we’ll be hearing a bit more from him in the next few days. Did y’all miss him??

  219. rq says

    Oh! Oh! Preview! More commentary from this… ‘event’ later.
    But there was a confederate flag rally at Stone Mountain.
    Militia groups are patrolling the Confederate flag rally at Stone Mountain.
    Man stomping on a ripped-up Confederate flag. “How does it feel to lose the war?”
    Take note, white people: (a) do you feel safe, with all those guns around? and (b) Do you think black people would be allowed to do the same?

    Jason Isbell Discusses Southern Storytelling, the Nashville Scene, and Singing About Race

    When it came time to write and record his fifth solo album, 36-year-old alt-country singer-songwriter Jason Isbell had an unenviable task: following up his fourth album, 2013’s Southeastern, which intimately chronicled his journey to sobriety and swept the 2014 Americana Music Awards, winning Artist of the Year, Album of the Year, and Song of the Year. It was a tall order, but the former Drive-By Truckers guitarist delivered, producing an album, Something More Than Free, that vaulted to No. 1 on the Billboard country music chart and No. 6 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart the week after its July 17 release. We grabbed time with Isbell to discuss his approach to the new record, the evolving country scene in Nashville, and whether he feels an obligation to address racial issues in his songwriting.
    […]

    You strike me as a fairly liberal guy, speaking out as you do against the Confederate flag and in support of gay marriage. Within the country-music establishment there can be consequences if you go too far in vocalizing certain views, as we saw with the Dixie Chicks or Tim McGraw. Does that ever worry you or influence what you say during shows, on social media, or in your lyrics?
    The best way to handle that is just to be honest. You might not wind up with as many fans, but how many fans do you really need? I’m not looking to be a superstar. I just want to be in a room with good people who are similar to me and are at least open to things that I have to say. If I’ve told them the whole time, This is who I am, this is what I believe, they’re not going to be shocked if I say something from the stage or one of my songs references a political belief.

    Pitchfork seemed to suggest that you weren’t doing your part as a spokesman for the South because you don’t talk about race on the new album. Do you feel that it’s a fair criticism?
    I don’t care what Pitchfork says. They write from a place that’s a little too self-aware for me to really give a damn about what they’re talking about. That being said, I do discuss race in a couple of my lyrics if you pay close attention. But I’m a white male. I feel like people are tired of hearing about what white males have to say about race. I will participate in the discussion, but I’m not going to claim any kind of insightful perspective because I’m very privileged, and I have been since I was born. I didn’t grow up with a lot of money, but I grew up with a lot of opportunities that many people don’t have. I talk about my own experience. I tell my own stories. Whatever kind of moral you want to glean from that, whatever kind of description of the South you want to take out of my personal story, that’s fine with me.

    And again, it’s not a North vs. South thing. When people say “the North” they probably think of New York, but Michigan is the North. Pennsylvania is the North. People there are often just as conservative, if not more so, than the rural folks in Alabama and Tennessee, Mississippi and Georgia. I mean, Ted Nugent and Kid Rock are from Michigan. That’s about as far north as you can get in this country, and they write songs that defend the fucking Confederate flag.

    100% guarantee that no one who says “what about black on black crime” will pay attention to this. See attached tweet, a photo from a rally of black people addressing – you guessed it! – black-on-black crime. So what about it? Stop focussing on it.

    August 7th – 10th. STL. #UnitedWeFight Poster of events (also can go to fergusonaction.com) scheduled for that weekend, with a lot of participant cities.

    Hard to draw conclusions about pot in Bland’s blood, experts say – so once the bad news is out, they can work on refuting the bad science. Yay.

    Forensic toxicology experts who analyzed a report that detected marijuana in Sandra Bland’s blood question whether investigators can draw many meaningful conclusions from it.

    Without additional testing, they said, simple blood analysis has significant limits, since much of marijuana science is in its infancy and legal interpretations of the tests are sometimes based on cultural stereotypes more than modern scientific understanding.

    Any attempt to establish a connection between the presence of 18 micrograms of the active ingredient of marijuana in Bland’s blood and her apparent suicide in jail three days after being arrested during a traffic stop would be very difficult, experts told the Houston Chronicle.

    “This is an interesting distraction,” said Bruce Goldberger, director of Health Forensic Medicine at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

    And a potentially harmful one. A bit more at the link.

  220. rq says

    Young Africans to Obama: ‘Clean your own house first’

    Standing beside the Kenyan president he likened the pursuit of gay rights in Africa to the civil rights struggle in the US. To an enthralled crowd in a stadium in Nairobi he talked of the importance of women in society.

    He talked of the need to eradicate corruption and treat fairly minority communities, including Muslims in Kenya.

    “Progress requires that you see the differences and diversity of this country as a strength, just as we in America try to see the diversity of our country as a strength,” he said.

    “I always say that what makes America exceptional is not the fact that we’re perfect, it’s the fact that we struggle to improve. We’re self-critical. We work to live up to our highest values and ideals.”

    American Black Lives Matter

    Kenyans and Ethiopians were overwhelmingly enthusiastic, even fanatical, about their returning East African son, but there were many who felt America, even Barack Obama, was not in a position to lecture others on some of these points.

    “Most Americans think about what needs to change in other countries but they need to solve their own problems,” Shiferaw Tilahun, 31, tells me in a coffee shop in Addis Ababa.

    “They are interested in other people’s problems but they don’t care about black people in their own country,” Shiferaw says. “Most of our black brothers and sisters are suffering in the US,”

    It was clear in both countries that the issue of race, more than any other, had damaged people’s perceptions of the US.

    “When I speak to my friends and family here in Kenya, their feeling about America is ‘clean your own house first’,” says Teresa Mbagaya, 28.

    More at the link.

    Texas man dies in police custody after he was denied medication. No racial issue here (not snark), just another in a pattern.

    In the arts in Canada, Preview: Obeah Opera

    You probably couldn’t find two cultures more disparate than 17th-century American Puritanism and the African-influenced Caribbean world.

    The way the two play off against each other in Nicole Brooks’s Obeah Opera excites director Lezlie Wade, who’s helming the project, a Culchahworks Arts Collective show presented as part of Panamania.

    A tale of the Salem witchcraft trials, the piece is told from the viewpoint of black Caribbeans enslaved by white masters. Obeah refers to an African-Caribbean practice that some saw as witchcraft and others as age-old healing.

    “The Puritans were staid, rigid and strict, while their Caribbean servants came from a culture that was loose, free, expressive and open to the magical and the mysterious,” says Wade, who recently directed The Twelve-Pound Look at the Shaw Festival.

    But there are more ideas fuelling this work – Wade calls it “a blend of Paul Simon’s Graceland and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible” – which had a powerful workshop in 2012 with, as in this full staging, an all-female cast that here numbers 14.

    “One of its key points is how women are perceived and treated, which includes issues of power and identity,” continues Wade. “At first, there are two factions of women, black and white, but at a certain point the universes collide, with one of the most powerful white women, Elizabeth, wife of Parris, the town’s reverend, realizing that Tituba has a power that could have saved lives, including that of Elizabeth’s daughter, Betty.”

    Tituba, like most of the others in the opera, is a historical figure, and Brooks has carefully combed factual records to create her characters. Wade notes that the Salem trials were the most documented of such events, and Tituba figures significantly in the material. (She’s also a character in Miller’s play.)

    “She was different from the others charged because she was a slave, and she probably did practise magic, whatever that meant. Maybe it was just medicine, but that action would have made her vulnerable and put her at the centre of the storm.

    “I think the whole town was toxic before the trials began, only waiting for an incident to spark an explosion. That incident happened to be connected to Tituba, who worked in Parris’s household. He was insecure and not liked by the community, so he fortified his position by identifying those he believed to be witches.”

    And the Toronto Star on the production, Obeah Opera focuses on black victims in Salem witch trials. What’s interesting? Never, ever, ever heard of a racial angle in the Salem witch trials. It’s probably been out there, but it wasn’t ever taught and it’s not in any mainstream information on the subject. I find that… interesting.

    Singing Sandra is the cultural ambassador for Trinidad and Tobago and a calypso Carnival Monarch, but she had never heard of Tituba, the Caribbean slave denounced as a witch in the notorious Salem witch trials.

    Tituba, who was accused of teaching or demonstrating witchcraft to the young women in Salem, was reported by her Puritan owner and imprisoned. In jail, she met other accused, both black and white women, rounded up in the first wave of witch hunting.

    Her story and those of other Caribbean slaves is the subject of Obeah Opera, which reveals an episode sparsely recorded in history books and forgotten by most historians. Even those well-versed in Caribbean culture, as is Singing Sandra, a.k.a. Sandra DesVignes-Millington, have found those revelations a surprise.

    “Things were telescoped, only telling a white version of history,” explains Nicole Brooks, the writer, composer and star of the production premiering Aug. 4 as part of Panamania. “They were the ‘other’ as slaves were considered non-human and nothing. And history is written by men.”

    As women and black persons, the slaves were ignored in the telling of the witch hunts, she says, adding that people were shocked to learn that the New England Puritans had slaves.
    […]

    The production, running for five performances at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts in the Distillery District, is being billed as a world premiere as the story has been reworked and new musical components have been added.

    This is an a cappella opera; all of the music comes from the voices and bodies of the 14 performers who chant, stamp, tap sticks and pat the floor through a wide range of black-inspired music.

    There is tango — for the confrontation between the Puritan and his slave — jazz, gospel, ska, blues, R&B and calypso.

    Brooks injects classical music for the Puritan’s world and the prisoners sing chain gang songs. The variety of musical styles for the opera make it difficult to pigeonhole. It has been called a musical odyssey and a theatrical epic.

    Brooks calls it a “musical journey” and says the production merits the term opera as much as the rock opera Evita did.

    She’s got her fingers crossed it will live on after the Parapan Am Games are over. “The hope is that somebody will see this and want to (produce it again).”

    Many of the cast play multiple roles with Brooks calling them “shape shifters.”

    Divine Brown says the cast has become close during rehearsals.

    I would absolutely love to see this. But geography. Maybe someone in the Toronto area will have a chance.

    A statewide pro #confederateflag rally is currently taking place at Stone Mountain.
    Guys in camo openly carrying what look like machine guns/assault rifles at Confederate Flag rally at Stone Mnt #wsbtv
    Consider that the second trailer.

  221. rq says

    Parents break into day care after 10-month-old forgotten inside

    Authorities are investigating after a mother claimed she had to break into a Houston day care after it closed because her baby was locked alone inside.

    Sharonda Ross said she arrived at Joann’s Day Care and Camp about 45 minutes after its closing time to pick up her 10-month-old son Jordan, but no one was there.

    Initially, Ross thought her husband picked up their son, but once she realized that wasn’t the case, the parents rushed back to the day care.

    Ross said she could hear her baby crying in a crib and she banged three times on the window before she and her husband decided to take drastic measures.

    “I put my phone on record and start recording it. He breaks the window. We start breaking the glass out. He goes in and I’m still recording it the whole time. He comes (back) and there’s my baby — just left,” Ross told KTRK.

    “Nobody’s here, no cars, no nothing. I called the day care several times on my way to make sure to see if he’s at home and on the way back and my child’s here at day care by himself, no supervision. Nobody’s here.”

    Ross says she’s filed a report with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, and detectives are now investigating the child abandonment claim.

    The daycare’s owner has responded to the claims and accepts responsibility.

    “First I’m deeply, terribly sorry,” said Joann Davis. “I thank God he was ok… It was our mistake. I’m not saying it’s not… but the main thing is the baby’s okay, and I’m sorry as I can be.”

    The owner says the employee who accidentally left the baby alone will not be fired.

    Wow. So someone forgets that a baby still needs to be picked up, and they will not be fired for leaving that baby unattended for who-knows-how-long.

    Corroborating Cops in Sam DuBose Case Were Involved in Another Death of Unarmed Black Man , I think a repost.

    A Canadian mining corporation is profiting from slave labor in Eritrea, according to a new UN report. Slavery by any other name… would still be slavery.

    The survivors of conscription in Eritrea have reported brutal scenes of torture, rape, and summary execution. They’re made to work backbreaking jobs under the guise of “national service” for international corporations like Nevsun, which opted into this system when it opened its Bisha mine.

    When confronted about its connection to slave labor, Nevsun Resources Ltd has refused to face the facts. Instead, it gleefully advertises the Eritrean mine as “untapped potential”.

    Now that this UN report is out, the international community will be watching closely. Nevsun even had to respond publicly to the allegations. Its answer? That the UN failed to rely on the company’s own “independent” human rights assessment.

    Few dispute that the Eritrean state has been involved in significant human rights abuses. But Nevsun is the only foreign mining company paying royalties and taxes to the Eritrean treasury — almost a billion dollars so far, and another $14 billion over the next ten years.

    Why does Nevsun do this? Because it’s making billions of dollars from the Bisha mine.

    Nevsun says these indentured workers were sub-contracted, and therefore not its responsibility. Imagine if every mining company across the world took this position, and tried to wash their hands of the most egregious of human rights abuses happening right under their noses.

    It’s increasingly common — companies are trying to bury human rights abuses through opaque supply chains, and mining companies are some of the worst.

    Together, we can prevent more shady investment in Eritrea — especially for companies that want to follow Nevsun’s example and profit from the sweat and tears of indentured workers.

    We’ve done it before — a few months ago we got the CEO of mining giant Newmont to agree to stop building its Conga mine in Peru without community consent.

    Tell Nevsun there’s no excuse for slavery — make sure ALL your workers get paid!

    I believe there is a petition at the link. Sign!

    During Baltimore Uprising, City Officials Criminalized Hashtags & Labeled Social Media Postings as ‘Threats’

    In the early moments of the uprising in Baltimore after police killed Freddie Gray, Baltimore city officials monitored social media. The officials labeled activists and other users, who were posting about reported rioting, protest activity, and police action, as “threats.”

    The spreadsheet listing individuals deemed to have posted “threats” was released in a cache of 7,000 internal emails sent during the uprising by city officials.

    It is unclear who specifically was compiling this list. No agency is listed in the spreadsheet as being responsible. However, what is apparent is officials followed hashtags and essentially criminalized certain flows of information being shared by individuals.

    Officials compiled 71 “threatening” pieces of content from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube on April 27 [PDF].

    Each threat was designated as some kind of a “violation.” These “violations” included “chatter,” “cyber threat,” “riot,” “physical threat,” “threat,” “violence,” and “rebellion.”
    […]

    Natalie recalled the experience of having a “beast”—the surveillance state—look at you and then later you find your name in a government document.

    “It feels like all of your anonymity is gone,” she stated. “Once [the state] starts monitoring, then they start digging.” And, “Those in power want people, who are posting to social media in times of rebellion, to “be quiet and good in the face of horrific injustice.”

    Other people noted in the spreadsheet were @UntoldCarlisle, a journalist, and Deray McKesson, a prominent voice in the movement for black lives.

    The city tracked the following hashtags: #Baltimorecitypolice, #AmeriKKKa, #justiceforfreddie, #justiceforfreddie, #FreddieGray, #Amerikkka, #Amerikkka, #BaltimoreRiots, #BaltimoreRiots #idgt, and #mondawmin, #Baltimore, #OPFREDDIE, #blacklivesmatter, etc.

    Essentially, city officials criminalized a select group of people, who engaged in freedom of expression and associated their expression of political discontent with any of these hashtags.

    Some examples of ‘threatening’ tweets at the link, plus a link to the actual pdf of compiled ‘threatening’ tweets.

    How the lack of police ‘discretion’ killed Samuel Dubose and Sandra Bland

    Former Baltimore police officer Peter Moskos used a word in an op-ed for The Post on the complexities of traffic stops for police that I have been looking for since we started drowning in the flood of videos showing confrontations between African-Americans and law enforcement. “[N]obody should die because police officers are more interested in absolute dominance than professional, moral and tactical discretion,” Moskos wrote.

    Discretion is the word that had escaped me. And it is a dearth of it —for all to see — that has fueled the “Black Lives Matter” movement and galvanized anyone else horrified by how little it takes to claim a black life. Officers armed with discretion know how to deescalate situations when necessary. They understand the breadth of their legal and lethal power. And they know how and when to use both.

    Clearly, University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing didn’t use discretion. He pulled over Samuel Dubose on July 19 because of a missing front license plate. It ended with Dubose being shot in the head. Then Tensing lied about the events leading up to the shooting. The video recorded by Tensing’s body camera exposed the truth. As a result, Tensing was indicted for murder and immediately fired from the university police force.
    […]

    Discretion was absent when Texas state trooper Brian Encinia pulled over Sandra Bland on July 10 in Waller County, Tx. She failed to signal a lane change. Encinia’s dashcam video revealed that Bland told him she did so to get out of his way. The disturbing footage also shows that her refusal to put out a cigarette she was smoking in her own car didn’t sit well with the officer. And when Bland refused to get out of her car, Encinia tried to pull her out, removed his Taser and then threatened “I will light you up” if she resisted. That Bland unleashed a flurry of invective at the cop after getting out of her car is immaterial. She shouldn’t have been stopped in the first place.
    […]

    I completely understand neither Dubose nor Bland wanting to get out of their cars. African Americans know horrible things can happen when they do. It is one of those rules right up there with keeping both hands visible and on the wheel. And even that is not enough to safeguard your life. That’s because the discretion we hope and believe police officers are trained to use is too often clouded by subconscious bias, outright prejudice or just plain hubris.

    Moskos, now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, had his own tense traffic stop in East Baltimore in 2000. He pulled over a black woman who had been driving without her headlights on. She thought she was a victim of “driving while black.” By his own recounting, the escalating encounter could have gone any number of ways, but it didn’t. In court, the judge ruled in his favor.

    Honestly, I had little sympathy for this woman’s mistaken sense of moral justice. But I had empathy for her as a human being. And other things being equal, I’d prefer not to wrestle and handcuff a middle-aged woman for a minor traffic violation, no matter the legal justification. I could win tactically but not morally.

    …Little about policing is ideal. But that’s why we have police officers, to handle non-ideal situations. These often involve people who are lost, mentally ill, criminals or victims. And, like Sandra Bland, nobody should die because police officers are more interested in absolute dominance than professional, moral and tactical discretion. Peaceful resolution isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s the very purpose of policing.

    Moskos’s “purpose of policing,” his mix of discretion and morality, is what I wish more police officers used. Without question, the vast majority do. But we cannot appreciate that fact because we have watched too many men in blue in different jurisdictions around the country fail to do so.

    Grand jury investigating John Geer police shooting hears officers’ testimony

    The special grand jury investigating the 2013 Fairfax County police killing of an unarmed Springfield man heard from at least 16 witnesses in its first week of work, and will return for more testimony and evidence on Aug. 17, Fairfax prosecutors said Friday.

    The nine-person grand jury will decide whether to indict Officer Adam D. Torres, 32, for the fatal shooting of John B. Geer, 46, who was standing in the doorway of his Springfield home when Torres shot him once in the chest from a distance of about 17 feet. Torres did not testify during the first five days of the grand jury’s meeting, and his lawyer has declined to comment on whether Torres will volunteer to testify. Torres, who has not been disciplined by the police and is on paid administrative leave, has not spoken publicly about the incident. Fairfax County has already agreed to pay Geer’s teenaged daughters $2.95 million to settle their civil suit.

    More details on who said what and when at the link.

  222. rq says

    uly 2015 Police Violence Report. Infographic.

    Interlude: Music! Lauryn Hill Performs Nina Simone Cover of Feeling Good on The Tonight Show.

    Lauryn Hill was a musical guest on”The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon”, performing her Nina Simone cover “Feeling Good”, from the tribute album Nina Revisited: A Tribute To Nina Simone. Watch the performance below.

    Release of Sandra Bland’s Arresting Trooper Brian Encinia’s Personnel Record: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

    The death of Chicago activist Sandra Bland while in custody at the Waller County Jail has stirred up racial tensions nationwide and has led to a flurry of questions about the nature of the arrest, why was she arrested in the first place and how did she die while in custody.

    On July 31, ABC7 Chicago released the personnel record of Texas Highway Patrol Trooper Brian Encinia, who was the officer behind the traffic stop that led to Bland’s arrest and death. The document — obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request — cast light on the mysterious figure at the middle of this scandal and help to explain the actions Encinia chose to take during this faithful encounter.[…]
    1. Encinia’s Personnel Record Showed that He Had a Previous Incident of “Unprofessional Conduct”[…]
    2. Encinia’s Bosses Defend Encinia’s Justification for Pulling Over Bland[…]
    3. Encinia’s Behavior with Bland has been Called a “Catalyst” to her Death by Encinia’s Bosses[…]
    4. Bland’s Death Brought Attention to the Marginalized Position Black People Currently Hold in Society
    5. Bland’s Death May Force Changes in Texas Policing and Detention

    Now, I find #s 2 and 3 somewhat contradictory, and #4 erases the fact that Sandra Bland’s death specifically brought attention to the plight of black women in the criminal justice system, but comes at a time of general heightened interest in the position of black people in general. Crappily worded point, in my opinion.

    St. Louis justice system rife with conflicts of interest, bias against black children – report

    Following a nearly two-year probe, the Justice Department found the St. Louis justice system rife with conflicts of interest. Courts have reportedly deprived children of legal representation and treated African-American children more harshly than whites.

    “The findings we issue today are serious and compelling,” Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.

    Having investigating 33,000 juvenile cases since beginning its probe in November 2013, the Justice Department found that the St. Louis County Family court system had committed multiple constitutional violations, including failing to ensure that children accused of wrongdoing had legal representation. The report stated that children had been held without properly determining probable cause, and that juvenile offenders had sometimes pleaded guilty without fully understanding the consequences.

    The report also said that African-American children were especially singled out for harsher treatment. They were nearly 1.5 times more likely than whites to have their cases handled formally, 2.5 times more likely to be detained before trial, and three times more likely to be sent to the family court’s Division of Youth Services for parole violations, the report said.

    “In short, black children are subjected to harsher treatment because of their race,” Gupta wrote in a letter addressed to Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, the St. Louis County Executive, and the Family Court Administration Judge, according to a report by the Associated Press.

    Gupta said there were several factors contributing to the problems and violations. A sole public defender being assigned to handling a “staggering caseload of delinquency cases” was cited as one reason, and an “arbitrary” system of determining who gets a public defender was listed as another, among other issues.

    She also criticized the court’s organizational structure, in which “the probation officer acts as both an arm of the prosecution as well as a child advocate.” That setup is “contrary to separation of powers principles,” said Gupta.

    Nixon called the report “deeply concerning,” according to AP.

    Trooper who arrested Bland disciplined last year, more on that.

    Black Lives Matter: Coming To A Museum Near You?

    As we approach the one-year anniversary of unarmed black youth Michael Brown’s death at the hands of Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is set to open next fall in Washington, D.C., has already started collecting banners and posters from the Ferguson protests, as well as gas masks donned by protesters and cell phone videos taken at the various demonstrations.

    NPR’s Scott Simon spoke with the museum’s director, Lonnie Bunch, about why he decided to start gathering items from the Ferguson protests and the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement.

    Audio at the link, interview highlights as partial transcript also at the link.

  223. rq says

    w/ @MsPackyetti, @EBONYMag. August 2015.

    The word “black” removed from a #BlackLivesMatter sign in Bethesda, Md. via @CarlosLozadaWP

    So Stone Mountain. I think these may be in reverse chronological order, I’m going to try and do it right-side-up, as it were.
    Check out these dudes in the parking lot at White Marsh Mall really expressing themselves.
    Stone Mnt Park Police ready for large crowds for pro-Confederate flag rally this morning LIVE report in 10 min #wsbtv

    it’s crazy how we been out here since 11 and just like that they flipped. same people saying we love yall were not racist calling us n*gg*rs – It’s HERITAGE, not HATE, at least until those uppity black folk piss you off!!!
    white man told me “make sure you go back and tell your black brothers and sisters you felt safe and nobody hurt you ” #stonemountainralley
    We’ve been surrounded. Stone Mountain, Georgia
    soon as the dude called Tyler a “greasy haired n*gga b*tch” she reacted and the police officer immediately grabbed his gun…
    More coming up.

  224. rq says

    Shit. Well, the first part of these Stone Mountain tweets in previous comment, currently in moderation for excessive linkage. Oops!

    mind you its fuckers walking around with AK strapped on them. but you react to an unarmed 5’2 130 pound female
    police surrounded us so quickly we’re unarmed as fuck & MOSTLY women. meanwhile it’s dudes walking around looking like they’re invading Iraq
    News ain’t said shit to us ALL day until Tyler reacted. then all of a sudden they want to interview all of us asking why were there
    RT @AUCShutItDown: BREAKING: KKK rally today at Stone Mountain. Participants are openly carrying heavy duty weapons.
    they are. they are not the military. they are protecting the pro confederate rally

  225. rq says

    reached the top of stone mountain. they had someone posted with a flag at every stop on the way up. then this @ top
    photo on stone mountain – “Stone Mountain Park neither approves nor disapproves of the events etc. etc.” Nice way of taking the side of the silent moderate, there.
    so. we’ve been threatened that if we go back down the mountain they’re going to follow and kill us. staying at the top for now. FEELING SAFE!!
    3% man handing out business cards to join them.
    Perhaps there will be more later, but that’s all for now.
    And my jaw is like way down on the floor. Seriously, people like this, and people feel the need to police black people?? I think they’ve shown more grace and courage under a heckuvalot of pressure and stress than any reasonable person could be expected to, and it’s a real kick to the gut to realize that they’re still seen as more threatening than the people actually walking around with assault weapons. Geez.

  226. rq says

    Sorry, we’ve finally had some summer weather. I may be scarce-ish next couple of days. I’ll try not to be.
    This guy burned and stomped on the Confederate flag today during a pro-flag rally at Stone Mountain, … – #Pics
    ITS NOT LEGAL FOR YOU TO KILL ME ANYMORE
    a man goes to pull a gun on @Younglionking7 .. and look how he police officer nicely asks him to not.

    Friday, August 7th 6pm to 9 pm join us at the CRC for self care workshops #BlackHealingMatters #FergusonSelfCare
    Saturday, August 8th from 8:30 pm to 10:30 pm at SweetArt for “Words of Healing” featuring Cheeraz Gormon, Joaquin Thomas, and Deniece Kemp
    Sunday *all day* we will act as emotiibal support for those grieiving and reflecting on the anniversary #BlackHealingMatters

  227. rq says

    A Psychologist as Warden? Jail and Mental Illness Intersect in Chicago

    As Congress embarks on a rethinking of the criminal justice system — including giving judges greater discretion in sentencing — jails and prisons are also confronting myriad problems in dealing with the mentally ill. There are now 10 times as many mentally ill people in the nation’s 5,000 jails and prisons as there are in state mental institutions, according to a study last year by the National Sheriffs’ Association and the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit group that supports expanded access to treatment. Such inmates are far more likely to be kept in solitary confinement and to be beaten by guards and other inmates, corrections officials say.

    Some wardens complain that their jails have become little more than makeshift mental asylums, and that they lack the money and expertise needed to deal with the problem.

    Three of the nation’s largest jails — Rikers Island in New York, the county jail in Los Angeles and Cook County Jail here in Chicago — have been under federal scrutiny, in part because of mistreatment of the mentally ill. In Los Angeles and Cook County, the jails are already operating under federal oversight, and Cook County has become a model of sorts for other troubled institutions in how to deal with the mentally ill.

    Before becoming warden, Dr. Jones Tapia oversaw mental health care at the jail, and under her guidance, Cook County began offering services that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. All inmates upon arrival now see a clinician who collects a mental health history to ensure that anyone who is mentally ill gets a proper diagnosis and receives medication. The jail then forwards that information to judges in time for arraignments in the hope of convincing them that in certain cases, mental health care may be more appropriate than jail.

    The jail also enrolls arriving inmates in health insurance plans, then helps arrange basic case management upon their release.

    “We’ve started to focus on the entirety of the system, from the point of arrest through discharge, and really forcing the whole system to take a look at the people that we’re incarcerating,” Dr. Jones Tapia said.

    More at the link. Vestiges of a changing attitude.

    Bush calls courtship of minority voters integral to campaign – a master of stating the obvious, neh?

    The former Florida governor was in the central part of the state earlier this week, speaking to a diverse group of 150 pastors and other religious leaders, repeating his oft-stated pledge to campaign in “every nook and cranny” of the country. On Friday, he’ll be one of only two Republican presidential candidates to address the National Urban League’s annual conference, joining Hillary Rodham Clinton and two other Democrats seeking the White House.

    “Republicans need to campaign everywhere. Not just amongst Latinos, but amongst blacks. It’s okay to get outside your comfort zone. It’s okay that not everybody agrees with my views,” Bush said Monday at his event outside Orlando. “It’s not okay to not try. That’s the difference.”

    It’s a lesson from Bush’s time running for office in Florida that he’s now applying to his race for president.

    In his first run for governor in 1994, Bush campaigned as a self-described “head-banging conservative” who said he’d do “probably nothing” for African Americans, explaining he instead wanted “equality of opportunity” for all people. Bush lost that race, and then took a different tack four years later.

    After traveling the state to meet with minority groups that typically align with Democrats, and touring hundreds of schools, he ran a winning campaign focused on schools and spoke often in black churches. William Andrews, executive director of Mercy Drive Ministries in Orlando, credits a statewide program Bush started once in office for helping him conquer his heroin and cocaine addiction.

    “Mr. Bush sold me on becoming a Republican,” said Andrews, who is black.

    Should Bush capture the GOP’s presidential nomination, repeating the campaign strategy he credits for his wins in Florida could be essential to his general election success in 2016.

    According to exit polls conducted for AP and television networks in 2012, 93 percent of blacks and 71 percent of Hispanics nationally voted to re-elect President Barack Obama. In 2008, Obama won the vote of 95 percent of blacks and 67 percent of Hispanics, who are likely to be especially crucial in the 2016 presidential race because of their growing numbers in swing states such as Colorado, Nevada and Florida.

    Democrats are eager to hold onto their decisive advantage among such voters, and argue blacks and Hispanics will ultimately reject Bush because of his support for policies that include repealing Obama’s health care overhaul, opposing a federal minimum wage and his record of tax cuts in Florida.

    “Bush’s failed policies of the past are no different than every other Republican in the field — he wants to divide families, hurt our economy, and let those like Jeb Bush, and only Jeb Bush, get ahead,” said Pablo Manriquez, the Democratic National Committee’s Hispanic media director.

    For his part, Bush said this week his campaign does not have a Hispanic outreach strategy, because “outreach is a term that makes it sound like it’s on the periphery.”

    “There is no outreach plan here, this is an integral part of my campaign,” said Bush, who is fluent in Spanish and whose wife, Columba, is a Mexican immigrant. “I have Hispanic children. I have Hispanic grandchildren. I’m part of the community.”

    Man dies after scuffle with deputies in Dallas jail lobby – he wasn’t black, so it wasn’t a racial thing, just police being brutal. Where’s the white outrage?

    The incident occurred after the unidentified man ran into the jail lobby screaming for help, saying that his wife was out to kill him, county officials said.

    Multiple witnesses said several deputies were on top of the 47-year-old white man; a knee was seen on his neck.

    The county said a nurse was called while the man was handcuffed and unresponsive. CPR was performed until Dallas Fire-Rescue paramedics arrived to take the man to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

    He called for help, they killed him instead. Where hae we heard that before?

    Chief insists officer fatally shot teen in self-defense. Unarmed teenagers may be obnoxious, but do they really deserve to die?

    WUSA9 investigation: Deputy’s arrest prompts man’s release

    The twist in the four-month long investigation came Friday, one week after Fredericksburg attorney Marcel Jones agreed to represent Fitzgerald without charge.

    Jones took the case after seeing the WUSA9 investigation that uncovered missing audio on the only known working camera, cameras that should have been there but were not, and cameras that may have recorded parts of the arrest but were never released.

    Virginia courts will appoint attorneys to defendants without resources to hire an attorney, but there’s a catch.

    Although Fitzgerald qualified, Virginia requires people like Fitzgerald to pay for their court-appointed attorneys themselves if they are found guilty.

    Until the past week, Fitzgerald had run out of money and run out of hope.

    “If it wasn’t for you guys, man, I mean you changed my life,” Fitzgerald said to the WUSA9 investigative team upon leaving court a free man. “On behalf of my family we thank you so much.”

    He credited WUSA9 and Jones with his release.

    Court documents identified the charge against the 37-year-old former deputy as a crime of deception, “felony obtain money by false pretenses.”

    Prosecutors acknowledged in court that the arrest threatened the integrity of their evidence and moved to release Fitzgerald, which the judge immediately ordered.

    The charging papers did not describe the alleged crime of the deputy or indicate whether the charge was related to the night Fitzgerald was arrested.

    Under new Oregon law, all eligible voters are registered unless they opt out – which is good news, right?

    When Brown signed House Bill 2177 into law, she was building on the Beaver State’s history as a ballot-box innovator, which has led to high voter participation. Oregon was the first state in the country to switch to all-mail voting when Ballot Measure 60 was passed in 1998 by a wide margin. Washington state and Colorado later followed suit.

    “In my role as secretary of state, I proposed a new way of registering to vote,” Brown said as she signed the bill. “We call it ‘new motor voter.’ It was my top priority, and I am absolutely thrilled to be signing this into law as the new governor. … Virtually every Oregonian will be able to have their voice be heard.”

    Brown stepped down as secretary of state and was sworn in to Oregon’s highest elected office last month, after then-Gov. John Kitzhaber resigned amid scandal. As secretary of state — and even earlier, as a state legislator — she championed increasing access to the ballot box.

    “This bill is about making government work better, treating citizens as customers and giving them access to the service they expect,” she said Monday. “When someone moves to Oregon, why should they have to fill out multiple forms for multiple agencies? They should be able to complete one form, one time.”

    Currently, there are about 2.2 million registered voters in Oregon, said Tony Green, spokesman for Secretary of State Jeanne Atkins, and an additional 800,000 are not registered but eligible. The new law is expected to bring nearly half of those onto the voter rolls.
    Myrna Perez, director of the Voting Rights and Elections Project at the Brennan Center for Justice, called Oregon’s new law “a groundbreaking innovation.”

  228. rq says

    Copwatch vs. Cops: After Freddie Gray

    In a year of violent police encounters, much of the conversation has been about cameras: Who should have them, what can they achieve and how can they improve the broken relationship between the police and African-American communities?

    Copwatch, an organization created to document police activity and possible harassment, has been at the forefront of the activity since its founding in 1990. But in the wake of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Mo., last August — after a white officer shot him and left his body in the road — the movement has gained a new urgency.

    The deaths of Eric Garner in Staten Island, Walter L. Scott in North Charleston, S.C., and Freddie Gray in Baltimore have fueled more outrage and debate because in each case, raw video propelled the incidents into public discussion.

    But in Baltimore, in the tense uprising after the death of Freddie Gray, as the video above shows, copwatching was also a form of protest and even provocation — a way to vigorously press for police accountability..

    This hybrid of media creation and activism may end up being one of the lasting legacies of Ferguson and the death of Mr. Brown.

    But what other changes have emerged over the past year in terms of policing and race in the United States?

    New York Times reporters would like to hear readers’ views on the impact of the fatal shooting of Mr. Brown, which set off violent protests and sparked countless conversations about race and police conduct.

    What do you see as the lasting effects of the events in Ferguson?

    Video at the link.

    Ferguson spurs 40 new state measures; activists want more

    When a white Ferguson policeman fatally shot a black 18-year-old nearly a year ago, the St. Louis suburb erupted in violent protests and the nation took notice. Since then, legislators in almost every state have proposed changes to the way police interact with the public.

    The result: Twenty-four states have passed at least 40 new measures addressing such things as officer-worn cameras, training about racial bias, independent investigations when police use force and new limits on the flow of surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

    Despite all that action, far more proposals have stalled or failed, the AP review found. And few states have done anything to change their laws on when police are justified to use deadly force.

    National civil rights leaders praised the steps taken by states but said they aren’t enough to solve the racial tensions and economic disparities that have fueled protests in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York and elsewhere following instances in which people died in police custody or shootings.

    “What we have right now in the country is an emerging consensus as to the need to act,” said NAACP President Cornell William Brooks. “What we don’t have is a consensus as to how to act, what to act on and how to do this in some kind of priority order.”
    […]

    The AP analysis of legislation passed in all 50 states found the greatest interest in officer cameras that can capture what transpires between police and civilians. Sixteen states passed body-camera measures this year, ranging from resolutions merely creating study panels to state grants subsidizing cameras and new laws on how they can be used. Numerous cities from coast-to-coast, including Ferguson, also began using the cameras without waiting for legislative direction.

    “Right now, all law enforcement has an image problem,” said California Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, a Democrat from Los Angeles whose budget subcommittee allotted $1 million for a pilot project outfitting some Highway Patrol troopers with cameras. “They’ve got to show that they can police their own.”

    Just three states — Colorado, Connecticut and Illinois — have passed comprehensive packages of legislation encouraging body cameras, boosting police training on such things as racial biases and requiring independent investigations when police shoot people. Colorado and Connecticut also are among several states that bolstered citizen rights to take videos of police.

    Police groups have been urging lawmakers to proceed with caution when altering laws on the way they do their jobs. They stress that officers involved in shootings deserve fair investigations and that surplus military equipment typically is used by police for defensive purposes. Any Ferguson-inspired changes should focus on training police commanders to make better decisions on when and how to use their officers and equipment, said Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police.

    Police are frustrated by the tone of the national debate, he said.

    “While we’re trying to save lives, politicians are trying to save their jobs,” he said.

    Police unions still hold considerable sway in some states, including in Missouri, where lawmakers filed about 65 bills stemming from the events in Ferguson. Legislators passed just one of them — a measure limiting municipal court fines and traffic tickets in response to complaints about aggressive law enforcement designed to generate revenue. Most notably, Missouri made no change to its law on when police can use deadly force, even though it apparently doesn’t comply with a 1985 U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring deadly force against unarmed fleeing suspects who pose no serious danger.

    “As a state, we have not done much,” said Missouri state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, who represents Ferguson and was among the protesters who were tear-gassed by police. “We have a bunch of chumps who are elected right now who are more comfortable keeping the status quo.”

    The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has rallied with relatives of Brown and Garner, described Missouri’s response as “disappointing” and indicative of an “institutional denial” of the need for change.

    But Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon says the “landmark” municipal courts bill is an “important step.” A commission he created has proposed 148 steps to improve police and court policies, racial and economic equality and local schools. Nixon also created an Office of Community Engagement and a summer jobs program for young people in the St. Louis area.

    Other governors also have acted without waiting for legislators. After a rookie Cleveland patrolman fatally shot a 12-year-old boy who was holding a pellet gun in November, Ohio Gov. John Kasich created a panel to develop the state’s first-ever standards for police use of deadly force. And New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order directing appointment of special prosecutors to investigate police killings of unarmed civilians.

    More at the link. Some people saying it’s cool, we have progress, though slow, while others are demanding more.

    I, Racist – a repost, a reminder.

    Lonnae O’Neal: I was pulled over last month. It didn’t go well. White woman gets pulled over and yelled at by cop for getting out of her car. Tsk tsk, don’t she know, you’re not supposed to get out of the car? Anyway it all ends well, but she, too, has finally woken up to the police problem in USAmerica. And this is the kind of ‘oh I get it now!’ attitude that I find annoying: black people have been talking about this for years and years, have you been listening? No.

    Okay, if you’re wondering about the trigger-happiness of officers? Look no further: Training Officers to Shoot First, and He Will Answer Questions Later. The first few paragraphs were enough to make me ill.

    The shooting looked bad. But that is when the professor is at his best. A black motorist, pulled to the side of the road for a turn-signal violation, had stuffed his hand into his pocket. The white officer yelled for him to take it out. When the driver started to comply, the officer shot him dead.

    The driver was unarmed.

    Taking the stand at a public inquest, William J. Lewinski, the psychology professor, explained that the officer had no choice but to act.

    “In simple terms,” the district attorney in Portland, Ore., asked, “if I see the gun, I’m dead?”

    “In simple terms, that’s it,” Dr. Lewinski replied.

    When police officers shoot people under questionable circumstances, Dr. Lewinski is often there to defend their actions. Among the most influential voices on the subject, he has testified in or consulted in nearly 200 cases over the last decade or so and has helped justify countless shootings around the country.

    His conclusions are consistent: The officer acted appropriately, even when shooting an unarmed person. Even when shooting someone in the back. Even when witness testimony, forensic evidence or video footage contradicts the officer’s story.

    He has appeared as an expert witness in criminal trials, civil cases and disciplinary hearings, and before grand juries, where such testimony is given in secret and goes unchallenged. In addition, his company, the Force Science Institute, has trained tens of thousands of police officers on how to think differently about police shootings that might appear excessive.

    A string of deadly police encounters in Ferguson, Mo.; North Charleston, S.C.; and most recently in Cincinnati, have prompted a national reconsideration of how officers use force and provoked calls for them to slow down and defuse conflicts. But the debate has also left many police officers feeling unfairly maligned and suspicious of new policies that they say could put them at risk. Dr. Lewinski says his research clearly shows that officers often cannot wait to act.

    “We’re telling officers, ‘Look for cover and then read the threat,’ ” he told a class of Los Angeles County deputy sheriffs recently. “Sorry, too damn late.”

    A former Minnesota State professor, he says his testimony and training are based on hard science, but his research has been roundly criticized by experts. An editor for The American Journal of Psychology called his work “pseudoscience.” The Justice Department denounced his findings as “lacking in both foundation and reliability.” Civil rights lawyers say he is selling dangerous ideas.

    “People die because of this stuff,” said John Burton, a California lawyer who specializes in police misconduct cases. “When they give these cops a pass, it just ripples through the system.”

    Many policing experts are for hire, but Dr. Lewinski is unique in that he conducts his own research, trains officers and internal investigators, and testifies at trial. In the protests that have followed police shootings, demonstrators have often asked why officers are so rarely punished for shootings that seem unwarranted. Dr. Lewinski is part of the answer.

    There’s a lot more at the link – must-read, really. Disgusting. This is what creates that sense of entitlement and arrogance. And, yes, fear.

    Marietta couple gets married at Confederate flag rally. How sweet. Lovely friends.

  229. rq says

    Power of video will be tested at CMPD officer’s trial

    A few seconds of video to be shown to the public for the first time this week contributed to Randall “Wes” Kerrick’s arrest and indictment.

    Now, the brief clip could help to either acquit the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officer of the shooting death of Jonathan Ferrell, or send him to prison.

    If convicted of voluntary manslaughter, Kerrick, 29, faces between three and 11 years in prison. Prosecutors say he shot the unarmed 24-year-old Ferrell 10 times on Sept. 14, 2013, during a pre-dawn confrontation in the Bradfield Farms neighborhood, east of Charlotte.

    The video taken at the scene by a camera inside a police cruiser is expected to be played in the courtroom in the coming days as Kerrick’s trial opens. For almost two years, and despite numerous requests from Ferrell’s family, state prosecutors have refused to release it. To do so, they said, would have undercut Kerrick’s right to a fair trial.

    Since Ferrell’s death, however, videos capturing controversial police shootings and other uses of force have been released in New York, Cleveland, Ohio, Baltimore and North Charleston, S.C. Last week, a district attorney in Cincinnati released graphic footage of a fatal traffic stop that led to a murder indictment against the officer involved.

    Against that dramatic backdrop, it’s hard to say how big a role the dashcam video will play in Kerrick’s trial. According to those who have seen it, the standoff with Ferrell lasts about 15 seconds. The shooting appears off camera. Kerrick is never in view.

    Ferrell went seeking help after a car crash and had the cops called on him. Then he was shot. By the cops.

    Interlude: Hip-hop! Dr. Dre Completely Scraps “Detox” Album, Reveals Date For “Straight Outta Compton” Inspired Project.

    Sen. Durbin calls for federal investigation into death of Sandra Bland

    cThe following letter, given exclusively to FOX 32 News, is from Senator Durbin and was sent to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch:

    “Dear Attorney General Lynch:

    I urge the Department of Justice to open an investigation into the arrest, incarceration, and death of Sandra Bland, a constituent of mine from Naperville, Illinois.

    As you know, Ms. Bland was arrested in Waller County, Texas on July 10. Disturbing video of the arrest shows how the situation quickly escalated after Ms. Bland was pulled over by a police officer for allegedly failing to properly signal during a lane change. When Ms. Bland refused to put out a cigarette at the officer’s request, the officer ordered her to get out of her car, attempted to physically remove her from the vehicle, and then threatened her with his Taser.

    After Ms. Bland exited her car, she can be heard in video footage stating off-camera that the officer “slammed” her and “knocked [her] head in the ground.” Ms. Bland was arrested and charged with assault on a public servant. Three days later, Ms. Bland was found dead in her jail cell. Texas officials have said that the autopsy results show injuries consistent with suicide. Reports indicate that her family is currently awaiting the results of a second, independent autopsy.

    Already, the Texas Department of Public Safety has stated that they “identified violations of the department’s procedures” in a preliminary review of the traffic stop. Furthermore, the Executive Director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards has found the Waller County Jail to be non-compliant with certain minimum jail standards for the state.

    Ms. Bland’s family, her community, and all of those troubled by the disturbing series of events in this case deserve answers. In light of the many concerns regarding Ms. Bland’s arrest and incarceration, and the uncertainty surrounding Ms. Bland’s tragic death, I urge the Department of Justice to fully and thoroughly investigate this case.

    Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to a prompt response.

    Sincerely,

    Richard J. Durbin
    U.S. Senator”

    May cross-post this into the feminist lens thread: It Has Begun… Allure Magazine Provides Step-by-Step Instructions for White Girls to Achieve an Afro, because it’s always fine for white women to appropriate black women’s attributes.

    First they laugh, then they copy… #blackwomenaretastemakers

    JUST WITNESSED A CLEVELAND POLICE OFFICER PULL A GUN ON A WOMAN WHO GOT IN CAR ACCIDENT. This shit right here.

    It’s taking them a year? Fatal police shooting in Wal-Mart under review 1 year later

    A year after a 22-year-old black man was killed by a white police officer while carrying an air rifle in an Ohio Wal-Mart, federal officials’ review of the case remains unfinished as his relatives plan an anniversary vigil — and the region grapples with the aftermath of a different deadly police shooting.
    […]

    “It does not appear that anything has changed for the better in this past year — that we’re still having a lot of police-involved shootings of young black men,” said Michael Wright, an attorney for Crawford’s family.

    They want to see charges filed in Crawford’s case and plan to voice that call as they mark the anniversary with a rally and prayer vigil Wednesday at Dayton’s courthouse square.

    The Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office responsible for the Dayton area are reviewing what happened, said Jennifer Thornton, a spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor’s office. She said a “review of the facts and circumstances” is continuing but she couldn’t provide a timeline for its completion.

    Crawford’s relatives have said they hoped the federal review would include analysis of whether race was a factor in the case. Crawford was black, and the two officers who confronted him are white.

  230. rq says

    Ferguson spurs 40 new state measures; activists want more, via the Kansas City Star.

    The Mpls. cop who writes more tickets than any other

    A recent ACLU analysis of low-level arrest data in Minneapolis showed that African-Americans received a disproportionate share of those misdemeanor citations. But the data also show another kind of disparity:

    One police officer handed out about twice as many of those citations as any other.

    That officer is Michael Killebrew, a 19-year member of the force. His record exemplifies a controversial approach to police work.

    The vast majority of Minneapolis cops issued fewer than 200 misdemeanor citations during the nearly three-year period the ACLU studied. Only 14 officers handed out more than 1,000. Killebrew stood far above even that elite group. He cited or arrested more than 2,000 people.

    Killebrew’s assignments over the past few years lent themselves to writing lots of tickets. He was freed from dealing with day-to-day 911 calls and tasked with proactively patrolling for crime. But that tells only part of the story. As the numbers show, Killebrew is unique.

    Steve Gallagher, who runs the Stevens Square Community Organization, said Killebrew is one of the best and most diligent cops he’s ever worked with. Gallagher used to jokingly warn his neighborhood watch volunteers not to jaywalk on patrol, because Killebrew would write them up for it.

    “He was very consistent,” Gallagher said. “If you broke the law, then you would get a ticket. He didn’t care what race or creed or sex you were. He was very fair to everyone. He would give everyone a ticket or let them know they were doing wrong.”

    Killebrew rarely gives warnings. That’s something Tamarra Robinson learned first-hand. “Never a warning,” she said. “A warning would be, ‘Next time, have this done and you won’t get towed.'”

    Police often pulled Robinson over when she lived in north Minneapolis. She was cited repeatedly for not having a valid license or insurance card. Killebrew caught her multiple times and had her car impounded twice.

    Now, Robinson says, she’s got her license and insurance up to date. And she’s moved to St. Paul, in part to get away from Officer Killebrew.

    More at the link. One might think he is only being thorough. One might.

    Philly. See the awesome graffitti.

    Glare of Video Is Shifting Public’s View of Police

    They began as workaday interactions between the police and the public, often involving minor traffic stops in places like Cincinnati; North Charleston, S.C.; and Waller County, Tex. But they swiftly escalated into violent encounters. And all were captured on video.

    Those videos, all involving white officers and black civilians, have become ingrained in the nation’s consciousness — to many people, as evidence of bad police conduct. And while they represent just a tiny fraction of police behavior — those that show respectful, peaceful interactions do not make the 24-hour cable news — they have begun to alter public views of police use of force and race relations, experts and police officials say.

    Videos have provided “corroboration of what African-Americans have been saying for years,” said Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown University Law School and a former prosecutor, who called them “the C-Span of the streets.” On Thursday, the family of Samuel DuBose, an unarmed black man who was shot to death by a University of Cincinnati police officer on July 19, said the officer would never have been prosecuted if his actions had not been captured by the body camera the officer was wearing.

    To the police, that poses a new challenge in trying to regain public confidence. “Every time I think maybe we’re past this and we can start rebuilding, it seems another incident occurs that inflames public outrage,” said James Pasco, the executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police. “Police officers literally have millions of contacts with citizens every day, and in the vast majority of those interactions, there is no claim of wrongdoing, but that’s not news.”

    Some polling bolsters such concerns. In a Gallup national survey conducted in June, 52 percent of people said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the police, down from 57 percent two years earlier, and 64 percent in 2004. In 2007, 37 percent of Americans had high confidence that their local police would treat blacks and whites equally, the Pew Research Center found, but last year that was down to 30 percent.

    At the same time, video may be changing the way prosecutors handle cases in which the police are accused of misconduct. Not only can video contradict an officer’s account of what happened, it can also create immense public pressure for action against officers.

    Such was the case with fatal police shootings in North Charleston and Cincinnati, and with the arrest in Baltimore of Freddie Gray, who died of injuries he sustained while in police custody. In all three cases, prosecutors brought rare murder charges against officers within days — remarkable speed for a process that in the past could take weeks or months. Those swift actions have been applauded by many African-Americans.

    There’s more at the link.

    Black Lives Matter, all of them (Content Note: Transphobia) – this is Tony’s post. I only cite the final couple of paragraphs:

    When it comes to the Black Lives Matter movement, intersectionality is an important concept because African-Americans experience discrimination across multiple axes of oppression:

    – Black cisgender women experience racism, misogyny, and sexism
    – Black lesbians experience racism, homophobia, sexism, and misogyny
    – Black bisexual women experience racism, misogyny, sexism, homophobia and biphobia
    – Black trans women experience racism, sexism, misogyny, and transphobia
    – Black cisgender men experience racism
    – Black gay men experience racism and homophobia
    – Black bi men experience racism, homophobia, and biphobia
    – Black trans men experience racism and transphobia

    How can one advocate for making the lives of black people better, if one does not address all the ways African-Americans experience suffering, discrimination, and injustice? Trans people experience some forms of oppression and discrimination that differ from those experienced by other African-Americans. But they experience that oppression and discrimination as black people. Their identities as trans people coexist alongside and are intertwined with their identities as black people. You cannot advocate for the lives of trans people to be made better along only the racial axis of oppression. You must also address other axes of oppression that affect the lives of black trans people if one is to truly believe that all black lives matter.

    It behooves all of us who seek to advance the causes of the Black Lives Matter movement to understand intersectionality and how important the concept is in fighting to make the lives of African-Americans better and reduce the level of suffering they experience. If an individual claims to be a Black Lives Matter activist, but does not support the right of all black people to exist on their own terms, free from oppression and discrimination, no matter what group they belong to then that person does not truly believe that all Black Lives Matter. And they need to either get with the program or sit the hell down and shut the fuck up.

    In Case Of My Arrest Templates

    It is important to be informed about your rights and to discuss your wishes with your family in case of your arrest. The documents below are intended to be templates for a conversation and a tool to complete and share with family and friends.

    The current printed templates are:

    * Detailed Emergency Information In Case Of My Arrest.

    This template provides an opportunity to document general information people will need for any emergency, but also the has sections on how to handle bail, legal issues, and social media.

    * Wallet-sized Emergency Information In Case Of My Arrest.

    This template is meant to be carried in a wallet, purse, or bag and contains contact information and instructions in case of an arrest. These cards can be printed on the standard business cards offered at your local office supply store.

    Future templates will include:

    * Emergency Information QR Code In Case Of My Arrest

    * Emergency Contact Using Popular Apps In Case Of My Arrest

    As the site warns, though, this is not legal advice – if you need legal advice, consult a lawyer.

  231. rq says

    First day of testimony is finished in shooting trial of CMPD Officer Kerrick

    A jury will decide whether Kerrick used excessive force when he fired 12 shots at Ferrell, or whether he was justified because he thought Ferrell posed a deadly threat.

    The 12-member jury has two people who are Latino, three African-American and seven white. Eight are women and four are men. The alternate jurors are all white, and consist of one man and three women.

    If convicted, Kerrick faces three to 11 years in prison. He has been on unpaid suspension since the shooting.

    Black Lives Matter Organizers Labeled as “Threat Actors” by Cybersecurity Firm. Mentioned previously, I think.

    Documents from a “crisis management” report produced by the cybersecurity firm ZeroFox indicate that the firm monitored Black Lives Matter protesters during the Freddie Gray protests in Baltimore earlier this year. The documents, which surfaced online last Wednesday, also state that the firm “protected” the online accounts of Maryland and Baltimore officials and members of the Baltimore Police Department and Maryland National Guard.

    The report identifies DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie, two prominent Black Lives Matter organizers who took part in the Baltimore protests, as “threat actors” for whom “immediate response is recommended.” It describes McKesson and Elzie as “high” severity, “physical,” and “#mostwanted” threats and notes both have a “massive following” on social media. It says that ZeroFox was engaged in “continuous monitoring” of their social media accounts and specifies their geographical locations at the time of the report. The report does not suggest that the pair were suspected of criminal activity but were “main coordinators of the protests.”

    McKesson and Elzie both tell Mother Jones they were “not surprised” that they were being watched. “It confirms that us telling the truth about police violence is seen as a threat,” McKesson says. Both activists say they do not know why they were identified as physical threats. McKesson and Elzie live in Missouri, where they helped organize the Ferguson protests. They traveled together to Baltimore for a week and a half during the Freddie Gray protests.

    A link to the ZeroFox report first circulated on Twitter last Wednesday. ZeroFox did not respond to a request to confirm the authenticity of the documents. The Baltimore Police Department and the mayor’s chief of staff did not respond to request for comment. The Maryland governor’s office says that the state does not have a contract with ZeroFox.

    In emails exchanged in April, ZeroFox’s CEO, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlins-Blake’s chief of staff, and the president of the Maryland chapter of an FBI intelligence partnership program discussed ZeroFox’s potential surveillance “help” for Baltimore. These emails were released to the Baltimore Sun last week following a public records request. The emails also indicate that ZeroFox “briefed our classified partners” at the Fort Meade Army base in Maryland on “intelligence” it had collected during the Gray protests. Other emails from the Baltimore Police Department indicate the department had collected “intelligence regarding potentially violent agitators.”

    … Agitators who previously had shown no signs of actually being violent. Well, except for all that noise with their chanting and singing, and the visual violence with their protest signs.

    Colorado Springs NAACP office bombing suspect pleads guilty

    A man accused of igniting a pipe bomb outside the Colorado Springs branch of the NAACP in January pleaded guilty in Denver’s federal court Monday morning.

    Thaddeus Cheyenne Murphy, 44, admitted to allegations of arson and being a felon in possession of a firearm. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for Nov. 3.

    In June, Murphy signed a plea agreement with federal prosecutors in the case. Murphy, of Colorado Springs, told investigators he bombed the building because he was angry at his accountant, a motive that NAACP officials say they doubt.

    But it won’t be a hate crime or a racially motivated one, because it was all about his accountant.

    WATCH: Clueless Klansman at Confederate flag rally confronted for wearing FUBU shoes. This is hilarious.

    A man with a Ku Klux Klan tattoo and hat was caught wearing FUBU shoes — an iconic brand associated with hip hop — at a rally in support of the Confederate flag at Stone Mountain Park in Georgia.

    “I just wanted to mention, I didn’t know if you were aware, I know you came here with the Ku Klux Klan or whatever,” George Chidi of Neon Flag began telling the man, only to be interrupted by the man explaining he came to the Saturday rally as a “southern American.”
    ADVERTISEMENT

    “The only thing that I wanted to mention is that the shoes that you’re wearing,” Chidi, a former associated editor at Raw Story, continued in video he uploaded to social media.

    “What’s the matter with the shoes I’m wearing?” the man interrupted again, saying his shoes sported colors of the KKK’s emblem. “They’re red and black and white.”

    “The brand FUBU, it stands for ‘For us, by us,’” Chidi explained, noting the clothing company was founded by black entrepreneurs with the intent of empowering the black community.

    But the man didn’t see the irony. “Them shoes that you probably wore was designed by a white man back in the 1920s,” he remarked. “But does that make you stop wearing them shoes because the white man designed them? I don’t care if a black man designed my shoes.”

    The man told Chidi he didn’t hate him. He only hated “what your people are doing to this country.”

    Waking people up to reality is, apparently, a thoughtless and unforgiveable action.

    40 New State Laws Sparked by Michael Brown’s Death in Ferguson. The Root. I think the article posted by Tony over on the discussion thread.

    Dylann Roof, Ray Tensing and their audacity to plead not guilty, from Blavity.

    Within the span of 24 hours, two white male millennial murderers have pleaded not guilty for charges for crimes they clearly committed. Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old who entered Mother Emmanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17th and explicitly stated he was there to kill black people and left one person alive to tell the truth of his horrors has plead not guilty to the 33 federal charges against him, including committing a hate crime. Similarly, Ray Tensing, the 25-year-old former officer of the University of Cincinnati who was charged for murder in killing Sam Dubose on July 19 during a traffic citation has plead not guilty, despite body camera footage released to the public concurrently with his indictment.

    Something is wrong here.

    Roof, who spent months coordinating his mass murder, whose hateful ideations were extrapolated online on a personal website called “the last Rhodesian” as an homage to the violent and racist apartheid regime of contemporary Zimbabwe, stood in court, lawyer by his side, to look the judge in the eye on the firm belief that he can prove without doubt that he is deserving of absolution in the eyes of the law. Tensing did the same, later freed from handcuffs to go home after posting the $100,000 of his $1 million bond in less than eight hours.

    Based on the information and evidence available, both men, quite frankly, have little grounds to stand on to assert innocence.

    And yet what is the necessity of proof when placed against the propositions of white skin? We know that Lady Justice is blind, but as two cold-blooded killers dare the law to tell them they committed any wrongdoing, we must ask how she got that way and how Roof and Tensing predict she’ll hold their lies and imagined truths in the balance.
    […]

    The rule of law is rather the audacious assumption that legality becomes circumstantially flexible when the perpetrator is white.

    After Charleston, an NRA board member had the audacity to blame Rev. Clementa Pinckney for his death and the eight other congregants in the Wednesday night bible study for not having someone there who was armed. And Sandra Bland and Sam Dubose, within the past two weeks alone, show how black people who die at the hands of the law are subjected to the death penalty long after their last breath has passed. Mainstream media, rather than investigating obvious inconsistencies around the circumstances of the deaths of black victims, are more concerned with seeking out potential records of criminality and the accompanying mugshots.

    Meanwhile, acrobatic maneuvers are deployed to turn a blind eye to white people who kill. Headlines garner them empathy, either by wrongfully deploying mental illness and “troubled” parenting as an excuse or by offering Roof a bulletproof vest for his protection.

    Not only is this a matter of being innocent until proven guilty, but this is also about the bold ways the color line demarcates who it is always unfathomable to imagine at fault within and without the law.

    These men shamelessly believe they have a right to claim no wrongdoing and what adds insult to the injuries they have created against many of us is the fact that, despite their own confessions and being caught on camera, our culture and the justice system have been prepared to allow them to do just that.

  232. rq says

    Probation May Sound Light, but Punishments Can Land Hard

    Mrs. Hall’s misdemeanor, one of more than a million drunken-driving arrests each year, is not one that would normally attract attention. No one was injured and no property was damaged, and most courts do not come down hard on first-time offenders in drunken-driving cases. Yet as more states turn to probation and parole as a means of reducing incarceration, her story shows how even a supposedly light punishment like probation can severely disrupt a working-class life and weigh heavily on its prospects.

    While Mrs. Hall’s case is extreme, she is far from alone in struggling under the burden of an unusually strict or inappropriate probation, experts say. “There are a number of people around the country being put on probation that don’t really need to be on probation,” said Carl Wicklund, the executive director of the American Parole and Probation Association, a professional group. “It’s a bad use of resources, and it’s bad for the individual.” Nationally, only about two-thirds of probationers successfully complete their terms, according to federal data.

    At its worst, the criminal justice system can backfire on a stable, nonviolent defendant like Mrs. Hall, said Edward Latessa, director of the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. “If I took you and locked you up for 30 days, what would happen?” he said. “You’d lose your job, you might lose your apartment, you end up with a criminal record. I don’t help you — I give you new risk factors.”

    It was, Mrs. Hall now says, a learning experience. When pressed about what, exactly, she had learned, she replied: “I’ve learned that the system is no good.”
    […]

    In Maryland, many first-time drunken-driving defendants are released on their own recognizance, particularly if no one was hurt. But Mrs. Hall’s bail was set by a court commissioner at $25,000.

    A bail bondsman charged Mr. Hall $2,000, payable in monthly installments, to post bond, and Mrs. Hall was released in less than 24 hours. Everyone assured her the case was minor.

    Drunken-driving penalties vary widely depending on the judge, but Mr. Stamm said a typical sentence for a first offense might be a year of unsupervised probation. Most judges will offer what in Maryland is called “probation before judgment,” or P.B.J., in which a defendant’s guilty plea is set aside. If the defendant violates probation, the judge may reimpose the conviction and sentence the person under the original offense — in Mrs. Hall’s case, up to 60 days in jail. If the defendant is successful, she avoids a criminal conviction.

    As expected, the prosecutor offered Mrs. Hall probation before judgment in exchange for a guilty plea. But Judge Joan Bossmann Gordon of Maryland District Court in Baltimore balked over what she viewed as Mrs. Hall’s lack of cooperation with the police. After taking a recess to consider the matter, she agreed to the plea deal “against my better judgment.”

    Typically, drunken-driving defendants get a professional assessment to determine what kind of treatment they need: a 26-hour class for “problem drinkers” or a 12-hour class for “social drinkers.” Mrs. Hall denies having a drinking problem, and there is nothing in her record to suggest otherwise.

    But Judge Gordon did not wait for an assessment. She sentenced Mrs. Hall to 18 months supervised probation, costing her $105 a month in fees for probation and drunken-driving monitoring. She also ordered Mrs. Hall to attend 26 weeks of alcohol education at $70 a week and three Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a week.

    All told, Mrs. Hall was looking at fees of $385 a month, her lawyer’s fee of $1,500, fines and court costs totaling $252.50 and the $2,000 bail bond.

    Still, her financial situation was about to get worse — in April, the Motor Vehicle Administration suspended Mrs. Hall’s driver’s license for 14 days. The suspension contributed, Mrs. Hall said, to the loss of her job at a rehabilitation center 20 miles away.

    Story continues at the link. Just another example of the system grinding people down. Would it have happened if Mrs Hall were white? You tell me.

    A surgeon from Ghana applied for a Spanish visa-when declined he wrote to the embassy & SLAYED )via @sunnysunwords ) It’s tiny type, but what I could make out was truly excellent.

    Media Coverage of Samuel Dubose Shooting Illustrates Why ‘Visuals Matter’

    “If social media has proved one thing, it’s that visuals matter. A lot,” the Cincinnati Enquirer reported on Friday.

    “On Wednesday, national news outlets including NBC and CNN juxtaposed an image of murder suspect Ray Tensing in front of a flag with a police mugshot of shooting victim Samuel DuBose. Tensing was a University of Cincinnati police officer July 19 when he shot and killed the unarmed DuBose during a traffic stop.

    “Many social media commentators questioned why a man who’s been indicted for the most serious crime would be pictured in a patriotic milieu while a victim was portrayed at one of his life’s low points. Among the tweets and Facebook posts are those below. . . .”

    The short Enquirer piece went on to ask readers what they thought.

    Elsewhere, some had already voiced their opinion. On The Root, the top trending story for some of Thursday was headlined “News Outlets Prove, Once Again, Their Photo Bias When It Comes to Black People Being Killed.”

    Writer Yesha Callahan stated matter-of-factly, “In the world of news reporting and black people being killed by cops, you can be certain about one thing: Mainstream news outlets seem to find a way to further victimize and show their biases through the images they use of the victims.” No one from a news outlet was quoted.
    […]

    McCarter explained how sensitivity to images at his newspaper put the Enquirer on the right side of the photo-selection issue, but also how the availability of images was a complication.

    “We did avoid that controversy,” McCarter said by email. “I would like to think that it’s because a visual editor is currently in the interim executive editor role (smile) but it is much more than that. The only photo available to us of Tensing early on was provided by the University [of Cincinnati, where Tensing worked.] He had not been booked (or charged) and as you can imagine we weren’t having much luck getting more than that.

    “The DuBose image we used was a lower quality image that one of the photographers photographed during the funeral. One image was on a leaflet taped to the windshield of a car outside the funeral and another was from the funeral program.

    “As a practice, we always try to get the most current photo(s) from the family if at all possible.

    “A conversation did take place in our newsroom about the booking mug. The question was raised about why we were not using the ‘better’ image that was all over most media outlets. I noticed the ‘better’ image (in quality only) was his booking mug. I, along with a few of our editors, made the decision to NOT use a booking mug. It was irrelevant to this story and DuBose was the victim. You have to understand the power of images in situations like this.

    “Once we had the booking mug of Tensing, we began the process of swapping that image out on our site and we made sure that his booking mug ran in print. We used other images provided by the family of [DuBose].”

    How Ferguson Changed America

    But Brown wasn’t the first unarmed black person killed by police officers in 2014, although he was the first to inspire mass demonstrations, riots, and an unprecedented, draconian police response of armored vehicles, automatic weapons, and tear gas. He wasn’t even the first unarmed black person killed that summer. That was Eric Garner, a Staten Island man who was killed a month earlier. In the video of his arrest and death, he’s surrounded by police, arguing. “I didn’t do nothing,” he tells an officer. “Every time you see me, you want to harass me, you want to stop me.” An officer puts him in a chokehold, while others hold him face down on the sidewalk. He pleads, “I can’t breathe,” but police continue the arrest. They turn over his unconscious body. An hour later, he’s pronounced dead.

    Garner’s death sparked outrage. It even produced protests and demonstrations. But it didn’t cause anything like the events in Ferguson. What was different about the death of Michael Brown?

    Part of it was the place where Brown died. St. Louis County, shaped by decades of redlining and white flight, was segregated and thick with racial tension. Worse, in small towns like Ferguson, municipal governments were openly predatory, extracting heavy fees from black residents through overpolicing and an opaque system of municipal courts.

    Yes, Brown’s confrontation with Wilson was fraught and complicated. Just minutes before, Brown and a friend had stolen a pack of flavored cigars from a nearby convenience store, and forensic evidence showed a clear struggle between Brown and Wilson. Insofar as there’s an accurate picture, it’s of a police stop that escalates into a fight and then a shooting, with bad judgment on both sides. As the Department of Justice concluded in its investigation, “There is no credible evidence that Wilson willfully shot Brown as he was attempting to surrender or was otherwise not posing a threat.”

    But no one knew that on Aug. 9, 2014. On that Saturday, the only thing anyone knew was what they saw and heard: An unarmed teenager was dead in the streets, with little word from the police. And in that moment, the powder keg of Ferguson and St. Louis County erupted. People wanted answers. Why did police leave Brown’s body in the street? Why, later, did they bring guns and dogs to confront protesters and concerned citizens?

    Frustration boiled over into anger, and anger boiled into protests and disorder, which were met with heavily armed, militarized police. Across the country, on cable networks and through social media, Americans watched armored vehicles move down small-town streets as military-clad police officers shot tear gas into crowds of peaceful demonstrators.

    There was more to Ferguson than violence, however. There was activism. Two now-prominent activists, Deray Mckesson and Johnetta Elzie met in Ferguson, where—writes Jay Caspian Kang for the New York Times Magazine, they were “radicalized,” and where they honed a new kind of advocacy centered on social media. “Their innovation has been to marry the strengths of social media — the swift, morally blunt consensus that can be created by hashtags; the personal connection that a charismatic online persona can make with followers; the broad networks that allow for the easy distribution of documentary photos and videos,” writes Kang, “with an effort to quickly mobilize protests in each new city where a police shooting occurs.”

    Thanks in part to Elzie, Mckesson, and activists like Alicia Garza, the events provoked by the death of Michael Brown would coalesce into the “Black Lives Matter” movement, which—a year later—is one of the most vibrant protest movements in recent memory.

    But this just takes us back to our first question: What was different about Michael Brown? Why was he the catalyst for protest and conversation, as millions of Americans began talking about race, racism, and policing in ways we haven’t seen since Rodney King was beaten by Los Angeles police officers in 1991?

    These questions answered, and more at the link.

    A Lawyer’s Advice For Black Men At Traffic Stops: ‘Comply Now, Contest Later’ – uh-huh, except when compliance gets you dead.

    “Bad incidents can happen to any person of any race or gender,” he says, “but we believe that black men are at a particular risk.”

    Broyles co-authored a book on such encounters with his friend Adrian Jackson, a police officer. In Encounters with Police: A Black Man’s Guide to Survival, their essential advice can be distilled to just four words:

    “Comply now, contest later.”

    That means that, even in moments of frustration, when the stopped citizen feels unfairly treated, Broyles recommends complying with the police officer’s request. Only once the encounter has concluded does he recommend filing a complaint and contesting the officer’s actions during the stop.

    As he tells NPR’s Arun Rath, he’s experienced the predicament in his own life: feeling frustrated and angry by what appeared to be racial profiling, but waiting until afterwards to raise his objections.

    And when asked whether there are any exceptions — any times a person should not comply with police orders — Broyles says it’s a difficult question.

    “Many people in the minority communities — African-Americans and Latinos — recognize that in the instance where they do not comply, they are putting themselves at great risk. Not always, but since you don’t know whether you are getting a true professional or a bad — a rogue — cop, I would err on the side of complying,” Broyles says.

    Audio at the link.

    Darren Wilson sticks with ‘like-minded individuals’ and avoids ‘mixing pot’ restaurants after killing Michael Brown, Raw Story looks at that sympathetic Darren Wilson interview. I’m not going to link to the actual interview, I’m sure it’s easy to find. Don’t y’all just feel sorry for him? (And yes, this is also over on the discussion thread.)

  233. rq says

    Anonymous Hacks Sheriff’s Department Computers For Sandra Bland, Leaks Info

    Last month we reported on the “hacktivist” group Anonymous calling for a “Day of Rage” for Sandra Bland. The series of actions were given the name #OpSandraBland, and they warned of a wide range of attacks and fronts for hitting the Waller County Sheriff’s Department on behalf of Sandra.

    Now, Anonymous has announced that they have hacked the Waller County Sheriff’s Department and leaked the salaries, addresses, telephone numbers and the like of the deputies involved in the murder of Sandra Bland.

    More on the information at the link.

    And on the other hand, Anonymous is the New KKK, Say Black Lives Matter Leaders

    A clear pattern of discrimination and exclusion has been emerging within the last few days regarding the organization Black Lives Matter. It started with the organization attempting to schedule an event at the same time and location as other organizations and immediately attempting to put in place rules limiting attendance, excluding members of Anonymous, members of Cop Block and members of Ohio Open Carry, all organizations which oppose police brutality and work hard to further liberty.

    These actions and attempts to control the narrative and attendance to the one year anniversary demonstration of John Crawford’s shooting by Ohio police have stirred up quite a debate in various circles, prompting individuals that would otherwise work together to further the cause of liberty to take sides based on political views and other opinions.

    Black Lives Matter, the George Soros funded organization, is now on full attack against Anonymous, a de-centralized organization which has been attempting to participate in exposing police brutality throughout the world for years. The attempt on the part of BLM to limit speech and control the message at public events is not new and I have documented a number of instances where bigotry is on display by members and leader in Black Lives Matter.
    […]

    When Jim inquired about the confusion generated by the exclusion of Anonymous members, he was told that Anonymous members lack “revolutionary-ness” (sic) and can be threatening to people of color. The insensitivity of the language used to describe Anonymous is astounding. The BLM leaders are attempting to describe Anonymous members as violent, unaccountable individuals who show up at protests in order to intimidate people of color.

    Here’s the thing, though – read the actual letters. The ones they’ve posted on the link. And then this article comes off as a bunch of white people whining about not being included in black spaces, because they have good intentions.
    And what’s interesting? The points the BLM crew sets out about wearing masks and how that can have a negative effect on black people protesting? They’re all valid. They’re so valid. And the person authoring the article cannot get past his own hurt feelings to see the potential harm of insisting on being present as Anonymous. Well.

    How ‘Assembly-Line Justice’ Victimizes Kids In St. Louis County

    Hundreds of children who have come into contact with the juvenile justice system in Missouri’s St. Louis County have been subjected to a process that is “rife” with “obvious” conflicts of interest, where allegations against them are “simply assumed to be true,” where constitutional rights are routinely denied, and where black kids are much more likely to receive harsh punishments, and even be locked up prior to their day in court, due to nothing more than the color of their skin.

    That’s according to an extensive investigation by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which began looking into the St. Louis County Family Court in late 2013 following a report by the National Juvenile Defender Center that examined systemic problems within Missouri’s juvenile justice system.

    In a 61-page report released publicly on Friday, federal authorities found that race “in and of itself” played a “significant” role in how children were treated in the county courts. Black youths were much less likely than whites to have their cases handled informally. Black children were 2.5 times more likely than whites to be detained before trial, regardless of their age or the severity of their alleged offense. Black adolescents were nearly three times as likely as whites to be placed in custody if they violated the conditions of the equivalent of parole. And black kids were 2.74 times more likely than whites to be sentenced to be placed in custody, “even after controlling for age, gender, risk factors, and the severity of the allegations involved.”

    The study found that those disparities were “evidence of racial bias,” and that the “disparate impact on Black children cannot be explained by factors other than race.” It found that purposeful, discriminatory intent was “at least a ‘motivating factor’ in the decision making” in the St. Louis County Family Court.

    “Black children in St. Louis County Family Court are significantly more likely to receive pre-trial detention because these children are Black,” the report said. “The disparity in initial detention demonstrates that Black children are treated significantly worse than White children, even after accounting for other social and legal factors.”

    One of the key problems federal investigators highlighted is that the roles of judge and prosecutor were blurred — an issue that plagues St. Louis County’s network of dozens of tiny municipal courts. These circumstances, investigators say, led to routine due process violations.

    “Essentially, the judiciary is controlling the entire system, and it is just rife with conflict,” Vanita Gupta, the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told The Huffington Post. “It is assembly-line justice, if you can call it justice at all. There’s really no meaningful adversarial system happening in the St. Louis County Family Court.”

    HuffPo on information already posted here.

    He’s Back! Fired LAPD Detective Frank Lyga Sues for Discrimination

    Looks like fired Los Angeles police detective Frank Lyga has resurfaced. Apparently Lyga is suing the City of Los Angeles for discrimination–I know, I know, we’ll get to that later.

    For those not hip to the Detective Frank “I could have killed a whole truck load of them” Lyga, let’s take a trip back down memory lane.

    Back in the olden days of 1997, Frank Lyga shot and killed LAPD Officer Kevin Gaines during a heated traffic dispute between the two. According to the investigation, neither Lyga nor Gaines knew the other was a police officer. During the altercation, Lyga put his gun on his lap for protection when Gaines allegedly pulled beside him, yelled, “I’ll cap you, motherfucker!” and pointed a gun at him. Lyga shot Gaines twice, he acknowledges in the complaint.

    After Gaines’ death and seemingly in the tradition of the LAPD, Gaines’ character was severely assassinated.

    The LAPD’s investigation claimed that Gaines was working for Death Row Records producer Suge Knight and was romantically involved with Knight’s estranged wife, Sharitha Knight.

    Lyga says that investigation also revealed that two of Gaines’s associates were involved in criminal activities, and led to the Rampart Scandal, involving corrupt officers in the LAPD’s Rampart Anti-Gang CRASH unit.

    Gaines’ death also sparked controversy because Gaines was black and Lyga is white.

    Lyga was found to be acting in self-defense and was cleared of wrongdoing by the LAPD and District Attorney’s Office, but prominent African-American civil rights attorney Johnny Cochran filed a $25 million civil rights suit claiming Lyga intentionally killed Gaines because he was black, Lyga says.
    […]

    So let’s get to today’s news.

    According to Court House News, Lyga sued the City of Los Angeles in Federal Court last Thursday, alleging racial discrimination and civil rights violations.

    The report says that Lyga says he did not know the conversation was being recorded by police Officer Bruce Stallworth, who was friends with Kevin Gaines.

    Stallworth released the comments to the press in June 2014 (I guess that would be me) and filed a personnel complaint against Lyga, which prompted an Internal Affairs investigation. About two months later, Capt. Charles Hearn wrote a letter stating that Lyga “poses a significant liability to the department,” that his comments “are inconsistent with our principles and values,” and that he should be fired, according to the lawsuit.

    Lyga says he apologized for his comments in a statement to the LAPD board of rights panel, saying: “I fully admit and recognize that the things I said were very wrong and I deeply regret that I used such poor judgment when I spoke that day. I have no excuse for what I did. I realize that my words were hurtful to many people as well as to the department. I accept responsibility for the harm I caused.”

    He said he hoped he could continue to serve the LAPD, but the panel found in October that he should be fired for his remarks. Instead, Lyga says, he chose to retire early so he could collect pension benefits.

    Lyga claims he has suffered “physical illness and physical injuries” and mental distress from the humiliation of being fired and “from the defamation and the attacks on his character.”

    Yeah, okay.

    Court House News says that Lyga claims the LAPD had no evidence that he is racist, but fast-tracked his termination because he is white and because his statements made the LAPD look like a racist institution.

    Lyga claims he was fired because of political pressure from the African-American community “based on their unfounded allegations that Lyga was a racist cop killer.”

    He claims he would not have been fired if he were black, and that black officer would not be fired for making the same statements he did.

    To make it right, Lyga wants $300,000 in compensatory and statutory damages, special damages, back pay, front pay and reinstatement. Yes–he wants to come back to work.

    Oh Lord have mercy, this is going to be interesting.

    Personally, I don’t think the LAPD needs cops like Frank Lyga on its payroll–and from what I can tell there are a few more relics of this ilk still collecting a pay check and on active duty.

    I say goodbye and good riddens.

    On a closing note, what I really want to know is, what happened to the 37 folks–give or a take a few– minus the one who reported the comments, who sat in that room laughing at everything Frank Lyga said? Lyga’s comments, while disturbing, aren’t the only issue on that audio tape and the Department knows exactly who was in that room.

    A lot of background on Lyga in the skipped bit.

    DuBose family to pursue wrongful death claim

    The mother of the man shot and killed by a fired University of Cincinnati police officer has asked a judge to allow her to oversee his interests in a wrongful death claim.

    No lawsuit has been filed in connection with the July 19 killing of Samuel DuBose by ex-UC Police Officer Ray Tensing. But the estate is being opened in Hamilton County Probate Court “to pursue a claim for wrongful death,” according to documents filed Monday.

    DuBose’s mother, Audrey, has asked to be appointed as administrator of the estate. DuBose was not married.

    The family is being represented by attorneys Mark O’Mara, Michael Wright and Al Gerhardstein.

    Distraught people, Deadly results

    Nationwide, police have shot and killed 124 people this year who, like Page, were in the throes of mental or emotional crisis, according to a Washington Post analysis. The dead account for a quarter of the 462 people shot to death by police in the first six months of 2015.

    The vast majority were armed, but in most cases, the police officers who shot them were not responding to reports of a crime. More often, the police officers were called by relatives, neighbors or other bystanders worried that a mentally fragile person was behaving erratically, reports show. More than 50 people were explicitly suicidal.

    More than half the killings involved police agencies that have not provided their officers with state-of-the-art training to deal with the mentally ill. And in many cases, officers responded with tactics that quickly made a volatile situation even more dangerous.

    The Post analysis provides for the first time a national, real-time tally of the shooting deaths of mentally distraught individuals at the hands of law enforcement. Criminal-justice experts say that police are often ill equipped to respond to such individuals — and that the encounters too often end in needless violence.

    “This a national crisis,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, an independent research organization devoted to improving policing. “We have to get American police to rethink how they handle encounters with the mentally ill. Training has to change.”

    As a debate rages over the use of deadly force by police, particularly against minorities, The Post is tracking every fatal shooting by a police officer acting in the line of duty in 2015. Reporters are culling news reports, public records and other open sources on the Internet to log more than a dozen factors about each case, including the age and race of the victim, whether the victim was armed and the circumstances that led to the fatal encounter.

    The FBI also logs fatal police shootings, but officials acknowledge that their data is far from complete. In the past four decades, the FBI has never recorded more than 460 fatal shootings in a single year. The Post hit that number in less than six months.

    For this article, The Post analyzed 124 killings in which the mental health of the victim appeared to play a role, either because the person expressed suicidal intentions or because police or family members confirmed a history of mental illness. This approach likely understates the scope of the problem, experts said.

    In many ways, this subset mirrors the overall population of police shooting victims: They were overwhelmingly men, more than half of them white. Nine in 10 were armed with some kind of weapon, and most died close to home.

    But there were also important distinctions. This group was more likely to wield a weapon less lethal than a firearm. Six had toy guns; 3 in 10 carried a blade, such as a knife or a machete — weapons that rarely prove deadly to police officers. According to data maintained by the FBI and other organizations, only three officers have been killed with an edged weapon in the past decade.

    Nearly a dozen of the mentally distraught people killed were military veterans, many of them suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their service, according to police or family members. Another was a former California Highway Patrol officer who had been forced into retirement after enduring a severe beating during a traffic stop that left him suffering from depression and PTSD.

    And in 45 cases, police were called to help someone get medical treatment, or after the person had tried and failed to get treatment on his own.

    I believe that is a repost, but it most certainly bears repeating.

  234. rq says

    Special Prosecutor In New York Launches Investigation Into Death Of Raynette Turner

    New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced Monday that his office will launch a formal investigation into the death of Raynette Turner, the mother of eight who died in a Mount Vernon, New York, jail cell while in police custody last week.

    “My office’s Special Investigations and Prosecutions Unit will investigate the death of Raynette Turner, consistent with Executive Order No. 147 and a conforming order to be issued by the Governor at my request,” Schneiderman said in a statement.

    It’s the first such investigation since Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) last month issued an executive order appointing Schneiderman as special prosecutor in all cases where an unarmed civilian dies at the hands of police.

    Turner, 42, was arrested on Saturday, July 25 after allegedly shoplifting some crab legs from a grocery store.

    With no judges working on Sundays to arraign her in court on the misdemeanor charge, police officers opted to keep Turner in custody through the weekend. On Sunday night, the Mount Vernon Police Department told The Journal News, Turner said she was feeling ill and was taken to a hospital. Turner, who had a history of high blood pressure, was treated at the hospital and released.

    At the courthouse Monday, Turner reportedly vomited while awaiting her arraignment in an upstairs holding area. She was then taken back to a cell downstairs.

    Although courthouse officials are supposed to check on the holding cells every 15 minutes, The Journal News reported, no one saw Turner for another hour, when she was found dead in the cell around 2 p.m.

    A spokesman for the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office told The Huffington Post that Turner’s initial autopsy was inconclusive. The medical examiner’s office is awaiting results from toxicology tests.

    A special investigation is at least a step in the right direction.

    Belmar said any and all protest arrests will go through @stlcountypd into County jail w/ “no bond for 99% of misdemeanors.” Trying to intimidate poeple into not holding any events at all? Shame, Belmar.

    FEATURE: ‘Fashion Rebels’ – Young entrepreneurs making moves in Pretoria, South Africa

    A fashion crew is bringing some edginess to Pretoria, South Africa, in the form of a “social market” described as a way to bring together “the people of Pretoria involved in growing the capital city in terms of ART // FASHION // FOOD & MUSIC.” Fashion Rebels are co-founders Maitele Wawe and Thifhelimbilu Mudau, and their colleague Sizophila Dlezi.
    In an interview with South African web magazine 10and5, Maitele Wawe stated: “There has always been a gap between Johannesburg and Pretoria in terms of the creative industries and more than anything we always had to travel in order to be part of the creative sessions and gigs. So we decided that with our influence and creativity we can start a pilot project and see how it would be received, and since then we’ve had 8 successful markets already.”
    Check out some of their best styles below!

    Worth a good look for anyone into fashion design, for men, too!

    Mayor Berry: Confederate flag to come down in Albuquerque Old Town. On whose authority, some may ask. Well.

    Mayor R.J. Berry has announced his final decision on the Confederate symbols in Old Town. After much controversy and debate among the community, Mayor Berry announced on Monday afternoon that the Confederate flag in Old Town will be taken down.

    The symbols in Old Town include the Confederate flag, plaques and replicas of Confederate canons.

    He said, “After taking all of this into consideration, I have determined that the City of Albuquerque will no longer fly the Confederate flag over Old Town. It will be returned to its owner or donated to the Albuquerque museum and replaced by the City of Albuquerque official flag.”

    There’s been a call to remove the symbols after a white supremacist went on a shooting spree at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

    Some community members felt that the symbols supported white supremacy. Others felt that the symbols were a part of history and should be displayed.

    His full statement is at the link, but here I cite in full:

    Over the past several weeks, I have listened carefully to many members of our community who have brought passionately different perspectives regarding the issue of the Confederate Stars and Bars flag and the civil war commemorative plaques and cannons in Old Town. This debate has presented us with an opportunity to consider diverse viewpoints pertaining to how we should mark our history in an appropriate and respectful manner.

    These diverse perspectives include those who feel strongly that the Confederate flag and any other Confederate artifact of any kind need to be removed from Old Town immediately. Others believe that the flag and artifacts are all valid historical reminders of the important role that Albuquerque and New Mexico played in the fight for freedom for all Americans.
    There is much to consider here including consideration of facts and consideration of the very real and differing perspectives of our diverse city.

    Those who consider the flag and artifacts to be nothing more than markers of history, should consider those who are deeply offended by the Confederate flag flying in Old Town because they view it as a celebration of an ideology that did not recognize all men as equal and an affront to those who died to ensure freedom for all.

    Those who consider the Confederate flag, plaques, and cannons to be so objectionable that none of them have any appropriate use as markers of our history should consider that Albuquerque and New Mexico played an important and historically significant role in turning back Confederate plans for westward expansion; and there is merit in honoring the role we played at the place where that history took place.

    As we consider all sides to this issue, we need to search for common ground and do our best to build a bridge connecting those who have fundamental differences of opinion – a bridge that will also foster deeper and more meaningful dialogues on other important issues facing us as a city, state and nation. And as always, carving out common ground will result in a compromise that may not please everyone.

    After taking all of this into consideration, I have determined that the City of Albuquerque will no longer fly the Confederate flag over Old Town. It will be returned to its owner or donated to the Albuquerque museum and replaced by the City of Albuquerque official flag. The City will however continue to mark our important contribution to the fight for equality for all Americans by retaining the civil war era cannons and plaques that accurately represent our place in the history of the Civil War. Historically inaccurate plaques and plaques that imply bias will also be removed and returned to those who donated them.

    We should never ignore our history; but we should also recognize and display our history in a way that is respectful to all those who it represents. By striking this balance, it is my hope that we can work through this debate as a community and build a strong foundation for future discussions of importance to us all.

    I think it makes a nice address to the ‘both sides’ people, and comes to the better conclusion.

    Darren Wilson, cop who shot Michael Brown, speaks about Ferguson: ‘I like the black community’. I guess it didn’t really like him back, though. Still doesn’t. Funny, that. Note citing. Feel free to read.

    Less than a week to go before the #UnitedWeFight Weekend! Attend the last mass meeting TODAY, 6PM to plug in

  235. rq says

    Feds Embed With Baltimore Homicide Squad

    Ten federal agents are set to join the Baltimore homicide unit after the city had one of its deadliest months in a decade. So far this year, 191 people have been murdered—45 of them in July. There are already 20 agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms on the ground as well as a full-time FBI analyst. “We’re not sitting still in Baltimore,” said Interim Police Commissioner Kevin Davis. “This is not something we are satisfied with happening to us as a city. We’re punching back, and we’re going to continue to punch back as creatively and innovatively as we can.”

    I don’t know if involving the FBI, etc., is the best plan – maybe look at improving community relations with police? Or, heck, the community itself? In a constructive way?

    Trey Yingst, Journalist Arrested In Ferguson, Wins Settlement From St. Louis County. Riot cops below that ‘Season’s Greetings’ sign is still one of the most chilling images I have seen throughout the year.

    Trey Yingst, a journalist arrested during November protests in Ferguson, Missouri, has settled a civil rights lawsuit filed against St. Louis County and the commanding officer involved in the incident.

    Yingst, who filed the suit in December with the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, will receive $8,500, and all three charges against him — unlawful assembly, failure to obey a lawful order and interfering with the duties of a police officer — have been dropped.

    In an interview with The Huffington Post, Yingst, a reporter with online site News2Share, said he is also requesting his arrest record be expunged. He said the county agreed to sign his petition with the court as part of the settlement, which states there was “no probable cause at the time of the action.”

    The ACLU announced Monday that along with Yingst, Bilgin Şaşmaz, a journalist arrested during a separate protest, will also not be charged and will similarly petition to have his records expunged.

    “Bilgin and Trey are relieved to put these incidents behind them and to no longer have the possibility of criminal charges hanging over their heads,” Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU of Missouri, said in a statement. “We are gratified that St. Louis County acknowledges that they should never have been arrested.”

    Though Yingst isn’t getting an apology from the county or from the arresting officer, Lt. James Vollmer, for being arrested, he said the fact that they’re paying him to drop the suit “shows they made a mistake.” The police have said Yingst was arrested while refusing police orders and standing in the street, a claim contradicted by journalists, eyewitnesses and video of the incident.

    Yingst is one of roughly two dozen journalists arrested or detained while covering demonstrations sparked by the Aug. 9 killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown at the hands of white police officer Darren Wilson. Most of the arrests occurred during the initial late summer unrest in Ferguson, in which police clamped down aggressively on the press. In an Oct. 26 report, PEN American Center cited 52 alleged violations of press freedom during the protests.

    But demonstrations continued in November in anticipation of the grand jury’s decision on whether to indict Wilson (it did not do so). On Nov. 21, a federal judge issued orders that appeared to better safeguard journalists from police harassment while reporting on the ground. Yingst was arrested two days later.

    The Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly — himself arrested in a Ferguson McDonald’s in August, and possibly still facing a trespassing charge — reported at the time that police arrested Yingst as he was standing on a sidewalk and wearing media credentials.

    A Reason magazine reporter, along with other witnesses, also supported Yingst’s account. And video of the incident, posted that night on Twitter, shows police in skirmish formation approaching Yingst on the sidewalk.

    The St. Louis County Police Department, however, tweeted after the incident that Yingst was detained for “failure to disperse” and had “refused” orders from commanding officers to leave the street. A police report echoes the description of events in that tweet.

    I know who I’m inclined to believe.

    WATCH: Kansas cop goes off on f*ck-filled rant, threatens to arrest man for asking him a simple question. See attitude in action.

    A Kansas sheriff’s deputy has apologized after being suspended for going off on a profanity-laced tirade and threatening to arrest a man for asking a simple question about a property dispute incident in his neighborhood, reports KSN.

    Harper County Sheriff’s Deputy Vance Williams said “I unfortunately used language that I should never have used,” after video of him showed him using various iterations of “f*ck” eight times in less than one minute was posted online.

    Wait, and who should be thinking twice before opening their mouth?

    Darren Wilson has applied for several policing jobs since leaving Ferguson. Still hating his face.

    Darren Wilson has attempted to return to work as a police officer since leaving his job in Ferguson, Missouri, amid the furore over his fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old, it emerged on Monday.

    Wilson said he applied for several police positions elsewhere but was turned down due to concerns that he was a liability. “It’s too hot an issue, so it makes me unemployable,” he told the New Yorker, during interviews for a profile published as the anniversary of Michael Brown’s death approaches.

    The 29-year-old said he had resigned from the Ferguson police department days after a grand jury in St Louis declined to prosecute him for killing Brown, in a sharply contested incident that led to months of unrest in the city and protests around the US.

    Wilson also told the magazine that despite the controversy, he wished he could return briefly to his old job in Ferguson, a suburb of St Louis. “I would want to do it for a day,” he said, in order to show observers that he was not “defeated”.

    Because he killed an 18-year-old teen and somehow not getting charged for it is him being defeated? Living on donations – him defeated? The timelords know, everybody knows he’s not defeated. They would still like to see him arrested.

    Things To Not Wear To a KKK Rally: FUBU Sneakers

    FUBU, the clothing brand founded by Shark Tank’s fourth most vicious shark, Daymond John, famously stands for, “For us, by us.” The “us” who FUBU was created by and intended for is not, as it turns out, white KKK members from backwater Georgia.

    Alas, that did not prevent one man—with the Klan’s insignia tattooed on his bicep, a confederate flag in his hands, and several teeth in his mouth—from attending a weekend rally in Stone Mountain, Georgia in a pair of FUBU sneakers. He was confronted in the video above by George Chidi, a local journalist, who pointed out that he was essentially a walking advertisement for black success.

    The man responded that he did not care if his shoes were designed by a black person, because they are the Klan’s colors of red, white, and black, which, I guess, is a fair point?

    A Brave Interview: Raising A Black Child In America

    Headlines are again blanketing us with images of an unarmed black man being killed by a white police officer. Not for doing something wrong, but for simply being black.

    The question hanging as 25-year-old Officer Ray Tensing faces spending much of his life in prison for the murder of 43-year-old Samuel DuBose is how many more black people are yet to be killed, murdered, as a direct result of racism before something changes? I don’t know. No-one can.

    I often wonder how different my life would be if had not been born white. And, as a mother of four children (including three teenage sons), I wonder what it must be like to be raising black children in America. How would I parent them differently? What if I had to warn my playful, outgoing sons to never carry a toy that may be mistaken for a gun? What if I had to teach them to arm themselves against prejudice and implicit bias? What if I could not let them risk the mistakes of the white children they go to school with without putting their very lives at risk?

    Ending racism will take courage. Courage to look ourselves in the mirror and to ask where by our action, inaction, denial or sheer indifference we are complicit in the racism that we see around us. Finding that courage first demands recognizing that regardless of our position, power or even the hue of our skin, we are more powerful than we think and never underestimating the ripple effect we set in motion when we decide to be the change we wish to see in the world around us.

    And as a parent, I believe that we have an obligation to amplify that ripple effect by raising the next generation of children to be more tolerant than those which have gone before them.

    So as part of my Brave Interview Series, I reached out to Clint Smith, a black poet and Harvard doctoral candidate whose TED Talk, “Raising A Black Son In America,” helped those of us who have never had to worry about such things to see with new eyes. I hope his answers will help you do likewise, because the only way we will ever end the racism that still runs deep in American culture, and in other countries around the world, is when white people care about ending it as deeply as black people do.

    Interview at the link.

  236. rq says

    McKinney has signs like this in all the store windows because of the McKinney Pool Protest. #ImDisgusted @deray Sign reads “Keep the mounted patrol on the McKinney police department”.

    Female inmate dies at St. Louis Justice Center

    The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department is investigating the death of a 28-year-old female inmate at the City Justice Center.

    Alexis McGovern, 28, of High Ridge, MO, experienced what’s being called a “medical emergency.” She had been confined to the Medical Infirmary and was found lifeless in her bed. A police investigation revealed that she suffered from medical issues and had recently had surgery. There were no signs of trauma.

    Jail staff performed CPR until she could be transported to a local hospital. She was pronounced dead a short time later.

    The investigation continues. Police are awaiting the Medical Examiner’s ruling of an official cause of death.

    Nobody said “All Lives Matter” until someone said “Black Lives Matter.” It is only said to change the conversation. See attached chart.

    The Continuing Reality of Segregated Schools

    Most black children will not be killed by the police. But millions of them will go to a school like Michael Brown’s: segregated, impoverished and failing. The nearly all-black, almost entirely poor Normandy school district from which Brown graduated just eight days before he was killed placed dead last on its accreditation assessment in the 2013-2014 school year: 520th out of 520 Missouri districts. The circumstances were so dire that the state stripped the district of its accreditation and eventually took over.

    In the months following Brown’s death, I traveled to Normandy and wrote a piece called “School Segregation, the Continuing Tragedy of Ferguson” for ProPublica and The New York Times, published last December.

    But I couldn’t stop reporting this story, as I had found something there that seemed straight out of a history book. A Missouri law had inadvertently created a new school integration program in one of the most segregated metropolitan areas in the country by allowing Normandy students to leave their unaccredited school district and transfer to white, high-achieving ones.

    I teamed up with Chana Joffe-Walt, a producer for the radio program “This American Life,” to tell the story of Michael Brown’s school district through the students who remain there. It is a story of children locked away from opportunity, what happens when those children are given a chance to escape failing schools and what happens to those children left behind. It is a story of how powerful people decided to do something only when the problems of the worst district in the state were no longer contained. And above all, it is a story of the staggering educational inequality we are willing to accept.

    I believe the article has a link to the audio.

    Next time they mention ‘black on black’ crime… The visual is a bit confusing, but the point is that it is possible to police high-crime communities without killing its members.

    If you search the hashtag, you’ll see that the vast majority of people speaking out for #ZacharyHammond right now are black. On black people never caring when cops shoot a white person.
    funny how when we say #BlackLivesMatter, white people say “that’s racist, all lives matter!” but y’all quiet for #ZacharyHammond now..

  237. rq says

    Managed to put one in moderation. Eh. Onwards!
    Your reminder that there’s real pain behind 8/9. This is not Social Justice “Coachella” weekend.

    @deray protect people’s lives #SandraBland #SamDubose #TonyRobinson #Walterscott @splcenter @genprogress The story this replies to is coming up, too.

    Ex-LAPD detective accused of making racially charged remarks sues to get job back, seen in blog post form just above.

    In a federal lawsuit filed last week, Frank Lyga alleged his civil rights were violated when LAPD officials wrongfully decided to fire him because of his race. Lyga alleged the action was “motivated by political pressure” from the African American community, alleging a black officer would not have been fired for making the same comments. He is seeking to be reinstated with the LAPD.

    “The decision to terminate Plaintiff Frank Lyga was based not on evidence that he was a racist police officer, but on the perception by others that he is a racist police officer and the fact that if he is not terminated, it would give fodder to LAPD detractors who believe that LAPD harbors racist officers,” the lawsuit read.

    Lyga, who worked for the LAPD for 28 years, said in his lawsuit that he decided to retire early rather than be fired. One of his attorneys, Joseph Avrahamy, said the department had taken steps to terminate his client, but Lyga retired “before that happened.”

    “He’s hoping that through this lawsuit, the truth will finally come out that he’s not a racist,” Avrahamy said.

    Weellll I don’t know about you but… he kind of made himself appear racist by being racist, ya know?

    Congratulations to the launch of http://blackstockimages.co/ The first Black run and owned stock image site. A few of the responses list other stock photo sites featuring black people. Well, at least one. :)

    Great to see @MsPackyetti, @deray, @bdoulaoblongata, and @wavyblackwoman in this month’s Ebony. Previously shown showing half the spread.

  238. rq says

    Political Staff Overruled “Purists” at State Department Who Tallied Slavery Problems

    A devastating new Reuters story chronicles how political concerns watered down the State Department’s annual report on human trafficking around the world. The story quotes anonymous diplomats as saying that human rights experts shouldn’t be “purists” when it comes to the forced labor policies in foreign countries that amount to modern-day slavery.

    The report from Reuters, based on over a dozen sources, alleges that senior personnel at the State Department, up to and including John Kerry’s chief of staff, Jonathan Finer, boosted the grades for 14 countries, over the recommendations of experts at the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, known in Washington as J/TIP. The upgrades included China, India, Mexico, Cuba and Malaysia.

    Staying out of the report’s lowest Tier 3 level helps countries avoid U.S. sanctions. In addition, Malaysia’s ascendance to Tier 2 allowed it to remain in Trans-Pacific Partnership talks, after a federal statute barred Tier 3 countries from receiving “fast-track” approval for any trade agreements with the United States.

    While politics are always part of the trafficking report, this year’s negotiations featured “a degree of intervention not previously known,” according to Reuters. Critics are frustrated by the damaged integrity of the report.

    But the diplomats doing the politicizing were apparently frustrated, too.

    “Some diplomats say that J/TIP staffers should avoid acting like ‘purists’ and keep sight of broader U.S. interests,” writes Reuters, “including maintaining open channels with authoritarian governments to push for reform and forging trade deals that could lift people out of poverty.” The article did not name names, noting that “U.S. diplomats are reluctant to openly strike back at critics.”

    Calling those concerned about the forced labor of human beings “purists” fits with a long and troubling history of U.S. governments ignoring human rights concerns in partner countries, particularly to advance trade deals. A study by Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s office earlier this year found labor-related human rights abuses in 17 of the 20 countries with whom the U.S. has trade agreements.

    Let’s hear it for All Lives Matter, eh?

    First day of testimony is finished in shooting trial of CMPD Officer Kerrick

    Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/crime/article29842051.html#storylink=cpy, I know posted just previous, but has updates.

    New Body Cam Videos Show Cops Coalescing Around False Narrative of Sam DuBose Killing

    On Thursday, Tensing pled not guilty to murdering DuBose and his lawyer said the charges were unwarranted. Stewart Mathews also gave a possible preview of his client’s defense, saying that the officer was knocked to the ground, dragged, and “feared for his life.”

    This account—which appeared to be contradicted by the video from Tensing’s body camera that showed him firing his gun and then falling down—was very similar to the stories initially given by two of Tensing’s fellow University of Cincinnati officers on the scene, Phillip Kidd and David Lindenschmidt, who have both now been placed on leave.

    Furthermore, the body cameras of Kidd and Lindenschmidt—made public on Thursday—show just how quickly Tensing and his colleagues coalesced around a false narrative of how the incident occurred. The footage should serve as a powerful lesson to anyone who automatically believes the accounts of police officers in these types of shooting incidents, for which cops are rarely prosecuted.

    In Kidd’s video, he can be seen chasing after DuBose’s car alongside Tensing after the fatal shot was fired and the vehicle went out of control. After the car crashes and the chase ends, you can hear Tensing say “I thought he was going to run me over.”

    As Tensing appears to formulate his story, you can hear Kidd confirm it aloud. Tensing says “he was dragging me” and Kidd replies “yeah, I saw that.”

    At the three minute and 30 second mark in the above video, Tensing repeats “he was dragging me, man” and then says “I just got my hand and my arm caught.” Again, Kidd replies “I saw that.” Kidd then curses and asks Tensing “what was he reaching for?” Tensing replies “He kept reaching around. I told him to step out of the car. He couldn’t produce a license.”

    Tensing then says “I almost got ran over” and Kidd responds “don’t—don’t say anything,” before cursing again.

    Later in the video, another officer asks Kidd if he saw Tensing being dragged and he says “yes.”

    Kidd backed up Tensing’s account in the official police report of the incident. Lindenschmidt, however, was portrayed as more circumspect in that document, which says “It is unclear how much of this incident [officer in training] Lindenschmidt witnessed.”

    But Lindenschmidt’s body cam video, which also starts off with him chasing DuBose’s out-of-control car, shows him supporting what appears to be a false narrative of the shooting as well.

    Lindenschmidt initially asks Tensing “what’d he pull on you?” After Tensing doesn’t answer, he asks again “he pulled?” This time, Tensing responds “he didn’t reach for anything.”

    At about the four-minute mark in the above video Lindenschmidt tells another officer the exact opposite, though. “He had a traffic stop, the guy took off from him. The officer got caught in his car, because the guy reached for something—he thought—and so he grabbed onto the car,” Lindenschmidt says, contradicting what Tensing had just told him. “Our officer went down, he got tangled in the car, drew his gun and fired.”

    At just after the seven-minute mark, Lindenschmidt actually describes the shooting accurately, though, saying that Tensing fired before the car went dangerously out of control. (In the video, the car appears to go out of control only after DuBose had been shot when he had apparently attempted to start to pull the car away from Tensing.) “I was right behind him. He fired from right here and the guy took off,” Lindenschmidt says to another officer, getting the order of events correct.

    Lindenschmidt then appears to go back to the other order: “I just arrived to back him up when the guy took off. The officer was stuck in the vehicle. Fired one round.”

    At the end of the video, Lindenschmidt says “I’m going to turn my camera off” before being instructed to “keep it on for now.” That’s when the footage ends.

    You’re White and Marched With Dr. King: So What? On Bernie Sanders.

    So you’re white and you marched with Dr. King. You supported the civil rights movement in some way. You joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or you got arrested at a sit-in, or you attended a demonstration. Maybe one late night at a bar, you loudly proclaimed that Dr. King was your homey.

    So fucking what?

    Isn’t that what liberals were supposed to be doing? You worked toward equality at a time when every decent person was working for equality.

    Maybe you walked a couple miles and learned the words to “We Shall Overcome.” Whoopty-freakin’-do! What else would you have been doing at the time? Supporting Jim Crow and segregation? Do you feel entitled to a clap on the back and a “Good show, old chap!” simply because when a bunch of white people were being assholes, you chose not to be one?

    Sorry, but you don’t get a cookie for not being an asshole.

    As a white liberal of adult age in the 1960s, you were politically required to do these things, right? And if the answer is yes—and we all know that it is—why the hell are you tossing Bernie Sanders’ record of doing them in Black people’s faces in order to shut down conversations about structural racism, police brutality, and the #BlackLivesMatter movement? Aside from a few sound bites here and there, Bernie Sanders doesn’t yet know how to speak to Black people about these issues.

    I say “yet” because there’s still time for him to get it together. That’s the beauty of primary season. This is the time when voters expect candidates to address their concerns. And right now, the primary concern of many Black voters is police violence in Black communities. And thus far, as demonstrated by his reaction at Netroots Nation last weekend to a group of #BlackLivesMatter activists—led by two Black women, Tia Oso and Patrisse Cullors—who stood up in a conference of supposed progressive allies and demanded that Bernie Sanders (and Martin O’Malley) provide substantive answers about what he would do about the epidemic of police violence in the Black community, Bernie Sanders is ill-equipped to speak substantively on these issues.

    Bernie Sanders marched with Dr. King in the 1960s, but in 2015, he marched off stage after mumbling something about fighting for civil rights for 50 years, and ignored the Black women who were standing right in front of him, asking him to speak to their concerns.

    Not only was Sanders’ response woefully inadequate—although he appears to have learned something as evidenced by his tweets and the fact that he said Sandra Bland’s name at a rally in Dallas on Sunday—but the reactions from many of his supporters, particularly his white supporters, have ranged from annoying to obnoxious to downright racist.

    Progressives are complaining that the protesters were disrespectful and rude. They’re whining that interrupting a speech isn’t an “invitation for solidarity.”

    I’ve seen some white folks complaining that they no longer feel safe at Netroots because—you know—unruly Black women. The horror! Still others don’t think the protest “looks good.” (Because as we all know, change comes when you politely ask for it, not when you disrupt and demand it, which, by the way, is what Dr. King did. White people tend to forget that Dr. King was a disruptor when they are using him as a Pokémon to shut Black people up.)

    Rather than support these brave Black women activists in what is quite literally a fight for the lives of Black people, there you are in all your pearl-clutching glory talking about how disrespectful the activists were, and how it’s such a shame that the uppity Black people were being so rude to an obvious ally, and how the #BlackLivesMatter movement is so disorganized and is protesting the wrong things at the wrong time in front of the wrong people.

    Ther’es plenty more, incl. examples of things people say about Sanders, at the link.

    Ferguson pd protest

  239. rq says

    75% of the way there in only a week. Help us meet our goal and support diversity in media! #BlackAugust https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1394424784/seven-scribes …

    A Superman comic just took on police brutality and left me breathless

    Now that he’s been outed, Superman’s relationship with everyone around him has completely changed. Some are supportive, and grateful, surprised to learn that he’s been living among them all along. Others, however, have a chip on their shoulder, resenting all the supervillains that he has attracted.

    Unfortunately for him, most of the angriest folks are cops.

    This quickly escalates into open conflict by the end of “Action Comics” #41, when a welcome home block party for Superman is about to be stormed by police in full riot gear while the de-powered hero tries to take on a massive monster several blocks away.

    It’s a moment that echoes similar events that have unfolded across the country recently in cities like Ferguson and Baltimore, where law enforcement — primed to use excessive force — attempt to strong-arm peaceful citizens into submission. Like in those cities, the smallest miscalculation can lead to utter chaos.

    When a Metropolis citizen then gets unruly, the commanding officer sees it as an opportunity to march on those gathered, with batons and shields at the ready — and then Superman, absolutely exhausted from his fight, places himself in between the crowd and the cops.

    It’s a beautiful, arresting image by artist Aaron Kuder and colorist Tomeu Morey, a cathartic moment for anyone who saw the shocking imagery coming out of Ferguson and felt utterly powerless. But that’s not even the real gut punch.

    The cops march anyway, raining tear gas on the citizens and even attacking an officer who objects to the proceedings— while Jimmy Olsen photographs the entire ugly affair.

    A few more bits at the link.

    The #MichaelBrown memorial lives on in Google Earth

    Reader reactions to the Michael Brown shooting and aftermath

    We are seeking honest reactions to the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting. How did it change you?

    Submission form at the link.

    The Government Is Watching #BlackLivesMatter, And It’s Not Okay, via ACLU.

    According to documents recently obtained by The Intercept in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the government is surveilling the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

    Records from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Operations Coordination show that since August 2014, DHS officials have been trolling public social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, and Vine, to map and collect information on #BlackLivesMatter protests –and supposedly related events. Targeted activities include silent vigils held across the country following the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, an anti-police brutality protest in Philadelphia, and an April 2015 #BlackLivesMatter protest in Washington D.C. The documents even show a plan to gather information on a funk music parade in a historically Black neighborhood in the nation’s capital.

    Perhaps most troubling are the Google maps and live updates tracking, minute-by-minute, the movements of participants in an April 2015 #BlackLivesMatter protest in Washington, D.C. A DHS email released to the Intercept confirms that on the day before the event, several DHS officials were aware of a Federal Bureau of Investigation joint intelligence bulletin characterizing the protest as a “First Amendment-protected event,” and noting that there was “no information suggesting that violent behavior is planned for Washington, DC.”

    What will be done with this trove of information? We know that DHS shares what it gathers with local and federal law enforcement for targeting police stops and investigations. Information about specific individuals can also be funneled into the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting system, which provides reports to the FBI through regional fusion centers.

    The problem with this is obvious. Modern protest movements speak, associate, and organize through social media. Their tweets, blogs, protests, marches, and die-ins are the trumpets by which they call for reform and social justice. Government monitoring of activists’ protests – simply because these activists dissent and without any evidence of wrongdoing – threatens to discourage them from speaking, associating, and expressing as is their right under the First Amendment. Surveillance of #BlackLivesMatter protests also opens the door to racial profiling because the movement is Black-led.

    Throughout our country’s history, the federal government has used the fear of threats – real or perceived – to conduct surveillance on domestic groups and people who look or act different. Civil rights and anti-Vietnam War activists in the 1960’s and 1970’s, American Muslim civil rights leaders and academics post-9/11, and the FBI’s recent, expansive racial, religious, and ethnic mapping program are a handful of examples.

    Today, at a time when the public is outraged and sickened that Black men and women are killed by police in too many incidents raising concerns about racial profiling, excessive force, and gross disregard for Black lives, the tracking of #BlackLivesMatter threatens to harm that movement and all others seeking equal treatment for minority Americans.

    Progress toward racial justice in America has been made precisely because brave people, particularly people of color, have raised their voices to hold America accountable to its promises of equality and liberty. Courageous men and women of color have stood up in order to call for the abolition of the chattel slavery, to urge the adoption of a constitutional amendment promising equal protection of the law, to demand an end to the legalized racial segregation that ruled America for 90 years, and to insist on federal protection for Black people’s right to vote after decades of disenfranchisement through enforced terror.

    The generations of civil rights activists who made these calls were branded as “dangerous,”
    “terrorist,” and “subversive.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his family, his colleagues in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress for Racial Equality, and countless other individuals and groups heralded today for their vision of racial equality in America were victims of FBI surveillance in the 1960’s.

    Surveillance of today’s civil rights activists is equally wrong. We do not need to wait 50 years to understand that.

  240. rq says

    This article of Dana’s, while a general article on allyship, actually focusses on race and has a great link within about being white and wearing dreds: Learning to Shut Up and Listen. Please read.

    Sandra Bland’s family files lawsuit over her death in Texas jail

    andra Bland’s family filed a federal lawsuit against the sheriff’s office, jail officials and the state Department of Public Safety on Tuesday to seek answers and accountability for her death in a Waller County, Texas, jail cell last month.

    “Candidly, we were unable to get many of the answers we have been asking for for weeks,” the family’s attorney, Cannon Lambert, told reporters in Houston as he was flanked by Bland’s mother and three of Bland’s four sisters, who had traveled from Illinois to be at the news conference. All family members wore buttons showing Bland’s face.

    “We are looking for Waller County and the individuals involved in this situation to take accountability.”

    The family’s motivation, Lambert added, “is that they don’t want to see this sort of thing happen again to another family. … It’s got to stop.”

    “The bottom line is, she never should have been inside of a jail. Period,” said Bland’s mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, of the Chicago suburb of Naperville, who brought her Bible with her to the Houston news conference.

    Names of nine Charleston victims painted on Confederate memorial. @Wcnc

    How Our Schools Are Failing Black Girls

    In a recent study focused on how schools respond to black children with behavioral and social challenges versus how they respond to white children facing the same difficulties, sociologist David Ramey uncovered what many black parents, including me, already know: Black children who exhibit “bad behavior” are more likely to have police intervene than medical professionals. “Black students are more likely to be punished with suspensions, expulsions or referrals to law enforcement,” writes the Huffington Post’s Rebecca Klein, who spoke directly with Ramey regarding his research, “a phenomenon that helps funnel kids into the criminal justice system.”

    This kind of funneling has become known as the school-to-prison pipeline, defined by the American Civil Liberties Union as “the policies and practices that push our nation’s schoolchildren, especially our most at-risk children, out of classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems,” and which reflect “the prioritization of incarceration over education.”

    Black girls are particularly vulnerable, as they are more likely than any other race of girls (and more likely than white boys) to be suspended and further criminalized. According to the Washington Post, “nationally, 12% of black girls received at least one-in-school suspension, whereas the rate for white girls is 2%, and for white boys it is 6%.”

    As an educator, I find these studies fascinating. As the mother of a black girl who lives with social and behavioral challenges, I find them frightening. My experiences as the mother of a daughter with special emotional and learning needs has shown me exactly how so many beautiful and brilliant black girls end up without the educational experience they deserve, and instead on their way to our nation’s prisons.

    More at the link.

    Alabama officer kept job after proposal to murder black man and hide evidence

    A police officer in Alabama proposed murdering a black resident and creating bogus evidence to suggest the killing was in self-defence, the Guardian has learned.

    Officer Troy Middlebrooks kept his job and continues to patrol Alexander City after authorities there paid the man $35,000 to avoid being publicly sued over the incident. Middlebrooks, a veteran of the US marines, said the man “needs a god damn bullet” and allegedly referred to him as “that n*gg*r”, after becoming frustrated that the man was not punished more harshly over a prior run-in.

    The payment was made to the black resident, Vincent Bias, after a secret recording of Middlebrooks’s remarks was played to the city’s police chiefs and the mayor. Elected city councillors said they were not consulted. A copy of the recording was obtained by the Guardian.

    “This town is ridiculous,” Bias, 49, said in an interview. “The police here feel they can do what they want, and often they do.” Alexander City police chief Willie Robinson defended Middlebrooks. “He was just talking. He didn’t really mean that,” he said in an interview.

    Within months of the recording, Middlebrooks was the first officer to respond to a controversial fatal shooting by a colleague of an unarmed black man in the city. He was closely involved in handling the scene and gave a key account of what happened to state investigators. His fellow officer was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing and both men continue to police the city of about 15,000 people about 55 miles north-east of Montgomery.

    There’s more at the link.

    New York Cracks Down On Illegal Toy Guns.

    New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced a settlement Monday with Walmart, Sears, Amazon and other retailers to wipe realistic-looking toy guns from their shelves.

    The retailers — namely, Walmart — must pay fines of more than $300,000 for selling more than 6,400 illegal toy guns from 2012 to 2014. The settlement, and the new rules that accompany it, put tighter restrictions on the shipping of illegal toy guns ordered online.

    “We’ve had 63 people shot in New York because law enforcement officers thought the toy gun was a real gun,” Schneiderman said during an appearance on the “Today” show. “That’s not acceptable.”

    As an example of a legal toy firearm, Schneiderman held up a plastic rifle, its buttstock dyed neon yellow and its barrel a bright orange.

    “No one is going to hand over their wallet because they’re being held up by this,” he said, brandishing the plaything. “No police officer is ever going to mistake this for a real gun and shoot someone in a tragic incident.”

    Federal law already requires toy guns to have bright orange tips on the end of the barrel. But, as “Today” show correspondent Jeff Rossen demonstrated in the segment, a fake firearm tucked tip-first into a potential assailant’s trousers can be deceiving to an officer making a split-second decision on whether to pull the trigger. Unable to detect the orange tip in a fast-escalating situation, three separate officers, using unloaded practice guns, decided to shoot Rossen when he came at them with the toy gun.

    New York City already requires any toy guns sold here to be brightly colored. The city regulation will now apply to the whole state.

    The move, at least in part, is a reaction to the killings of two unarmed black people by police who say they mistook toy guns for real ones. A year ago, police shot John Crawford, a 22-year-old man, while he was holding a pellet gun at a Walmart near Dayton, Ohio. Last November, an officer in Cleveland killed Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy playing with a pellet gun at a local park.

    “We are pleased that we were able to resolve the attorney general’s concerns regarding toy gun sales in a mutually satisfactory way,” Howard Riefs, a spokesman for Sears, said in an emailed statement to The Huffington Post. “We remain committed to meeting the needs of our many customers and members in New York.”

    Okay then.

  241. rq says

    Are police going too far or doing their job? Is this a ‘both sides’ argument?

    Those punches two years ago marked one of more than 3,000 incidents between January 2011 and fall 2014 in which central Ohio officers reported using force against a citizen.

    The number of those cases deemed excessive, as Hoge’s was?

    Nine.

    LOTS more at the link.

    Andre 3000 To Star In ‘American Crime’ Season 2, just because for fun.


    What #BlackLivesMatter Organizers Being Labeled ‘Threat Actors’ Means And Why It Matters

    More proof is surfacing that #BlackLivesMatter organizers have been heavily monitored for quite some time, and the language used in a “crisis management” report proving that, issued by cybersecurity company ZeroFox (and which found its way into the public’s eye last Wednesday, via Twitter), should be quite telling, and leave you more than a little angry.

    ZeroFox readily admits in its report that it was monitoring #BlackLivesMatter organizers, such as DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie, both Missouri residents who had helped organize during the Ferguson protests, and who have since remained active, even branching out nationally, as is evident by their growing social media following and presence in Baltimore for the Freddie Gray demonstrations – the main focus and purpose for ZeroFox monitoring McKesson and Elzie in the first place.
    […]

    And here’s the gravy. Dig how McKesson and Elzie are labeled in this “crisis response” report: “threat actors.”

    Actors?

    Most readers are probably aware that there is a such thing as a crisis actor – people paid to act out dire emergencies for first response drills. You usually hear a lot about that line of work in the conspiracy theory videos that follow mass shootings and such.

    But what is a “threat actor”? Is the report claiming McKesson and Elzie are not genuine, but possibly paid actors? Infiltrators?

    Hardly. If only that were true; then we could just laugh it off and keep marching, keep banging the drum. No, this report means actors in a far different manner, unfortunately, and it’s use as such should be a rather striking underscore for Americans to take note of, which is militaristic.

    In the theater of war to a white power establishment such as the U.S. government and so many of the smaller systems comprised within it, even peaceful activists such as McKesson and Elzie are deemed “violent actors,” as it is the power of their influence and their leadership, their banner-raising of truth to power, that the establishment fears. That is the invisible gun ZeroFox sees them holding, and reported to authorities in Baltimore as “physical.”

    Now, McKesson and Elzie, though having never committed any violence or crime, have become actual targets monitored online and off, constantly, for whom “immediate response is recommended.” Now they are “high” in severity and described as “physical.” ZeroFox also labeled them as “#mostwanted.”

    So that’s that, folks. Proof right there. This is a war – always has been. It’s in the language. Listen. You take out the generals, first.

    Not that they’re self-declared generals, mind you, but that this is how they are perceived by the Great White.

    UCPD mission changed before fatal shooting

    The letter to Hamilton County’s judges in 2013 carried an urgent message: Criminals were preying on University of Cincinnati students and something had to be done.

    “Our students continue to be victimized at a troubling rate that is simply unacceptable,” said the letter, signed by UC President Santa Ono and Cincinnati Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell. “We need your help.”

    The plea to judges was part of an aggressive anti-crime campaign that included hiring more cops, adding street lights and security cameras, beefing up campus patrols, and signing an agreement with the city to expand the presence of UC police in neighborhoods around the Corryville campus.

    The approach is increasingly common, particularly on urban campuses, and it may have helped reduce crime. UC students last year reported fewer assaults, robberies and burglaries.

    But the extension of patrols into the city fundamentally changed the mission of UC police, turning them into something more than a campus-oriented police force that dealt mostly with students. They began stopping, questioning and ticketing motorists and pedestrians by the hundreds, often in urban neighborhoods where they’d rarely ventured before.

    Now, the mission of UC police may be changing again.
    […]

    Too aggressive, according to some. City Council took the first steps Monday toward banning off-campus traffic stops by UC police and promised to review the agreement, or memorandum of understanding, that was signed in 2009 and became the basis for much of the cooperation between city and campus police.

    Without the agreement, UC police could not have handed out all those tickets and the fatal encounter on July 19 between UC Officer Ray Tensing and Samuel DuBose would likely not have happened. Tensing shot DuBose after pulling him over for driving without a front license plate, claiming he was being dragged as DuBose attempted to drive away.

    “We need to be involved with them,” Chief Blackwell said Monday of UC police. “But to do traffic enforcement of residents – and it largely appears to be minority residents – we certainly don’t want that to continue. We don’t need that to continue.”

    Deters went even further after a grand jury indicted Tensing on a murder charge last week. He said UC should disband its 73-member police department and let Cincinnati police do the job.

    “They’re not cops,” he said. “Being police officers shouldn’t be the role of this university.”

    Exactly.

    @deray idk if you know, but there is another protest going on at John Crawford III’s memorial tomorrow, for open carry advocates -> While I don’t in general support open-carry, I think most of you are mindful of the difference in how white open-carry advocates are treated, and the abject fear that black open-carry advocates can create in non-black people. So. If it’s open-carry, it’s open-carry for all, same consequences. I think I’m actually less afraid of a black person open-carrying in public than I am of a white person, though I say that, having never met either in a real-life situation.

    Montgomery boxes Confederate statue to protect it from vandalism, and thus it looks the best it has ever looked.

    Montgomery County has erected a wooden box around a Confederate monument recently spray-painted with the words “Black Lives Matter,” in hopes of shielding the statue from further vandalism as officials seek to move it out of downtown Rockville.

    County workers put up the barrier Friday, about a week after the words appeared across the base of the 102-year-old bronze statue of a Confederate soldier.

    Officials said additional nighttime security lighting also has been added to help safeguard the artifact, which stands on the lawn next to the landmark Red Brick Courthouse and has been granted historic status by the city of Rockville.
    […]

    Several favored leaving the monument in place but adding explanations to provide historical context — including that Maryland did not secede and that the state sent more soldiers to fight with the Union than with the Confederacy.

    “Eradicating history we don’t want to hear or see means we have yet to heed those lessons history serves to teach,” Tony Cohen, a historian and founder of the Menare Foundation, which works to preserve the history of the Underground Railroad and other parts of the slavery era, told the Rockville City Council in July.

    Others, such as Rockville council member Tom Moore, said the statue did not belong near the courthouse. Moore suggested placing it at the Beall-Dawson House, a historic Rockville home that was once the property of slave owners and is operated by the Montgomery County Historical Society.

    The county’s general services director, David Dise, said Monday that his department is taking bids from companies that specialize in removing monuments and statuary.

    The life-size statue and its base weigh about 20,000 pounds, and moving them will require considerable planning. Dise said the gray granite pedestal will have to be removed in pieces.

    “I only want to move it once,” Dise said.

  242. rq says

    Sandra Bland’s family files federal lawsuit, USA Today.

    Call for activists to boycott walmart. Hold a vigil. #wecantshop #CrawfordDay #boycottwalmart

    Wife of officer: ‘Black Life’ matters less because he’s a cop – really?

    The St. Louis police sergeant shot in the Central West End is speaking out in the second part of an exclusive television interview with NewsChannel 5.

    In the first part of the emotional interview, he talked about how he believes divine intervention saved his life. In the second part he talks about the support he has and has not received since he was shot. He asked that his name not be used out of concern for the safety of his family.
    […]

    But the man who considers his police work a calling wonders, is something is missing? His wife asked on Facebook if her husband’s black life mattered less “because he’s a cop.”

    “Being a black male I didn’t hear any politicians, any clergy, no one reached out to me on any hashtag,” he says referencing the social media phrase #BlackLivesMatter.

    “Just like many other policemen on this department it’s not about black lives matter, all lives matter, it’s humanity matters.” And he says that bothered him “a little bit.”

    “I can remember as far back as being in first grade seeing what police meant to me and my community. They were here to help people. I remember telling my mom back in first grade, ‘I want to be a policeman because policemen help people,'” he says.

    In the context of the past year and so many people taking to streets proclaim very different views of police he says, “both sides, in my opinion, could do better.”

    “On the police side, maybe we could communicate better with the public,” says the sergeant who worked the front line of protests in Ferguson and St. Louis last August and later in the year.

    “We live in a violent society, and in my opinion, I think people should support their local policemen even more,” he says.

    “This department, like many departments across the nation we’re doing everything we can to heal wounds as far as those who feel like they’ve been done wrong by any police department, especially this one. I’m in the mindset that humanity matters.”

    “I think we’ll get there. But we need the community support.”

    I hear they investigated the shooting pretty darned quick, though.

    ‘Black Lives Matter’ painted on Rockville Confederate statue, Baltimore Sun.

    Jonathan Ferrell Asked for Help—and Cops Killed Him. There’s a lot of detail about the shooting within, including evidence (like DNA) and where it was found, etc. I’m still not convinced that Ferrell tried to go for the officer’s gun. There’s lots of ways to get his DNA on a gun.

  244. rq says

    Photographs of shooting scene trigger commotion in trial of CMPD officer

    After a dramatic start to Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Officer Randall “Wes” Kerrick’s voluntary manslaughter trial, testimony Tuesday consisted of a meticulous unveiling of evidence collected in and around the death scene.

    But emotions spiked when prosecutors showed a photograph of Jonathan Ferrell’s body lying face-down in a ditch. Five women in the courtroom – including Ferrell’s mother, his fiancee’s mother and his fiancee’s sister – walked out.

    When prosecutors attempted to show more photographs of Ferrell’s dead body taken from different angles, defense attorneys objected. Attorney Michael Greene argued that the photos were repetitious and the state was trying to “pull the heartstrings of the jury.”

    Superior Court Judge Robert Ervin blocked some photos and allowed others. In one case, the judge stood up, grabbed a pair of scissors and cut off a portion of the photograph.

    Jurors saw Ferrell lying dead in a drainage ditch, a Taser stun gun nearby; his hands handcuffed behind his back and Kerrick’s patrol car with headlights and spotlight on.

    K.C. Nyx, a crime scene investigator, testified that a person standing in front of Kerrick’s car likely would not have been able to see beyond the lights. “The things behind the lights tend to fall into darkness as you’re looking at that bright light coming towards you,” Nyx said.

    According to police, Ferrell ran in that direction after Officer Thornell Little aimed his Taser. Kerrick was standing near the car with his gun drawn. He fired 12 shots, and 10 hit Ferrell at close range.

    Thousands of California convicts to regain voting rights – ain’t that a beautiful thing?

    California restored voting rights Tuesday to tens of thousands of criminals serving sentences under community supervision, reversing a decision by a state official that they could not participate in elections.

    Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced the settlement between the state and the American Civil Liberties Union of California, which sued on behalf of nearly 60,000 convicts who became ineligible to vote when then Secretary of State Debra Bowen determined in 2014 that community supervision was equivalent to parole.

    Her decision stemmed from a 2011 realignment of the state’s criminal justice law that aims to reduce overcrowding in state prisons by sending people convicted of less serious crimes to county jails or alternative treatment programs.

    A judge later overturned Bowen’s policy, stating that community supervision and parole are different.

    Bowen’s office appealed the decision, but Padilla, a fellow Democrat, decided to let the court ruling stand.

    The secretary of state’s office found the lower court’s opinion thorough and convincing, said Padilla spokesman Steve Reyes. He added it is Padilla’s position to err on the side of maintaining voting rights in contentious cases.

    “When there are questions, we’re in favor of keeping the right to vote intact,” Reyes said.

    Tuesday’s announcement was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

    “Secretary of State Padilla is bucking a national trend in which voting rights are under attack,” Lori Shellenberger, director of the ACLU of California’s Voting Rights Project, said in a statement. “We are thrilled that this administration has effectively said ‘no’ to Jim Crow in California.”

    Still, California’s ruling is a narrow one and unlikely to establish precedent, said Michael Risher, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California.

    Citing evidence favorable to North Charleston officer who shot Walter Scott, attorney asks for bail. What favourable evidence?

    Mentioning “extensive” evidence favoring his client, the attorney for Michael Slager asked a judge on Tuesday to set bail for the former North Charleston police officer jailed in Walter Scott’s shooting death.

    There is no indication yet when a judge will weigh the written motion, which serves as attorney Andy Savage’s first attempt to free his client while the defense team prepares for trial on a murder charge.
    […]

    The attorney’s request for bail does not mention specifics, but it refers to evidence that might help exonerate Slager, 33, who was arrested three days after the shooting when a bystander’s cellphone video of the gunfire surfaced.

    The motion stated that it took authorities two months to hand over some of the evidence to Slager’s attorneys — twice the amount of time allowed under court guidelines governing criminal cases.

    Slager, meanwhile, has been held in solitary confinement because he is a former police officer, the filing added. Authorities have said that measure was taken for Slager’s own safety.

    “Slager’s request for this hearing comes only after his counsel has, after significant delay, been afforded an opportunity to review the arresting agency’s investigation, including the extensive exculpatory evidence contained therein,” the motion stated. “Given the conditions of his confinement and his inability to meaningfully participate in preparing his defense, Slager can wait no longer to assert his constitutional right to be considered for pretrial release.”

    Savage said Tuesday that he had no further comment because the bail motion speaks for itself. Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson, who is prosecuting the case, could not immediately be reached.

    If they let him go on technicalities, I will be mad.
    Also, I’ve been having thoughts about these officers, stress, solitary confinement and reinforcing the false narrative. I suppose I wonder if they’re in solitary less for their own safety and more for the definition of their story.

    august 2015–> ferguson (1 yr); katrina (10 yrs); watts (50 yrs). the telescopic history of black struggle.

    Pine Lawn police lieutenant conspired to arrest mayoral candidate, feds say

    During the April trial of former Pine Lawn Mayor Sylvester Caldwell, Akram Samad, manager of the Pine Lawn Food Market, testified that he helped frame Nakisha Ford, Caldwell’s 2013 opponent. Samand said Blakeney told him to call 911 and claim that Ford had taken a Caldwell campaign sign from the store. Blakeney then returned to take a police report, and told Samad to testify against Ford in court.

    The initials in the indictment match the initials of Samad and Ford. The indictment says that Blakeney falsified the police report related to the arrest.

    Before the trial reached the jury, Caldwell pleaded guilty to extortion and attempted extortion. He was sentenced last month to 33 months in prison.

    Blakeney was fired in December after allegations surfaced that he’d called in another officer to provide a taxi service for two women he had taken home from a bar. Blakeney sued, claiming he was actually fired for providing information to the FBI.

    That’s another one of those small communities around St Louis.

    If anyone has been following this on twitter, there’s apparently a rap battle between Drake and Meek Mill and Meek Mill hasn’t been doing so well. File under ‘Entertainment’. A Crisis PR Specialist Has a Plan to Save Meek Mill and His Career, a bit of light reading.

  245. rq says

    Being Arrested Is Nearly Twice As Deadly For African-Americans As Whites

    Among whites, African-Americans and Hispanics being held in local jails, African-Americans are the least likely to commit suicide.2 Instead, illnesses — and heart disease, in particular — are the most common causes of deaths for black inmates while in custody.3 White inmates are five times as likely to commit suicide in jail as blacks.

    Although African-Americans are at a lower risk of death in local jails than whites overall (largely because of the higher rate of suicide among white inmates), they face a higher risk of arrest-related death specifically. Among every 100,000 black people who are arrested, 5.6 die, compared with only 3 of every 100,000 white arrestees.
    […]

    African-American arrestees are at a considerably higher rate of arrest-related death by homicide than whites. Those homicides are overwhelmingly likely to be committed by law enforcement personnel, not other jail inmates.4 The U.S. Justice Department counted 2,958 arrest-related homicides between 2003 and 2009; 99 percent of those were committed by law enforcement.

    The Justice Department notes in both its report on deaths in jail and on arrest-related deaths that its numbers are likely to underestimate the true rate of deaths, because of underreporting, but that they have more confidence in the relative rate of different causes of deaths.

    Because of the attention that activists have brought to Bland’s case, her death is more likely to wind up accurately tabulated in future updates to the DOJ’s numbers. It’s harder to be sure about the approximately 1,000 other deaths in local jails that take place each year.

    Some nice graphs at the link.

    How I Infiltrated a White Pride Facebook Group and Turned It into ‘LGBT Southerners for Michelle Obama’

    I was beginning to feel stupefied and distressed, and my friends were complaining that all their recommended friends now had Confederate flag avatars as well. While some of the Confederate Facebookers were plum happy to have me on board—check out this weirdly adorable picture of a bowing horse someone sent me!—others, like the guy who told me to “run off and join ISIS,” were not.

    Just when I was about to unfriend them all and start drinking, I was invited to a private group of about 2,500 called “confederate pride, heritage not hate.”

    The group consisted of more of the same good ol’ boy palaver about Southern Pride and Confederate Lives Matter, peppered with tirades from a handful of out-and-out Stormfront white supremacists and neo-Nazis. I added a few dozen of my friends, who promptly started trolling the shit out of the group.
    […]

    All of these shenanigans were too much to keep up with for the group’s lone, overworked admin, who did not seem to know how to stop the banner from changing or ban the trolls, whose numbers were starting to rival those of the Rebels. So, in the style of Shock Doctrine, I swooped in and offered to clean up this manufactured crisis. The hapless admin fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

    Once I was in charge of the group I decided to take it in a new direction. The Confederate flag, I felt, had become a toxic brand. And all this South-rising-again business was a sure loser with swing voters. A top-down rebranding was in order. After rigorous focus-group testing, I decided to align the group with LGBT rights, Michelle Obama, Judaism, miscegenation, and the victorious Juche ideology. And that is how “confederate pride, heritage not hate” became “LGBT Southerners for Michelle Obama and Judaism.”

    Etc., etc., with screenshots of the ensuing havoc.

    County Chief Belmar not in command in Ferguson, but preparing for protests

    St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said the Ferguson Police Department will command the police response to protests planned for the coming one-year anniversary of the police killing of Michael Brown Jr. Ferguson Interim Chief Andre Anderson will make decisions in Ferguson, though Belmar’s cops will be at his command, along with Missouri Highway Patrol troopers assigned to Ferguson and working with the County.

    Belmar likened the arrangement to the December 23 police response to protests in Berkeley after the police killing of Antonio Martin, when County police responded in force but commanders on the scene took direction from Berkeley Chief Frank McCall.

    Belmar said he was waiting as long as possible, for human and financial reasons, to place his officers on 12-hour shifts, but he would do so before the August 9 anniversary. He plans to run a command center from County emergency operations, moving a command post to Ferguson only if the situation escalates.

    The 12-hour shifts, he said, are required to ensure adequate staffing if there are extensive protests and to avoid the nightmare of Ferguson calling Code 1000. This was one of many police command decisions from August in Ferguson harshly criticized by the Department of Justice. Code 1000 is a call for all available officers to report, which resulted in chaotic, unsupervised self-deployments.

    Belmar, who has been meeting with protestors and community leaders, said he has been told personally to expect civil disobedience as part of the protest movement’s strategy for calling attention to its issues.

    “And if there is going to be civil disobedience, we need police to be there and they need to be prepared to fulfill their mission,” Belmar told The American in a long sit-down on August 3. “We are obligated to prepare and maligned if we don’t.”

    Belmar said the County has been preparing with de-escalation training. He said County officers are now trained in de-escalation, and the County Police Department is certified by the Missouri Police Officers Standards and Training Commission to offer de-escalation training, which it has been doing in the Ferguson Police Department.

    “De-escalation should be part of a police officer’s daily job,” Belmar said. “I don’t know how you’ll live long in this job without it. You can’t bull-rush everything.”

    He’s saying the right things, but one wonders if he really has learned his lessons from last year.

    Review of Street Poison, a biography of Iceberg Slim (can’t access)

    Solitary confinement and mental illness, also currently inaccessible to me.

    #BlackLivesMatter activists were ‘monitored by cyber security firm’ during Baltimore Freddie Gray protests , the Independent getting on top of that.

  247. rq says

    This Poet Taught Creative Writing To Prisoners And Learned An Incredible Lesson

    Every Saturday for the past school year, Smith, a Louisiana native and doctoral student at Harvard, taught creative writing to prisoners at Bay State Correctional Center, a specialized facility for inmates who were incarcerated for significant portions of their lives. While his position allows him to teach others, he says the experience has also taught him valuable lessons.

    In a short film produced by the Future of StoryTelling, a summit that explores storytelling in the digital age, Smith — who is also a talented poet — opened up about how teaching at the prison prompted him to look at those behind bars as more than just people who broke the law.

    “Our entire lives, we’re inundated with media and messaging that tells us that to be incarcerated is to be criminal and to be criminal is to be a bad person,” Smith told The Huffington Post. “And then [inmates] have the totality of [their] personhood defined by this single act.”

    In the video, Smith admitted that he’d been socialized to view incarcerated men in a very specific way. “We don’t remember that they’re people worth remembering,” he recites from a poem in the film, titled “Beyond This Place.” He carried his biases as he first walked into the prison, he told HuffPost. This was something he was “proactive and very purposeful” in learning to move away from. Though he held these biases, the reality of people going to prison was all around him growing up.

    “It’s always been a part of my world, even when I didn’t necessarily understand it to be,” he said.

    Of 2.3 million people incarcerated nationally, nearly 1 million are African American, according to according to the NAACP. In 2013, the Sentencing Project reported that one in every three black men born in America will go to prison at some point in their life.

    Smith, 26, said there was nothing preventing him from falling into that statistic. Because of this, Smith dedicated his research to the systematic issues prisoners in America face by spending time with these men on Saturday mornings.

    “They quickly became people who I wasn’t just sharing an intellectual space with but sharing a personal and emotional space with,” he told HuffPost.

    In a particularly affecting moment, Smith recalled a time when one of his students once asked him how it felt to stand in solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter protestors outside of the prison walls. After Smith offered his experience, one man responded with something that was especially memorable for the teacher.

    “He said, ‘I am a part of all that I have met,’ a line from Alfred Lord Tennyson poem called ‘Ulysses,’ Smith told HuffPost. “Because you’ve come in and shared these stories with us and talked about what it’s like beyond these walls and beyond these fences. Now we are a part of those protests as well.”

    Link to his new poem also coming up.

    Michael Brown’s mom responds to Darren Wilson article. To be truly revolutionary, this is who they should have interviewed in the first place. Also his father and his stepfather, and perhaps even Dorian Johnson. Not Darren Wilson, the poor guy. Video only at the link.

    DeRay Mckesson to deliver keynote speech at Rising Tide X

    Rising Tide, the annual bloggers’ “conference on the history of New Orleans,” will feature a keynote speech by civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson when it holds its 10th session Aug. 29 at Xavier University.

    Mckesson is a prolific tweeter and member of We The Protesters, which has had a presence at civil rights demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri, Charleston, South Carolina and Baltimore.

    In a statement, Rising Tide organizer Mark Moseley wrote, “Part of Rising Tide’s mission is to use technology to transform advocacy into action. No one has done that better over the past year than DeRay McKesson. He is at the forefront of a new digital movement to expose and resist systems of racial oppression.”

    Other panels this year will discuss the state of public transportation in New Orleans; education; the city’s changing media scene; black women writers; short-term rentals and more.

    Admission is free, and Mckesson will speak at 2 p.m.

    Americans say blacks treated less fairly in 2015 than 2007: Gallup. Whatever happened to progress?

    In the wake of high profile killings of unarmed black men by police, Americans feel blacks are treated less fairly today than they were in 2007, according to survey results released on Tuesday.

    Whites, blacks and Hispanics also expressed a new low in their satisfaction with the way blacks are treated in U.S. society, according to the Gallup 2015 Minority Rights and Relations poll.

    Overall, about 49 percent of respondents said they were satisfied, compared to 62 percent just two years ago, pollsters said.

    The survey of more than 2,000 respondents, conducted from June 15 until July 10, comes at a tense time between U.S. law enforcement and the communities in which they operate, particularly after grand jury decisions not to indict white officers who killed unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and in New York City.

    “The effects of those incidents have led to an increase in the U.S. public’s perceptions of race relations as the most important problem in the country, a decline in confidence in the police and a significant decrease in Americans’ satisfaction with the way blacks are treated in the U.S.,” Gallup said on its website.

    The decline in satisfaction among blacks (33 percent in 2015 compared to 47 percent in 2013) was expressed “even though blacks themselves are no more likely than two years ago to report being treated unfairly in various situations because of their race, including dealing with the police,” Gallup said.

    Satisfaction with the way blacks are treated also dropped among whites (53 percent in 2015 compared to 67 percent in 2013) and Hispanics (44 percent in 2015 compared to 61 percent in 2013), poll results showed.

    “Americans are also now more likely to perceive that blacks are treated unfairly in various situations, including dealing with the police, but also at work, when shopping and when visiting restaurants and other establishments,” the survey organization said.

    There’s lots more numbers at the link.

    Misty Copeland ::: #DVNLLN I just. There’s something so very breathtaking about her and her achievements and what she does.

    ‘Go Set a Watchman’ refunds are now a thing, at least in one bookstore

    “It is disappointing and frankly shameful to see our noble industry parade and celebrate this as ‘Harper Lee’s New Novel’,” bookstore owner Peter Makin wrote on the Brilliant Books blog. “This is pure exploitation of both literary fans and a beloved American classic (which we hope has not been irrevocably tainted.)

    “We therefore encourage you to view Go Set A Watchman with intellectual curiosity and careful consideration; a rough beginning for a classic, but only that.”

    I have a feeling it’s white people complaining. Black people may have been less surprised.

  248. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Citing evidence favorable to North Charleston officer who shot Walter Scott, attorney asks for bail. What favourable evidence?

    Mentioning “extensive” evidence favoring his client, the attorney for Michael Slager asked a judge on Tuesday to set bail …

    The attorney’s request for bail does not mention specifics, but it refers to evidence that might help exonerate Slager, …

    “Slager’s request for this hearing comes only after his counsel has, after significant delay, been afforded an opportunity to review the arresting agency’s investigation, including the extensive exculpatory evidence contained therein,” the motion stated.

    If they let him go on technicalities, I will be mad.

    Just so you know, rq, Slager’s own statements to investigators, such as “Of course I didn’t break the law!” and “Yes, I was quaking in my books with fear that he might have a gun hidden in his rectum which he intended to use just as soon as his buttocks were pointed squarely toward me,” are in fact “exculpatory evidence” in the sense that this is testimony that, if believed, would tend to exonerate the defendant.

    There may well be some truly credible and truly exculpatory evidence in the files turned over … but there doesn’t have to be for a defense lawyer to make a statement like this.

    There’s nothing in what you quoted to believe that the lawyer is stating anything other than:

    “I believe my client and my client told investigators that my client committed no crime. The investigators, as required by law, included their records of my client’s statements in the file released to me. Therefore I am now in possession of exculpatory evidence [the investigators’ record of my client’s statements] to which I previously had no access. Now that the investigators have admitted that they have an official record of my client stating that my client should not be jailed at all, I think it is clearly true that my client should certainly not be jailed pre-trial.”

    Lawyer holds up piece of paper in court, waves it around a bit, insists it means the law favors the lawyer’s client. Film at 11.

    Yawn.

  249. rq says

    Yet the so called “race baiters” like @deray and @JamilahLemieux weren’t silent.
    Intro to this HuffPo article: A Cop Killed A White Teen And The #AllLivesMatter Crowd Said Nothing. It’s pretty self-explanatory. So yes, #AllLivesMatter has a distinct racist bent to it. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

    Onlookers outraged as group of NYPD tackle shopkeeper

    YouTube user TWoN uploaded video of NYPD officers violently arresting a man in East Harlem. The man runs a recycling shop and apparently had words with a customer. Police can be heard asking for his identification and he says he’ll show it to them after he locks up his shop. After locking up one storefront, they surround him as he’s trying to lock the second and within seconds at least six NYPD officers can be seen taking him down. The crowd began to swell with onlookers becoming increasingly angry, shouting “police brutality!” and “which one of you good cops is going to stop this?”

    Fucking cops.

    Why the Church Can’t Be Silent about Police Violence
    Read more at     http://www.relevantmagazine.com/current/nation/why-church-cant-be-silent-about-police-violence#5W9f3SrH9IegvhIb.99

    Since the shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown—and lack of indictment of the officer, who is white—sparked massive protests in Ferguson, the news has featured a seemingly constant stream of headlines about black men and women who have been killed by police or died while in custody: Walter Scott, Akai Gurley, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray and recently, Samuel DuBose and Sandra Bland are just a few of those that have caught national attention.

    According to The Washington Post, in 2015 alone, there have been nearly 400 fatal shootings by police. Many of them were people of color.

    We recently spoke with Lisa Sharon Harper, Chief Church Engagement Officer and columnist at Sojourners and one of the authors of Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith, about the string of police shootings, how our society can hold authority figures more responsible and how the evangelical church can help usher in change and racial reconciliation.

    Read more at http://www.relevantmagazine.com/current/nation/why-church-cant-be-silent-about-police-violence#5W9f3SrH9IegvhIb.99

    Interview at the link. Excerpt:

    Do you think these vidoes we’re seeing of incidents can help communities like white evangelicals come to grips with the problem?

    Yes, I hope so. And I’m actually seeing that.

    It has been frustrating to have such huge pushback from the white evangelical church, who has refused in many cases over the previous decades to acknowledge the depth and pervasiveness of racism and racial bias in our nation. There has been a washing over, a minimization of it.

    But, over the past year, we have kind of taken a look into the pit and understood how deep the problem goes, how pervasive it is and how horrific the consequences are in daily life. I can’t even say with confidence that most evangelicals get it now, but there’s at least a conversation happening within the white evangelical church—a lot of searching and asking questions. We’re finally getting to the place where white evangelical leaders are realizing the limitations of their own experience and wisdom. That’s been a new thing, and it really was a product of the constant drumbeat of deaths over the past year.

    It’s sad that that’s what it’s taken.

    There needs to be deep, deep repentance for inaction, for being OK with not knowing. And even for defending one’s own worldview to the exclusion of the worldviews of others, because that has consequences.

    If evangelicals were to say “No more” with the veracity, with the energy, with the conviction that the protestors do, stuff would cease tomorrow. Because not only are evangelicals the largest single religious group in America beside Catholics, we also tend to hold a lot of power in society. There are police chiefs who would be among evangelicals rising up across the country. There are police officers who would receive critique from our community as another step on the road of discipleship rather than pushing back against it, as if it’s a personal attack.

    If we as the evangelical church said “no to one more death, not one more,” I really believe there would be deep societal change and an opportunity for coming together at just the moment when there’s a great threat of major divide.

    What do you think is preventing the evangelical community from speaking out like that?

    I think the thing that has kept evangelical churches from saying “No more” has been the reality of the distance from the problem. When I traveled to Ferguson and St. Louis a year ago, that city was on fire, but it really wasn’t the whole city that was on fire, it was Ferguson that was on fire. It was lit up with protests. They had cops down several streets blocking traffic, you had thousands of people flowing into St. Louis over the course of weeks in order to join the protests.

    The evangelical church has to grow in compassion. First and foremost, what that means is we need to engage in listening to stories and learning.

    I think that there’s a proximity gap that is pervasive and really does keep evangelicals cloistered from the reality of life. That’s white folks, generally speaking, that are intentionally cloistered by where they live, by where their schools are. Those are intentional acts that separate realities and as a result make it possible for people to not pay attention.

    More at the link.

    Alabama police officer recorded plotting to kill a black man, calling him racial slurs, keeps job. Shaun King for the DailyKos on that story.

    Florida cop fired for racist Facebook comments gets his job back – another one for whom racism has no lasting consequences.

    A Florida police officer fired for making racist comments online was reinstated following an appeal, the Broward Palm Beach News reports, the Broward Palm Beach New Times reports.

    Jeffery Feldewert, a 20-year veteran of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, posted a photo on his Facebook page of a black man being arrested with the comment, “typical hoodrat behavior.” The post was a meme with the words, “Black People. Because without them the evening news wouldn’t be as much fun to watch.”
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    After appealing his firing, his punishment was altered to a 10-day suspension without pay.

    Fort Lauderdale City Manager Lee Feldman told the paper Feldewert was reinstated because his firing put several of the prosecutions of arrests he was involved with in jeopardy.

    “While the city certainly does not condone Officer Feldewert’s actions, nor are they in any way representative of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, the actual matter, evaluated with the officer’s record, did not warrant termination,” Feldman wrote in a statement emailed to reporters.

    Gordon Weekes, the county’s chief public defender, told Local 10 that he doesn’t think Feldewert should have been allowed back on the job.

    “If you express that type of hate, you should no longer be an officer,” Weekes told the station.

    Feldewert said in a recorded response aired by Local 10 that the comment was supposed to be funny.

    Feldewert had also used a picture of a skull painted red, white and blue with the Fort Lauderdale police bade, and the words “savage hunter” emblazoned on it.

    “That term, ‘savage hunter,’ is very indicative of a police officer that is truly trying to hurt and terrorize a community,” Weekes told Local 10.

    Feldman, who was responsible for reinstating Feldewert onto the streets of Fort Lauderdale, was on vacation and unavailable to comment, according to Local 10.

    This is just one incident in a department that has had problems with race relations in the past.

    I guess it might seem like a deep philosophical thing where the evil of letting him back is out-weighed by the good of those prosecutions… but with an attitude like that, might it not be worthwhile to take a look at his arrests etc. a little more closely before continuing?

  250. rq says

    Stupid link that inserts links every time you copy-paste, stupid moderation. Ew.

    +++

    2 Chicago moms’ sons were murdered. Now they’re suing 3 suburban towns.

    In an unusual lawsuit filed July 7, Bosley and Nance-Holt claim their civil rights have been violated by three suburban governments that they say do not adequately regulate gun shops near the Chicago border. The suit argues that weapons sold at these stores are responsible for too much of the violence that disproportionately afflicts this poor, black corner of Chicago.

    Critics say the two mothers are stretching the definition of civil rights too far, and are urging the court to dismiss the case. Either way, the suit is timely: Although Chicago recorded the fewest killings in nearly 50 years in 2013, the homicide rate has since been on the rise, darting up 20 percent in the first half of this year.

    More people are getting shot in other cities, as well. Police departments in New York, Washington and Milwaukee, among others, are dealing with more killings this year than last. Criminologists caution against a national explanation, especially because homicide rates have decreased in some cities, including Los Angeles. They say local factors, such as shifting gang dynamics and changes in police stop-and-frisk tactics, probably are a factor.

    Still, these spikes — along with high-profile mass shootings in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Lafayette, La. — are pushing the gun debate higher on the national agenda.

    Chicago has long been at the center of this debate. It is the country’s murder capital in absolute terms, although it is lower down in the rankings when population is considered. The city attracts even more attention because it is President Obama’s home town, and because Rahm Emanuel (D), Obama’s former chief of staff, serves as mayor.

    So, although Garry McCarthy, the city’s superintendent of police, does not know the full details of the lawsuit, he welcomes its intent.

    “If we were to get gun dealers to be much more stringent in their sales, it would help us enormously,” he said, adding that “short-term fluctuations” in the homicide rate are inevitable until the number of guns coming into the city decreases.

    “More guns, more shootings,” he said.

    More at the link.

    NAACP chapter president says police used force on sister

    An NAACP chapter president says police in Eugene, Oregon, used excessive force on his sister after she tried to stop an officer from deploying a Taser stun gun on her 19-year-old son.

    Eugene-Springfield NAACP President Eric Richardson said Ayisha Brown called a mental health service early July 16 because her son was having a psychotic breakdown. The assistance team could not respond, and police officers arrived.

    Richardson, who said he witnessed the incident, said Brown hugged her agitated son to prevent an officer from using the stun gun.

    An officer, who was white, threw Brown to the ground, put a knee in her back and arrested her, Richardson said. His sister, he said, suffered a concussion and has back and knee problems.

    Richardson said he raised his hands and identified himself as the chapter president of the NAACP. He said the officers told him he was at risk of being tased.

    “I asked everyone to calm down, and I don’t believe my efforts were respected,” he said.

    Richardson said he has spoken with Police Chief Pete Kerns about the incident, and those talks have gone well. Richardson said his goals are to improve police training and transparency, while boosting resources for mental health.

    “I want to be as positive as possible, while at the same time showing that I felt the whole situation that happened to my sister was unjust,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday.

    According to a recording of a 911 call released by Eugene police, the son was yelling and swearing at Brown, did not recognize her as his mother and believed he was trapped inside the house. A second caller, who talked with Brown some time later, told dispatchers that the son was choking Brown.

    When officers arrived at Brown’s house, according to the police report, the son appeared agitated and stared at one of the officers with an angry expression. He swore at the officer and repeatedly mumbled to him that he was not a real officer, according to the video released by the police. The report also says the son was crowding the officer and had nudged his shoulder twice with his hand.

    Another officer then told the son to step back or he would get tased, and Brown wrapped her hands around her son and asked the officer not to tase him, according to the report. The officer asked her to step back, but she did not comply. When the son started “moving aggressively” toward the officer, he eventually deployed the stun gun and handcuffed the son, according to the report.

    Police and jail records obtained by The (Eugene) Register-Guard newspaper show Brown was booked into jail on a misdemeanor charge of interfering with police. She was released the same day, and prosecutors declined to file formal charges.

    Way to help, police.

    Clint Smith: Beyond This PLace, poetry via video.

    Societal problems like racism and inequality often feel overwhelming. Clint Smith sees a possible remedy: storytelling. Through his work as a poet, educator, and activist, including an innovative program at the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, Smith often confronts how we’re socialized to simplify others down to their race, their class, or even just their worst moment. The same is being done to us, and thus our lives can feel riven by social divides. But if we learn to tell our own stories—to explore our emotions, and to captivate the emotions of others—we can fully engage with our shared humanity. Smith’s experience as a poet has made him adept at teaching these key storytelling tools, which he’ll be sharing at this year’s FoST.

    Attorneys say toxicology report proves security guard was high when he shot Monroe Bird III But get this:

    District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler declined to file charges against Stone for the shooting, calling it justified; however, months later Stone was charged with misdemeanor drug possession related to the discovery of marijuana in his vehicle on the night of the shooting.

    Crump said Tuesday Kunzweiler told Bird’s family he couldn’t prosecute the security guard because of “Stand Your Ground” laws, but Crump says those laws do not apply because of the drugs in Stone’s system.

    “Either Kunzweiler doesn’t know the law or he chooses not to apply the law when it comes to certain groups of people,” he said.

    Crump said the DA’s decision not to file charges “is inconsistent with Oklahoma law, but more importantly it’s inconsistent with the concept of equal justice.”

    Funny how the toxicology of black victims is generally not a mitigating factor but – what’s the word – something that actually has great weight in conclusions. But here… Well, you see.

    Dashcams For Freedom, on Central Asians fighting for their rights via video. Sorry I’m not entirely capable of doing a worthwhile blockquote at this time.

    Texas ID Law Called Breach of Voting Rights Act – what Nerd of Redhead linked to above.

  251. rq says

    So, this happened: Reddit (Finally) Bans CoonTown

    After months of bending over backwards to explain why a subreddit dedicated to violent hate speech against black people was OK, Reddit’s new CEO announced today that /r/CoonTown is no more.

    Previously, Reddit’s new CEO Steve Huffman had said booming hate communities like CoonTown were acceptable because it was important to have a vital meeting of the minds: “I don’t think you can win an argument by simply silencing the opposition.”

    Not anymore, I guess:

    Today we are releasing an update to our Content Policy. Our goal was to consolidate the various rules and policies that have accumulated over the years into a single set of guidelines we can point to.

    Thank you to all of you who provided feedback throughout this process. Your thoughts and opinions were invaluable. This is not the last time our policies will change, of course. They will continue to evolve along with Reddit itself.

    Our policies are not changing dramatically from what we have had in the past. One new concept is Quarantining a community, which entails applying a set of restrictions to a community so its content will only be viewable to those who explicitly opt in. We will Quarantine communities whose content would be considered extremely offensive to the average redditor.

    Today, in addition to applying Quarantines, we are banning a handful of communities that exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else. Our most important policy over the last ten years has been to allow just about anything so long as it does not prevent others from enjoying Reddit for what it is: the best place online to have truly authentic conversations.

    I believe these policies strike the right balance.

    He added:

    Today we removed communities dedicated to animated [child pornography] and a handful of other communities that violate the spirit of the policy by making Reddit worse for everyone else: /r/CoonTown, /r/WatchN*gg*rsDie, /r/bestofcoontown,/r/koontown, /r/CoonTownMods, /r/CoonTownMeta.

    It took months and months of public criticism and internal controversy, and general tumult for the site’s management to decide that “WatchNi*gg*rsDie” did not belong on Reddit.

    Bottle of Gin Shown in Sam Dubose Traffic Stop Was Actually Air Freshener. Guess what, he wasn’t lying!!!

    Turns out that the gin bottle Samuel Dubose handed to a University of Cincinnati officer, who would later kill him with a single gunshot to the head, didn’t contain gin at all but was, in fact, filled as Dubose had said: with air freshener.

    The July 19 exchange between Officer Ray Tensing, 33, and Dubose, 43, was caught on the officer’s body cam and shows Tensing inquiring about the bottle.

    “What’s that bottle on the floor there?” Tensing asks Dubose.

    “Oh, it’s a bottle of air freshener,” Dubose answers and hands the bottle to the officer.

    According to the New York Daily News, the Hamilton County, Ohio, coroner analyzed the bottle and found that the liquid was, in fact, air freshener and that Dubose was telling the truth.

    Tensing was arrested shortly after the fatal shooting and is out on bond. He currently faces several charges, the most serious of which is murder.

    The Daily News notes that Dubose’s “family has set up a trust in Hamilton County Probate Court as the first step to filing a wrongful death lawsuit in the killing.”

    Five Other Black Lives That Mattered, “Families who lost loved ones to police violence in the years before Ferguson reflect on the year since.”

    The past year has forced Americans—especially white Americans—to realize that when a black person is wrongfully killed by a police officer, it’s not an isolated incident, but part of a systemic institutional failure. This has been the achievement of the Black Lives Matter movement, which coalesced into a powerful force in the wake of Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri. Today, when a black person dies in police custody in any part of the country—whether it’s Samuel DuBose in Ohio or Sandra Bland in Texas—chances are higher than ever that it will be news all over the country.
    […]

    Robinson died during a very specific window of time: before the killing of Michael Brown by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson in August 2014 and after the shooting of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager shot dead by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, in February 2012. It was Martin’s death, and the subsequent acquittal of his killer, that first prompted activists to start using the BlackLivesMatter hashtag on Twitter and wielding the phrase at demonstrations. But if the Martin case lit the wick, it was Brown’s death that triggered the explosion of public reckoning that would turn what began as a slogan into a full-fledged national campaign.

    The 32 months that elapsed between Martin’s death and Brown’s were an incubation period—a time when millions of Americans experienced a dawning of consciousness on the issue of police violence against black people. During this brief era, awareness of what would come to be regarded during the past year as the defining social crisis of our time was on the rise but hadn’t fully registered. Many black people lost their lives in police encounters during this period, and many white police officers were allowed to walk away without consequences. And while the particulars of these encounters might have briefly made the news, neither the victims nor the officers involved became household names, and their stories were not widely held up as evidence of a national crisis.

    The families of these pre-Ferguson victims have experienced the past year in a way no one else has. These mothers, fathers, siblings, and children have watched as their personal tragedies retroactively became part of a national debate not only about policing but also about the fundamental differences between being black and white in America. In the year since Ferguson erupted, they have continued to mourn their loved ones, and they have poured their grief into activism, becoming inextricably tethered to a movement that had yet to fully emerge when their family members were taken from them. In so doing, they have found purpose, as well as sorrow and disillusionment.
    […]

    Dobbinson was one of five people I interviewed who lost a family member to a deadly police encounter during the roughly two and a half years after Trayvon Martin’s death and before Ferguson. All experienced the past 12 months differently, though they are united by a sense that the country has, at the very least, woken up to the crisis that has defined their lives, even if it’s far from resolving it.

    Calling Ferguson a “turning point,” Dobbinson said she is now seeing people who have suffered as a result of this previously unacknowledged epidemic beginning to stand up together behind an urgent rallying cry. “People are starting to go out and speak their minds,” she said.

    I asked Dobbinson what she thought when she heard about the death of Michael Brown. “My reaction was: not again. Not again,” she said. “When these incidents happen, with Eric Garner, with Michael Brown—all these things are part of me.” So is Black Lives Matter, she said. “I am a part of that, and my son is too.”

    “There are a lot of stories that we haven’t heard,” Dobbinson added. “But they did happen.”

    Much more at the link.

    Thank you @maximmag for including me in your Sept fashion feature. Go pick up your copy today! #legit #thismaximlife If this is the same one with Idris Elba on the cover…

    New Report Uncovers Staggering Inequality for Anyone Not Young, White, Straight, and Male in Hollywood. Can we hear it for the Oscars, then?

    The lack of equality in talent behind the cameras in Hollywood has been at the center of conversation many times this year. And while we know that kind of inequality bleeds into the stories we see in front of the camera, and that movie theaters are packed with superheroes played by white guys named Chris, a new study reveals that Hollywood’s diversity problem is worse than you think. Much, much worse.

    In examining gender, race, and ethnicity in Hollywood, the Media, Diversity, and Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California uncovered some staggering statistics. After seven years of collecting data from the 100 top-grossing fictional films from 2007 to 2014, the group has produced a report titled “Inequality in 700 Popular Films.” Here is just some of what they found:

    – Gender: In the 700 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2014, only 30.2 percent of the 30,835 speaking characters were female. That means for every 2.3 guys with lines, you’ll only see one speaking woman. And while there’s no analysis of the quality of the lines given to women, the 2015 blockbusters don’t exactly paint a pretty picture.

    – Age: Nestled inside the gender statistics is the fact that in the 100 top-grossing films of 2014, “no female actors over 45 years of age performed a lead or co lead role.” (Nope, not even Meryl Streep. As Manohla Dargis of The New York Times points out, in 2014 “the hardest-working woman in cinema had only supporting roles, including in the Disney musical Into the Woods.”) And outside of the lead roles the study notes that “only 19.9 percent of the middle-aged characters were female across the 100 top films.”

    – Race and Ethnicity: Of the speaking characters in the 100 top films of 2014, 73.1 percent were “White,” 12.5 percent were “Black,” 5.3 percent were “Asian,” 4.9 percent were “Hispanic/Latino,” 2.9 percent were “Middle Eastern,” less than 1 percent were “American Indian/Alaskan Native or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander,” and 1.2 percent were from “other” racial and/or ethnic groupings. Given that statistic, the uproar over Emma Stone’s controversial casting in Aloha seems pretty justified. As the report points out, sadly, this represents no change “in the portrayal of apparent race/ethnicity” from the previous seven years.

    – Sexual Orientation: As corroborated by GLAAD’s annual report, things aren’t much better for L.G.B.T. characters. Despite advances in the realm of television, the U.S.C. study reveals that “across 4,610 speaking characters in the 100 top films of 2014, only 19 were Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual. Not one Transgender character was portrayed. Ten characters were coded as Gay, 4 were Lesbian, and 5 were Bisexual.”

    Looking at these numbers, it’s clear that female-led movies like The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 or Maleficent—number two and eight at the 2014 box office, respectively—were anomalies. And even those movies only address Hollywood’s gender divide. Katniss and Maleficent are still straight, relatively young, and white.

    There’s a bit more at the link.

    In Zimbabwe, we don’t cry for lions, an inaccessible article for me.

  252. rq says

    Ferguson shooting one year later, an interactive examination via Washington Post. I don’t get why every narrative has to begin with Darren Wilson driving his police cruiser around town instead of with Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson heading out for an afternoon.
    A lot of information and a lot of cool artwork at the link.

    A Year Later, Ferguson Takes Steps, but Progress Is Slow, Wall Street Journal, I don’t have access.

    Life as Sara, “What it’s like to be a transgender woman when you’re not Caitlyn Jenner”. TW for descriptions of sexism and transphobia.

    Seventeen days after Caitlyn Jenner appeared in airbrushed glory on the cover of Vanity Fair, Sara Simone woke up in her rented Alexandria bedroom and considered the tools at her own disposal: a $9 bottle of Revlon ColorStay foundation — “Mahogany” — a spritz of Paris Hilton perfume, a plunging black T-shirt showcasing the breasts she had patiently earned with hormones. Was the shirt too racy? Maybe. But it was better, she’d decided when she transitioned four years ago, to have men stare at her chest than to have them scrutinize her face and ask whether she was a man or a woman. “Better they whistle at me than jump me,” she sometimes said, because in her particular existence as a transgender woman, catcalling seemed the lesser and safer of possible indignities.

    Sara added a set of false eyelashes, one retrieved from the carpet where it had escaped. Two tan hormone patches, one for each buttock.

    She slid gold sandals onto her feet, a gold ring onto her toe, and onto her lower half, a pair of snug neon pants which she planned to keep in rotation “as long as my legs can pull it off.”

    “Pretty cute,” she declared, clipping back her long hair before heading into a world she was still learning to navigate, which was still learning to understand her.

    There had never been a more visible time to be a transgender woman in the United States, but the visibility was mostly focused on the story lines of a privileged few. Glamorous Jenner, with her expensive stylists and a reality show documenting her transition. Bodacious Laverne Cox, the main reason Sara watched “Orange Is the New Black,” an actress who posed on red carpets in designer gowns.

    Sara’s bedroom was lacking in designer gowns; it was, for that matter, lacking furniture. Her clothing sat in folded piles around the perimeter, a sheet on the carpet was a makeshift bed until a mattress could arrive in a few weeks. She was broke. In her 50s, she was “rebuilding,” after a chaotic span in which she lost a job, lost relationships, lost use of the sputtering pickup where she’d slept when she was too tired to keep looking for dingy motels. Her previous apartment — gone, after Sara determined that if it came down to spending $300 per month of her dwindling savings on testosterone blockers and estrogen, or putting the same amount toward housing, it was the pills and patches that were, she said, “essential and lifesaving.”

    On Facebook, she railed against these setbacks to her friends, ruefully but not without optimism, noting that her experiences were shared by so many of the transgender women whose stories she’d heard. They also reflected the academic research: Transgender people were four times more likely than the general population to live in poverty (“Riddle me this, Batman; [I] have this donated canned food, but no microwave,” Sara lamented in 2012). They disproportionately experienced work and housing discrimination (“My butt will be hooking before I go through the homelessness crap again,” Sara wrote). Sixty-four percent of transgender people, in one comprehensive survey, reported being sexually assaulted. (“This man tried to destroy me, but he didn’t destroy me,” she said in a Facebook video, after ending a relationship with a man she says attacked her.) At her lowest point pre-transition, she’d considered suicide, picturing swerving off the road and only stopping herself because she needed to give someone else a ride home.

    “I am very, very lovable,” she shared with her online community one day, after realizing her updates had been a string of bad news. “I am not a loser. I am lovable.”

    More at the link, plus a lot of photos!

    Chicago police detained thousands of black Americans at interrogation facility

    At least 3,500 Americans have been detained inside a Chicago police warehouse described by some of its arrestees as a secretive interrogation facility, newly uncovered records reveal.

    Of the thousands held in the facility known as Homan Square over a decade, 82% were black. Only three received documented visits from an attorney, according to a cache of documents obtained when the Guardian sued the police.

    Despite repeated denials from the Chicago police department that the warehouse is a secretive, off-the-books anomaly, the Homan Square files begin to show how the city’s most vulnerable people get lost in its criminal justice system.

    People held at Homan Square have been subsequently charged with everything from “drinking alcohol on the public way” to murder. But the scale of the detentions – and the racial disparity therein – raises the prospect of major civil-rights violations.

    Documents indicate the detainees are a group of disproportionately minority citizens, many accused of low-level drug crimes, faced with incriminating themselves before their arrests appeared in a booking system by which their families and attorneys might find them.

    The Chicago police department has maintained – even as the Guardian reported stories of people being shackled and held for hours or even days, all without legal access – that the warehouse is not a secret facility so much as an undercover police base operating in plain sight. “There are always records of anyone who is arrested by CPD, and this is no different at Homan Square,” the police asserted in a March statement.

    But an independent Guardian analysis of arrestees’ records, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, shows that Homan Square is far from normal:

    – Between September 2004 and June 2015, around 3,540 people were eventually charged, mostly with forms of drug possession – primarily heroin, as well as marijuana and cocaine – but also for minor infractions such as traffic violations, public urination and driving without a seatbelt.
    – More than 82% of the Homan Square arrests thus far disclosed – or 2,974 arrests – are of black people, while 8.5% are of white people. Chicago, according to the 2010 US census, is 33% black and 32% white.
    – Over two-thirds of the arrests at Homan Square thus far revealed – at least 2,522 – occurred under the tenure of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former top aide to Barack Obama who has said of Homan Square that the police working under him “follow all the rules”.

    Contained within the statistics are stories of people held at Homan Square in and under questionable circumstances:

    – A 42-year-old civil rights activist says he was abducted by masked officers, shackled, held on false charges and “with no food, no water, no access to the outside world” at the behest of “covert operations”. He is one of at least 118 people whom police have detained at Homan Square since the Guardian exposed the warehouse’s usage as a detention facility in February. His wife described the ordeal as feeling their family had been “lost” by the police.
    – One young man, held at the warehouse for 14 hours without any public listing of his whereabouts, was just shy of his 18th birthday; the courts sentenced him to community service and probation.
    – Another man, not included in the disclosed data, said he fled Chicago after resisting police pressure to become an informant during multiple stints inside Homan Square.

    The revelations are by no means a full accounting of police detentions at Homan Square, which Chicago has owned since 1995. The records only date from late 2004 and they exclude people eventually released without charge. After months of disputing the Guardian’s reporting, the Chicago police only made detailed information available after the Guardian sued them for it. Vast amounts of data documenting the full scope of detentions and interrogations at Homan Square remain undisclosed.

    There is more at the link, but did you see that percentage way at the beginning? Thousands of detainees, and 82% were black. That is incredible.

    Why the police killing of this unarmed white man has not led to national outcry, LA Times on Zachary Hammond.

    Hammond’s death left his family scrambling for answers, but it did not spark the national outcry that has accompanied other fatal police shootings in the last year. His name has not joined the lexicon that includes Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and Samuel DuBose.

    Why?

    Saying Hammond’s death is being ignored because he was white would be an oversimplification, said Meredith Clark, an assistant professor at the Mayborn School of Journalism at the University of North Texas who is conducting a research project on the Black Lives Matter movement.
    Police have not released video

    Clark said the absence of a compelling video or a history of brutality complaints involving the Seneca Police Department, not Hammond’s race, was the main reason the story has remained low-profile.

    Although the lack of attention paid by the mainstream media and on social media has caused some to suggest Hammond’s case would have received more attention if he were black, researchers in the social justice field believe the story is not being ignored, but rather is spreading slowly.

    “The thing that I’m hearing from people is not just a narrative of racial justice. It is accountability for police forces. It is transparency. It is understanding how communities are being policed and what the average citizen has a right to do, or not to do, in those interactions,” Clark said. “In that case, Hammond fits right in. It’ll just be a matter of time, but we haven’t heard of prior complaints about the police force where he was.”

    The Hammond family’s attorney, Eric Bland, expressed frustration about the lack of national media attention. “An unarmed white teenager whose life is wrongfully taken at the hands of overzealous police is the same and equal to an unarmed black teenager whose life is wrongfully taken at the hands of overzealous police,” he said. “That’s very, very disturbing to us.”

    And you know why the story is spreading? Because of black activists, not because of white people outraged at police brutality towards another white person.
    * Not exclusively, but I’ve seen more about that story on black twitter than anywhere else.

    Dorian Johnson: A Year After Mike Brown’s Death, He’s Still Grappling With the Fallout

    The August 9 shooting brought the weight of the world’s scrutiny on the modest north county suburb of Ferguson, but a significant portion of that burden fell on the narrow shoulders of Dorian Johnson. The wiry college dropout with a checkered past and mismatched eyes – one blue, one brown – became a national lightning rod almost overnight.

    To a grieving community seeking answers and justice, Johnson, then 22, was the key witness to the reality of both Brown’s death and the black experience in Ferguson, and his emotional testimony became the gospel of a burgeoning protest movement. The “Hands Up; Don’t Shoot” mantra was based, in part, on Johnson’s account of how Brown raised his hands and told the advancing Wilson, “I don’t have a gun,” before the final shots rang out.

    But Johnson also drew the ire of people skeptical about the movement taking hold in Ferguson. They combed through his statements, drawing jagged circles around the inconsistencies and omissions. They blogged, tweeted and commented that Johnson was no truth-teller – in their view, he was an accomplice, a proven liar, just another young black thug claiming victimhood and angling for a payday.

    For a time, Johnson’s face appeared in newspapers and on television across the world, but for the past eight months he’s mostly avoided direct contact with journalists. Last week, however, he sat down with Riverfront Times for a 60-minute interview, describing the months of secrecy and strain that followed Brown’s death – as well as the surprising silver lining to his recent, highly publicized arrest by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.

    He’s currently suing the City of Ferguson, its police department and the now-retired officer Wilson. He says he lives in fear of retaliation from vigilantes and law enforcement.
    It’s been almost a year since Michael Brown was shot to death on Canfield Drive, and the shockwaves of those frenzied moments are still pushing Johnson toward an unknown destination. Try as he might, he can’t escape what happened that day. Michael Brown told him to run. In some ways, Dorian Johnson has been running ever since.

    Another three pages of Dorian Johnson’s profile – very nice. Not necessarily happy, but nice.

  253. rq says

    Pellet gun-wielding Michigan woman spews N-word at neighbors in fight over dog poop

    A Grand Rapids, Michigan woman reportedly spewed racist epithets and waved a pellet gun at her neighbors in a heated dispute about dog feces on her lawn last week.

    WZZM Channel 13 reported Tuesday that 56-year-old Judy Lorraine Syrek was charged with felonious assault and ethnic intimidation over the altercation.
    ADVERTISEMENT

    “She was upset over the neighbor’s dog and feces in their yard,” said Grand Rapids Police Sgt. Terry Dixon to Channel 13. “Apparently those neighbors were not addressing that particular problem. She got upset and felt the need to bring out a long gun and then point it at several subjects.”

    Syrek did not fire the weapon, but did aim it straight at the neighbors and threatened to fire, hence the felonious assault charge. As she yelled at them, Syrek reportedly let fly multiple times with the N-word.

    This is not Syrek’s first run-in with police. She was deemed a habitual felony offender in 2004 when she was convicted of welfare fraud over $500.

    She posted a $5,000 bond and was released, but with orders not to contact her neighbors or go near their house.

    Everyday racism.

    White Alabama cop caught on tape discussing how he’d cover up the murder of a black man police had been harassing, Salon on that story.

    Police, demonstrators gearing up for Michael Brown anniversary weekend in Ferguson

    Police commanders are expecting a peaceful weekend — and demonstrators are promising it. But authorities said Monday they would be prepared if the observance of the first anniversary of the controversial police killing of Michael Brown turned violent.

    An organizer for a series of events characterized them at a press conference Monday as mainly “family-friendly, open to the public and free of charge.”

    “The events we have planned this weekend are intended to show the strength of community, the value of self-empowerment and the power of the people,” said Nabeehah Azeez, of Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment.

    Azeez was joined by more than two dozen people from at least nine organizations at the Central West End offices for the Service Employees International Union. They called on police to respect the free speech rights of demonstrators and refrain from confronting protesters in a militarized manner.
    […]

    Police do expect some roadway closures for protests, mostly in Ferguson. And they think some protesters may seek to interrupt retail areas on what is Missouri’s annual tax-free weekend for buying school supplies and clothing.

    Azeez said she did not know how many people would attend the marches, concerts and demonstrations planned for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. But she said it was a historic moment that would undoubtedly include people from outside the St. Louis area.

    On Monday, protesters are planning a day of “civil disobedience.” No one at the press conference would elaborate, but Azeez said it would not be “family-friendly.”

    To help parents who want to participate in protests, organizers have established around-the-clock child care, she said.

    Belmar told the county Board of Police Commissioners at a meeting July 15 that, “I’m not alarmed by any of the intelligence I’ve seen. I do not believe we will have any acute problems.”

    He added, “I don’t believe it’s going to be anything like the grand jury announcement.” That was in reference to a night of rioting, looting and arson after a St. Louis County grand jury decided not to indict Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting of Brown.

    A Cop Killed A White Teen And The #AllLivesMatter Crowd Said Nothing

    If the snide retort to #BlackLivesMatter is that #AllLivesMatter — a shallow rejoinder that misses the point entirely — the resounding silence around Hammond’s death exposes these complaints for what they often are: narrow-minded attempts to squelch honest discussions about the black experience. If these people truly believe that all lives matter, they should speak out about Hammond’s death, just as they should have spoken out about the questionable deaths of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Natasha McKenna or Ryan Bolinger, a white man killed by Iowa police in June.

    Of the white people who have taken notice of Hammond’s death, some have suggested that his case flies in the face of one of the core tenets of the Black Lives Matter movement. If police misconduct is a racial issue, they ask, how do black activists explain the shooting of a white person?

    While advocates for reform do see police violence as reinforcing racial inequality, they also denounce controversial law enforcement tactics that have harmed many white people. Data compiled by The Guardian shows why police killings are both a national issue and a racial issue. Police in the U.S. have killed more white people in the first seven months of 2015 than people of any other race — at least 335 so far. Adjust these numbers by population, and we see that police are killing black people at a rate more than twice that of whites. Beyond these limited death statistics are the broader studies that show police are more likely to subject black suspects to force, abuse and harassment — which, again, doesn’t mean white people don’t also face frequent mistreatment.

    Others have argued that the media or black people are actually to blame for Hammond’s case not receiving more coverage — that both parties are interested in covering police misconduct only to drive some sort of racial division. After all, how else can we explain that Hammond’s case has received no national coverage, despite the fact that it looks similar to the July 19 killing of Samuel DuBose, a black man shot in his car by a University of Cincinnati police officer?

    One reason is that video has not been released in Hammond’s case, and there’s nothing cable news loves more than a shockingly violent clip to play on loop.

    Second, the media certainly are aware of the racial context responsible for propelling police shootings to the forefront of the national debate. News outlets cover stories that highlight such issues of race — often those in which a white officer has killed a black suspect — because they involve legitimate concerns worthy of closer examination, not to create racial tension. The fact that these cases keep emerging with such troubling regularity, even amid heightened scrutiny of law enforcement, has only fueled this narrative.

    There is no such racial narrative in Hammond’s case, but there is a third, more basic difference surrounding his death.

    White America’s apathetic response to the killing of a young white man is not just evident on Twitter. It also appears to be the prevalent attitude in the mostly white town of Seneca and in surrounding Oconee County, which is almost 90 percent white. The community there has not organized protests or demonstrations. They haven’t held rallies or vigils — or at least any that have been well-attended enough to attract even local news coverage. The national media aren’t likely to parachute into a local story when nobody there, apart from Hammond’s parents, seems to think it is a story.

    Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that white Americans have, for the most part, collectively shrugged at police violence. Polls have repeatedly shown that white people are much more likely to have confidence in the police, suggesting that they’re either more willing to believe that officers are justified in their actions or that the system can be trusted to sort it out if they’re not. As Ebony’s Jamilah Lemieux notes, speaking up about Hammond now would create a conflict for many of those people:

    Alabama officer kept job after proposal to murder black man and hide evidence , the Grauniad.

    Michael Brown’s mother on Darren Wilson: ‘He’s evil’

    McSpadden’s comments came after the New Yorker published a lengthy profile of Wilson as the anniversary of Brown’s Aug. 9 killing approaches. In the profile, author Jake Halpern detailed Wilson’s “very quiet life” after Brown’s death and the subsequent protests that roiled Ferguson on-and-off for months: a life on “a nondescript dead-end street on the outskirts of St. Louis” filled with fears of death threats, dim prospects of a future in law enforcement and limited reflection on the man he killed.

    “Do I think about who he was as a person?” Wilson told Halpern. “Not really, because it doesn’t matter at this point. Do I think he had the best upbringing? No. Not at all.”
    […]

    “Michael was definitely a leader,” she said. “He was a big brother, so he was a protector. He was the first grandson, so he was a provider to elderly people that needed help across the street, bringing in their groceries, very respectable. He also was a first nephew for his aunts and uncle, so any kids that they had, he was like the big brother role model. He was the role model.”

    Harris asked whether McSpadden had forgiven Wilson.

    “Never,” she said.

  254. rq says

    St. Louis Doesn’t Have To Ask Taxpayers For Permission To Spend Taxpayer Money On A Football Stadium, a privilege for the privileged.

    The Ferguson Protests Worked

    Nearly a half-century ago, a University of Missouri law professor named T.E. Lauer issued a warning. Missouri’s network of municipal courts, he wrote, were “a modern anomaly” generally “overlooked or ignored as the misshapen stepchildren of our judicial system.”

    It was “disgraceful,” he argued, that poor people accused of municipal ordinance violations didn’t receive lawyers. Arresting and confining citizens for petty violations of municipal codes was unnecessary. Many municipalities, he wrote, had clearly “conceived of their municipal courts in terms of their revenue-raising ability,” and those financial incentives influenced judges’ decisions. He questioned whether the term “kangaroo court” would “too often validly apply to municipal court proceedings.”

    That was 1966. The Civil Rights Act was two years old. Martin Luther King Jr. was still alive, and Barack Obama had just turned 5. Dozens of young girls in St. Louis were treated for minor injuries sustained at a Beatles concert. George Wallace, who had tried to prevent black students from enrolling at a public university after promising “segregation forever,” was governor of Alabama.

    In the ensuing decades, those “kangaroo courts” enabled small towns, especially in St. Louis County, to pad their budgets by extracting fines from people for extraordinarily minor violations of municipal codes — under threat of jail. Arrest warrants were issued for thousands of people, for supposed crimes like wearing baggy pants, missing a special sticker on their car, or failing to subscribe to a designated trash service. Residents who had to endure these local courts described them as “out of control,” “inhumane,” “crazy,” “racist,” “unprofessional” and “sickening.”

    The decades between Lauer’s warning and 2014 brought no significant reforms to Missouri’s municipal courts. Then, on Aug. 9, a Ferguson police officer’s bullet that killed 18-year-old Michael Brown brought an end to the inaction.
    […]

    Nine months after Brown’s death, the Missouri legislature passed a bill that capped the amount of revenue that municipalities can collect from tickets. Gov. Jay Nixon signed the legislation last month, saying that when “the practices of municipal courts fail the basic tests of fairness and equality — those failings reflect on our entire judicial system.” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R), a leading supporter, said he doesn’t believe the bill would have happened without the protests in Ferguson.

    St. Louis County’s municipal courts didn’t kill Michael Brown. But they were a major contributor to the outrage and distrust that was on display in Ferguson following Brown’s death.

    “For me, after August and being from the St. Louis area and growing up in North County, I felt the desire to try to right a wrong in how justice was playing out in our municipal courts, or the absence of it,” Schmitt said. “The long lines outside of municipal courts next to pawn shops shocked the conscious, and I think it compelled people — regardless of their party — to want to do something about it.” Schmitt said the attention “brought together a broad coalition.”

    Law enforcement leaders said Ferguson was a wake-up call.

    “If not for the unrest, we wouldn’t have seen municipal court reform. It’s certainly a game-changer,” said Kevin Ahlbrand, president of Missouri’s Fraternal Order of Police and a member of the Ferguson Commission, created by the governor to correct economic and social conditions that fueled the unrest.

    St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar told The Huffington Post it was “a shame that we haven’t had the political will before 2014” to look at the municipal courts.

    “If you went to a very affluent area in St. Louis County, how long do you think a program would last where speed cameras were put up on arterial roads coming into subdivisions, and people were given letters saying they were going to be arrested? It would last about five hours,” Belmar said. “You know that and I know that, and that’s part of the problem. Yet in areas that are not as affluent, and where folks really are struggling with issues of poverty and education and crime and everything else that goes along with it — unemployment — they don’t have the ability really to voice that opinion. They can’t leverage change. That’s a good thing that’s come out of all this.”

    Ferguson’s protests spawned at least 40 state measures aimed at improving police tactics and use of force. The national conversation around race and policing has shifted so dramatically that the director of the FBI said law enforcement officials historically enforced “a status quo that was often brutally unfair to disfavored groups” and discussed how unconscious racial bias affects police officers with no pushback from the law enforcement community.

    “I don’t think there has ever been this level of attention being paid to communities all over the country,” Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a recent interview with The Huffington Post. “As a country, it will be shame on us for missing the opportunity … given the kind of elevated attention that is being paid to criminal justice.”

    There’s more at the link, including an opinion that the protests added more nuance to how the media portrays black people and police violence against them.
    So yeah. There’s a lot more at the link.

    Half of blacks say police have treated them unfairly

    A majority of blacks in the United States — more than 3 out of 5 — say they or a family member have personal experience with being treated unfairly by the police, and their race is the reason.

    Half of African-American respondents, including 6 in 10 black men, said they personally had been treated unfairly by police because of their race, compared with 3 percent of whites. Another 15 percent said they knew of a family member who had been treated unfairly by the police because of their race.

    This information, from a survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, comes as the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, approaches its first anniversary and the nation continues to grapple with police-related deaths of black Americans.

    White Americans who live in more diverse communities — where census data show at least 25 percent of the population is non-white — were more likely than other whites to say police in their communities mistreat minorities, 58 percent to 42 percent. And they’re more likely to see the police as too quick to use deadly force, 42 percent to 29 percent.

    Larry Washington, 30, of Merrillville, Indiana, described his encounter with a white police officer when he was arrested for theft in Burbank, Illinois, as a teenager. “When I got to the police station, the officer who arrested me told me that I looked like I wanted to do something about it,” Washington said, adding, “And he kept calling me ‘nigger.'”

    “It’s been like this for a long time,” Washington said. “It’s just now that everybody starting to record it and stuff, it’s just hitting the spotlight. Most Caucasians, they think it’s just starting to go on when it’s been like this.”

    The AP-NORC poll also showed:

    —More than two-thirds of blacks — 71 percent — thought police are treated too leniently by the criminal justice system when they hurt or kill people. A third of whites say police are getting away with it, while nearly half — 46 percent — say the police are treated fairly by the criminal justice system.

    —Sixty-two percent of whites said a major reason why police violence happens is that civilians confront the police, rather than cooperate, when they are stopped. Three out of 4 blacks, or 75 percent, said it is because the consequences of police misconduct are minimal, and few officers are prosecuted for excessive use of force. More than 7 in 10 blacks identified problems with race relations, along with poor police-community relations, as major reasons for police violence.

    —Nearly 3 out of 4 whites — 74 percent — thought race had nothing to do with how police in their communities decide to use deadly force. Among blacks, 71 percent thought police were more likely to use deadly force against black people in their communities, and 85 percent said the same thing applied generally across the country. Fifty-eight percent of whites thought race had nothing to do with police decisions in most communities on use of deadly force.

    Seventy-two percent of whites said they always or often trust police to do right by them and their community, while 66 percent of blacks said they only sometimes, rarely or never trust the police to do what is right.

    This and that else at the link.

    She’s “Home”! Meet the Young Newcomer Who Will Star as Dorothy in The Wiz, congratulations Shanice Williams!

    Young, Black, Trans, Arrested: How Women Like Meagan Taylor Are Made Invisible

    Meagan Taylor has bright red hair. She takes cute selfies. She went to Iowa two weeks ago, a trip from her home in Illinois cut short with an arrest. Her name became a hashtag. She is black and transgender and young, and in a month that has seen at least five black women die in American jails, last Wednesday, Meagan Taylor left her cell alive.

    How many women like Meagan Taylor will we never hear about?

    On Monday, July 13 at 1:30 in the afternoon, Meagan Taylor was booked into the Polk County Jail in Des Moines, Iowa. She would not be there had the staff of the Drury Inn not called them to take Meagan Taylor away from the room she had paid for, after alleging—as cops put it—that she was engaged in “possible prostitution activity.” Meagan Taylor told the Des Moines Register she saw hotel staff “acting really funny.” Then police arrived at her room.

    “It seemed like they were trying to find something to charge me with,” she told the paper.

    After seeing local news reports of her arrest, Des Moines activists Kaija Carter and Tony Tyler put out a call on Facebook for help. On Friday, July 17, they met at Smokey Row Coffee on Cottage Grove Avenue to talk about how to support her. Tyler told me around 30 people came out, and on Saturday, they rallied in front of Drury Inn, carrying a huge red banner with the hashtags #FreeMeaganTaylor and #BlackTransLivesMatter.
    […]

    Almost half of all black transgender people have been incarcerated at some point in their lives, according to the 2013 report “Injustice at Every Turn” by the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce. Of the black transgender people they surveyed, 44 percent had done sex work. The trans sex workers they surveyed were also four times more likely to have been incarcerated than other transgender people.

    There’s also no disputing that police profile transgender women of color, often by describing them as sex workers. This presumes that any time a sex worker is visible in public, she must be also be doing sex work—that is, suspected of committing a crime. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as community-based organizations like Make the Road New York and Alliance for a Safe & Diverse DC, have documented how often police target transgender women this way, how it funnels them into jails, and sticks them with criminal records that only make them more likely to be targeted by police again.

    There are thousands of women like Meagan Taylor.

    “What happened to Meagan Taylor is horrible and terrible and it is absolutely part of a larger problem of how the criminal legal system is designed to target people of color and trans people and people who are pushed into the margins of the labor market in various ways,” Chase Strangio, staff attorney at the ACLU’s LGBT Project, told me. “Her story is important because it shows us that this happens, but just because we know about Meagan doesn’t mean this is the only person this has happened to.”

    Black trans women don’t need to be doing anything to be profiled: It’s enough to just be breathing, to just be seen. Drury Inn staff said they saw, as the police phrased it in their report, “two males dressed as females.” Staff called police because they witnessed Meagan Taylor being a black transgender woman, not because they witnessed her doing sex work or using drugs. (Neither West Des Moines Drury Inn and Suites staff nor their corporate office responded to my request for an interview.)

    Meagan Taylor wasn’t charged with prostitution. After detaining her in her room and interrogating her and a trans friend traveling with her, police charged Taylor with offenses related to her legal identification and possession of hormone therapy (police say she had unmarked prescription drugs). Some of the news and commentary that followed made a point of telling readers that Meagan Taylor wasn’t a sex worker, that she was only in possession of prescription drugs she needed, that she wasn’t doing anything wrong.

    Does it matter?

    When we in the media report these stories of police profiling, in shaping the public’s response and attempt to make sense of them, we can write ourselves into knots. What we might usually just call “walking the down the street” or “hanging out with friends” gets turned into something else: “not doing anything wrong.” The “wrong” here isn’t what Meagan Taylor was or wasn’t doing. The wrong occurred when the hotel profiled her as a legitimate target for discrimination and arrest, or what I prefer to name directly, for forced removal from public. Meagan Taylor was marked because of her body. It didn’t matter what she was doing—the hotel just wanted her body unseen.

    These arrests are not news; they are the daily order of business in this country. It is time for the media to ask different questions: Would such discrimination, this forced removal, be somehow acceptable if women profiled as sex workers really were doing sex work? Should we regard the arrest of Meagan Taylor as a system error, or as evidence of the system at work?
    […]

    All that momentum has served Meagan Taylor, too. “I was really happy to see the community come together around Meagan,” Flor Bermudez at the Transgender Law Center told me. “This just brings to the forefront the reality that there is such bias, racism and transphobia, and that the interactions hotel staff have with people can trigger so many things, like what happened to Meagan.”

    “Justice, as far as I’m concerned, is a world where Meagan wasn’t arrested in the first place,” Chase Strangio at the ACLU told me. “Already, we are starting from a place where every intervention we make is going to be a compromise. Even paying the bail and getting her out is a compromise.”

    “That doesn’t mean we don’t do it,” he added, “but it means we have to question the system itself and what we can do to destabilize the dynamics that lead to trans women of color—and black trans women in particular—from being routinely funneled into the system and spending much of their lives navigating criminalization.”

    “The point of incarceration,” Strangio went on, “is to cut people off from support and to make invisible what is happening to them.”

    What Meagan Taylor and her supporters have done is make her seen again.

    In 2012 black voting percentage surpassed white for first time in American history. In 2013 #SCOTUS nullifies key voting rights protections.

  255. rq says

    St. Louis Doesn’t Have To Ask Taxpayers For Permission To Spend Taxpayer Money On A Football Stadium, a privilege for the privileged.

    The Ferguson Protests Worked

    Nearly a half-century ago, a University of Missouri law professor named T.E. Lauer issued a warning. Missouri’s network of municipal courts, he wrote, were “a modern anomaly” generally “overlooked or ignored as the misshapen stepchildren of our judicial system.”

    It was “disgraceful,” he argued, that poor people accused of municipal ordinance violations didn’t receive lawyers. Arresting and confining citizens for petty violations of municipal codes was unnecessary. Many municipalities, he wrote, had clearly “conceived of their municipal courts in terms of their revenue-raising ability,” and those financial incentives influenced judges’ decisions. He questioned whether the term “kangaroo court” would “too often validly apply to municipal court proceedings.”

    That was 1966. The Civil Rights Act was two years old. Martin Luther King Jr. was still alive, and Barack Obama had just turned 5. Dozens of young girls in St. Louis were treated for minor injuries sustained at a Beatles concert. George Wallace, who had tried to prevent black students from enrolling at a public university after promising “segregation forever,” was governor of Alabama.

    In the ensuing decades, those “kangaroo courts” enabled small towns, especially in St. Louis County, to pad their budgets by extracting fines from people for extraordinarily minor violations of municipal codes — under threat of jail. Arrest warrants were issued for thousands of people, for supposed crimes like wearing baggy pants, missing a special sticker on their car, or failing to subscribe to a designated trash service. Residents who had to endure these local courts described them as “out of control,” “inhumane,” “crazy,” “racist,” “unprofessional” and “sickening.”

    The decades between Lauer’s warning and 2014 brought no significant reforms to Missouri’s municipal courts. Then, on Aug. 9, a Ferguson police officer’s bullet that killed 18-year-old Michael Brown brought an end to the inaction.
    […]

    Nine months after Brown’s death, the Missouri legislature passed a bill that capped the amount of revenue that municipalities can collect from tickets. Gov. Jay Nixon signed the legislation last month, saying that when “the practices of municipal courts fail the basic tests of fairness and equality — those failings reflect on our entire judicial system.” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R), a leading supporter, said he doesn’t believe the bill would have happened without the protests in Ferguson.

    St. Louis County’s municipal courts didn’t kill Michael Brown. But they were a major contributor to the outrage and distrust that was on display in Ferguson following Brown’s death.

    “For me, after August and being from the St. Louis area and growing up in North County, I felt the desire to try to right a wrong in how justice was playing out in our municipal courts, or the absence of it,” Schmitt said. “The long lines outside of municipal courts next to pawn shops shocked the conscious, and I think it compelled people — regardless of their party — to want to do something about it.” Schmitt said the attention “brought together a broad coalition.”

    Law enforcement leaders said Ferguson was a wake-up call.

    “If not for the unrest, we wouldn’t have seen municipal court reform. It’s certainly a game-changer,” said Kevin Ahlbrand, president of Missouri’s Fraternal Order of Police and a member of the Ferguson Commission, created by the governor to correct economic and social conditions that fueled the unrest.

    St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar told The Huffington Post it was “a shame that we haven’t had the political will before 2014” to look at the municipal courts.

    “If you went to a very affluent area in St. Louis County, how long do you think a program would last where speed cameras were put up on arterial roads coming into subdivisions, and people were given letters saying they were going to be arrested? It would last about five hours,” Belmar said. “You know that and I know that, and that’s part of the problem. Yet in areas that are not as affluent, and where folks really are struggling with issues of poverty and education and crime and everything else that goes along with it — unemployment — they don’t have the ability really to voice that opinion. They can’t leverage change. That’s a good thing that’s come out of all this.”

    Ferguson’s protests spawned at least 40 state measures aimed at improving police tactics and use of force. The national conversation around race and policing has shifted so dramatically that the director of the FBI said law enforcement officials historically enforced “a status quo that was often brutally unfair to disfavored groups” and discussed how unconscious racial bias affects police officers with no pushback from the law enforcement community.

    “I don’t think there has ever been this level of attention being paid to communities all over the country,” Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a recent interview with The Huffington Post. “As a country, it will be shame on us for missing the opportunity … given the kind of elevated attention that is being paid to criminal justice.”

    There’s more at the link, including an opinion that the protests added more nuance to how the media portrays black people and police violence against them.
    So yeah. There’s a lot more at the link.

    Half of blacks say police have treated them unfairly

    A majority of blacks in the United States — more than 3 out of 5 — say they or a family member have personal experience with being treated unfairly by the police, and their race is the reason.

    Half of African-American respondents, including 6 in 10 black men, said they personally had been treated unfairly by police because of their race, compared with 3 percent of whites. Another 15 percent said they knew of a family member who had been treated unfairly by the police because of their race.

    This information, from a survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, comes as the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, approaches its first anniversary and the nation continues to grapple with police-related deaths of black Americans.

    White Americans who live in more diverse communities — where census data show at least 25 percent of the population is non-white — were more likely than other whites to say police in their communities mistreat minorities, 58 percent to 42 percent. And they’re more likely to see the police as too quick to use deadly force, 42 percent to 29 percent.

    Larry Washington, 30, of Merrillville, Indiana, described his encounter with a white police officer when he was arrested for theft in Burbank, Illinois, as a teenager. “When I got to the police station, the officer who arrested me told me that I looked like I wanted to do something about it,” Washington said, adding, “And he kept calling me ‘n*gg*r.'”

    “It’s been like this for a long time,” Washington said. “It’s just now that everybody starting to record it and stuff, it’s just hitting the spotlight. Most Caucasians, they think it’s just starting to go on when it’s been like this.”

    The AP-NORC poll also showed:

    —More than two-thirds of blacks — 71 percent — thought police are treated too leniently by the criminal justice system when they hurt or kill people. A third of whites say police are getting away with it, while nearly half — 46 percent — say the police are treated fairly by the criminal justice system.

    —Sixty-two percent of whites said a major reason why police violence happens is that civilians confront the police, rather than cooperate, when they are stopped. Three out of 4 blacks, or 75 percent, said it is because the consequences of police misconduct are minimal, and few officers are prosecuted for excessive use of force. More than 7 in 10 blacks identified problems with race relations, along with poor police-community relations, as major reasons for police violence.

    —Nearly 3 out of 4 whites — 74 percent — thought race had nothing to do with how police in their communities decide to use deadly force. Among blacks, 71 percent thought police were more likely to use deadly force against black people in their communities, and 85 percent said the same thing applied generally across the country. Fifty-eight percent of whites thought race had nothing to do with police decisions in most communities on use of deadly force.

    Seventy-two percent of whites said they always or often trust police to do right by them and their community, while 66 percent of blacks said they only sometimes, rarely or never trust the police to do what is right.

    This and that else at the link.

    She’s “Home”! Meet the Young Newcomer Who Will Star as Dorothy in The Wiz, congratulations Shanice Williams!

    Young, Black, Trans, Arrested: How Women Like Meagan Taylor Are Made Invisible

    Meagan Taylor has bright red hair. She takes cute selfies. She went to Iowa two weeks ago, a trip from her home in Illinois cut short with an arrest. Her name became a hashtag. She is black and transgender and young, and in a month that has seen at least five black women die in American jails, last Wednesday, Meagan Taylor left her cell alive.

    How many women like Meagan Taylor will we never hear about?

    On Monday, July 13 at 1:30 in the afternoon, Meagan Taylor was booked into the Polk County Jail in Des Moines, Iowa. She would not be there had the staff of the Drury Inn not called them to take Meagan Taylor away from the room she had paid for, after alleging—as cops put it—that she was engaged in “possible prostitution activity.” Meagan Taylor told the Des Moines Register she saw hotel staff “acting really funny.” Then police arrived at her room.

    “It seemed like they were trying to find something to charge me with,” she told the paper.

    After seeing local news reports of her arrest, Des Moines activists Kaija Carter and Tony Tyler put out a call on Facebook for help. On Friday, July 17, they met at Smokey Row Coffee on Cottage Grove Avenue to talk about how to support her. Tyler told me around 30 people came out, and on Saturday, they rallied in front of Drury Inn, carrying a huge red banner with the hashtags #FreeMeaganTaylor and #BlackTransLivesMatter.
    […]

    Almost half of all black transgender people have been incarcerated at some point in their lives, according to the 2013 report “Injustice at Every Turn” by the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce. Of the black transgender people they surveyed, 44 percent had done sex work. The trans sex workers they surveyed were also four times more likely to have been incarcerated than other transgender people.

    There’s also no disputing that police profile transgender women of color, often by describing them as sex workers. This presumes that any time a sex worker is visible in public, she must be also be doing sex work—that is, suspected of committing a crime. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as community-based organizations like Make the Road New York and Alliance for a Safe & Diverse DC, have documented how often police target transgender women this way, how it funnels them into jails, and sticks them with criminal records that only make them more likely to be targeted by police again.

    There are thousands of women like Meagan Taylor.

    “What happened to Meagan Taylor is horrible and terrible and it is absolutely part of a larger problem of how the criminal legal system is designed to target people of color and trans people and people who are pushed into the margins of the labor market in various ways,” Chase Strangio, staff attorney at the ACLU’s LGBT Project, told me. “Her story is important because it shows us that this happens, but just because we know about Meagan doesn’t mean this is the only person this has happened to.”

    Black trans women don’t need to be doing anything to be profiled: It’s enough to just be breathing, to just be seen. Drury Inn staff said they saw, as the police phrased it in their report, “two males dressed as females.” Staff called police because they witnessed Meagan Taylor being a black transgender woman, not because they witnessed her doing sex work or using drugs. (Neither West Des Moines Drury Inn and Suites staff nor their corporate office responded to my request for an interview.)

    Meagan Taylor wasn’t charged with prostitution. After detaining her in her room and interrogating her and a trans friend traveling with her, police charged Taylor with offenses related to her legal identification and possession of hormone therapy (police say she had unmarked prescription drugs). Some of the news and commentary that followed made a point of telling readers that Meagan Taylor wasn’t a sex worker, that she was only in possession of prescription drugs she needed, that she wasn’t doing anything wrong.

    Does it matter?

    When we in the media report these stories of police profiling, in shaping the public’s response and attempt to make sense of them, we can write ourselves into knots. What we might usually just call “walking the down the street” or “hanging out with friends” gets turned into something else: “not doing anything wrong.” The “wrong” here isn’t what Meagan Taylor was or wasn’t doing. The wrong occurred when the hotel profiled her as a legitimate target for discrimination and arrest, or what I prefer to name directly, for forced removal from public. Meagan Taylor was marked because of her body. It didn’t matter what she was doing—the hotel just wanted her body unseen.

    These arrests are not news; they are the daily order of business in this country. It is time for the media to ask different questions: Would such discrimination, this forced removal, be somehow acceptable if women profiled as sex workers really were doing sex work? Should we regard the arrest of Meagan Taylor as a system error, or as evidence of the system at work?
    […]

    All that momentum has served Meagan Taylor, too. “I was really happy to see the community come together around Meagan,” Flor Bermudez at the Transgender Law Center told me. “This just brings to the forefront the reality that there is such bias, racism and transphobia, and that the interactions hotel staff have with people can trigger so many things, like what happened to Meagan.”

    “Justice, as far as I’m concerned, is a world where Meagan wasn’t arrested in the first place,” Chase Strangio at the ACLU told me. “Already, we are starting from a place where every intervention we make is going to be a compromise. Even paying the bail and getting her out is a compromise.”

    “That doesn’t mean we don’t do it,” he added, “but it means we have to question the system itself and what we can do to destabilize the dynamics that lead to trans women of color—and black trans women in particular—from being routinely funneled into the system and spending much of their lives navigating criminalization.”

    “The point of incarceration,” Strangio went on, “is to cut people off from support and to make invisible what is happening to them.”

    What Meagan Taylor and her supporters have done is make her seen again.

    In 2012 black voting percentage surpassed white for first time in American history. In 2013 #SCOTUS nullifies key voting rights protections.

  256. rq says

    Controversial expert to provide training to Houston police officers next week.

    Dr. Bill Lewinski, director of the Force Science Institute, which according to its website studies “the true nature of human behavior in high stress and deadly force encounters,” is a nationally-recognized expert on officer-involved shootings who has testified in dozens of trials across the country involving shootings by police officers.

    Lewinski also was the subject of a recent article in The New York Times, which raised questions about the research performed by Force Science – which has been labeled “pseudoscience” by critics and taught in trainings at departments across the country. The Times story also raised questions about Lewinski’s track record in testifying on behalf of officers who had shot or killed civilians.

    The issue of police violence has become a national issue over the last year, following high-profile incidents where civilians have died at the hands of police in Missouri, New York and Cleveland. Here in Texas, the arrest of Sandra Bland and her death – ruled a suicide by authorities – in a Waller County jail cell last month set off controversy over the issue of use of force by law enforcement.

    The issue is especially pertinent in Houston, where the last time one of the police department’s officers was convicted for shooting someone was in 2005, after Officer Arthur Carbonneau shot and killed a 14-year-old boy 11 months after joining HPD.

    In that trial, in which Lewinski testified on behalf of Carbonneau, he said the shooting had appeared to be a “classic example of unintended discharge,” and told jurors something knocked the hand in which Carbonneau was holding the gun, and when he clutched the weapon to make sure he had control of it, he inadvertently squeezed the trigger, killing the boy.

    Lewinski said a focus of his research has been to try to understand the dynamics of individual shootings and how officers respond to specific situations.

    “Our general view is improvements in training is probably going to be very helpful,” he said.

    Other researchers have questioned Lewinski’s findings.

    “All the things he talks about are really important,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina.

    “[Officers] are put in situations not healthy,” he added. “Now, do they respond properly? Well, I can’t tell you all the time. Should training include some of these issues? Yes. Should they be trained to justify every shooting? No.”

    Really, Houston, this is how you want to improve police-community relations? With Dr Lewinski?

    During Baltimore Uprising, City Officials Criminalized Hashtags & Labeled Social Media Postings as ‘Threats’, just another source on that.

    Deputy arraigned on federal charges over botched raid that disfigured child. Remember that one?

    The attorney for a former deputy charged in connection with a botched raid claims the feds are after her.

    During the raid, a flash-bang hit and severely injured little Bounkham Phonesavanh. He is still recovering.

    Former Habersham County Deputy Nikki Autry faces federal charges she violated the injured baby’s civil rights, along with other people there the night of the raid in question.

    She wouldn’t talk after a short arraignment Tuesday, but did speak with state investigators on at least two occasions.

    “I said, ‘Are there any signs of children there?’ And they said, ‘Nothing but a minivan,’” Autry told authorities in taped interviews.

    She said she had a bad feeling going into the botched May 2014 drug raid. She said she felt rushed.

    “You’re knocking on the judge’s door at 12:15 and you’ve got SWAT team waiting on you. And you’re trying to get everything together before the defendant gets home,” Autry said.

    During the raid, a flash-bang thrown by a drug task force agent landed in the playpen of “Bou Bou” Phonesavanh. He was badly disfigured.

    The suspect the task force was after wasn’t there.

    Amid a local grand jury investigation, Autry resigned her post, promising not to work in law enforcement again, but then the feds moved in, finding Autry mislead a magistrate judge with the information she gave to obtain the no-knock warrant.

    “Does that mean I shouldn’t have put more details in it? I probably should have,” Autry said.

    In Gainesville federal court Tuesday, Autry pleaded not guilty to the four counts. She walked out of court free on bond.

    “It’s horrible what happened to Bou Bou Phonesavanh, there’s no question about that,” said attorney Jeff Brickman. “I think they thought they had to have someone to be the blame.”

    Brickman says his team will take this case to trial. It could go before a judge sometime early next year.

    Ahead of Ferguson anniversary, Nixon preps for law enforcement announcement

    Gov. Jay Nixon will crisscross the state tomorrow for an announcement on police training and licensing, his office said in a statement.

    Nixon will visit law enforcement training centers in Kansas City, St. Louis and Springfield to make an announcement regarding the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission (POST). POST is responsible for establishing “standards for peace officer basic training, continuing education of officers, as well as for instructors and law enforcement training academies in Missouri.”

    The announcement comes just days before planned events in the St. Louis area commemorating the one year anniversary of the shooting death of Michael Brown by then-Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, which sparked waves of protests and unrest for months in St. Louis and placed the state in an international spotlight during a debate about police tactics.

    Earlier this year, Missouri lawmakers weighed dozens of bills directly related to the unrest in Ferguson. Urban Democrats filed many of the bills, a large number of which saw little progress, including legislation mandating the use of body cameras for all officers.

    But lawmakers ultimately did advance Senate Bill 5, a sweeping municipal court reform measure that limits the amount of revenue cities may collect through traffic fines and court fees and creates new minimum service standards all municipalities must meet.

    Lawmakers also spent significant time near the end of the legislative session debating a measure changing the standards by which Missouri officers may use deadly force. Missouri is currently the only state in the country whose state law does not match federal standards for killing an unarmed suspect.

    The bill ultimately passed the senate but was soon gutted in the final days of the session in the House.

    Nixon will make announcements tomorrow from the Kansas City Police Department, the St. Louis Police Academy and the Springfield Regional Police and Fire Training Center.

    UC police drew guns far more often this year

    University of Cincinnati police have drawn their guns or used physical force 16 times so far this year, compared to two times in both 2013 and 2014.

    The most recent of those incidents occurred July 19, when UC Officer Ray Tensing shot and killed Samuel DuBose in a traffic stop in Mount Auburn.

    The use-of-force data from UC, obtained by The Enquirer through a public records request, show the dramatic increase began in March and accelerated through the summer. Half of the incidents occurred in June and a small portion of July.

    The data was compiled through July 3; information on incidents since then – other than the DuBose shooting – was not available Wednesday.

    Tensing, who is charged with murder in DuBose’s death, was involved in at least four of the incidents this year, in one of which he’s listed with other officers.

    The increase comes after UC hired 32 police officers in the past year, raising its department total to 73. It also coincides with more aggressive traffic enforcement and more patrols by UC police in city neighborhoods surrounding the university’s Corryville campus.

    Sounds like Tensing was a real catch for the UC PD.

    The North Carolina case that could decide the future of voting rights in the US

    Fifty years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. And 50 years later, voting rights remain a frontier of partisan and racially charged debates due to a Supreme Court ruling that severely weakened the federal law and triggered a wave of new court battles over the issue.

    In these battles, North Carolina may turn out to be the most important state. In 2013, the state enacted sweeping voting restrictions. Now civil rights advocates are challenging the state’s measures in court, arguing that they disproportionately hurt people of color.

    “Fifty years ago, we were fighting for voting rights,” William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP, said. “Fifty years later, we’re in court fighting to hold on to the rights that people won.”

    Many court watchers and advocates say the North Carolina case could be a huge deal: It has a real chance of climbing to the Supreme Court, which would give the nation’s highest court another chance to consider the limits of the Voting Rights Act. And with Republican-dominated states pushing the boundaries of acceptable voting restrictions, whether the Supreme Court affirms or rejects the North Carolina law could decide the future of voting rights in the US.

    Civil rights groups, joined by the US Department of Justice, are challenging a North Carolina law that requires a photo ID for all residents to vote, eliminated early voting days, ended same-day voter registration and out-of-precinct voting, and stopped the preregistration of 16- and 17-year-olds in the state.

    The Republican-dominated state legislature passed the law in 2013 after a Supreme Court ruling struck down a key measure in the Voting Rights Act, allowing North Carolina — which has a history of discrimination against black voters — to proceed with its new restrictions without approval from the federal government. The North Carolina Senate had been working on what it called a voter ID bill prior to the Supreme Court ruling. But after the court’s decision, state Sen. Tom Apodaca (R) said, “Now we can go with the full bill” — passing what the Brennan Center for Justice characterized as “one of the most restrictive voting laws since the Jim Crow era.”

    In Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court struck down the formula in Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act used to establish which states had to get preclearance from the Justice Department before enacting major changes to their voting laws, based on the states’ history of discrimination against black voters in particular. This removed North Carolina from the federal government’s watch list, allowing the state to pass its voting restrictions without federal supervision.

    But the Supreme Court left in place Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which “prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups.” It’s under this section of the federal law that civil rights advocates and the Justice Department are challenging the voting law in North Carolina.

    “You cannot enact laws that deny or diminish the right to vote for African Americans and Latinos,” Donita Judge, an attorney with the Advancement Project, a civil rights group, said. “We believe that this law has a greater impact on African Americans and Latinos — and that’s unconstitutional.”

  257. rq says

    “DA Time”: How New Orleans Locks People Up For Weeks Without Charges

    In Louisiana, the district attorney’s offices have 60 days to decide whether or not to charge a person for the felony they were arrested for, 45 days for misdemeanors, and 120 days for serious crimes like murder and aggravated rape. If prosecutors have still not filed charges when the time runs out, the defendant must be freed from jail without bail. Most states give prosecutors 72 hours to file charges before a defendant must be released. California allows for 48 hours. New York allows for six days. Florida allows for 33 days. Texas allows 60 days for felonies and 30 days for misdemeanors. Despite the many sweeping changes to New Orleans’ criminal justice system made in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, these lengthy pre-charge detentions have survived.

    “I don’t know of any that are longer than Louisiana,” said Steve Singer, a law professor at Loyola University.

    The median felony arrest charging decision time during the first half of 2014 was 52 days, according to data collected by the city’s Metropolitan Crime Commission, three days more than the same period in 2013.

    “A lot of times the DA’s office uses all the time they have,” said Derwyn Bunton, Orleans Parish’s chief public defender since 2009.

    “There’s too much at stake for the prosecution to have that much time to accept or reject a case,” said Norris Henderson, director of the nonprofit Voice of the Ex-Offender. “If the guy had housing, he’d have lost it because he couldn’t pay his rent. If he had a job he’d have lost that because he hasn’t been present. It’s a system set up on the backs of folks who can’t pay.”

    The purpose of the law is to give prosecutors time to investigate the merits of a case before deciding whether or not to formally file charges. The consequence, however, is that poor defendants who can’t afford to pay bail end up behind bars even when there is little evidence against them. The practice, known as “DA time,” is one of many factors that helped drive Louisiana’s incarceration rate higher than any other state’s and New Orleans’ higher than any other city in the country.

    “When I first started working here, I remember calling my friends in public defense offices in other states and telling them, ‘You won’t believe this,’” said Katherine Mattes, a law professor at Tulane University. “This was a shocker.”
    […]

    Dandridge’s situation is common in New Orleans. But it had been even more common before Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. In the decade since the storm, thanks to a wave of policy changes aimed at reducing the city’s incarceration rate, police have made fewer arrests. From 2009 to 2013, arrests dropped by half, from around 60,000 a year to around 30,000. As a result, the district attorney’s office charges a higher rate of arrestees. In 2003 and 2004, the DA’s office decided not to file charges against 42% of arrestees. That dropped to 18% in 2013 and 14% in 2014.

    City leaders and many advocates cite the lower arrest numbers as one of the signs of progress in New Orleans’ criminal justice system over the last decade. The courts began using a pretrial service program to evaluate how high a judge should set bail, and the number of defendants released on their own recognizance has increased by 10%. The city established an independent police monitor. The public defender’s office was rebuilt, with a full-time staff of attorneys replacing what had been a part-time network of private defense lawyers.

    “Every one of the components of our criminal justice system are all functioning significantly better than they did before Katrina,” said Michael Cowan, a Loyola University professor and executive director of Common Good, a network of community organizations formed in the aftermath of the storm. “It would not have been possible to do any of that the day before Katrina.”

    The reformers had also sought to address DA time. But that was less successful. In the months following the storm, with buildings flooded and lawyers and judges out of the city and county jail inmates shuttled out to prisons across the state, the court system shut down. There was not a single criminal trial for 10 months. The backlog of cases grew, and when the system picked back up again, it moved slowly. Prosecutors said that they needed more than 60 days to investigate many cases. In 2006, around 3,000 defendants were released because prosecutors ran out of time, five times more than in 2004. Newspapers reported that locals had coined the terms “misdemeanor murder” and “60-day murder” to describe the perception that criminals were serving their DA time, then getting released back into the outside world, with no charges likely coming. And the effort to reduce charging decision times never gained momentum.

    “We wanted to get rid of DA time,” said Bunton. “But that’s one area that hasn’t changed.”

    Actually, I think similar systems also exist elsewhere. Like here, for instance.

    A Little-Noticed Supreme Court Case Could Deny Justice For Sandra Bland – or maybe it can be successfully challenged?

    This week, Reed-Veal filed a civil-rights lawsuit against Texas and Waller County officials, accusing them of violating Bland’s rights from the moment state trooper Brian Encinia stopped her car last month until she was found hanging in her jail cell a few days later.

    Reed-Veal’s lawsuit goes to great lengths to avoid the word suicide. The term appears only once in the 46-page document — an oblique reference to a claim by Waller County Jail officials that Bland told them she had “previously attempted to commit suicide.” But if pending investigations confirm that Bland killed herself, Bland’s mother may amend her lawsuit to allege jail officials failed in their duty to protect her daughter. And if that happens, a little-noticed ruling the Supreme Court issued in June — with facts as grim as those presented in the Bland case — may damage Reed-Veal’s chances.

    In Taylor v. Barkes, all nine justices shut down a lawsuit by family members of Christopher Barkes, a Delaware man who took his own life within a day of being arrested for violating probation. Jail officials’ failure to set up safeguards to keep him from hanging himself, the court ruled, was not a violation of his civil rights.
    […]

    The night before his death, Barkes called his wife and told her he “can’t live this way any more,” and planned to take this life. The next morning, while still in custody, he hanged himself.

    This failure to properly screen Barkes and take steps to prevent his suicide, his family charged, amounted to cruel and unusual punishment — a violation of his Eighth Amendment rights.

    But a unanimous Supreme Court disagreed. “No decision of this court establishes a right to the proper implementation of adequate suicide prevention protocols,” the court said in a short, unsigned opinion that was decided without briefing or oral arguments. “No decision of this court even discusses suicide screening or prevention protocols.”

    In other words, Barkes had no right to be kept alive while in custody.

    If that sounds harsh, it’s because the dirty little secret of the case is that it was less about “a troubled man with a long history of mental health and substance abuse problems,” as the court put it, and more about the controversial doctrine of qualified immunity, a legal shield the Supreme Court created decades ago to protect government officials accused of constitutional wrongdoing.

    The law of qualified immunity is thorny and rife with controversy. But as characterized by the court, its purpose is as simple as it is overarching: It “protects all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law” from being sued. And not just any law, but “clearly established” law at the time of the violation.

    Plaintiffs seldom overcome this legal bar. And here, since there was no law or “clearly established” right in 2004, when Barkes died, mandating Delaware jail officials institute methods that would protect people like him from themselves, no violation occurred. That is, everything the jail did or did not do in its dealings with Barkes was perfectly reasonable and lawful at the time.

    “In short,” the Supreme Court wrote, “even if the institution’s suicide screening and prevention measures contained the shortcomings that (Barkes’ relatives) allege, no precedent on the books in November 2004 would have made clear to (jail officials) that they were overseeing a system that violated the Constitution.”

    Homan Square: US congressman calls for inquiry into ‘shocking’ detentions, the Guardian. The Guardian seems more intent on maintaining coverage on this than some US media.

    Danny Davis, the US congressman who represents the home district of Homan Square, said he would personally seek a meeting with police superintendent Garry McCarthy to learn the “rationale” for a practice – stretching back at least a decade – of holding Americans without a public record of their whereabouts or access to a lawyer while interrogating them at the police site, known as Homan Square.

    “It’s hard to imagine and it’s just as difficult to understand the rationale for this kind of action,” Davis, the longtime Democratic representative of Chicago’s West Side, said late on Wednesday.

    “I think a city council hearing would be the best place … [for] an official oversight look at what is being done.”

    Davis said he would talk to members of the Chicago city council to press them for what would be the first proper examination of Homan Square since the Guardian revealed its usage for detentions and interrogations in February.

    On Wednesday, the Guardian revealed the initial results of a transparency lawsuit it filed to uncover the extent of Homan Square’s emergence as what ex-detainees, lawyers and activists describe as the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

    The lawsuit compelled the Chicago police to disclose that over 3,500 people – 82% of whom a Guardian independent investigation found to be black – have been subject to detention at Homan Square, with only three documented visits from lawyers to the building since September 2004. (The Guardian was able to compile eight other incidences in which lawyers at the very least knew their clients were held at Homan Square.)

    Neither the Chicago police nor the office of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose administration has presided over at least 2,522 of the detentions, responded to requests for comment before or after the Guardian published the cache of Homan Square files on Wednesday. Both have insisted there is nothing untoward about the warehouse.

    Davis has in the past several months attempted to compel transparency and oversight into Homan Square. In March, he and Cook County commissioner Richard Boykin personally delivered a letter to then-attorney general Eric Holder requesting a US Justice Department inquiry.

    Responding to the new Guardian revelations, Boykin said: “What is happening at Homan Square is symptomatic of what is taking place across the country, in regards to our law enforcement.”

    “This hands-off approach brings into question the integrity of the justice department and whether or not they can be fair,” he told the Guardian on Thursday. “I think they have failed the citizens of Chicago, especially those who have been arrested and rounded up.”

    But the county commissioner remained confident that the justice department in Washington could do more than the Chicago police department would to reform itself, or Emanuel to speak out more than his brief statement that the police “follow all the rules”.

    “I don’t think we can expect the local forces here – and that is Mayor Emmanuel and Chief McCarthy – to do anything about this,” he continued. “That is like asking the fox to guard the chickens.”

    More at the link.

    Mumia Abu-Jamal files suit over prison’s refusal to provide medical care

    On March 30, 2015, Abu-Jamal was rushed to the hospital after losing consciousness and going into diabetic shock. Although prison medical staff were aware that Abu-Jamal had a dangerously high blood glucose level of 419 on March 6, they failed to treat, monitor, or even inform Abu-Jamal of his condition. Glucose levels like those that Abu-Jamal had can result in diabetic shock, diabetic coma, and death.

    Abu-Jamal’s diabetic shock came in the midst of an escalating year-long health crisis that began with a rash in August 2014. The skin condition grew in intensity over the course of the next several months, eventually covering most of his body with a painful, severe rash that is resistant to conventional treatments. The skin condition is abnormal in its duration and intensity, and has led to lesions, open wounds, and swelling.

    The lawsuit filed yesterday seeks injunctive relief for prison medical staff’s failure to treat Abu-Jamal’s active Hepatitis C. Recent blood tests provided at the insistence of Abu-Jamal, his lawyers, and consulting doctors have confirmed that Abu-Jamal has active Hepatitis C, which has likely been the underlying cause of his health crisis. Despite the undeniable medical evidence that he is in need of treatment for his Hepatitis C, prison medical staff is refusing to provide any.

    Advances in Hepatitis C treatment in recent years have revolutionized the way the disease is treated, with new direct-acting anti-viral medications that have had over 95% success rates in curing the illness in clinical trials. The medications, however, are extraordinarily expensive in the United States due to monopoly pricing practices by the pharmaceutical companies that have patented them.

    The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has yet to promulgate a new protocol for treating Hepatitis C with the new medications, meaning that the estimated 10,000-plus people in DOC custody who have Hepatitis C are not receiving any treatment.

    A year after Ferguson, 6 in 10 Americans say changes are needed to give blacks and whites equal rights. A bare majority, but a start, I suppose.

    A growing number of Americans say the country needs more changes to give blacks equal rights, according to a new Washington Post poll — the latest evidence that events in the year since Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Mo., almost one year ago have fueled fundamental concerns about racial equality.

    The Post poll found 60 percent saying the nation needs to continue making changes to give blacks and whites equal rights, while 37 percent say those changes have already been made. The findings mark a shift from a 2014 Pew Research Center poll asking the same question. Back then, prior to Ferguson, 46 percent said more changes were needed to guarantee equal treatment.

    [11 a.m. Update: A Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday also finds a significant shift on the same survey question since 2014, with the public saying by 59 to 32 percent that more changes are needed to give blacks and whites equal rights. The poll finds 50 percent saying racism is a “big problem” in U.S. society, up from 33 percent in 2010. Their full report is here.]

    The public’s shift on this broad question follows changing views on related issues over the past year. A July New York Times/CBS News poll plumbing racial issues in-depth found growing numbers saying race relations in the country are in bad shape, that the criminal justice system is biased against blacks and that blacks do not have an equal chance as whites to get ahead in society.

    This and that and graphs at the link.

  258. rq says

    A year after Ferguson, whites are far more likely to admit racism is a problem

    After a year of high-profile police shootings of black Americans, many captured on video, racial attitudes among Americans — particularly whites — have undergone a significant shift, several newly released polls have found.

    A majority of whites now say the country needs to do more to make equal rights a reality, and substantially more whites say that blacks are treated less fairly than others by law enforcement officials.

    The share who say that racism is a “big problem” in the U.S. has grown significantly as well.

    Asked whether the country “needs to continue making changes to give blacks equal rights with whites” or whether it already has “made the changes needed,” Americans by just short of 2-1 now say more change is needed, according to a new survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

    A majority of whites, 53 percent, agrees that more change is needed, according to the Pew survey and a separate poll by the Washington Post and ABC News, which asked the same question. The polls come around the Aug. 9 anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, the black teenager whose shooting by an officer in Ferguson, Mo., focused new attention on police use of force against blacks and other racial minorities.

    That’s a significant shift. For the past several years, fewer than four in 10 whites have said that more change was needed, while a majority of whites consistently said that the country already had “made the changes needed.”

    Among African-Americans, a large majority has long said the country needs to make more changes, but that share has grown in the past year, with 86 percent now holding that view, Pew found. Latinos also say by large margins that more changes are needed.

    A big part of the shift in attitudes among whites has come among Republicans. A majority of those who identify as Republican says that the country already has made the necessary changes. But the share who say the country needs to change more has grown 15 points over the past year, Pew found.

    Asked how significant racism is in the U.S., half of the country now says it is a “big problem,” Pew found, up from one-third who said so five years ago and one-quarter who held that view at the time Barack Obama was inaugurated as the nation’s first black president.

    Among whites, just over four in 10 now see racism as a “big problem,” up from one in four when the question was last asked in 2010. A majority of blacks, 73 percent, and Latinos, 58 percent, call racism a big problem.

    A third poll, by Gallup, asked Americans whether they believe blacks are treated less fairly than others in a variety of situations. The poll found significant increases since 2007, when the question was last asked, on each of the situations asked about.

    Just over four in 10 Americans say blacks are treated less fairly in dealing with the police, the poll found. As in the other surveys, the change in attitudes mostly came from a shift in white opinion.

    This IS good.

    After a year of high-profile killings by police, Americans’ views on race have shifted, LA Times on the same.

    Ferguson turns down initial Justice Department plan, asks for time to come up with an alternative, because they did so well on their own previously, right?

    With the anniversary of Michael Brown’s shooting only days away, the city appears to have rebuffed a Justice Department draft proposal to reform Ferguson’s police and courts and requested more time to come up with a counteroffer.

    Comments from one council member suggest that the distance between the two sides may have more to do with finances than anything else.

    “We feel that what they are asking would financially ruin the city,” Councilman Brian Fletcher said.

    Fletcher declined to be specific about what he and others found unacceptable in the DOJ’s proposal, but he said the council was unanimous in its agreement to request more time to come up with an alternative.

    Other city officials downplayed the significance of the back-and-forth between the city and the federal agency, which, last March, denounced the practices of the city’s court and police department in a widely publicized report.

    “Let me just put this in perspective,” said Councilman Wesley Bell. “The DOJ didn’t expect us to accept their first proposal. This is just part of the negotiations. That’s all. You want $200. You ask for $400.”

    Mayor James Knowles III declined to characterize the talks except to say that they were ongoing and that no member of the city council was authorized to speak on behalf of the city.

    Knowles said no vote had been taken in regards to the proposal.

    That comment about financial ruin makes me think they just don’t want to let go of their ticketing scheme.

    The Kids Of Ferguson Rise Up

    Last summer, Ferguson became the most notorious small town in America after Darren Wilson, a white police officer, shot and killed Michael Brown Jr., an unarmed 18-year-old black teenager. In the days following Brown’s death, outraged citizens took to West Florissant to protest the killing and demand that the Ferguson Police Department be held accountable for a history of racial profiling and wanton brutality. These protests would provide the contours for a narrative of racially-tinged police violence that has swept the country, from Staten Island to North Charleston to Baltimore.

    Ferguson is certainly a story about race. But it’s also a story about youth. Michael Brown was a teenager, and so were many of those who protested, and looted, in his name. Nearly one year after his death, MTV News travelled to Ferguson to find out what was really going down on the ground, in its stores, on its corners, and — in particular — within the minds of its young people.

    The future of Ferguson, after all, is predicated on those young people. And, the more I talked to them, the more I learned that making it in Ferguson is really all about navigating the town’s many contradictions. It is, to be sure, a place with a wrong side of the tracks, where the “youth” are monitored by the courts and the police. But it is also a place filled with students who endeavor to envision a better future; a place where people come together to create a strength in numbers — to unify a movement — and, eventually, graduate into a better world.

    A new generation of young leaders is now hoping to create this world. One morning, I pulled up to the intersection of Canfield and Copper Canyon, the precise location where Brown was killed.

    It was hot and hazy outside. I could feel the skin on my neck turning pink as I looked over an informal memorial festooned with purple gorillas in silk boxer shorts; pink bulldogs in red bow ties and nylon flowers stuffed into traffic cones. Someone had left a Buddah bong and about a dozen people had deposited their shoes — sneakers, mainly, and some rubber shower sandals. Signs bearing inspirational messages lined Canfield for some 25 feet. One, in particular, stood out. It read: “They Tried To Bury Us, They Didn’t Know We Are Seeds.”

    Standing beside the memorial, an 18-year-old named Clifton Kinnie was wearing dungarees, work boots, and a Howard University sweatshirt. Clifton told me that he comes to this spot often; it keeps him hungry, he said, for the work that lies ahead.

    Over the past months Clifton and other young activists have been planning #FergusonSummer, a series of non-violent demonstrations that will begin around August 9th, the anniversary of Brown’s death. “I spent a lot of time studying the protests of the Arab Spring,” he said. “That was more than protesting. That was a cultural awakening. Those people were ready to stand up against tear gas and rubber bullets — even live gun fire.”

    Clifton and his friends want to honor Brown’s legacy by overturning their town’s reputation from a hotbed of racism to a font of hope. That, they hope, will become Ferguson’s real legacy.

    [Part II]

    Ferguson is essentially two different cities, divided by (you can’t make this stuff up) an actual railroad track.

    Once you make that stately left onto West Florissant, a familiar scene unfolds, one that could appear in any small American town that has known better days — there is a yellow stucco building with a neon sign bearing the words, “Pawn Center.” Nearby is a Family Dollar and a shuttered mattress store. Strip malls — squat and bleached by the sun — stretch for what seems like eternity.

    Then there’s Furniture for Less; The Nail Trap; Primetime Beauty and Barbershop; Checks Cashed & Loans. At the corner of West Florissant and Ferguson Road sits the Ferguson Market & Liquor store where Mike Brown stole the cigarillos and shoved the store-owner.

    Beside the liquor store stands the McDonald’s that was featured prominently in the media’s coverage of last year’s demonstrations. Chop suey restaurants are plentiful. Jaywalking is rampant. There are no trees; the only greenery in sight are weeds. A sprawling self-storage facility gives off an industrial vibe. On shutters at Sam’s Meat Market & More, there are posters for menthol cigarettes, light beer, and photographs of two black hands raised in surrender. “No Justice. No Peace” was spray-painted on the outside of Red’s Original BBQ.

    I passed an empty lot where the torched QuikStop gas station and mini-mart used to stand. The charred remains were only recently removed, leaving behind a bare paved lot with the words “FUCK THE POLICE” painted in white on the pavement. I could count the number of white folks that I saw on one hand.

    But if you don’t make that left onto West Florissant, and instead take South Florissant Avenue, a whole other town emerges. St. Louis and its surrounding municipalities are infamously segregated. Missouri was a slave state, and the first in the country to be segregated by ballot measures.

    When a small black section of the town was settled in the 1960s, African-Americans were legally forbidden from entering the main drag after dark. In the decades since, zoning laws, deed restrictions, prejudiced real estate agents, tax code, insurance and banking regulations, among other things, have kept blacks away from whites.

    Those practices are no longer upheld but they still cast a very long shadow. The side streets off of South Florissant Avenue feature big craftsman homes with professionally landscaped yards. Many have placards stuck in the lawn that read: “I ♡ Ferguson.” South Florissant Avenue, indeed, seems like Main Street, U.S.A.: there are coffee shops, a bakery, a store to buy frozen custard, which is really just fancy ice cream, a yoga studio, a wine bar, a cigar bar, a brew pub, bakeries and coffee shops, a farmers’ market, and a caravan of high-end food trucks.

    It was green and leafy. There was shade. White women in capris and Crocs. One such person said that the whole terrible Mike Brown mess was a tragedy for that boy, his parents, and this town, which finally seemed to be heading in the right direction before the riots. She hadn’t participated in the healing, though. She told me that she didn’t go to any of the vigils or demonstrations.

    On this side of the tracks, the police and fire stations were gleaming, modern constructions. January Wabash Memorial Park has a beautiful public pool with a cork-screwy water slide. The park is filled with trees memorializing the dead. Last year one was planted in remembrance of Mike Brown.

    In less than 24 hours it was hacked apart and the plaque was stolen. When I tried to find the saplings remains, I discovered that the leaves were brown, the limbs decrepit.
    […]

    As I met dozens of teens, I attempted a mental calculus that went something like this: how does the skinny guy from the McDonald’s get to New York and make it as an artist? What kind of job would he need to find to save the money to move there and find an apartment? Who does he know that can help him with a job? What are the chances that a clip of George rhyming blows up on YouTube and he becomes the next Nelly? How many hours of writing, of practice, are required? What are the odds the right person will see the video? The numbers never compute.

    There is also another, more subtle but very real problem: jail. Even if Ferguson’s town manager and police chief have been replaced in the wake of Mike Brown’s death, and even if FYI administrators try to help kids get their lives on track, the town has long leaned on the police to make up for tax shortfalls by creating revenue. One option: targeting African-Americans for needless tickets and fines that the officials know their citizens can’t pay.

    Data collected by the FPD from 2012 to 2014 shows that African-Americans account for 85 percent of vehicle stops, 90 percent of citations, and 93 percent of arrests, according to a Department of Justice report issued this past spring. When the citizens can’t pay those fines, the municipal courts impose unduly harsh penalties. These people wind up going to jail for minor infractions; the court issued 9,000 arrest warrants in 2013, most of them coming from unpaid parking tickets and housing code violations. That’s almost half the people that live in Ferguson.

    To fill its coffers, Ferguson’s cops could literally stop you if they don’t like the manner in which you’re walking. They could ticket you for trespassing for cutting through a parking lot to get to a bus stop. Many stops resulted in multiple citations, like Jacoby’s vague “Failure to Comply” penalty. (From 2012-2014 the cops issued four or more citations during a single stop 73 times.)

    Over time, this profit mongering led to recklessness. I heard, over and over again, that Mike Brown wasn’t the first case; it was just the one that we all learned about. According to the Department of Justice’s investigation, the FPD’s method of policing was illegal and unconstitutional. They routinely violated the Fourth Amendment rights of their citizens with illegal stops and searches and the use of excessive force. They violated the First Amendment right to freedom of expression. And they broke the Fourteenth Amendment, and a whole mess of federal laws, for basing police practices, “in part,” as the D.O.J. put it, on discriminatory intent.
    […]

    Last year, after the protests died down, a race summit for St. Louis-area schools was announced. There was room at the conference for seven students from McCluer North High School, a predominantly black school on the very northern edge of Ferguson. Teachers and administrators were tasked with picking seven student-leaders.

    They selected Thomas Justin, who spent the last days of the summer before his senior year protesting Mike Brown’s death. Thomas is soft-spoken but fierce. He told me that over the years he’d witnessed both of his parents mistreated by the police. Once, as a kid, he had been left in a parked squad car for three hours. “My parents always told me that in Ferguson and around that area — Berkeley, Hazelwood, Riverview — the police department has never been fond of black people. If you get caught outside, when the sun is going down, they’ll find a reason to mess with you.” His parents told him never to fight back if he was stopped by the police.

    Another student chosen for the summit was Jacquez Webb. When the protests started he wrapped his shirt over his face and rushed right into the fray. One night he saw an officer mocking the demonstrators — throwing his hands up in the air and begging another officer not to shoot; both police laughed. Jacquez, though, didn’t find it funny. “The cops sit there and they smile at you. That’s why we come up to them in their faces and look them directly in their eyes. It’s like a face-to-face confrontation. I’m gonna look you back in the eyes and smile and if you try something, I’m gonna try something. I’m not gonna just let you do something.” Jacquez has been reading about social issues like the school-to-jail pipeline and the prison-industrial complex. His idol is Marcus Garvey, the Black Nationalist leader.

    Ksean Collard, another student leader, learned about Mike Brown via social media. He went to community meetings and vigils and church services and absorbed the wisdom of clergymen and leaders. “This wasn’t an isolated incident,” he told me. “This was just the first time there were witnesses. The first time the media found out.”

    Niger Moore was also picked for the race summit. She had a strong interest in social justice. Ksean called her and asked her what she was going to do about it. “‘If I’m old enough to die, then I’m old enough to lead a group of people,’” she said. She went out to the protests and left feeling as though singing and chanting and marching was good for very little. Unarmed black people were still going to be killed. She wanted to find other ways to manufacture change.

    At the summit, last January, the kids from McCluer sat with students from Parkway North, a white school twenty minutes away. They spoke for hours about segregation, institutionalized racism, privilege, and bias. The kids from Ferguson described what it was like living there after the riots, about fires and street closures. They identified problems, and drummed up solutions. When they saw self-segregation in the lunchroom, for instance, they vowed to make other students aware.

    “On the bus ride home, we were talking about how if you wanna see the change, you need to be the change. We decided to be the change,” Ksean told me. “We came up with a mission: Better ourselves, better our school, and watch that spread out to our community.” They called this movement, “The Vision.”

    More at the link. So much youth and potential.

    Michael Brown’s Mother on Darren Wilson: ‘The Devil. That’s What Comes to Mind’, The Root looks at the Al Jazeera interview.

    And here, let’s here it for reverse racism: Brooke Hogan Defends Father Hulk Hogan, Says She Was Once Told White People Smell Like Bologna. I’m sorry, when I stop laughing, I may blockquote.
    Then again, I may not.

  259. rq says

    National civil rights attorney takes on Tulsa case of ‘Trey’ Bird

    On the night of February 4th, Monroe Bird III, known to his family as “Trey,” was in the parking lot of the Deerfield Estates apartment complex in Tulsa with a teenaged girl.

    Security guard Ricky Stone approached the vehicle, demanding to know who they were and what they were doing there.

    At some point, Stone pulled a gun and fired into the car, striking Monroe in the neck and leaving him paralyzed.

    Stone’s story was that Monroe tried to run over him, and he fired in self-defense, invoking Oklahoma’s “stand your ground” law.

    But Monroe’s family has said from day one the story didn’t add up, and his stepfather, Johnny Magness, has spoken with KRMG several times about the shooting.

    Trey Monroe died June 30th, after he was forced to leave the hospital because the insurance company would no longer pay benefits.

    In March, the family contacted civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who gained a national reputation during the Trayvon Martin case in Florida.

    Crump came to Tulsa Tuesday, and with Tulsa attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons, argued the two main contentions they plan to take to court.

    First, they say Stone can not use the “stand your ground” defense because he was breaking the law at the time of the shooting.

    Specifically, he was under the influence of marijuana, and in possession of the illegal drug as well.

    “If you’re engaged in an illegal activity, a criminal act, then you can’t get the benefit of ‘stand your ground,'” Crump said Monday. “And we know that he had illegal drugs in his system at the time that he shot Monroe Bird.”

    But more importantly, the attorneys say Stone’s account of shooting in self-defense can not be factual.

    They claim that the gunfire immediately paralyzed Monroe – but the car was driven forward after the shooting, meaning Monroe would have had to stop the car, put it in drive, turn the wheel and pull away (the vehicle ended up hitting a tree) all after he was already paralyzed.

    “There’s no way possible he could be backing up, get shot, paralyzed, put it in drive, and end up 50 to 75 yards from where the shooting happened,” said Solomon-Simmons. “So that is – to be a real lawyerly speak – a boldfaced lie. He was shot as he was driving away, unjustly.”

    MichaelBrown’s father requests 4.5 moments of silence at 11:55 a.m., Aug. 9., followed by silent walk from Canfield

    Ferguson Class of 2014, “The students who graduated with Michael Brown had only hope and promise ahead of them. And a year after Brown’s tragic death, somehow they still do. Here are their stories.”

    Michael Brown was shot and killed one year ago by Police Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. His death ignited riots, set off protests around the country and inspired the
    Black Lives Matter movement.

    Brown graduated high school a few weeks before he died. He was eighteen years old. Eighteen is that delicious moment in life, a time of new beginnings. The promise of the future is bright. Brown’s death hit his classmates especially hard. Normandy High School was a family, they say. The students called each other brothers and sisters. And when they lost Brown, it was like losing a member of that family.

    The Huffington Post talked to several of Brown’s classmates. Despite their grief, they have carried on. Some started college. One embarked on a career in home health care; another is studying graphic design. But all of them are forever scarred by how Brown died at the hands of the police. All of them say they believe it could have been their body left on the pavement for hours. Below, they share their stories, reflecting on the past and looking to the future.

    These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

    Interviews and videos at the link.

    US police killings headed for 1,100 this year, with black Americans twice as likely to die

    Police in the United States are killing people at a rate that would result in 1,100 fatalities by the end of this year, according to a Guardian investigation, which recorded an average of three people killed per day during the first half of 2015.

    The Counted, a project working to report and crowdsource names and a series of other data on every death caused by law enforcement in the US this year, found that 547 people had been killed by the end of June.

    In total, 478 of those people were shot and killed, while 31 died after being shocked by a Taser, 16 died after being struck by police vehicles, and 19 – including 25-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore – have died after altercations in police custody.

    When adjusted to accurately reflect the US population, the totals indicate that black people are being killed by police at more than twice the rate of white and Hispanic or Latino people. Black people killed by police were also significantly more likely to have been unarmed.

    Post-racial America, folks.

    One year later: Ferguson is still pumping out arrest warrants, yeah but stopping would destroy them economically, so… what’s your problem?

    A year after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown sparked a firestorm in Ferguson, the city is still pumping out thousands of new arrest warrants and jailing people over minor offenses, according to an exclusive CNNMoney analysis.

    This practice continues despite a scathing report from the Department of Justice in March that found that Ferguson’s police department and municipal court were unconstitutionally targeting low-income and minority residents with tickets and fines for minor offenses — often in pursuit of revenue. The report noted that there were more than 16,000 people (residents and non-residents alike) with outstanding arrest warrants as of the end of last year, equivalent to around 75% of the town’s population.

    While the police were the ones giving out the tickets, the DOJ slammed the city’s court for using arrest warrants to squeeze money out of the people least able to afford the fines. Even though there need to be repercussions for people who break the law and ignore their tickets, the DOJ says jail time is far too harsh a punishment for infractions that rarely pose a major threat to public safety.

    But in the wake of the DOJ report, CNNMoney found that Ferguson is still at it. The city has issued more than 2,300 new arrest warrants so far this year and thousands of older warrants continue to haunt people — even as neighboring municipalities are wiping out old tickets or warrants entirely.

    But that number, provided to CNNMoney by the state, only tells part of the story. So CNNMoney decided to zero in on the underlying offenses that are leading to these warrants. Getting this information wasn’t easy. At first, CNNMoney filed a public records request for data showing all offenses that have led to outstanding warrants, which was denied. CNNMoney then turned to a state committee of judges, which ultimately ordered Ferguson to release the city’s court records. But then the city said it doesn’t store these records digitally and could only make paper copies available.

    So CNNMoney analyzed more than 700 pages of paper court dockets from the two most recent months available at the time, April and May.
    […]

    “They’re still engaging in racial profiling, still over-enforcing and still issuing too many warrants,” said Brendan Roediger, a professor at St. Louis University School of Law who is representing plaintiffs in two lawsuits against Ferguson over its municipal court operations.

    So all that talk about slow change or any change at all seems rather false.

    States With New Voting Restrictions Since the 2010 Election, information from the Brennan Center for Justice.

    Election laws have long been prone to politicization, but the 2010 election marked a major shift. From early 2011 until the 2012 election, state lawmakers across the country introduced at least 180 restrictive voting bills in 41 states. Ultimately, 19 states passed 27 restrictive voting measures, many of which were overturned or weakened by courts, citizen-led initiatives, and the Department of Justice before the 2012 election. States continued to pass restrictions in 2013, 2014, and 2015, although to a lesser degree.

    What is the cumulative effect of this legislative movement? This page details the new voting restrictions in place in 21 states since the 2010 midterm election. In 15 states, these restrictions will be in effect for the first time in a presidential election in 2016.

    Those 15 states are: Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

    A bit more at the link.

  260. rq says

    Commentary: Jonathan Ferrell faced three officers; only the white one used deadly force

    If you are white and think cops are unfairly criticized, you see yet another black man who could still be alive if only he awaited police orders and obeyed them.

    If you are black and you see a pattern of fatally biased policing, you see one more white officer so physically intimidated by the thought of the “big bad black man” that he picks deadly force as his first option instead of the last.

    Opinions won’t divide neatly and solely along racial lines, of course. But like it or not, your racial background goes a long way toward determining how you see such matters in this country. And because the moment Ferrell and Kerrick collide happens off-camera, our biases and preconceptions flow into our reactions.

    I have always suspected that Kerrick’s biggest hurdle at trial wouldn’t necessarily be the video, but the actions of the two police officers who joined him that night.

    The standard at issue in this trial is whether a reasonable officer, confronted with the same circumstances, would take the same action Kerrick did.

    Usually, that other “reasonable officer” is a hypothetical. Here, there are two other real officers.

    And they are both African-American.

    One, Officer Adam Neal, didn’t pull any weapon. He testified that he expected a violent confrontation, but figured on subduing Ferrell by fighting him.

    The other, Officer Thornell Little, pulled out his Taser, fired and missed.

    Kerrick pulled his service revolver.

    Similar situation. Three officers. Three responses.

    It will be up to the jury to decide whether Kerrick, now an officer charged with voluntary manslaughter, was a law-upholding cop or an extrajudicial killer that night.

    But it is not a coincidence that the white officer is the only one of the three to pull his service revolver.

    I’m not saying Kerrick was or is a racist. I’m saying he was afraid – more afraid than the two black officers out there that night.

    I’m saying that, when confronted with a black suspect or subject – especially a black man – the level of force that seems reasonable to an officer often depends on the color of that officer’s skin.

    In a country where blindfolded Lady Justice symbolizes our quest for impartial courts, that’s a problem. A huge problem.

    Stop being afraid, white officers!

    “That’s Our Standard in Policing … Fear”

    This past year has seen an enormous amount of attention paid to the toxic divide between police departments and the poor, black communities they serve. One thing we’ve learned is that tribal loyalty often prevents police officers from criticizing each other or their departments publicly—and at least sometimes, they lie when one of their own faces charges of misconduct. That’s why the recent emergence of Michael Wood Jr., a retired Baltimore cop, as a critic of law enforcement culture landed with impact: His voice was the relatively rare one that spoke with the knowledge of an insider but the unforgiving skepticism of an outsider.

    In this video, you’ll meet Wood while he drives the streets of the city where he served as a police officer for 11 years, and hear him lay out his conception of what’s going wrong in the world of policing and how it could be made right.

    Only have a minute? Here are the parts you shouldn’t miss:

    At 2:40, Wood describes his biggest fear while working on the force.

    At 6:20, he identifies the type of officers who are most likely to act irrationally in high-stress situations.

    At 8:10, Wood pivots to a systemic problem throughout the force: how easily anger among officers can turn toxic.

    At 10:30, Wood offers his own proposal to change the cycle.

    Video at the link.

    Ferguson’s radical knitters: “If someone asks me what I’m doing, I say, ‘I’m knitting for black liberation”

    In a coffeehouse on the south side of St Louis, a group of women discuss how to knit, purl and dismantle white supremacy.

    They are The Yarn Mission, a collective formed in October 2014 in response to the violence and police brutality in nearby Ferguson, Missouri.

    The Yarn Mission seeks to “use yarn to promote action and change to eradicate racism, sexism, and other systems of oppression”. The group, founded by CheyOnna Sewell, a PhD student in criminology, seeks to spark conversation about race and police brutality by engaging with curious passersby as they knit, all while providing a comforting activity for beleaguered activists.

    “As a black woman, you’re invisible,” says Taylor Payne, a member of the group. “But knitting makes people stop and have a conversation with you. If someone asks me what I’m doing, I say, ‘I’m knitting for black liberation.’ Sometimes they respond and sometimes I just get ‘Oh, my grandma knits,’ like the person didn’t hear me. But at least it opens the door to talking about my experiences.”

    Sewell and Payne are protesters who have been active in the Ferguson movement since it began last summer. According to Sewell, the Yarn Mission forces local citizens to see Ferguson activists in different ways.

    “People who would never otherwise talk to you will engage with you about what you’re doing,” she says. “They come to see that the people who are out in the street are very nice, and that we are openly talking about race and racism. The group provides a path into the movement that people aren’t even looking for.”

    Though anyone can join the Yarn Mission, the group consists mainly of black St Louis women who meet every other Sunday to knit and chat in parks and coffee shops. The number of knitters present at each session has ranged from a few to more than 20, with women of all ages participating. One of the group’s goals is to encourage community engagement by knitting in public spaces, with the members’ colorful handmade items serving as the impetus to a surprising conversation.

    “People consistently underestimate the power of knitting,” says Sewell. “They don’t recognize its radical properties. They’re always surprised when they talk to us about what why we’re knitting, like, ‘Is she talking about racism right now? Did she really just say ‘police brutality?’”
    […]

    The women who participate in the Yarn Mission view it as a form of activism, but it is one that helps relieve stress. They cannot escape structural racism, but coming together to knit offers solace in a community exhausted by police brutality.

    “It’s scary,” Sewell says, “because the police will come after you, no matter how organized and important the work is that’s being done. Knitting offers a little relaxation and relief. It shows we can come together in other ways too, in places that feel a little safer.”

    The group has found support from local yarn shops like Knitorious, which has donated yarn, and in advocates like St Louis Rabbi Susan Talve, who has helped the women expand their business network. The Yarn Mission sells their goods, seeing it as a path to self-sufficiency. They hope to shop their wares in farmers markets and craft expos, and are planning to reach out to the younger generation.

    “I have a meeting with the principal of the Ferguson-Florissant elementary school to talk about being involved in their afterschool program,” says Payne. “I want kids to see the possibilities of creativity and entrepreneurship, and to have an artistic outlet. That’s never taught. In school you’re taught how to be an employee and work for someone else.”

    The Yarn Mission plans to expand as Sewell relocates to Minneapolis while Payne teaches knitting at the St Louis branch. Sewell hopes The Yarn Mission will one day become a national organization.

    “Knitting can help you feel productive,” she adds. “When so much of what we do as activists is pursuing social and racial justice, it’s easy to feel like we’re not accomplishing anything. For me, the feeling that I’m finishing something is really critical.”

    Love it.

  261. rq says

    So You Want To Be Activist, Now What?

    You see the pictures of inspiring men and women marching and protesting. Activists are on your page, and there are hash tag slap fights going on in your social media feed. And you want to get involved, you want to be an ally. You want to be an Activist you don’t quite no what. So let me be the first to welcome you.

    Welcome to the world of Activism.

    Here is your Ally Cookie.

    [delicious ally cookie]

    Enjoy it, because this is the only one that you are going to get.

    But you still have questions, and while you munch on your delicious ally cookie you are standing awkwardly wondering what you are supposed to do next.

    What am I supposed to do as an ally / activist?

    Listen.

    That’s it. In fact I almost could just end the post right here with Listen. Find the voices of the marginalized group you are identifying with or want to be an ally for. And listen to them.

    Don’t go seeking out people who are not marginalized and see what they have to say about the marginalized groups. In fact, if you take this so seriously that you close this page right now and find advice from a person of color I would be more than happy with that. Because it is not right that my white voice is the one being listened to. But we are here, and we are going to learn together.
    And when you are listening, when you feel those strong objections come up. When you want to say “Not all are like that!” choke it down. Bottle up that discomfort. Realize that this is a place to start to empathize, because as uncomfortable as you feel right now, they feel like that all the time.

    Now you need to do something with all of those difficult feelings, I suggest you weaponize your privilege and use it for good.

    I don’t know how to behave or what I should do when I am at an event.

    Listen and follow directions.

    It’s just like grade school.

    If you are at an organized event they will tell you where to march, stand, or go. They will often share talking points or give directions. Be mindful of what you chant along with. When they ask you to Say His / Her Name, you can say their name. But if you are White you shouldn’t say Hands Up Don’t Shoot.

    I’m just afraid I am going to lose friends / family over this

    You are.

    Get over it.

    People are dieing. But you might lose some friends.

    People are being murdered. But you are worried Thanksgiving is going to be awkward.

    People are suffering from PTSD simply because every day in the world is a traumatic event. But someone is going to say something hurtful to you on social media.

    Get. Over. It. Do the work.

    Applies to all allyship, I suppose, but for the moment, I aim this at us white folk trying to do better by our black friends and non-friends.

    #UNITEDWEFIGHT, schedule of events for this weekend, starting this evening, actually.

    It has been almost one year since the murder of Michael Brown, Jr. and the uprising that followed. Our movement has grown immensely and here in Ferguson and St. Louis, we continue to fight for all those who have been lost. From August 7-10th, we will stand together, united in purpose, as we uphold our commitment to this movement for Black Lives.

    Over the last year, our movement has made it clear that Ferguson is Everywhere. That’s why we’re using the hashtag #UnitedWeFight — because we lift up and demand justice not just for Michael Brown, Jr., but for Sandra Bland, for Cary Ball, for Yvette Smith, for Kajieme Powell, for Dontre Hamilton, for Taneisha Anderson, for Vonderrit Myers and for far too many more.

    We invite you to join us in St. Louis for the Anniversary Weekend. We have a huge variety of events planned including mass meetings, rallies, concerts and protests. If you can’t join us, we ask that you plan solidarity actions in your own communities. We ask that groups honor Michael Brown Jr by participating in a four and a half minute National Moment of Silence on Sunday, August 9th at 11:55AM CST. We also ask groups to join us in a day of mass civil disobedience by planning Moral Monday actions for August 10th. Investigations and reports are not enough. We must demand federal intervention into the systematic terror against people of color by police.

    How Much Do Black Lives Really Matter To Our White Friends? Yep, another post aimed at us white folk! Because dismantling white supremacy shouldn’t be the job of black people – it’s up to us to take ownership and responsibility for our inadvertent membership of the privileged group.

    “Sandra Bland.”

    I said her name and it sat there in the air between us, met with nary a hint of recognition.

    “Sandra Bland…?”

    I was talking to one of my closest and most cherished friends in the world, and it became clear that almost two weeks after news of her inexplicable death broke, he was completely unaware of the incident.

    I felt a surge of emotion crop up and electrify the already emotional response I have to thinking about Sandra Bland, to saying her name, even to typing it out right now. I suppressed it. Pushed it to the way back of my mind, and carried on the conversation.

    I had brought the despicable incident up in the first place because my friend works in the visual arts and I wanted to ask him about that “mugshot.” Many of us have questioned and scrutinized and hypothesized about the initial images released to the public, and the idea that she might have been laying down or possibly even already dead in the widely circulated picture was being debated all over my social media feeds.

    (Video was subsequently released allegedly disputing this, but we were also fed doctored dashcam footage, so the hypotheses continue.)

    In fact, #SandraBland had been dominating my social media consumption since her untimely death. And yet, here was my friend; my intelligent, successful, socially aware, enlightened friend, surprised to learn that this terrible thing had happened.

    He’s white, I thought. This is what it’s like to be white.

    That’s the thought that I immediately swatted away, as soon as it came bubbling to the surface. It felt dismissive and rude. Perhaps even bigoted. Definitely reductive, and most certainly insulting. My friend grabbed his iPad and got to Googling, emitting groans at each link he clicked on. I told him my perspective, asked some specific questions about Photoshop and gravity and shadows and light, he gave me his professionally informed opinion, and we moved on to another topic.

    How could you not have heard about this?, I thought. How is it that I am the one to tell you, and after all this time has passed?

    But we had moved on to another topic.

    In the days since that conversation, I’ve sat with that nasty feeling and done my best to parse it. I certainly don’t blame my friend for being white, or for living his life in a way that didn’t include awareness of this particular tragic death in Texas. And yet, I couldn’t deny my reaction.

    This horror, this scenario that I’ve envisioned in my nightmares and obsessed over during my waking hours, was simply not in his sphere of awareness. It would be one thing if I alone were obsessed, or were part of a fringe group who took a particular interest in this occurrence. On the contrary, my online Black community could speak of little else, mainstream media (prodded by aforementioned online influence, of course) was covering it, hell—even Kim Kardashian joined the conversation, blessing the timeline with a rare Konscious Kardashian tweet declaring Sandra Bland’s death a “#MassiveCoverUp.”

    Also, I’m not talking about a racist, a non-sophisticate, or a fool. He had not just returned from being locked away in a sensory-deprivation hut, nor is he a well-intentioned “ally” who’s really just a self-serving ignoramus. He. Just. Didn’t. Know.

    And I dunno, I’m willing to take black people being dismissive and rude to me for not getting it. Or for getting it wrong. Seems a small price to pay in helping them achieve a better, more equal, place in society. There’s more at the link to ponder.

    Police: Man falls, dies after being stunned by officer’s Taser. It’s another hashtag.

    DeKalb County police have confirmed to Channel 2 Action News that an officer stunned a man with a Taser who then fell to his death.

    Now police have turned over the investigation to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

    Police told Channel 2’s Tyisha Fernandes that the DeKalb police robbery unit was patrolling the area around Flat Shoals Road, and they pulled the suspect over who then ran.

    “When I got out the car, I hit record and that’s where it starts, you see him start running,” said Lewis Wright, who shot cellphone video that shows a man running from police.

    Lewis told Fernandes that he saw the whole thing.

    “I saw them pull the guy over. I guess they told him to get out the car so he got out the car, and all I know I saw him run,” Lewis said.

    Police say the suspect ran from the passenger side of that car, ran by a Family Dollar, then tried to climb a brick wall.

    Police told Fernandes they shocked the man with a Taser while he was on the wall, and that’s when he fell and died.

    “He had the Taser still attached to him. He was handcuffed, but he was unconscious,” witness Natosha Davis said.

    A 12-year-old boy saw the suspect fall. His mother gave permission to speak with Channel 2 Action News, but asked not to identify him.

    “He fell and hit his head and then after that, this girl named Sheniya, her mother tried to see if he was still breathing,” the boy told Fernandes.

    The mother said she tried to perform CPR, but police wouldn’t let her.

    “So I feel like if someone was here to perform CPR, they should allow her to do that,” Davis said.

    DeKalb Police Chief and Director of Public Safety Cedric Alexander was at the scene speaking with investigators.

    The GBI has now picked up the case, because the suspect died.

    Wright told Fernandes you just don’t run from police.

    “I told him to stop, you know? Because a lot of stuff going on and I didn’t want nothing to happen to him. He kept on running,” Wright said.

    And therefore deserved to be tased while being in an ultimately fatal position on that wall? I don’t think so, Wright. I don’t think so.

    A protester, a cop, a new councilman, a child: Views of their town one year after the death of Michael Brown

    The way Jerome Jenkins sees it, Ferguson’s history now falls into three periods: before MB, during MB and after MB.

    Jenkins, 48, is most interested in the “after Michael Brown” period, especially as the first anniversary of the teenager’s shooting death approaches. It’s a complicated “after,” tinged with anger, resentment, sadness. In black Ferguson, he says, there’s still hopelessness. In white Ferguson, disbelief.

    “The white community still doesn’t want to admit how bad it is,” Jenkins tells me as he sifts through the books of his family’s two downtown restaurants, Cathy’s Kitchen and J & C Barbecue and Blues. The latter opened in March, when broken and burned buildings still stood as unhealed wounds of the tragedy that unfolded here. Most have since been bulldozed or rebuilt.

    Jenkins believes his eateries represent the best of Ferguson. Yeah, the gumbo and pulled pork kick ass. But most of all, his restaurants are places, he says, that bridge the race and class divides outed last August 9 by the shooting of an unarmed black teen by a white police officer.

    “This was the only happy spot in all of Ferguson when things went down,” he proclaims. “This was the only place where blacks and whites came together.”

    I tell him I can’t vouch for the “only” part, but it’s true that every time I’ve been inside Cathy’s Kitchen the lunch crowd has been diverse. Protesters ate here; so did police officers.

    That’s the case on this summer afternoon, just a few days ahead of the first anniversary of Brown’s death. Part of it, I suspect, has to do with how Jenkins and his wife, the eponymous Cathy, embrace everyone. They both grew up in predominantly black Gary, Indiana, but chose Ferguson as their new home more than two decades ago. They value community, and their restaurants attract people from all walks of life.

    Everyone in Ferguson sought sanctuary during the darkness last fall, when the air was volatile and filled with bitterness. They sought physical and emotional refuge in churches, in homes, at the library or the community center. For many, Cathy’s Kitchen was a haven, with its cardinal (as in baseball) red walls, checkerboard tiles and the soulful sounds of Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin wafting through the speakers.

    On this day, a busload of folks from nearby Washington University are ending their “tour” of Ferguson at Cathy’s Kitchen with plates of blackened tilapia sandwiches, jerk wings and Memphis-style gumbo. The curious are part of the “after MB” history of Ferguson.

    This was where I met so many people during the tumult of the past year. The unrest that began with Brown’s death last August stretched through the fall to a grand jury decision in November not to indict police officer Darren Wilson. The events ignited a national conversation on race — and on policing as other shootings of unarmed black men by white officers were caught on camera or otherwise came to light across the country.

    Ferguson itself became a symbol — both positive and negative. So on this trip to the St. Louis suburb, I asked some of Ferguson’s residents to take me to the places they feel are emblematic of their city a year after Brown’s death.

    Lots n lots of stories worth reading at the link.

    Run The Jewels on Ferguson: ‘Riots work’

    It is a year since black teenager Michael Brown was shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

    The 18-year-old was unarmed and his shooting led to riots, both in Ferguson and across America.

    Acclaimed rap band Run The Jewels are outspoken on racism and on the night that a grand jury decided not to indict the police officer that killed Brown – sparking the worst riots to date – they drove into the area to perform.

    In this special video for the BBC, Killer Mike and El-P explain why they think riots work and what it was like to perform on such an emotive night.

    Video at the link.

  262. rq says

    DeKalb police: Man falls from wall, dies after officer uses Taser, a slightly more legible version of previously posted article.

    A comment from the GOP debate:

    We shouldn’t be surprised that #BlackLivesMatter would get short shrift in the first Republican debate, but seriously: less than one minute dedicated to the biggest social movement of our time? Just three days before the one-year anniversary of Mike Brown’s death, which began a new civil rights movement?

    [tweet] — deray mckesson (@deray)
    August 7, 2015

    The moderators essentially did not address any issues of criminal justice during the #GOPDebate.[/tweet]

    It was 10:36pm on the East Coast by the time Megyn Kelly (who had been asking good questions most of the evening) posed one of the most awkward questions of the night. She directed her single debate topic on race and policing toward Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, asking him if it was a movement of our time, but really framing it around what to do when policing gets out of hand.

    Kelly addressed the question just to one man, and right before the commercial break – unlike many other sprawling topics from the debate, which were directed to really more candidates, with hopes of invoking the 30-second rebuttal.

    Walker answered, predictably, that bad cops should face consequences, but that most cops are good. The governor dodged racism entirely.

    And then, Fox News cut to commercial, playing a trailer for the Straight Outta Compton movie in at least one market.

    Later on, the last question before closing statements was about race relations, and was addressed to Ben Carson. Again, it was only given to one person – the only black man on stage – and the debate moved on quickly after he dismissed the role of black skin in American society.

    So the pressing question of how Black Lives Matter was given less than two minutes, and was clearly not of much importance to the Republican Party. It still isn’t.

    No indictment for Georgia officer in shooting of teen in 2011– raise your hand if you’re surprised! Mine’s still down.

    A grand jury cleared a former police officer of criminal charges more than three years after shooting and killing an unarmed teenager.

    Late Thursday evening a Fulton County grand jury voted not to indict former Union City police Officer Luther Lewis on any charges.

    This is the second grand jury to hear the shooting case that left Ariston Waiters dead after being shot twice in the back. In May 2012, the first grand jury opted not to indict Officer Luther Lewis on recommended charges of felony murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and violation of oath.

    Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard convened the latest grand jury after a Channel 2 Action News/Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation into evidence and witnesses the first grand jury was never told about.

    The investigation also uncovered concerns that Officer Lewis had suffered from PTSD after serving in Afghanistan.

    Channel 2 Action News saw around 10 witnesses coming and going from the courthouse during the case, including an independent DNA expert who we used in our investigation when we reported that the teen’s DNA was not conclusively found on the officer’s gun.

    “Anybody who’s claimed that this had Mr. Waiters’ DNA on the gun is absolutely wrong. It has millions of people. Even my DNA looks like it’s on that gun,’ Dr. Greg Hampikian, from Boise State University, told Channel 2’s Jodie Fleischer during our investigation.

    In December 2011, Ariston Waiters, 19, ran when police arrived to break up a fight that he was watching.

    He committed no crime and was already lying face down on the ground with one hand in handcuffs when Lewis fired twice into his back. Lewis said Waiters reached behind and upward toward the gun, while still lying face down, but an expert called his statements “self-contradictory” and inconsistent with the forensic evidence during our investigation.

    A Union City police supervisor who never believed the shooting was justified testified Thursday. Channel 2 Action News also talked to a 23-year-old who said the officer crossed the line with him six months before the shooting.

    Private investigator TJ Ward helped provide new information that finally made its way to the grand jury, including a cover-up of prior incidents involving the officer. Ward said there were no winners Thursday.

    “If the administration would have taken the necessary steps early on, when it was identified that he had PTSD, I think Luther Lewis may have not ever been here today,” Ward said.

    Officer Luther Lewis testified before the grand jury for nearly two hours Thursday. Witnesses in the courtroom said he cried during some parts of the testimony.

    Here’s a hankie. Now own up.

    Friend: Ex-Ferguson cop Darren Wilson was a victim too. Not citing, not watching the video, you’re welcome to. A victim who had something towards the tune of 2 million dollars donated to him, and who has not learned anything – neither about himself, nor his job, nor anything. Victim. *spits*

    The 5 Worst States for Black People. Reposted for something like the third time at least, but let’s hear it one more time, as the #1 worst state presents its governor as a Republican candidate. Nice.

    the first to throw a brick at stonewall was Marsha P. Johnson, a black trans drag queen. why whitewash her history? Yeah the movie kinda fucked up. When I say ‘kinda’ here, I mean ‘absolutely and completely’.

  263. rq says

    Cleveland sets new “mass arrest” protocol for protesters; plans to buy protest insurance for RNC convention: Mark Naymik. Right, that’s happening there.

    This week’s GOP debate in Cleveland is the perfect backdrop to offer an update on the city’s cat-and-mouse games with demonstrators, who have been vocal with and without the national spotlight in town.

    First, Cleveland is close to resolving a suit the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio filed against the city in July over the arrest of four people who were protesting the May 23 acquittal of Cleveland police officers Michael Brelo. In that suit, the ACLU charged that the city purposefully delayed bringing the four demonstrators and many others before a judge to keep them from potentially returning to the streets.

    A federal judge ordered the city late last month to create a new “mass arrest procedure,” which was signed today (Aug. 6 ) by Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams.

    “Judges were available, public defenders were available — with only a couple of exceptions, no one should have been locked up,” ACLU Ohio Executive Director Christine Link said in an email. “We’re very close to being ‘final’ on that suit.”

    The ACLU provided me with a copy of the procedure, which appears to address concerns raised by the civil rights organization after the Brelo demonstrations.

    The new protocols are “designed to ensure the efficient and effective arrest and processing of prisoners arrested without infringing upon that person’s protected constitutional rights,” according to the copy.

    The procedure requires that police to place a sticker on people indicating what time they were arrested and that the people be taken quickly to the processing center. You can read the full order below in the box.

    Here’s another emerging issue that’s worthy of more attention.

    The city is planning to buy special insurance next summer to insulate it from the costs of lawsuits filed by protesters who may be arrested during the Republican convention in the city. The convention is expected to draw hundreds, if not thousands, of demonstrators.

    Stickers on arrestees? … I don’t really know what to say.

    Ferguson activists @Deray and @Nettaaaaaaaa answer Redditors’ questions. Looks like they got the right number of a’s in her twitter handle.

    Two activists who gained prominence during the Ferguson unrest answered questions on Reddit Thursday, in what the website calls an AMA (“Ask me anything.”) DeRay Mckesson and Johnetta Elzie, better known by their Twitter handles @Deray and @Nettaaaaaaaa, answered questions with a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Nusrat Choudhury, responded to a variety of questions.

    Q from coffeevodkacupcakes: “Do you think the police brutality against the black community has escalated in recent years or has it always been this bad and we’re just now taking notice and protesting against it?

    Response from benjancewicz: “The quote by Ta-Nehisi Coates is relevant: ‘The violence isn’t new. The cameras and the awareness is new.'”

    A from Mckesson: “Yup. This is perfect.”

    Response from primordialstew: “One more piece of what’s new is social media (I guess this is covered by the awareness part of the quote). … It seems to me that, intentionally and unintentionally, information gatekeepers wouldn’t report on white supremacist violence, or they would do so mostly to recast or recruit support for it.

    “It seems like now, when a story blows up on social media, there’s more pressure to cover it in broadcast, and social media itself is an alternative to broadcast, so even stories that broadcasters still refuse to cover (or do cover with racist-as-hell spin) have an alternative way of reaching millions of people.”

    A from Mckesson: “Agreed…. We have been telling the truth about police violence our entire lives. The only thing that’s different now is that the truth is becoming mainstream, due to Twitter, cell phones, and videos.”

    A from Choudhury: “… Police violence against Black people is the legacy of 240+ years of slavery and 90 years of legalized apartheid in America. The recent media uptick just confirms what Black people have been saying all along.”

    Q from benjancewicz: “What are your thoughts racism online as a whole? … Is racism online the true reflection of how people think, or is it an exaggeration?”

    A from Elzie: “After experiencing racist trolls on twitter for a year, Facebook, Instagram, and other online sites… I think racism online is definitely a true reflection of how people feel. It’s sad.”

    Q from malevolentmc: “… What are the common/generic questions asked, intended to discredit or ‘challenge’ the movement you see aimed at you in everyday encounters? And secondly, what are your answers to those questions and those people? …”

    A from Elzie: “One of the most generic questions I’m asked is ‘who is the leader?’ or some variation of looking for one charismatic male leader. The answer usually reflects on how we have all worked really hard to change that narrative.

    “‘I am one of many people who went out in response to Darren Wilson killing Mike Brown Jr. on Aug. 9.’

    “‘There was no organization who urged us to go, we just did. And when people told us to go home, we didn’t.'”

    Lots more great stuff at the link. Brave people, for heading the Reddit. On top of everything else.

    Prosecutor to receive findings in shooting of stepbrothers by Olympia officer

    The task force investigating the May 21 shooting of two stepbrothers in Olympia will hand its findings over to the Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney’s office for review Thursday afternoon.

    Olympia Officer Ryan Donald reported that he was being assaulted with a skateboard before shooting Bryson Chaplin, 21, and Andre Thompson, 24, before shooting and wounding the two men.

    Chaplin and Thompson were not armed with guns or knives, but attacked the officer with at least one skateboard, investigators said. Both men survived.

    Donald was responding to a call of two men stealing beer from a supermarket shortly before the shootings. He remains on administrative leave.

    Thurston County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Brad Watkins confirmed the interagency task force investigating the shootings has concluded gathering evidence and conducting interviews and will submit the report to prosecutors who will review it and determine whether or not the shootings were justified and whether any of the men involved will face criminal charges.

    Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Andrew Toynbee said the review could take five to six weeks before a decision is reached.

    It has been heard that the brothers haven’t even been interviewed. But what do I know.

    One Year in Ferguson

    put on your headphones
    This project contains raw, uncensored audio
    Some language may be considered offensive

    These voices and images are meant to represent
    a year of tragedy, reflection, action and change.
    They are not in strict chronological order.

    It doesn’t seem to be working for me at all, though. :(

    Training for police officers in Missouri to get an upgrade

    Training standards for police officers in Missouri will get an overhaul for the first time in nearly 20 years.

    Gov. Jay Nixon announced Thursday that he will ask the Missouri Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission to issue new rules around tactical training, fair and impartial policing, and the well-being of officers.

    “The brave men and women of law enforcement put their lives on the line every day to protect us and keep our streets safe,” Nixon said. “We owe it to them, and the citizens they serve, to provide our law enforcement officers with the knowledge and training they need to keep themselves and their community safe.”

    The new standards, which are expected on Dec. 1, are based on the work of the Ferguson Commission. Its members want officers to get 24 hours of training in each of the three areas over three years, for a total of 120 hours.

    “These three areas around culturally competent policing, tactical and use of force, and officer wellness are areas that the community has said are very important,” said the Rev. Starsky Wilson, a co-chair of the commission. “We’re glad there’s a convergence of interest on this right now.”

    Wilson’s co-chair, Rich McClure, applauded the three-month time frame.

    “There needs to be sense of urgency in adopting these standards,” he said. “It’s really past time for us to increase these standards.”

    “It was clear to us that there was a differential that needed to be closed, both in the type of curricula, as well as in the guaranteeing of it,” Nixon said. “The bottom line is, we feel a strong motivation to be leaders here.”

    So will they receive extra sensitivity training on what to do when faced with a person with a mental illness? Or how to combat their own prejudices while on the job? Maybe access to resources to help officers deal with their own issues and stress? How not to shoot someone when they’re the ones who dialled 911?

    Whitewashing History: Stonewall Movie Leaves Out Trans Women and Black Drag Queens Who Started The Movement

    Watching history repeat itself before your very eyes can be a bit taxing. Just like how they are often relegated to the sidelines of the movement they helped start, in the new movie Stonewall, Trans Women and Drag queens and persons of color are being all but written out of history.

    Quick history lesson: The Stonewall riots were a series of violent protests against the police by the LGBT+ community in New York in 1969. Many cite the Stonewall Riots as the single most important event that led to the LGBT+ liberation movement in America, and the foundation upon which all modern LGBT+ rights are founded.

    With the release of the trailer, there is some level of controversy regarding director Roland Emmerich’s version of historical events.

    The trailer, claims to be a ‘true story’, and tells the audience that a young, white, cisgender, gay man was the first to throw a brick and start the Stonewall Riots. In reality, hundreds of eye witness accounts and documented evidence have said the riots were started by black drag queens and transgender women.

    The two people most credited with sparking the riots and paving the way for modern LGBT+ rights were Marsha P.Johnson, a black transwoman who performed as a drag queen, and Silvia Rivera, puerto rican transgender woman. These two people, who are universally recognized as starting the riots, take a back seat in to the “pretty white boy” who comes to save the day.

    Some more at the link.

  264. rq says

    consensus. A cartoon titaled “finally racial consensus”.

    White guy sitting at bar: I’m scared of cops.
    Black guy beside him: I’m scared to death of cops.
    WG: I see why.
    BG: Good enough.

    Is it?

    Provider of mental health evaluations for Baltimore police under investigation

    The company contracted to conduct mental health screens of aspiring Baltimore police officers is under investigation by the city’s inspector general and legal department over allegations that it rushed those evaluations, according to city officials and documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun.

    The investigation focuses on whether Lutherville-based Psychology Consultants Associated fulfilled the requirements of its $730,000, two-year contract with the city. PCA allegedly conducted evaluations of prospective police officers in as little as 15 minutes, instead of the hour required under the contract to clear them for service, officials said.

    “The allegations raised are obviously very concerning,” said Kevin Harris, a spokesman for Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, to whom the Police Department referred all questions. “The mayor wants to determine what exactly the truth is, so an investigation is under way. … Every allegation that has been raised will be examined.”

    PCA, which has provided evaluations for more than a dozen law enforcement agencies across the state, became the city’s sole contractor in 2005. The city investigation follows another by Maryland State Police that found PCA conducted evaluations of aspiring troopers too quickly, violating its contract, according to state officials.

    State police have retained PCA, despite the findings, under a “probationary status.”

    Robert H. Pearre Jr., the city’s inspector general, said Wednesday that his office is “in the very early stages” of its investigation. “In keeping with our policy, we do not comment on the details of ongoing investigations,” he said.

    Beyond screening prospective officers — the Baltimore department has hired 1,875 new officers since 2005 — PCA counsels officers involved in violent or traumatic incidents, including police shootings, as well as those with other issues such as alcoholism, anger management, domestic problems and violent tendencies. The force has about 3,000 officers.

    Richard G. Berger, an attorney for PCA’s president, Dr. Kenneth Sachs, and the company, said Wednesday that Sachs denies “all allegations” against him and his firm.

    “He has not violated any regulations, and that was supported by a decision by the Maryland State Police,” Berger said. He acknowledged the company had been put on probation by the state police.

    “At this time, we’re unaware of any other investigations that may be ongoing,” Berger added, “but we deny everything.”

    He actually said that? “We deny everything”? REALLY? I’m laughing but it’s not a good laugh.

    New report faults NOPD investigation of fatal police shooting that killed unarmed man

    New Orleans Police Department brass failed to take action against three officers who gave false statements about a 2012 police raid in Gentilly that ended with the death of an unarmed man, according to a report released Tuesday by Independent Police Monitor Susan Hutson.

    The 29-page report raises new questions about the integrity of the NOPD’s investigation of the fatal shooting of 20-year-old Wendell Allen, a former basketball star at Frederick Douglass High School whose death tore at an already strained relationship between the black community and police in New Orleans.

    The officer who shot and killed Allen, Joshua Colclough, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2013 and is serving a four-year sentence in state prison. Colclough is white; Allen was black.

    Hutson’s report was made public a day before Colclough, 31, is scheduled to appear in Criminal District Court court and ask Judge Keva Landrum-Johnson to reduce his sentence.

    “He apologized to the family and the community. The family accepted his apology. There’s really nothing further to be served by” keeping him in prison, Colclough’s lawyer, Claude Schlesinger, said. “He’s not a threat, not like keeping violent offenders off the street. He’s turned his life around, admitted to what he did.”

    Hutson’s report accuses the department of whitewashing aspects of the raid and violating the terms of a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department by failing to determine whether the shooting ran afoul of department policy — claims Superintendent Michael Harrison denied.

    “There was a lot that did not go right in this investigation,” Hutson said at an afternoon news conference.

    At the time of the raid, Allen was unarmed, shirtless and wearing pajama bottoms. Colclough shot him in the chest at the top of a flight of stairs. Investigators later found 138.4 grams of marijuana in Allen’s brother’s room, along with a scale.

    So he deserved to die for the marijuana. Okay then.

    Olympia shooting report passed on to county Prosecutor’s Office

    County prosecutors are one step closer to a charging decision in the May 21 police shooting of two young men on Olympia’s west side.

    The Thurston County Sheriff’s Office submitted the Critical Incident Task Force investigation report to the county Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday afternoon, and a decision on whether Olympia Officer Ryan Donald or the two men he shot will be charged criminally is expected in the next several weeks.

    The Prosecutor’s Office announced at 4 p.m. Thursday that the Sheriff’s Office had officially turned over the report. Investigators might be asked to gather more information before Prosecutor Jon Tunheim makes a final decision.

    The Prosecutor’s Office will release a progress update within three weeks.

    The Critical Incident Task Force, a team made up of South Sound law enforcement agencies, began its criminal investigation after Donald shot Olympia residents Andre Thompson, 24, and Bryson Chaplin, 21, just after 1 a.m. on May 21.

    The two men were suspected of stealing beer from the Safeway on Olympia’s west side, and Donald found them on Cooper Point Road.

    During a May 21 news conference, Olympia Police Chief Ronnie Roberts said that Thompson and Chaplin weren’t armed with guns or any other conventional weapons, but one of the men might have attacked the officer with a skateboard.

    Donald wasn’t injured in the alleged attack. However, Chief Deputy Brad Watkins said May 21 that there was evidence that an assault occurred.

    Seattle-based attorney David Beininger said he is still representing Chaplin and Thompson. He said Chaplin is in rehabilitation, and is paralyzed from the waist down as a result of the injuries he sustained in the shooting.

    On June 3, Beninger told The Olympian that he believes the shooting was unjustified, and the details of the case were still fuzzy. On Thursday, he said he hopes the investigation report will shed some light on the case.

    “We’re looking forward to looking at the full report,” Beninger said.

    Family of John Crawford Seeks Answers I believe it was August 11 that is the one-year anniversary of that.

    The death of Raynette Turner will be the first case the New York State Attorney General will investigate since Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order last month, stating that all police officers involved in civilian deaths are to be investigated. According to The Journal News, State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will probe the death of the 42-year-old Westchester County woman who died July 27 in a holding cell at Mount Vernon police headquarters while awaiting an arraignment date on a shoplifting charge. “We’re going to handle this investigation impartially, thoroughly and completely independently and follow the facts wherever they lead,” Schneiderman told reporters in Manhattan. In a statement, Mount Vernon Mayor Ernie Davis said the city will cooperate with Schneiderman’s probe. In a statement, Cuomo said Turner’s death “raises questions.” An autopsy was inconclusive, and toxicology results won’t be available for weeks.

    That same day, trial began for Charlotte officer who fatally shot a 24-year-old, reports The New York TImes. Opening statements were heard on Monday and two portrayals of Jonathan Ferrell, a former Florida A&M football player who wrecked his fiancée’s car in an unfamiliar neighborhood and knocked on doors for help, were presented. Kerrick’s lawyer attributed the shooting to bad decisions made by Ferrell, which Kerrick believed that Ferrell had been drinking, smoking marijuana, and acted aggressively when he knocked on a stranger’s door after a car crash. The lawyer also stated that Ferrell attacked Kerrick even after being shot several times, climbing on top of him and striking the officer’s face until he was subdued. Prosecutors portrayed Ferrell as a soft-spoken young man who had been out with friends and was seeking help as he ran, fearing for his life, after another officer aimed a laser-sighted Taser at his chest. Kerrick, who has been suspended without pay, was charged quickly after the shooting. It took a second grand jury to send him to trial after a first declined to indict. Mr. Ferrell’s family have already reached a $2.25 million settlement with the City of Charlotte in a wrongful death lawsuit. Officer Randall Kerrick is on trial for voluntary manslaughter charges. The trial is expected to continue for several weeks.

    Police shot and killed a man in southeast Albuquerque on July 3. KOAT-TV reports that the suspect was accused of pointing a gun at officers, who then opened fire. Officers say they spotted Rafael Molina Jr.’s SUV near Eighth Street and Central Avenue after a 911 caller said they witnessed Molina and a female arguing in Robinson Park. As police attempted to stop the vehicle, the 33-year-old initially pulled over near Fourth Street at Bridge but then fled, police said. The suspect headed east on Avenida Cesar Chavez, and a female passenger was able exit the vehicle before the shooting, but suffered minor injuries. Officers attempted another traffic stop near Edith and Garfield, at which time shots were fired. Witnesses said they recalled hearing at least three shots. Albuquerque Police Spokesperson Celina Espinoza stated that a .22-caliber pistol was found near Molina’s body, and that a witness saw Molina raise the gun, pointing it at officers. Espinoza mentioned that the safety was disengaged on the weapon and that the gun was loaded. Espinoza says that lapel footage from the shooting is being reviewed, and that investigators are waiting for a search warrant to search Molina’s vehicle. Two officers were placed on paid leave.

    The Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney has released body camera footage capturing the moment a Cincinnati police officer shot a motorist during a traffic stop over a missing front license plate, reports the Associated Press. Authorities said Officer Ray Tensing spotted a car driven by 43-year-old, Samuel DuBose and a struggle ensued after DuBose refused to provide a driver’s license and exit his vehicle. Tensing said he was dragged by the car and forced to shoot Dubose. He fired once, striking DuBose in the head. On the footage released from Tensing’s body camera video, the officer could be heard asking for DuBose’s driver’s license several times with DuBose saying he had one. Later, DuBose said, “But I don’t think I have it on me.” Tensing asks DuBose to unbuckle his seat belt. About that time, Tensing pulls on the door handle, and DuBose puts his hand on the door to keep it closed. Last Wednesday, a grand jury indicted Tensing on charges of murder and voluntary manslaughter. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Ray Tensing is the first officer in Cincinnati to face murder charges for killing someone in the line of duty.

    Yesterday marked the one-year-anniversary of the death of John Crawford, III, who was fatally show in an Ohio Walmart after another customer called police claiming that the man was armed and brandishing a weapon. Crawford was holding an air-soft rifle sold by the retail giant. His family’s civil suit goes to trial in 2017.

    Blacks are four times as likely as whites to say police violence is a major problem, Washington Post on those most recent surveys that I don’t think would have been particularly surprising to anyone following these threads. Maybe to people living under rocks or inside pasty white bubbles, though.

  265. rq says

    Kalief Browder’s Family Plans $20,000,000 Lawsuit Against NYC. And may they win.

    In May 2010 Kalief Browder, then 16, was stopped and arrested on a New York street for reportedly stealing a backpack. Brower’s family was unable to pay Browder’s bail and although no charges were filed against Browder he spent some three years in Rikers Island prison. While locked away he endured beatings from prisoners and guards. In total he spent 800 days in solitary confinement. He was released in May 2013. He killed himself in June 2015.

    On Thursday, Browder’s family set the wheels of a $20 million dollar lawsuit in motion after they filed “notice of intention to file a wrongful death suit” papers with the city controller’s office, the New York Daily News reports.

    According to the Daily News, Browder was subjected to “systemic and agonizing physical and mental abuse…tantamount to torture,” during his incarceration. The report names the city Department of Correction, the Bronx District Attorney’s office, and various city health agencies as being complicit in Browder’s death.

    How Ferguson changed hearts and minds in America – not nearly enough, though.

    A year after the police shooting of Michael Brown set off a wave of protests in Ferguson, Missouri, the Black Lives Matter movement that rose to prominence in the aftermath is winning. Americans are paying more attention to systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Democratic presidential candidates have had public appearances derailed when they fail to take a convincing stance on the issue. And cops have been charged and indicted for high-profile killings.

    The movement hasn’t definitively won. Black people are still dying at alarming rates at the hands of police, and several recent police shootings — such as the killing of Samuel DuBose in Cincinnati — were horrifying and unnecessary.

    But recent surveys show the shift. A June survey of 2,000 US adults from Gallup found that all Americans are more likely to say that black people are unfairly treated in all aspects of society, including police encounters. And a July survey of 2,000 US adults from the Pew Research Center found a 20-year high in the percentage of Americans calling racism a “big problem” in society.

    The media is also paying more attention. Both the Washington Post and the Guardian now track police shootings in databases that make up for the lack of credible federal data.

    Part of this reflects a rise in public interest, which the media is responsive to: Ferguson was the biggest news story for Americans on Twitter in 2014 — surpassing the Russian invasion of Crimea, Ebola, and the 2014 election. And there has been more interest in police shootings, according to Google searches, since late 2014:

    Beyond public interest, perhaps the most compelling evidence that police shootings are taken more seriously is that prosecutors — who ultimately have the power to criminally charge police accused of wrongdoing — are taking the issue more seriously. After a white police officer fatally shot DuBose, a black man, during a traffic stop in Cincinnati, Hamilton County Prosecutor Eric Deters — a Republican — called the shooting “unwarranted” and “senseless,” stating that it was “the most asinine act I’ve ever seen a police officer make.” And Deters was hardly the only prosecutor to come out against a police shooting in the past year, with prosecutors filing charges against the officers who killed Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina; Eric Harris in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Freddie Gray in Baltimore.

    Lawmakers, too, are pushing to hold police accountable. President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have both called for police to wear body cameras that would record police officers on the job. The Obama administration has said that the federal government needs to do a better job tracking police killings. And Clinton dedicated her first 2016 campaign speech to criminal justice issues, including policing.

    Again, none of this is to say that the battle is over and Black Lives Matter has achieved its overall mission of “redressing the systemic pattern of anti-black law enforcement violence in the US.” Republicans and white Americans are still far more skeptical about the threat of racism in US society, according to Gallup and Pew surveys. And Republican presidential candidates — with the exception of Sen. Rand Paul (KY) — have largely avoided any criminal justice issues, including policing.

    But the trend is apparent: Black Lives Matter is winning. The notoriously slow American political system may take a while to reflect that, but it’s really happening.

    Some nice graphs at the link, too.

    New York white supremacist blows off his own leg while making bombs at his house: prosecutors. And yet it’s black people who are the real threat. C’mon, authorities. Be serious now.

    An entire police department just got pulled off the streets of Cincinnati after an officer killed an unarmed man, AND YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT! Sorry.

    A city-council committee in Cincinnati has voted to bar the University of Cincinnati Police Department (UCPD) from patrolling city streets.

    The news station FOX19 reports that the move stems from an ongoing investigation into the university police department’s practices regarding traffic stops.

    According to a report compiled by the University of Cincinnati and obtained by FOX19, the Cincinnati Police Department and city officials entered an agreement with the UCPD in December 2013.

    That agreement allowed campus officers to patrol some police districts within the city.

    The agreement stipulates that city traffic stops by campus cops were limited to “serious traffic offenses” only — the type that “jeopardizes public safety,” according to the agreement.

    Questions about UCPD’s handling of traffic stops have become more pertinent since the indictment of former UCPD officer Ray Tensing, who faces murder charges related to the fatal shooting of an unarmed man during a traffic stop last month.

    Tensing pulled over 43-year-old Samuel Dubose on July 19 for driving without a front license plate. The encounter escalated, and as Dubose prepared to drive away, Tensing shot him in the head, killing him.

    Tensing has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge.

    Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/an-entire-police-department-just-got-pulled-off-the-streets-of-cincinnati-after-an-officer-killed-an-unarmed-man-2015-8#ixzz3iAJtgme4

    Again, to reiterate, it is manifestly sad that it takes someone to die before such action is taken. Can we start listening to the people complaining about this for years, please?

    “Oppressed People Are Everywhere”: A Year After Ferguson, a Conversation With One of the Protests’ Organizers

    When Michael Brown was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014, and the city made international headlines for the militarized response to the largely peaceful protests sparked by his death, Johnetta Elzie was was right on the front lines. Her livestreamed video of the demonstrations earned her a massive social media following, and she quickly assumed a role as one of the protests’ lead organizers.

    In the year since the Ferguson protests, police treatment of African Americans has come under intense scrutiny. Numerous police killings of unarmed black men in New York, Baltimore, North Charleston, and elsewhere have drawn national attention. And across the country, activists and community leaders have demanded accountability from officers and reforms from lawmakers. These efforts already have had some results. Still, police are on track to kill more people this year than last year—upwards of 1,000 by year’s end. Most of them are black.

    I spoke with Elzie, who is now an organizer with the Ferguson-based group We The Protesters. She is co-editor of the This Is The Movement newsletter, and her writing and commentary has appeared in Ebony, the Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera​, and the Feminist Wire. She and her fellow organizer DeRay McKesson were the focus of a New York Times Magazine profile in May. Her participation in protests in Baltimore earlier this year prompted a cybersecurity firm to identify her as a “threat actor” in a report it provided to the city. Though she insists the Black Lives Matter movement is a leaderless one sustained by communal anger, the 25-year-old Elzie has been called on to serve as one of its spokespeople at conferences, panels, and meetings with public officials and lawmakers. In our conversation, she reflected on the Ferguson protests, the year since, and what lies ahead for the Black Lives Matter movement.

    Interview at the link. Excerpt:

    MJ: Michael Brown’s killing and the Ferguson protests set off protests nationwide and internationally. Why do you think what happened in Ferguson resonated with so many people?

    JE: I didn’t anticipate that. My first help with getting tear-gassed came from Palestine. I would tweet that I just got tear-gassed, my face burns, my mouth burns, my throat burns. And people from Palestine would tweet pictures of tear-gas cannisters saying, “Do they look like this? This is probably the same tear gas that they used on us. Here’s how you fix the burning.” Oppressed people are everywhere. Our situation in America, the way black people are experiencing living in America, is very similar to how Palestinians are experiencing living in their homes by the Israeli government. It’s global. A lot of folks don’t make those connections. But I think it’s just the part that makes humans human. When you see a group of people who are literally standing unarmed against the government, the state, and the state is armed head to toe in military gear. I think for most people it’s quite obvious why they should be moved to action. Even though it might not be happening where you live right now.

    MJ: How has the national conversation surrounding police violence changed since Ferguson?

    JE: We have more videos now. That has forced the conversation to change. Instead of it just being a blurb, and moving on to the next thing, some news publications and journalists are now asking the hard questions about fatal police shootings or white vigilantes who are taking it upon themselves to act, like in Charleston. They are asking the hard questions that need to be asked of state officials, of law enforcement, about why things are happening, and why they are protecting police through unions and things like that. I think that Ferguson has changed things, so that every fatal police shooting that happens has made some type of headline since August, in a way where people immediately jump on it, get the facts, or are digging for facts, or are following it and holding people accountable, in a new way that hasn’t happened for my generation. And there has been some new legislation that has been introduced across the country.

    MJ: Are you satisfied with the progress that’s been made in the past year?

    JE: The police are still killing people. Six people died Wednesday. But I think it is so unfair that people expect leaps and bounds to happen in just 365 days. Nothing in the Civil Rights Movement was accomplished in a day. The Civil Rights Movement spanned 10 years. So, for people to expect so much out of one year is really, really wild to me. And that question kind of shows me how far removed people are from this. Proximity matters. So, if you are an onlooker, and you’re just looking for progress and improvements and things like that, then that’s a different conversation to have with someone else who’s not so invested. But for some people, this is their life. They’ve been harmed by the police. They’ve seen their family and friends harmed by the police. And this is emotional work to be doing. So in this one year, I feel like we have accomplished much. But there is still a lot to do because police are still protected by their unions, by the institution of policing in general. And still have been killing people at higher rates than even last year, for example. July was literally the deadliest month of 2015. And that’s a problem.

    More at the link.

    white people: “asians all look the same” white people: Please see attached picture. I’m pretty sure I could insert Henry Cavill and Christian Bale into that line-up, and nobody would blink an eye. Perhaps Leo diCaprio in his younger days, too. I salute the diversity of whiteness.

  266. rq says

    Bah. I counted my links but didn’t count on that automatic insert via citing. So previous in moderation.

    Mere sight of a gun makes police – and public – more aggressive, experts say. In the case of black people, I would say it’s not even the sight of a gun, but the vague suspicion of a gun, or the imagining of a gun. No actual gun required.

    When police officers put on their badges and blues, do they somehow change inside? Surrounded by stories of pepper-sprayed protesters, threats at traffic stops, and sudden bursts of violence sometimes causing deaths, the US has spent a year asking itself about police misconduct, circling the question, “why?”

    Psychology may give some clues. For decades psychologists have looked for evidence that weapons affect behavior, and a large body of research has borne out their suspicions: simply seeing a weapon – whether a sword, hand grenade, tank or gun – makes people more aggressive.

    Speaking to the Guardian, Ohio State psychology professor Brad Bushman said that research has shown humans respond as quickly to guns as to spiders and snakes, though unlike that impulse the effect must be at some level learned.

    “Weapons increase all of those aggressive thoughts, feelings, hostile appraisals and the type of thinking that somebody’s out to get you, or wants to hurt you,” Bushman said.

    Aggressive impulses can sometimes be strong enough to override common sense, studies have found. Confronted with a pickup truck driver who had stalled at a green light, drivers in one 2006 study were more likely to honk at the pickup with a rifle than they were at the pickup without a rifle. The study developed a similar 1975 experiment that also included a bumper sticker reading “vengeance”.

    “You’d have to be complete idiot to honk your horn,” Bushman said, “but that’s the power about the weapons effect, people don’t think about it much. The effects are very automatic.”

    Studies have also shown that carrying a gun tends to make people more likely to deliver electric shocks, increase paranoia about people and objects, and increase testosterone. (The “vast majority” of perpetrators of gun violence are men, according to the APA.)

    The toolkit of police in America often includes a handgun, Taser and nightstick, and many departments also have the assault weapons, riot gear and armored vehicles that transformed Ferguson, Missouri, into an illustration of militarized police action. The surfeit of weapons probably makes both officers and people around them more aggressive, the experts said, regardless of the type of weapon.

    So basically presence of weapons increases tensions and decreases chance of de-escalation. I can go with that.

    Beavercreek @walmart. #JohnCrawford Green laser on Wal-Mart facade: John Crawford was killed here. See photos.

    Confederate Memorial Day disappears from 2016 Georgia holiday calendars. But don’t worry, you can still celebrate them!

    Confederate Memorial Day has been struck from Georgia’s official 2016 state holiday calendar. So has Robert E. Lee’s birthday.

    Most state employees will still get days off for both events, but the controversial names have been replaced with the more neutral term “state holiday.”

    The change was reflected in emails that landed this week in the inboxes of many state employees.

    Brian Robinson, a spokesman for Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, said the state still intends to celebrate the days even if it doesn’t “spell it out by name.”

    “There will be a state holiday on that day,” he said. “Those so inclined can observe Confederate Memorial Day and remember those who died in that conflict.”

    But it was a noticeable departure from the 2015 calendar, which clearly listed April 27 as the Confederate holiday and Nov. 27 as Lee’s birthday. And it comes as Georgia’s embrace of Confederate symbols has come under increased scrutiny since the racially tinged massacre of nine black worshippers at a Charleston, S.C., church by a suspected white supremacist.

    Democrats including former Gov. Roy Barnes, who engineered the redesign of Georgia’s state flag 14 years ago, have said the state should abandon Confederate Memorial Day in favor of a holiday in February commemorating the day Georgia was founded. State Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, has said he’s exploring legislation to force the issue.

    A portrait of Ferguson one year after Michael Brown’s death – in pictures

    A year after the shooting of the unarmed black teenager, photographer Andrees Latif returned to the town where he covered the riots. He photographed the residents, canvassing their views on how Brown’s death had affected them and the changes they’d seen in their community

    See photos with stories of residents attached. See the faces. Read about the people.

    Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Don’t Let Trump and Co. Distract From Black Lives Matter

    ealed video shows police shooting to death Jonathan Ferrell, who knocked at a nearby house for help after a car accident in 2013. The phrase “Black Lives Matter” isn’t just a metaphor; it’s a call for awareness of the literal danger to one’s physical body merely by being black in America. A danger that whites don’t share.

    Presidential candidates must also have vision and intelligence. You have to envision an ideal America of equal opportunity and treatment for all and have an intelligent plan to actually move the country in that direction. Both qualities require an awareness of current political and social movements. Thousands recently attended a “Black Lives Matter” conference in Cleveland. A lot of the news coverage ignored the substance of the meeting, instead focusing on the more dramatic images of a transit cop pepper-spraying some people who protested the arrest of a 14-year-old black kid accused of being intoxicated. The following week, candidates including Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush spoke at the National Urban League’s conference, an African-American political activist group that is larger and older than the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Why were there no candidates at the “Black Lives Matter” conference?

    Part of the reason is that the discussion of race in America as a major talking point for this election has been derailed by the funhouse candidacy of Donald Trump. His unexpected popularity has sent many of you candidates into hiding so as not to offend his conservative supporters. You tried denouncing his rude, inaccurate, and bullying comments, but that only seemed to increase Trump’s popularity. Trump is succeeding at taking the Grumpy Old Grandpa approach: complain without offering practical solutions. It’s likely that his supporters are mostly the disenfranchised older, white, middle-class conservatives who already feel marginalized and invisible. Like Howard Beale in Network, they’re mad as hell and won’t take it anymore. They have this narrow window to be heard, and by supporting such an outrageously improbable candidate, their voices are coming through loud and clear.

    What they fail to realize is that Trump’s outspoken opinions, which his followers consider refreshing, are mostly meaningless. As president he wouldn’t have the power to do much of what he claims he would do. That’s why he appeals to those who have little knowledge of how government actually works. Never mind that Trump’s statements reveal no specific policy or plan, or that he has no experience, and that his comments show him to be detached from the street-level problems of America. Or, most important, that the very people who support him will likely be the most hurt by his election. His popularity is similar to the Schwarzenegger Syndrome: Californians elected Arnold simply because he was refreshingly outspoken, despite the fact that he had no qualifications or job experience appropriate to running a state. In the end, despite Schwarzenegger’s bold talk and good intentions, some argue California was worse off when he left office. That is pretty much what we could expect under the Trumpinator.

    With the nation focused on the Trump Distraction, the “Black Lives Matter” issue has been moved to the back of the bus. But don’t expect the issue to wait patiently for its turn in the spotlight. Take a look at this week’s Pew Research Center poll, which concludes that 58% of Hispanics and 73% of African Americans believe racism is a big problem. That’s two voting blocks. Perhaps even more relevant is that 44% of whites agree that it’s a significant problem, which is an increase of 17 points since 2010. Finally, the most important finding: 59% of all those polled agree that the country “needs to continue making changes to give blacks equal rights with whites.” That’s up from 46% about a year ago.

    In his novel Animal Farm, George Orwell satirizes totalitarian governments that revise history by changing their original commandment: “All animals are equal” becomes “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” By ignoring the “Black Lives Matter” issue, you’re proclaiming your political position that, “All life matters, but some lives matter more than others.” Let’s see how that works out for you next November.

    I accidentally blockquoted the whole thing.

    This is what I’m talking about: White Supremacy is Not a Black Problem.

    It’s been 106 years since the NAACP was formed. Yet in North America, our predominantly white societies still tell us we must earn our humanity, and until such proof of merit can be provided, any manner of inhumane treatment we receive must be our own fault.

    We’re still living in societies that rationalize why black people occupy a lower caste status, are still being disenfranchised, still struggle to receive justice. To be black in North America is to know that our skin negates our expectation of safety, and that any manner of white violence against our bodies will be isolated, explained, and often excused. To be black in North America is to speak out against that white violence done to our bodies, and brace for the retort that “black on black violence” is a more important conversation to have. It is to know that our identities—our art, music, food, and colourful vernacular, and even our skin and hair—only exist as unique until white folks come to snatch them from us, too.

    This isn’t a failure on the part of black communities, but rather, a failure of white culture. As long as people of colour have been free to form communities, white supremacy has existed to remind us where we stand. And as long as white supremacy has resulted in violence against our bodies, white culture has existed to downplay the problem, instruct us on how to deal with it peaceably, and deny it exists at all. White culture tells us that white supremacy is a black problem.

    *

    Despite the appalling lack of diverse representation in our politics and business, and overrepresentation of people of colour in our penal system, Canada is especially susceptible to the myth that we have outgrown racism. Many will be quick to tell you that here, racism claims a much lower body count than it does down south. That myth has permitted white Canadians to look the other way while we’ve had to deal with the worst of them. A couple of years back, in Georgina, Ontario, a black teenager was beaten by his white classmates while others crowded around shouting, “Pound the nigger!” The assault happened in the same school where the Confederate flag waved so freely that complaints from black parents forced the local school board to ban it. It happened in the same city where Asian Canadians were being swarmed by white mobs and thrown off fishing docks with such regularity that the practice was given a name: nipper-tipping. But to hear white residents tell the story, all of this can be excused by the feeling that they are now minorities in their own country. I spoke about this story often with white friends at the time, and I can’t remember one conversation I had where someone didn’t pitch the refrain, “Well, at least we’re not as bad as the States.”

    Back in April, a few days after cellphone footage was released showing North Charleston police officer Michael Slager murdering a black man named Walter Scott during a traffic stop, I met up for beers with a friend whom I’ll call “Jason.” After Jason had spoken out on social media against Toronto police’s carding policy, his white friends began to flood his Facebook wall with videos and comments every time another dead black person became the center of the news cycle. They wanted to know his thoughts, whether he was as outraged as they were, and what should be done to stop this rash of violence against black bodies. When the YouTube footage of Scott’s execution reached his wall, Jason had enough and temporarily deactivated his profile.

    The evening we met, I noticed the new creases between his brows, and on the corners of his lips. When I asked if he’d been sleeping well, he responded, “You know deep down they don’t care. I thought I knew my friends.” I said I didn’t follow. He picked up his beer, took a deep drink, and sighed. “To them, we’re nothing but videos to share on Facebook and hashtags to boost on Twitter. Then when they put their phones back in their pockets, and go on about their lives, they feel like they’ve done something that matters. And after people are done talking about this guy getting shot, or that guy getting choked out on the street, we’re still the ones carrying this weight.”

    I carried this conversation with me the day I recorded the June 23rd episode of my podcast, Canadaland Commons. In the final segment of the podcast, I discussed the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church, the hate-motivated shooting spree in Charleston, South Carolina, with guests Supriya Dwivedi and Ishmael N. Daro. In the final edit of the podcast, the conversation seems to carry on smoothly, but the recording session was brutal. There were moments when, overwhelmed by thoughts of Jason and the many others who’ve been beaten down by the never-ending torrent of white violence on black bodies, I had to stop recording. If one were to listen closely around the 21st- and 23rd-minute, one might notice a few pauses where I had to stop myself from breaking down into tears.

    After the episode was released, I received e-mails, tweets, and direct messages from people who took exception to my use of the word “terrorism” to describe the shooting. One e-mail in particular stands out to me. The writer suggested my comprehension of terrorism needed correcting, and chalked it up to my confusing the term with “mass murder,” as though it were more accurate (or even distinct) to call the shooter, Dylann Roof, a “racist mass murderer,” and not a terrorist. “I just point this out,” explained the writer, “because I find identity politics very interesting…I couldn’t help but perceive a line of inquiry framed through the inquirer’s identity rather than a dispassionate frame of reference (as would be appropriate for an unbiased show on politics, lest [sic] you be grouped in with people like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, etc).” In other words, speaking on the violence against black bodies through the lens of my black identity lessened my credibility. The writer concluded, in the voice of Yoda, “Perhaps to a painted nail, like a white hammer everything looks.”
    […]

    The failure of white culture is a failure to look inward, and I suspect it’s because white people would be frightened or ashamed at what they see. James Baldwin examined this failure more than 50 years ago in his blistering “Down at the Cross” essay, published in his book The Fire Next Time. His outlook was no less cynical:

    [There] is certainly little enough in the white man’s public or private life that one should desire to imitate. White men, at the bottom of their hearts, know this. Therefore, a vast amount of the energy that goes into what we call the Negro problem is produced by the white man’s profound desire not to be judged by those who are not white, not to be seen as he is, and at the same time a vast amount of the white anguish is rooted in the white man’s equally profound need to be seen as he is, to be released from the tyranny of his mirror.

    We’ve seen how disastrous the legacy of that unmet need has been for black North America. The legacy to which both the Red Summer and the razing of Africville belong. The legacy produced by the bombing of Osage Avenue, the redlining of neighbourhoods, and by racially selective immigration policy. Ending that legacy would require white people to examine how collective wealth accrued since World War II created its middle class, and why generational black wealth has been all but nonexistent. It would require confronting that legacy wherever it lives.

    Recently, I spoke at a panel discussion on racism and policing for an organization called JAYU, which engages marginalized communities through art and public dialogue. When asked about my experience discussing black issues, I told the audience, “White allies, y’all are fucking up.” The room got quiet. “Every time your uncle makes a racist comment at the Thanksgiving dinner table, or your co-worker complains about affirmative action, or your friend thinks it’s funny to make ironically racist jokes, and it’s too uncomfortable for you to confront it, you are making your community’s racism our problem to deal with.”

    In every white social circle, you will find a Dylann Roof. They’re someone’s wayward younger brother, or cousin with the anger issues, or classmate, or someone’s co-worker’s kid who posts those troubling Facebook updates. Dylann Roof’s family and friends knew he had a grudge against black people. Roof’s father knew he owned a firearm, because his father was the one to come up out of pocket for it. Dylann Roof’s roommate knew he was planning to harm black people, because he had been talking about it for months. Everyone who could have prevented Dylann Roof from robbing the earth of nine black souls chose to do nothing. That aversion to looking in the mirror, that desire to avoid personal friction, came at the cost of our lives.
    […]

    Expecting black people to do more work to end racism is, in itself, an act of oppression. If white audiences can watch the evening news and not come away with the impression that black people are living in a state of terror, we cannot sacrifice any more bodies to convince them. We cannot grant white North America compassion if, after learning a young man is gunned down by police in Brampton, the only story told is of his criminal past. We cannot grant white humanity to North America if, when we literally plead for our lives by chanting “Black Lives Matter,” the reply is that “All Lives Matter.” We’ve borne the burden of white apathy, self-delusion, and hatred for far too long. It is time for white North America to begin carrying its own weight and holding its communities to account for the terrorist violence borne within—terrorism which we’ve become obligated to withstand and rise above. We need white North Americans to risk hurting the feelings of others close to them, and hurting their own feelings as well. We need white North America to stop making excuses; to do the uncomfortable work of calling racism what it is, and confronting it head on.

    The message now is that white comfort is worth more than black lives. This has to change.

    William English Walling was not stopped by the spectre of identity politics. He did not dispassionately report both sides of the story on the Springfield riots, and neither did Mary Ovington White fold up her magazine and shake her head at what the world was coming to. The work they put in confronting white supremacy helped to create the modern day civil rights movement. Right now, we are in the midst of another movement, and there is no neutral place on the sidelines. Who will answer the call and come to our aid?

    Well that ended up being long, too. “Who will answer the call and come to our aid?” Please let that be us.

  267. rq says

    Bah. I counted my links but didn’t count on that automatic insert via citing. So previous in moderation.

    Mere sight of a gun makes police – and public – more aggressive, experts say. In the case of black people, I would say it’s not even the sight of a gun, but the vague suspicion of a gun, or the imagining of a gun. No actual gun required.

    When police officers put on their badges and blues, do they somehow change inside? Surrounded by stories of pepper-sprayed protesters, threats at traffic stops, and sudden bursts of violence sometimes causing deaths, the US has spent a year asking itself about police misconduct, circling the question, “why?”

    Psychology may give some clues. For decades psychologists have looked for evidence that weapons affect behavior, and a large body of research has borne out their suspicions: simply seeing a weapon – whether a sword, hand grenade, tank or gun – makes people more aggressive.

    Speaking to the Guardian, Ohio State psychology professor Brad Bushman said that research has shown humans respond as quickly to guns as to spiders and snakes, though unlike that impulse the effect must be at some level learned.

    “Weapons increase all of those aggressive thoughts, feelings, hostile appraisals and the type of thinking that somebody’s out to get you, or wants to hurt you,” Bushman said.

    Aggressive impulses can sometimes be strong enough to override common sense, studies have found. Confronted with a pickup truck driver who had stalled at a green light, drivers in one 2006 study were more likely to honk at the pickup with a rifle than they were at the pickup without a rifle. The study developed a similar 1975 experiment that also included a bumper sticker reading “vengeance”.

    “You’d have to be complete idiot to honk your horn,” Bushman said, “but that’s the power about the weapons effect, people don’t think about it much. The effects are very automatic.”

    Studies have also shown that carrying a gun tends to make people more likely to deliver electric shocks, increase paranoia about people and objects, and increase testosterone. (The “vast majority” of perpetrators of gun violence are men, according to the APA.)

    The toolkit of police in America often includes a handgun, Taser and nightstick, and many departments also have the assault weapons, riot gear and armored vehicles that transformed Ferguson, Missouri, into an illustration of militarized police action. The surfeit of weapons probably makes both officers and people around them more aggressive, the experts said, regardless of the type of weapon.

    So basically presence of weapons increases tensions and decreases chance of de-escalation. I can go with that.

    Beavercreek @walmart. #JohnCrawford Green laser on Wal-Mart facade: John Crawford was killed here. See photos.

    Confederate Memorial Day disappears from 2016 Georgia holiday calendars. But don’t worry, you can still celebrate them!

    Confederate Memorial Day has been struck from Georgia’s official 2016 state holiday calendar. So has Robert E. Lee’s birthday.

    Most state employees will still get days off for both events, but the controversial names have been replaced with the more neutral term “state holiday.”

    The change was reflected in emails that landed this week in the inboxes of many state employees.

    Brian Robinson, a spokesman for Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, said the state still intends to celebrate the days even if it doesn’t “spell it out by name.”

    “There will be a state holiday on that day,” he said. “Those so inclined can observe Confederate Memorial Day and remember those who died in that conflict.”

    But it was a noticeable departure from the 2015 calendar, which clearly listed April 27 as the Confederate holiday and Nov. 27 as Lee’s birthday. And it comes as Georgia’s embrace of Confederate symbols has come under increased scrutiny since the racially tinged massacre of nine black worshippers at a Charleston, S.C., church by a suspected white supremacist.

    Democrats including former Gov. Roy Barnes, who engineered the redesign of Georgia’s state flag 14 years ago, have said the state should abandon Confederate Memorial Day in favor of a holiday in February commemorating the day Georgia was founded. State Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, has said he’s exploring legislation to force the issue.

    A portrait of Ferguson one year after Michael Brown’s death – in pictures

    A year after the shooting of the unarmed black teenager, photographer Andrees Latif returned to the town where he covered the riots. He photographed the residents, canvassing their views on how Brown’s death had affected them and the changes they’d seen in their community

    See photos with stories of residents attached. See the faces. Read about the people.

    Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Don’t Let Trump and Co. Distract From Black Lives Matter

    ealed video shows police shooting to death Jonathan Ferrell, who knocked at a nearby house for help after a car accident in 2013. The phrase “Black Lives Matter” isn’t just a metaphor; it’s a call for awareness of the literal danger to one’s physical body merely by being black in America. A danger that whites don’t share.

    Presidential candidates must also have vision and intelligence. You have to envision an ideal America of equal opportunity and treatment for all and have an intelligent plan to actually move the country in that direction. Both qualities require an awareness of current political and social movements. Thousands recently attended a “Black Lives Matter” conference in Cleveland. A lot of the news coverage ignored the substance of the meeting, instead focusing on the more dramatic images of a transit cop pepper-spraying some people who protested the arrest of a 14-year-old black kid accused of being intoxicated. The following week, candidates including Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush spoke at the National Urban League’s conference, an African-American political activist group that is larger and older than the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Why were there no candidates at the “Black Lives Matter” conference?

    Part of the reason is that the discussion of race in America as a major talking point for this election has been derailed by the funhouse candidacy of Donald Trump. His unexpected popularity has sent many of you candidates into hiding so as not to offend his conservative supporters. You tried denouncing his rude, inaccurate, and bullying comments, but that only seemed to increase Trump’s popularity. Trump is succeeding at taking the Grumpy Old Grandpa approach: complain without offering practical solutions. It’s likely that his supporters are mostly the disenfranchised older, white, middle-class conservatives who already feel marginalized and invisible. Like Howard Beale in Network, they’re mad as hell and won’t take it anymore. They have this narrow window to be heard, and by supporting such an outrageously improbable candidate, their voices are coming through loud and clear.

    What they fail to realize is that Trump’s outspoken opinions, which his followers consider refreshing, are mostly meaningless. As president he wouldn’t have the power to do much of what he claims he would do. That’s why he appeals to those who have little knowledge of how government actually works. Never mind that Trump’s statements reveal no specific policy or plan, or that he has no experience, and that his comments show him to be detached from the street-level problems of America. Or, most important, that the very people who support him will likely be the most hurt by his election. His popularity is similar to the Schwarzenegger Syndrome: Californians elected Arnold simply because he was refreshingly outspoken, despite the fact that he had no qualifications or job experience appropriate to running a state. In the end, despite Schwarzenegger’s bold talk and good intentions, some argue California was worse off when he left office. That is pretty much what we could expect under the Trumpinator.

    With the nation focused on the Trump Distraction, the “Black Lives Matter” issue has been moved to the back of the bus. But don’t expect the issue to wait patiently for its turn in the spotlight. Take a look at this week’s Pew Research Center poll, which concludes that 58% of Hispanics and 73% of African Americans believe racism is a big problem. That’s two voting blocks. Perhaps even more relevant is that 44% of whites agree that it’s a significant problem, which is an increase of 17 points since 2010. Finally, the most important finding: 59% of all those polled agree that the country “needs to continue making changes to give blacks equal rights with whites.” That’s up from 46% about a year ago.

    In his novel Animal Farm, George Orwell satirizes totalitarian governments that revise history by changing their original commandment: “All animals are equal” becomes “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” By ignoring the “Black Lives Matter” issue, you’re proclaiming your political position that, “All life matters, but some lives matter more than others.” Let’s see how that works out for you next November.

    I accidentally blockquoted the whole thing.

    This is what I’m talking about: White Supremacy is Not a Black Problem.

    It’s been 106 years since the NAACP was formed. Yet in North America, our predominantly white societies still tell us we must earn our humanity, and until such proof of merit can be provided, any manner of inhumane treatment we receive must be our own fault.

    We’re still living in societies that rationalize why black people occupy a lower caste status, are still being disenfranchised, still struggle to receive justice. To be black in North America is to know that our skin negates our expectation of safety, and that any manner of white violence against our bodies will be isolated, explained, and often excused. To be black in North America is to speak out against that white violence done to our bodies, and brace for the retort that “black on black violence” is a more important conversation to have. It is to know that our identities—our art, music, food, and colourful vernacular, and even our skin and hair—only exist as unique until white folks come to snatch them from us, too.

    This isn’t a failure on the part of black communities, but rather, a failure of white culture. As long as people of colour have been free to form communities, white supremacy has existed to remind us where we stand. And as long as white supremacy has resulted in violence against our bodies, white culture has existed to downplay the problem, instruct us on how to deal with it peaceably, and deny it exists at all. White culture tells us that white supremacy is a black problem.

    *

    Despite the appalling lack of diverse representation in our politics and business, and overrepresentation of people of colour in our penal system, Canada is especially susceptible to the myth that we have outgrown racism. Many will be quick to tell you that here, racism claims a much lower body count than it does down south. That myth has permitted white Canadians to look the other way while we’ve had to deal with the worst of them. A couple of years back, in Georgina, Ontario, a black teenager was beaten by his white classmates while others crowded around shouting, “Pound the n*gg*r!” The assault happened in the same school where the Confederate flag waved so freely that complaints from black parents forced the local school board to ban it. It happened in the same city where Asian Canadians were being swarmed by white mobs and thrown off fishing docks with such regularity that the practice was given a name: nipper-tipping. But to hear white residents tell the story, all of this can be excused by the feeling that they are now minorities in their own country. I spoke about this story often with white friends at the time, and I can’t remember one conversation I had where someone didn’t pitch the refrain, “Well, at least we’re not as bad as the States.”

    Back in April, a few days after cellphone footage was released showing North Charleston police officer Michael Slager murdering a black man named Walter Scott during a traffic stop, I met up for beers with a friend whom I’ll call “Jason.” After Jason had spoken out on social media against Toronto police’s carding policy, his white friends began to flood his Facebook wall with videos and comments every time another dead black person became the center of the news cycle. They wanted to know his thoughts, whether he was as outraged as they were, and what should be done to stop this rash of violence against black bodies. When the YouTube footage of Scott’s execution reached his wall, Jason had enough and temporarily deactivated his profile.

    The evening we met, I noticed the new creases between his brows, and on the corners of his lips. When I asked if he’d been sleeping well, he responded, “You know deep down they don’t care. I thought I knew my friends.” I said I didn’t follow. He picked up his beer, took a deep drink, and sighed. “To them, we’re nothing but videos to share on Facebook and hashtags to boost on Twitter. Then when they put their phones back in their pockets, and go on about their lives, they feel like they’ve done something that matters. And after people are done talking about this guy getting shot, or that guy getting choked out on the street, we’re still the ones carrying this weight.”

    I carried this conversation with me the day I recorded the June 23rd episode of my podcast, Canadaland Commons. In the final segment of the podcast, I discussed the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church, the hate-motivated shooting spree in Charleston, South Carolina, with guests Supriya Dwivedi and Ishmael N. Daro. In the final edit of the podcast, the conversation seems to carry on smoothly, but the recording session was brutal. There were moments when, overwhelmed by thoughts of Jason and the many others who’ve been beaten down by the never-ending torrent of white violence on black bodies, I had to stop recording. If one were to listen closely around the 21st- and 23rd-minute, one might notice a few pauses where I had to stop myself from breaking down into tears.

    After the episode was released, I received e-mails, tweets, and direct messages from people who took exception to my use of the word “terrorism” to describe the shooting. One e-mail in particular stands out to me. The writer suggested my comprehension of terrorism needed correcting, and chalked it up to my confusing the term with “mass murder,” as though it were more accurate (or even distinct) to call the shooter, Dylann Roof, a “racist mass murderer,” and not a terrorist. “I just point this out,” explained the writer, “because I find identity politics very interesting…I couldn’t help but perceive a line of inquiry framed through the inquirer’s identity rather than a dispassionate frame of reference (as would be appropriate for an unbiased show on politics, lest [sic] you be grouped in with people like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, etc).” In other words, speaking on the violence against black bodies through the lens of my black identity lessened my credibility. The writer concluded, in the voice of Yoda, “Perhaps to a painted nail, like a white hammer everything looks.”
    […]

    The failure of white culture is a failure to look inward, and I suspect it’s because white people would be frightened or ashamed at what they see. James Baldwin examined this failure more than 50 years ago in his blistering “Down at the Cross” essay, published in his book The Fire Next Time. His outlook was no less cynical:

    [There] is certainly little enough in the white man’s public or private life that one should desire to imitate. White men, at the bottom of their hearts, know this. Therefore, a vast amount of the energy that goes into what we call the Negro problem is produced by the white man’s profound desire not to be judged by those who are not white, not to be seen as he is, and at the same time a vast amount of the white anguish is rooted in the white man’s equally profound need to be seen as he is, to be released from the tyranny of his mirror.

    We’ve seen how disastrous the legacy of that unmet need has been for black North America. The legacy to which both the Red Summer and the razing of Africville belong. The legacy produced by the bombing of Osage Avenue, the redlining of neighbourhoods, and by racially selective immigration policy. Ending that legacy would require white people to examine how collective wealth accrued since World War II created its middle class, and why generational black wealth has been all but nonexistent. It would require confronting that legacy wherever it lives.

    Recently, I spoke at a panel discussion on racism and policing for an organization called JAYU, which engages marginalized communities through art and public dialogue. When asked about my experience discussing black issues, I told the audience, “White allies, y’all are fucking up.” The room got quiet. “Every time your uncle makes a racist comment at the Thanksgiving dinner table, or your co-worker complains about affirmative action, or your friend thinks it’s funny to make ironically racist jokes, and it’s too uncomfortable for you to confront it, you are making your community’s racism our problem to deal with.”

    In every white social circle, you will find a Dylann Roof. They’re someone’s wayward younger brother, or cousin with the anger issues, or classmate, or someone’s co-worker’s kid who posts those troubling Facebook updates. Dylann Roof’s family and friends knew he had a grudge against black people. Roof’s father knew he owned a firearm, because his father was the one to come up out of pocket for it. Dylann Roof’s roommate knew he was planning to harm black people, because he had been talking about it for months. Everyone who could have prevented Dylann Roof from robbing the earth of nine black souls chose to do nothing. That aversion to looking in the mirror, that desire to avoid personal friction, came at the cost of our lives.
    […]

    Expecting black people to do more work to end racism is, in itself, an act of oppression. If white audiences can watch the evening news and not come away with the impression that black people are living in a state of terror, we cannot sacrifice any more bodies to convince them. We cannot grant white North America compassion if, after learning a young man is gunned down by police in Brampton, the only story told is of his criminal past. We cannot grant white humanity to North America if, when we literally plead for our lives by chanting “Black Lives Matter,” the reply is that “All Lives Matter.” We’ve borne the burden of white apathy, self-delusion, and hatred for far too long. It is time for white North America to begin carrying its own weight and holding its communities to account for the terrorist violence borne within—terrorism which we’ve become obligated to withstand and rise above. We need white North Americans to risk hurting the feelings of others close to them, and hurting their own feelings as well. We need white North America to stop making excuses; to do the uncomfortable work of calling racism what it is, and confronting it head on.

    The message now is that white comfort is worth more than black lives. This has to change.

    William English Walling was not stopped by the spectre of identity politics. He did not dispassionately report both sides of the story on the Springfield riots, and neither did Mary Ovington White fold up her magazine and shake her head at what the world was coming to. The work they put in confronting white supremacy helped to create the modern day civil rights movement. Right now, we are in the midst of another movement, and there is no neutral place on the sidelines. Who will answer the call and come to our aid?

    Well that ended up being long, too. “Who will answer the call and come to our aid?” Please let that be us.

  268. rq says

    I was torn about whether or not to go to Ferguson this weekend. Decided not to. It makes sense to follow the weekend happenings on Twitter.
    Last August, I followed the Ferguson hashtag obsessively, stayed up late into the night following tweets, pictures and videos from protests.
    I will never forget the images that came out of Ferguson last August. I will never forget how the police brutalized that community.
    The police showed up in full riot gear to Mike Brown’s peaceful candlelight vigil. They declared war on the community of Ferguson.
    We watched unarmed community members of Ferguson get shot with rubber bullets and teargas in their own backyards.

    Here’s a small reminisce: Ferguson PD

    Via James Roberson “Police swarming random vehicles for no reason with m16s. Breaking out people windows and beating people for no reason. These people were just parked in a public lot.”

    On vimeo.

  269. rq says

    Black Lives Matter Has Become a Global Movement

    In the two years since its conception, the Black Lives Matter movement has transformed from a powerful, U.S.-based unifier to a globalized movement connecting black and oppressed people all over the world.

    After the acquittal of George Zimmerman in July 2013 in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, three black women created #BlackLivesMatter to represent black people who were being terrorized by state-sanctioned violence, poverty and mass incarceration.

    It was a declaration.

    Let’s be clear: The reach of anti-black racism is not confined to the borders of North America. Black Lives Matter has become a transformative outlet for all black people from different historical, cultural, socioeconomic and political identities. It is a source of solidarity for the survivors of colonization, exploitation, capitalism and police brutality.

    After a grand jury failed to indict then-Ferguson, Mo., Police Officer Darren Wilson for killing 18-year-old Michael Brown, “Black lives matter!” became the rallying cry of protesters in Ferguson and across the nation. The militarization of police, the presence of the National Guard and a citywide curfew in St. Louis drew international attention.

    As #BlackLivesMatter gained momentum, social media campaigns like #Palestine2Ferguson connected the violent erasure of Palestinian lives in Gaza to the mistreatment of black people in Ferguson and the U.S. at large. The mutual experiences of struggle and marginalization between African Americans and Palestinians created a real base of international solidarity, with Palestinians using Twitter to provide tips to Ferguson protesters on methods of neutralizing tear gas.

    When Freddie Gray died in April, a week after he was brutalized by police officers in Baltimore, that city rose up in defiance. A state of emergency was declared, the National Guard was called and a curfew set. Major protests swept across the country, in open resistance to anti-black racism and police brutality.

    Around the time that military forces were being withdrawn in Baltimore and the curfew lifted, Ethiopians in Israel began protesting after an Ethiopian member of the Israeli army was attacked by Israeli police while in full uniform. The systemic anti-black racist discrimination against Ethiopians living in Israel became connected to the larger Black Lives Matter movement, with Ethiopian Jews demanding that their black lives mattered, too. Much as in Ferguson and Baltimore, they demanded an end to discrimination and police brutality in Israel.

    Last month, 28-year-old Sandra Bland was pulled over by Texas state Trooper Brian Encinia and was found dead in her cell days later. An international campaign for justice emerged, from a mural in Ottawa to #SandraBland hashtags worldwide. #SayHerName—a campaign seeking justice for black women who died while in police custody, among them four other women in July—connected to #BlackLivesMatter. That connection created a deeper understanding of state violence, expanding the movement to include gender and sexuality under its banner.

    In the latest act of resistance, Black Lives Matter Toronto shut down both sides of a major highway in July to agitate and advocate for the families of 33-year-old Jermaine Carby and 45-year-old Andrew Loku, who were killed by police in Canada. #BlackLivesMatter activists in the U.S. used social media in solidarity, helping to shape the narrative in seeking justice for the families.

    Anti-black racism continues to thrive on a global scale, from the mass deportation of Haitians out of the Dominican Republic—rendering them not just homeless but stateless—to the international abandonment of African migrants who risk drowning on overcrowded fishing boats while fleeing war-ravaged countries. All are the concern of #BlackLivesMatter.

    With 26 chapters in the U.S., Canada and Ghana, the continued expansion and evolution of this movement into a globalized black resistance must go beyond nationalism and borders and strike at the heart of the matter, which is that all black lives matter, everywhere.

    I’m sad that the necessity is global, but… I’m actually kind of glad there’s that kind of reach.

    Cops make disgusting online ‘memorial’ mocking death of Ferguson’s Michael Brown. Paragons of virtue that they are.

    An online group dedicated to police officers posted a wildly offensive “memorial” to slain Ferguson, Missouri teenager Michael Brown on the social medium Facebook. After an outcry, it now appears the tasteless post has been removed.

    The Free Thought Project reported that the Facebook group Police Officers posted the offensive image in advance of the 1-year anniversary of Brown’s slaying at the hands of police officer Darren Wilson.
    […]

    Some users, however, objected to the post.

    “Sorry, while I support my LEO [law enforcement officer] brothers,” wrote one commenter, “this is very distasteful. We are above this garbage. Should take down.”

    The Police Officers administrator replied that “Mike Brown chose his path, one that has lead [sic] this country into complete divisiveness. He’s not a martyr, he was a thug, who robbed a clerk then made the adult choice to fight a cop, of which he intended to murder.”

    “At the end of the day,” the post continued, “the person truly responsible for the killing of Mike Brown is Mike Brown himself.”

    Brown’s was one of the factors that touched off the #BlackLivesMatter movement and has remained a bone of contention in the year since.

    Officer Wilson was profiled this week in a New Yorker article in which he said he is trying to put the slaying of the unarmed teen behind him and that he and his family are living in anonymity. To avoid conflict, Wilson said when the family dines out, they go to businesses frequented by “like-minded individuals” and restaurants that “aren’t a mixing-pot.”

    The offensive rhyme seems to have originated on a now-banned Reddit community called “C*onTown,” but was reprinted on Facebook by the Libertarian group Communism Kills.

    Firm investigated for lax police screenings also accused of negligence in officer’s suicide – so first they’ve been hiring inappropriately, and then it turns out they’ve been offering inadequate resources? No wonder things are shit.

    The Lutherville psychology firm that’s under investigation for allegedly rushing mental health screenings of prospective Baltimore police officers also treated — and cleared for duty — an officer who killed herself last year, her family says in a lawsuit.

    Officer Angeline Todman shot herself with her service weapon in February 2014 after a long battle with bipolar disorder and depression.

    Her family says in a wrongful-death lawsuit filed in June that Psychology Consultants Associated and its president, Dr. Kenneth Sachs, are partly to blame for Todman’s suicide because they told the department that she was fit to return to work in Southeast Baltimore despite erratic behavior and pleas from the family that she not be given access to her department-issued handgun.

    “Dr. Sachs’ recommendation that Officer Todman could return to patrol for The Baltimore City Police, one of the most dangerous and stressful jobs in one of the most dangerous cities in America, was forensically negligent,” Marc Rosen, an attorney for Todman’s husband and mother, wrote in the complaint filed in Baltimore Circuit Court.

    The lawsuit also names as defendants Loretta Elizalde, a licensed clinical professional counselor for PCA who the family says treated Todman; psychology firm Columbia Counseling Center and one of its contracted psychiatrists, Dr. Jing Zhang, who they say treated Todman; former Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts; and Lt. John Wendall, one of Todman’s supervisors at the department.

    “It should have been obvious that a person with bipolar disorder who was dealing with episodes of depression and medication noncompliance is susceptible to doing something that would result in someone getting hurt,” Rosen said in an interview Thursday. “It didn’t take long for her to be challenged with the stresses of the position and to be overcome by them.”

    Attorneys for Sachs and PCA did not respond Thursday to requests for comment. In a court filing, the defendants have denied liability for Todman’s death.

    They would deny it, of course.

    Defense says prosecutor steered police away from evidence Freddie Gray had history of ‘crash for cash’ schemes. Honestly, right now, I don’t even want to know what that’s about. But there it is for your reading pleasure.

  271. rq says

    Catch-up from the work computer!
    Old stuff.
    Sandra Bland’s arresting officer once flagged over conduct (CBC)
    Baltimore forms task force to curb skyrocketing homicides (CBC)

    Mano Singham:
    Suggestion to reduce police abuse: Raise income taxes

    Brianne Bilyeu:
    I Am Not Your Tool

    And a couple I can’t remember if they’re on the discussion thread, I think that’s where I got them from, but here goes on here too:
    My Lived Experience is Not Up For Debate

    When I speak to people about lack of black female representation and stories in many of the different types of media I consume there’s always tension present. It’s hard to express how I absolutely adore Kendrick and Jermaine and KRIT and so many other Black male artists but know I can never expect to hear much of anything I relate to as a black woman represented in their work. It’s generally met with “agh that sucks” or “I mean but like what exactly can be done to fix it. You got point by point instructions on exactly how to make it better? Nah? Oh well. can’t be that bad” Which is fine but I can’t help but feel that many times these points are made to problematize my complaint not the actual institution being critiqued. This dismissal occurs not just in hip hop but in most spheres of Blackness that I engage with that is not exclusively Black feminist.

    More times than not I generally feel regret when I have these interactions. Regret that I don’t have a quick and easy answer for how black males can better include black women into their vision for racial uplift outside of birthing the future kings and queens of our society and/or being there solely to support our male counterparts. Regret that I even brought it up in the first place and couldn’t just nod and agree that that one track was dope and his delivery in that one verse was great.

    Then I remember I spent the first 23 years of my life smiling and nodding and trying not to make too much noise when I felt silenced or excluded. The thing with doing that is that you’re still invisible whether you don’t make waves or you rock the boat till it tips over. When in discussion with a friend, for the sake of proving a greater point, I tried to think of how he must feel when listening to mainstream music from this genre he identified with so heavily and how he copes when his voice isn’t acknowledged and his presence isn’t considered important enough to address with care and complexity. Then I recall that as a cishet, black male it probably doesn’t happen too often and by probably I mean rarely to never. So no I don’t feel bad when I’m bumping Rihanna or Nicki or Rapsody and refuse to play male artists when I’m having a ‘get em girl’ jam session. Its not always about things being equal, one must always take into account power and privilege.

    Worth re-reading if you’ve already read it once!

    If my mom was alive, she’d probably be voting for Hillary, also I think from the discussion thread.

    I recently discussed the black church and its historic role and power in our communities, with an analysis of President Barack Obama’s eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney. In the church there are intersections with other groups that matter when politicking. Two of the eulogized Charleston “Emanuel 9” were members of black sororities—Myra Thompson was a Delta and Sharonda Coleman-Singleton was an AKA. The Rev. Pinckney was an Alpha.

    African Americans also have informal networks of social clubs, barber shops, and beauty parlors, where black Americans of differing social strata interact as they do in church. But if a politician wants to plug into an organized and historic powerhouse of black womanhood, he or she had better find the black sororities. The same is true for men and black fraternities.

    It’s a looooong article, but I found it extremely educational and interesting.

  273. rq says

    So I was fluttering around the internetz and ended up at Libby Anne’s, where I discovered a series of her posts on one man’s changed opinion on slavery (don’t expect anything too radical, this is a conservative christian we’re talking about here – and actually these are fine examples of the flawed thinking that people use in support of slavery):
    Doug Wilson: Supporting Marriage Equality Is a “Far More Serious” Problem Than Supporting Slavery;
    Doug Wilson: Slavery As It Was;
    Doug Wilson: Black and Tan;
    Doug Wilson: Exchange with Thabiti Anyabwile;
    Doug Wilson: Have His Views on Slavery Changed?.

  274. rq says

    And a couple more from Libby Anne, this time with a focus on abortion, pregnancy and black people with uteri:
    Is Abortion an African-American Genocide? The Problem with Conservatives Citing Margaret Sanger;
    No, the African American Womb Is Not More Dangerous Today than during Slavery.

    And the Toronto Star on this weekend in Ferguson:
    Ferguson residents try to move on

    Everything changed on Aug. 9, 2014, when a white police officer named Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old. The street confrontation on that sultry day launched the Black Lives Matter movement.

    Now the city government, and the streets themselves, look much different.

    The city has a new police chief, a new city manager and a new municipal judge — all blacks who replaced white leaders. All Ferguson officers wear body cameras. The city council has new members, too, several of whom are black. And the business district that was at the centre of last year’s sometimes violent protests is slowly rebuilding.

    The unrest that followed the shooting scarred a proud community, which has spent nearly a year trying to atone for past sins and move ahead.

    Some stuff about how Knowles sort of kind of admits that there used to be a police-community relations problem, but probably not actual racism, and anyway, that is now over. However:

    Interim Police Chief Andre Anderson wants officers engaging with the community, doing things like getting out of their cars and mingling. He has publicly acknowledged that he hopes to be considered for the job permanently, and has implored the city’s populace to help him “set a course in the history books that clearly proves that peace prevails.”

    But some residents question the improvements. Emily Davis says she has seen little change for the better, especially along the busy roadway that was looted and burned.

    “People are still being targeted by police officers,” the 38-year-old said. “. . . Our city government has not become any more communicative. They have not made any attempt to engage in dialogue — meaningful dialogue — with the citizens, which is not any different than it was a year ago.”

    And here’s a CBC piece on black-on-black crime – or at least, the perceived threat thereof:
    L.A. gangs using social media to terrorize communities

    If you’d told Townsend’s younger self that one day he’d be helping the cops, the conversation wouldn’t have ended well. But the now 40-something former gang member leads a gang intervention group. And he has traced the #100days#100nights challenge to a couple of Peevy’s friends.

    “They put that out over Facebook, Instagram, they tweeted it, and before you know it, it went viral,” Townsend says.

    Spike in violence

    But is this a credible threat? Would gang members really slaughter 100 members of their own community?

    “It’s really been taken out of context, out of character, and it’s really not true,” Townsend says.

    He says the panic over #100days100nights isn’t warranted, but he is worried that more often these days, beefs start on social media and end up in the graveyard.

    Gangs, he says, are all over social media, advertising, recruiting and threatening. Graffiti is now old school. Tags have been replaced by hashtags.

    “Social media is an instigator in a lot these situations where individuals try to be the toughest person from behind the computer screen,” Townsend says. “There are individuals who are sometimes not in Los Angeles, who are in New York. They’ve been instigating things.”

    Police have stepped up their patrols, even though LAPD Deputy Chief Bill Scott agrees with Townsend that the #100days100nights threat may not be real.

    “I wouldn’t say we’re in the middle of a gang war,” Scott says. “We do have a spike of violence.”

    Doesn’t sound too much like the community is staying silent about it, or that those involved are doing nothing about it, or… well, you get the point.

  275. rq says

    Issa Rae: Hollywood Wanted to Lighten Awkward Black Girl—I Said No, also worthy of cross-post to the Discuss: Art thread.

    Make no mistake about it: Issa Rae is still on her content-creating grind after the success of her online fictional Web series Awkward Black Girl.

    Except now she’s in Hollywood trying to work with production companies and television networks to get her stuff on television and in front of a bigger audience.

    To say that this leg of the journey hasn’t been easy would be an understatement.

    In an interview with the New York Times, Rae spoke about how hard it has been for Hollywood executives to understand the vision behind Awkward Black Girl (even though it did so well online), and how some executives have tried to change the concept of the show from its initial premise of chronicling the life of an awkward black girl.

    One network executive wanted to make it a “pan-racial franchise operation,” the Times explains, by casting a different ethnicity in the lead character for each iteration, starting with Awkward Indian Boy.

    Another executive advised Rae that if she wanted to get her show on TV, she should change the lead character from a chocolate-complexioned black girl (Rae played the lead character) to a lighter-skinned black girl with straight hair.

    “They wanted to make it as broad as possible, broadly niche, but I was like: No, that’s not what this is about,” Rae said. Rae respectfully declined any efforts to reinvent ABG in a way that didn’t feel authentic.

    After a few promising green lights that didn’t go anywhere (one project had Shonda Rhimes loosely attached), Rae is now working on an HBO-approved pilot for a show she pitched called Insecure. It’s faring much better, but when Rae gave the network a list of young directors and producers of color whom she wanted to work with, it recommended that they go with more seasoned writers.

    She got a black showrunner, though, so there’s that. So much for small victories.

    Nomad Shamira Muhammad Aims to Launch Illustrated Novel & Travel Web Magazine

    The Ma’Ati is a novel and travel web-magazine hybrid inspired by the legend of a magical nation of nomads. Founding editor Shamira Muhammad created the Ma’Ati nation out of her desire to see the soul of exploration personified.

    Muhammad says, “After living and traveling overseas for the past six years, I struggled to find a travel website that fit the needs of quirky, cool, urban travelers of color. As a self-professed nerd, I also wanted to read an illustrated book that would allow me to travel around the world one chapter at a time through magical, strong black and brown characters.”

    Here’s the plan: “Each month, a new chapter of the Ma’Ati story is illustrated and published online, all written in, set and featuring a new global destination.” This work will be paired with the travel magazine that will “[highlight] must see locations for the month’s featured destination, plus interviews with amazing global artists, beautiful visuals and inspiring style inspirations. At the end of each year, the Ma’Ati will publish a completed novel compiled of all the adventures we were able to experience and imagine.”

    So far, Muhammad has written six chapters of the book in Washington, D.C.; Alabama; New Orleans; Jamaica; and Cuba. Muhammad doesn’t do all the work on her own. The crew involved in creating the Ma’Ati include Jamaican artists Taj Francis and Paul Davey.

    Wow. That sounds like a lot of fun!

    Meet the man serving breakfast to 500 Ferguson residents this weekend

    On the top floor of a flat in the south side of this city, Charles Wade and his team are preparing to serve a meal for 500 people in Ferguson, Mo. this Sunday, an event that will help mark one year since the shooting of teenager Michael Brown.

    Atop a table lay stacks of syrup for waffles, trays of muffins, boxes of Spanish-style rice, granola mix, and more. “We do half continental, half hot,” Wade said of the selection. “It really lets someone know you care when you give them a hot meal, and that’s what we wanna do.”

    Wade, co-founder of the St. Louis-based nonprofit Operation Help or Hush, would know. The organization was born in the ashes of the rioting and looting that hit Ferguson immediately after the death of Brown. The group has become a major player in the non-profit/activism scene that has moved into Ferguson since last year, including groups like Hands Up United, Lost Voices, Ferguson Freedom Fighters, and others.
    […]

    Since those beginnings, Operation Help or Hush has grown into a certified force in the activism community across the nation. When rioting and looting hit Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, Wade and his group ordered hot Dominos pizzas for neighborhood kids who would be missing out on free school lunch for the day. “Sustaining protesters and the communities they protest in is core to our mission,” said Wade.

    Today, the organization employs two people from Gilmor Homes (where Gray lived) who help hand out lunches to about 75 people in that community every weekday. In St. Louis, employees and volunteers have been handing lunches to impoverished children for much of the summer.

    Serving hot food like pizza a marketing plan of sorts, Wade admits. A lot of groups come into a community when there’s a crisis, do some quick work, and then leave without really getting to know the community. But for Help or Hush, the pizza was a way into a deeper relationship. “The first day I went back to the community, people were shocked. They were like, ‘We never thought we’d see you again,” he said. “I wouldn’t be able to walk around Gilmor Homes as freely as I walk around Gilmor Homes if I hadn’t already established a trust from the moment I met them there. Same in St. Louis. We wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing here if we didn’t already establish trust in August and November,” when they regularly fed community members and activists.

    What they are doing isn’t by any stretch a miracle, but it is much appreciated. In the impoverished North St. Louis neighborhood of Baden, employee Isaiah Qualls and two volunteers recently sat at a table in a park, offering free meals to children who haven’t had access to free school lunch all summer. Signs of inner-city ills in the area are abound. A few steps from the table, a small memorial sits adorned with teddy bears in the name of a loved one. Homes and businesses in the area display the yard sign: “We Must Stop Killing Each Other.”

    Kids take breaks from basketball games to grab a turkey sandwich and water. A hungry pregnant woman approaches the table and asks if she can have a lunch. “Thank you,” she said, when Qualls told her unborn children count.

    See, but they’re also trying to take care of the living, so that’s what I would call ‘pro-life’.

    Chicago police OK independent stop-and-frisk evaluations – which means they’re going to let someone else look at their practices!

    The agreement that calls for increased public disclosure and more officer training follows a scathing March 2015 report from the ACLU of Illinois that found Chicago officers disproportionately targeted blacks and other racial minorities in hundreds of thousands of stop, question and frisk encounters.

    Under the agreement, former U.S. Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys will provide public reports twice a year on Chicago police investigatory stops and pat downs, looking at whether the city is meeting its legal requirements. It goes into effect immediately.

    “It’s not going to be a change in the actual way that we stop people, it’s going to be a change in the way that we record the stop,” Superintendent Garry McCarthy said at a Friday news conference. And he suggested that the evaluations will bear out his belief that the stops have been constitutional.

    McCarthy also said he was pleased that his department was not compelled to take action by a court order, and that he hopes the agreement will “set the standard” for other police departments.

    The president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association said other departments would be “wise” to follow Chicago’s lead.

    “If we can address the community concerns without having to go to court, without … a lawsuit, I think that’s obviously a better way and certainly better for the relationship between the police and the community,” said Tom Manger, chief of police in Montgomery County, Maryland, who was in Chicago to meet with McCarthy and other police chiefs.

    The only concern McCarthy said he had is that the extra paperwork might take officers off the streets for too long.

    Meh.

    Ferguson anniversary: St Louis County PD suggest residents signup for alerts on any “large deployment of officers” see attached text.

    Ferguson Missouri: One Year On

    US race and policing one year after the shooting of teenager Michael Brown and the riots in Ferguson, Missouri; plus why it’s so hard to talk openly about miscarriage. Audio at the link.

  276. rq says

    I interviewed activist Tef Poe of the Hands Up United. #MikeBrown #Ferguson http://youtu.be/GIztjZidyaE?a

    This is how the highbrow Dutch newspaper @NRC designed and headlined its review last week of @tanehisicoates’s book. Umm, the headline reads “N*gg*r, Are You Crazy?” but without the asterisks. Enough said.

    Ferguson Braces for First Anniversary of Michael Brown’s Death. “Braces”? I think only the cops are bracing. The community is bracing for the media vultures, but… not really much else? Maybe?

    Ferguson, Mo., officials are not planning any kind of a memorial ceremony to mark the one-year anniversary of the death of Michael Brown on Aug. 9, but there will be a job fair and the Ferguson Youth Initiative, an organization that posts a list of Safe Places where children can run to avoid violence, will hold its monthly Youth Advisory Board meeting.

    Other than that, will it be just another summer weekend in Ferguson? Don’t bet on it. Ferguson may not be sponsoring an official memorial event, but church leaders told Reuters they are expecting “hundreds, if not thousands” of people to come to their city to mark the passing of the 18 year old who was shot to death by a police officer in 2014.

    Mary Engelbreit, illustrator of sweet lil images of children, is now doing this & pissing off racist old white ladies, see attached picture.
    She is the artist who did this heartbreaking image last year.

  277. rq says

    What You MUST Know About Planned Parenthood and Black Women, and how the attack on Planned Parenthood is important.

    The most recent anti-Planned Parenthood video took aim at Black women, communities and history. Just days after what would have been Emmett Till’s 74th birthday, Students for Life unveiled a video in which clinic staff allegedly scrutinized an aborted fetus. “Call him Emmett,” suggested the video, and make him this century’s civil rights symbol — just like the 14-year-old Emmett Till’s murder by White Mississippi racists galvanized the modern civil rights movement.

    Let’s call the video what it is — the latest in the anti-abortion movement’s appropriation of civil rights and its crass manipulations of history. And it won’t be the last because abortion opponents have long capitalized on the very real history of how exploiting Black bodies has been foundational to the United States, whether we talk about slavery, medical experimentation or mass incarceration. But while “pro-lifers” seek to sway Black people by acknowledging the past, they spin history and foster myths and misconceptions about not just Planned Parenthood, but also Black people’s responses to various reproductive and sexual-health issues.

    Here’s a guide to help you sift through the distortions behind such videos and the fury of anti-abortion Tweets targeting Black women (i.e. the #unbornlivesmatter hashtag.)

    1. This isn’t the first time that anti-abortion groups have effectively called Black women murderers. The Emmett Till video compares Black women who choose abortion to a group of White men who killed a Black youth for allegedly whistling at a White woman in 1955. Black women making a legal and personal choice about whether to become parents is not comparable to White men committing kidnapping and homicide to maintain White supremacy. But anti-abortion groups frequently erect billboards that show pictures of Black babies with slogans like “The most dangerous place for a Black child is in the womb,” despite reams of statistics and real-life examples of how the world outside the womb means that Black children have higher chances of going to inadequate schools, lacking health care, and being under police surveillance.

    2. Abortion foes say: Abortion clinics target Black communities by situating clinics in Black neighborhoods. Research from the New York-based Guttmacher Insitute, researches sexual and reproductive health, found that 60 percent of abortion-providing clinics are in predominately White neighborhoods. But, even so, abortions are part of the continuum of women’s health care, along with Pap smears, contraceptive, maternal health care. And doesn’t everyone want to have health care nearby?

    3. Myth: Black communities are inherently anti-abortion and anti-birth control. Not so. Black women make up about a third of those who get abortions in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s more than their share of the population because Black Americans comprise about 13 percent of the total U.S. population. The disparity can be explained, say public-health scholars, by how often Black women have unintended pregnancies, a measure that’s related with access to contraception. But while Black women are much more likely to have abortions than White and Hispanic women, it’s worth remembering that one in three U.S. women will have an abortion in her lifetime.

    4. If you read “Hotep” propaganda — the outraged thoughts of latter-day male Black cultural nationalists who frequently confuse Black liberation with Black female submission — you would think that early Black nationalists were uniformly against birth control. It’s true that many Black nationalists of the early and mid-20th century felt that birth control (along with police violence, hunger and poor urban schools) was part of a genocidal plan to wipe out Black people. But there was debate about contraception and abortion within the Black Panther Party, specifically, and Black nationalist communities at larger. Not surprisingly, many Black nationalist, feminist and radical women questioned the idea that it was the job of the sisters to birth as many foot soldiers for the revolution as possible. First, they understood that, as Frances Beal wrote in her seminal 1969 “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female” essay, “rich White women somehow manage to obtain these operations with little or no difficulty [before abortion was legal]. It is the poor Black or Puerto Rican woman who is at the mercy of the local butcher. Statistics show us that the non-White death rate at the hands of the unqualified abortionist is substantially higher than for White women.” Mary Treadwell of Washington, D.C., said it was possible to believe in Black freedom and to reject the idea of the reproductive numbers game where Black people had to out-procreate Whites to build power: “There’s no magic in a home where someone has reproduced five or more Black babies and cannot manage economically, educationally, spiritually nor socially to see that these five Black babies grow up to highly trained Black minds.”

    More points at the link. Going to put that up in the feminism discussion, too. In closing, the article:

    In this most recent scandal, there’s an unfounded conspiracy theory — that Planned Parenthood is cashing in on fetal body parts — and there’s a real conspiracy: anti-abortion forces setting up shell organizations, using fake names, and illegally wire-tapping their “sources” over years.

    We can’t fault those who ask questions — for there are many things we don’t know — and because the exploitation of Black bodies has been a foundation of this country. During slavery, the enslaved were living, breathing capital whose flesh, families, skills and “breeding” capacities could be commodified. The institution of slavery was propped up by medicine, with physicians providing just enough care to keep slaves producing (both crops and children) and their owners’ bottom lines healthy. And we don’t have to go far into the past to find Henrietta Lacks, whose cancer brought her to a hospital where her multiplying cells were indeed taken and have since become standard “equipment” in medical research — furthering science without enriching her family.

    But here is what we do know: many women — many of them Black and Latina — rely on Planned Parenthood for their primary and reproductive health care. For that physical, that Pap smear, low-cost contraception, pregnancy tests, breast exams. I have been one of them, and I will continue to be. I am also gratified when I walk into my local health center and see a nurse practitioner who looks like me or a Spanish-speaking attendant. While Planned Parenthood’s advocacy has not always been there for me, these staff have. Should Planned Parenthood health centers face closure, many women will be out of health care, and many workers will be out of jobs.

    But at the end of the day, who do I stand with? I stand with Black women and women who use Planned Parenthood’s services. I don’t want a return to a world where women die from unsafe abortions and have even fewer health-care options than they already do. Nor do I want to live in a world where we expect Black women to build health-care organizations in the blink of the eye to save themselves when they have an average wealth of $100.

    Because Margaret Sanger is dead, and I want Black women to live.

    Man Claims Self Defense in Police Killing. Please let him say he feared for his life.

    The sister of an ex-convict charged with fatally shooting a Memphis police officer during a struggle says her brother was just trying to defend himself because the officer was manhandling him and being too aggressive.

    Callie Watkins, 28, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that her brother, 29-year-old Tremaine Wilbourn, told her during a phone conversation after the shooting but before his arrest that he was forcibly pulled out of a car by Officer Sean Bolton on Saturday night. Police have said that Bolton approached the 2002 Mercedes Benz on foot after pulling up in his squad car, and that it was parked illegally during a drug deal.

    Watkins said her brother described the officer putting Wilbourn in a hold and telling him to put his arms up. But, she said, Wilbourn told the officer that he couldn’t because his arms were restrained. That’s when the scuffle escalated, she said.

    Police said Wilbourn took out a gun and shot Bolton multiple times. Bolton died at a hospital.

    “He needed to defend himself,” Watkins said. “It’s self-defense against an aggressive officer. It was kill or be killed.”

    Memphis police spokeswoman Karen Rudolph said that she did not want to “entertain that comment” and that the evidence will speak for itself. Police have said Wilbourn got out of the car, confronted Bolton, and they got into a physical struggle.

    Watkins said her brother did not own a gun, and she does not know where he got it. She said they were adopted along with other siblings when they were children, and her brother liked to play basketball and football in their neighborhood. She said they have the same mother but different fathers, and that’s why they don’t have the same last name.

    “He wasn’t a bad kid,” she said. “He was a people person.”

    Bolton, who was white, was the third Memphis officer to be fatally shot in slightly more than four years. Wilbourn is black.

    I can certainly see the merits of the argument.

    Instagram Deleted Our Account

    This morning, we found that our Instagram account ‘@TheDreamDefenders’ has been deleted by Instagram administrators, without any warning, after posting graphics that detailed questionable quotes by GOP Presidential candidates via the hashtag #KKKorGOP. Other #KKKorGOP participants who shared graphics using the hashtag #KKKorGOP individual posts were deleted, but our entire account was deleted.

    It’s also noteworthy that Facebook sponsored, and cohosted the GOP Debate last night. Facebook owns Instagram, and Instagram deleted our account for posts that facilitated discussion and debate via the #KKKorGOP hashtag on Twitter and other online forums.

    In times of darkness, the people must have the freedom to shed light. It is truly concerning when privately owned companies like Instagram step over the lines to censor organizations and people that are participating in the Democratic process by challenging people to think critically.

    #KKKorGOP is a question that we asked for people to think about. We are working with allies to draw parallels and facilitate debate and conversation.

    We are concerned that with brash actions like the one taken against our Instagram account last night, our right to free speech is under attack.

    Some background on the campaign. And they did get their account back.

    Ferguson: The other young black lives laid to rest in Michael Brown’s cemetery

    There is still no headstone in the place where 18-year-old Michael Brown Jr is buried.

    Those who wish to pay their respects have to ask for a map inside the office at St Peter’s Cemetery, a verdant swatch surrounded by a low stone wall in the middle of urban north St Louis County. From the gates, visitors go straight, down a slight slope, make a right at the flower planter, pull over and walk a few short paces to section 10, block F, lot 12, grave number four, where the dirt has settled over the past 12 months and the grass is beginning to take root.

    There’s a cement base on the spot with the initials “MB” spray-painted on it in orange. The permanent monument is supposed to be installed any day now.
    […]

    If one walks in any direction away from grave number four, there are many more pictures of black men and women who died in their teens or early 20s. Some are grinning in school portraits, or giving the camera their most serious expression. Some stones include a baby picture, or a composite photo of the deceased with their children. One marker is etched with a photo of the young man’s beloved truck.

    Within a roughly 30-metre radius of Michael’s grave there are at least 15 homicide victims. The youngest was a 15-year-old. Most of them were shot. There are also deaths by suicide, cancer, car accidents, but for those under the age of 30, the predominant cause of death is homicide.

    Jarris Brown’s death was an accident – a friend told police that he found a gun tossed in an alley, then playfully pointed it at the younger boy’s head.

    The friend went with him to hospital, and so his is one of the rare cases police closed. Most of the homicide victims lying here still have open files with St Louis’ city or county police departments.

    No-one has been charged. There’s almost no information about what happened beyond a couple of lines in the local newspaper.

    Oshay Safari Caves has one of those photos in his headstone – a black and white picture of him with dark eyes and thick brows, a slight afro puff, grinning with a mobile phone up to his ear.
    […]

    “If any of you have loved ones that you’ve lost we’re having a memory parade,” she says. “You can honour your loved ones in joining us,”

    “It’s not just about Mike. You know, he opened everybody’s eyes, but it’s not just about him. We want to honour everybody who has been lost, whether it’s to a police man or just senseless crime.”

    While those killed by police have captured the nation’s attention, “senseless” homicides often merit little more than a line in the local crime blotter or a two-minute TV news bulletin. We know little about the victims – their names do not become hashtags.

    “This is systemic. This idea that black people are ‘less’ – that it suffuses everything in our culture in America,” says Jesamyn Ward, author of Men We Reaped, a memoir about the lives and deaths of five young black men she knew growing up in Mississippi – including her younger brother.

    “Every time something like this happens I think about my brother and I think, ‘These are somebody’s sons. These are somebody’s brothers.’ In some cases these are people’s fathers…They’re human beings.”

    Lots more at the link.

    A Ferguson Syllabus: Reading a Movement

    Sunday will mark the one-year anniversary of the death of Mike Brown Jr., the 18-year old black teenager who was fatally shot by 28-year old Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown’s killing — and the subsequent public display of his lifeless body left bloodied and uncovered on a tiny street before his family and neighbors — was a fulcrum igniting a sustained uprising.

    Ferguson, like Brown’s name, appeared as hashtags in social media over the last 12 months, building upon a growing outcry for the need for contemporary black protest. Names like #MikeBrown, #RekiaBoyd and #EricGarner and movement themes like #HandsUpDontShoot, #SayHerName and #ICantBreathe signify the same idea: Black lives matter and are worth fighting for, regardless of the reason black people end up opposite a police officer’s gun.

    This present movement for black lives was catalyzed by people’s willingness to fight for black life and well-being. It has also raised the consciousness of so many in the United States and the world as it relates to anti-black racism, police misconduct and other forms of state-sanctioned violence. There are lessons to be learned, especially from the perspectives of the black people who spent many days organizing and demonstrating in the sweltering streets of Ferguson.

    Here are some essential readings from several astute activists, journalists and writers that have inspired, angered and challenged readers everywhere this past year. While this is in no way an exhaustive list, the following offers insider and outsider views of Ferguson, pushing all of us to consider the radical spirit and collective beauty illuminated in mass mobilized protests.

    Reading list follows at the link. Here’s a quick excerpt:

    “Black Lives Will Matter When Our Tragedies Turn to Triumph: Let Ferguson Be a Start” by Ashley Yates, Huffington Post

    “Ferguson resonated with so many people because Ferguson really is everywhere. The economic assault via government schemes, police brutality and culpable leadership are dynamics that play out across the globe.” — Ashley Yates

    “When I Close My Eyes at Night, I See People Running From Tear Gas” by Johnetta Elzie, Ebony

    “His blood on the ground cried out to us. His blood was the call to action.” — Johnetta Elzie

    “Young Ferguson Protestor: It’s Bigger Than Us” by Audie Cornish (interviewing Brittany Ferrell), NPR

    “I do feel like Ferguson is going to be a very historical moment. It’s going to be something that’s going to be talked about 50 years from now because we weren’t prepared for this. We were thrown into it.” — Brittany Ferrell

    “I’ve Spent More Time in Jail Than Darren Wilson” by Alexis Templeton, Ebony

    “My family members could not understand the purpose behind my arrests. They still cannot fathom how I was detained for peacefully protesting, yet Darren Wilson was not detained for killing an unarmed 18-year-old young man and still remains free.” — Alexis Templeton

    “St. Louis Rapper Tef Poe Describes the Scene on the Ground in Ferguson, Missouri” by Tef Poe, Noisey

    “And we need the prayer, we need the marches, but the police state won’t de-escalate if we don’t confront it, so a lot of the young people have been finding ways to confront it and expose it rather than go home at night and let them have their way.” — Tef Poe

    “The Fight for Justice is Our Job” by Larry Fellows III, Ebony

    “For the first few weeks of protests, all I wore were t-shirts and basketball shorts because I wasn’t always able to get home. Protesting took a lot of my time and energy not only physically and emotionally but mentally.” — Larry Fellows III

    “The Lost Voices of Ferguson” by Nyle Fort, Urban Cusp

    “While the Lost Voices have received little to no mainstream media attention, they represent the heart of a burgeoning community-based movement primarily organized by youth. The group formed the night of Michael’s murder. And they’ve been camping out in a vacant parking lot ever since.” — Nyle Fort

    “An Open Letter From Ferguson Protestors and Allies” by DeRay Mckesson, Brittany Packnett and Johnetta Elzie, Huffington Post

    “In this American town, officers tapped their batons, pointed guns in our faces, kneed our women’s heads, threw our pregnant mothers to the ground, jailed our peaceful clergy and academics and tear gassed our children.” — DeRay Mckesson, Brittany Packnett and Johnetta Elzie

    Arlington police officer fatally shoots burglary suspect

    A man was fatally shot by an Arlington police officer following an attempted burglary at an area car dealership.

    Police say the burglary suspect — identified as 19-year-old Christian Taylor — crashed a vehicle into the showroom of the Classic Buick GMC located off Interstate 20 near South Collins Street. A third-party security company monitoring cameras at the dealership notified police of the break-in at approximately 1 a.m.

    Several responding officers established a perimeter around the dealership and approached the suspect inside. A confrontation involving Officer Brad Miller ended with Taylor being fatally shot. Police confirmed that Taylor did not have a weapon.

    Miller, 49, has been on the force for less than one year, and had no police experience prior to joining the Department. Sgt. Paul Rodriguez with the Department’s media office said Miller has no history of commendation or discipline. Since graduating from police academy in March 2015, Miller has been under the supervision of a police training officer.

    While the Department is exploring the idea of outfitting officers with body cameras, none were in-play during this incident. Police are working with the dealership to review its surveillance footage to evaluate the situation. However, Rodriguez noted that no footage of the shooting has been located.

    As is routine in incidents involving deadly force, Miller has been placed on administrative leave. The department is conducting a criminal and administrative investigation into Miller’s actions.

    “The preservation of life and safety is our highest priority,” Rodriguez said. “The Arlington Police Department is saddened by this loss of life and will provide the community a clear and transparent investigation.”

    Note how they call him a ‘man’. At 19. Right off, just like that, while it took a while for them to realize that Roof was also a man, at 21…

  278. rq says

    [FERGUSON FORWARD] Brittany and Alexis: In Love and Struggle

    It takes little more than a cursory glance at St. Louis-natives Brittany Ferrell and Alexis Templeton to recognize that they may be one of the most head-over-heels-in-love couples you’ve ever seen. And you probably wouldn’t assume from that quick peek that the sweet faced young twenty-somethings have emerged as two of the baddest, boldest activists to emerge from the movement we call #Ferguson. The co-founders of Millennial Activists United (along with Ashley Yates, who has since left the group to organize in Oakland) were a critical part of the early protests and also made it very clear that women would not take a backseat or secondary role in this new movement.

    Here, the newlyweds talk about what brought them to the streets when Mike Brown was killed and finding love in a hopeful place.
    […]

    EBONY: So once your story came out about you all meeting in the middle of the struggle and falling in love and getting married, did you find that the local LGBT community got a little bit more engaged in what was happening?

    BF: It varied. Because, I noticed from a lot a gay White men, we still don’t hear from them. We still don’t see them. But from a lot of other people of color who identify as LGBTQ, and a good amount of White women that identify as LGBTQ, that they have really supported us. They’ve supported us in a different way than they supported us before the engagement. But the LGBT community still has a lot of work to do, especially here.

    AT: I think our engagement sparked a lot of conversation whether it was wanted or not. It definitely started a lot of conversation here and across the nation. But definitely here people had there comments and that led to commentary about intersectionality.

    BF: People did not realize that in this Black liberation movement, it is about Black folks. When the engagement happened, you had folks that wanted to express their concerns about the gayness distracting from the movement. And it gave people the opportunity to lay their viewpoints on the table. Do you really think it’s not about gay Black lives? …It created a lot of teachable moments for people. A lot of people were so stuck on the fact that this was a Black man issue. Few months later, nah, it’s all Black people. It’s Black women. You gotta show up for Black women. You gotta show up for Black LGBTQ folks. You have to do that.

    AT: They used to call me “Hoops” and they’d be like “But Hoops been out there everyday!” (laughs) “You cant remove Hoops from this. Her life matters, too.” Those confrontations would happen and it would be like okay there’s queer folks fighting out here for us, too. This is about them too. Some people got that. It was great for people to have the growth and to see it’s not just about a straight Black man. It’s not just about me straight Black women. All of us are dying, regardless of how we identify. We’re all dying. We gotta lift their names up, too. So then when you go into certain spaces, people will lift up Mya Hall’s name. They’ll say Penny Proud, you know what I’m saying. Or the sister, Rakia Boyd. It changes. The names being lifted up has definitely changed from just men to inclusive of men, women, trans women, queers. Jessie Hernandez gets lifted up. I would say the engagement, not sparked it, but it helped just a little bit.
    […]

    EBONY: So what is MAU doing now? What’s your long term vision for the organization?

    BF: We were just talking about getting some 501-3C status.

    AT: We have new members.

    BF: We do have new members.

    EBONY: How many new members?

    BF: Two. We wanna be able to come back and start doing work, established to where we can raise our own funding to do the work in the way that we wanna do it and not from an organization that’s suffering from the non-profit industrialization complex. I don’t want people to dictate what we do for the dollar. I want to be able to do what we do passionately without having to request or seek some type of approval for things that we choose to do. I think as an organization that’s ledby queer Black women that advocate very strongly for Black women and queer folks and young people and Black lives, in general, I think we should have the right to be able to make those type of decisions without having to consult with a predominantly White organization. I’m not comfortable with it. I never have been and moving forward, when we really start, like, when we get back into organizing and movement-building like we have been in the past, I want to be able to know that whatever we decide to do, we are in control of that.

    AT: It’s also changed our lane. We had a lane, we just never really focused in on it. Our lane was women, Black women, queer folks, Black queer folks and Black young folks. We did not stay in that lane because there’s just so much going on to where it’s hard to not be reactionary here because there are people dying left and right…You had people who were like “Well, they focusing on women’s rights and they focusing on gay rights and we are focusing on police brutality and we all need to be focused on Black men because they the ones dying.” Like these are real conversations. Like why can’t we do all of that and work towards a center goal of Black liberation, because that’s what “Black Lives Matter” encompasses and what it should encompass.

    I appreciate folks like DeRay [McKesson] who stays in his lane and does his thing online for wetheprotestors.org and collects all that data and people don’t know that when you’re having these arguments with whomever you’re using his statistics to help combat your argument. So that’s helping the movement. Shout out to Hands Up United. They started their tech program for the youth.

    BF: That’s huge.

    AT: That’s huge! And people see that as them not doing nothing. Man, that’s amazing to have that! That’s solidarity all day there. I love it. And you’re giving people computers and you’re helping people get jobs? That’s incredible.

    BF: Shout out to the clergy doing “Truth and Reconciliation.”

    AT: Yes! Shout out to the clergy doing Truth and Reconciliation! Shout out to the Ferguson Commission, folks like Brittany Packnett, folks like Reverend Starksy Wilson, who are talking to the, if you will, “respectable Negroes,” who come to those meetings. You have people like them, who are there, and Tracy Blackmon, who are there, who are very woke and are very “non-respectable” or they can be respectable but they’ll take the respectable out real quick for you and get you together, you know what I’m sayin, in a very loving way. And we have got a lot of voices who will get out there and will take to the streets and…

    BF: Turn up in the most uncouth way and don’t care.

    AT: And it don’t matter. They’re unapologetically Black and they’re unapologetically them and we need all of that. It all works together. I think it’s dope and nobody sees how organized that looks on the inside because we’re all tryna keep it together, but on the outside it looks incredibly organized in St. Louis. We’re really doing the damn thing. I think a lot of people here, in the movement, have to take a step back and see that. I think it’s great what everybody is doing.

    This and that else at the link.

    Ferguson court clerk fired over racist email is now working in another nearby court

    The Ferguson court clerk who was fired over racist emails that surfaced during the Justice Department investigation now has a job with another north St. Louis County municipal court.

    Mary Ann Twitty is reportedly working three days a week as court clerk in Vinita Park, a city of only 1,880 people just a few communities southwest of Ferguson. The city has not yet responded to questions about the specifics of her employment there, but two employees confirmed with a reporter Friday that she was now working for the court.

    News of the hiring set off a swift reaction on social media, with many incredulous that the city would pick a woman who became the face of all that was wrong with the municipal court operations in Ferguson and elsewhere.

    Also incurring that unflattering distinction was former Judge Ronald Brockmeyer, who not only resigned from Ferguson’s court in the wake of the DOJ investigation, but also from his positions in five other municipalities — including as prosecutor in Vinita Park.

    Patricia Bynes, the Ferguson Township Democratic Committeewoman and one of the more recognizable faces of the protest movement, called it a slap in the face to everyone who is trying to fix a broken St. Louis County criminal justice system.

    “I don’t understand why anyone would allow her to work in the halls of justice,” she said, in a phone interview Friday. “And I am just flabbergasted that it’s in another black community like Vinita Park, just down the street.”

    Wonderful.

    Ugh, Maya Angelou’s books are being sold at a tag sale and I’m almost sure they didn’t get cataloged first http://www.estatesales.net/NC/Winston-Salem/27106/952257 …
    , just a sort of note.

    The blocking off of Tiffin ave. Small act of passive aggressiveness (from last night).

    Well, we missed the opening, but it still sounds worth a visit: IMPTXDESIGN.14/15.

    The Regional Arts Commission (RAC) presents IMPTXDESIGN.14/15., curated by Creative Reaction Lab. Opening the weekend of the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown, Jr.’s death, this exhibit will be one of many efforts in the St. Louis region igniting a call to action within our communities for racial equality and eradicating police brutality.

    IMPTXDESIGN.14/15. features social impact designs and visual artistic responses developed over the last year that will require attendees to reflect, engage, converse approaches in designing a better St. Louis (#DESIGNSTL) and, ultimately, a better self.

  279. rq says

    Ferguson National Response Network

    Listing of planned Response Events for #Ferguson and all police brutality & racial injustice nationwide.

    See events in a city near you.

    Kajieme Powell Memorial Rebuild.

    [FERGUSON FORWARD] DeRay McKesson: He, the Protestor – because we’ve already seen quite a bit about him throughout the year, I’m not going to cite as liberally. Though one never knows.

    DeRay McKesson has become one of the most visible faces of the Ferguson resistance movement, despite the fact that he’s a Baltimore native. Widely accused of “racism” by right wing pundits who’d sooner avoid the subject of race all together, the 30-year-old is a polarizing figure who may be just as loved as he is loathed. His rapid fire social media reporting and the skill with which he slays challengers on cable news programs has positioned him as a rising civil rights leader while continuing to emphasize the fact that no one person will be the face of movement.

    Here, McKesson, who founded We The Protestors with fellow activist and platonic soulmate Jonetta “Netta” Elzie, explains how a Baltimore boy found his way to St. Louis and why he won’t be leaving any time soon.
    […]

    EBONY: There’s been a lot of pushback against your role here… how do you respond to that?

    DM: You know, I think that freedom work will always be more important than it is popular. And I’ve tried to and I believe I have remained true to my commandments, both around disrupting and confronting a system that is killing people and using the platforms that I’ve had access to, to further the work. So I know that I will fight for people who don’t love me and I want them to be free too.

    EBONY: What does a typical a day of ‘doing the work’ look like for you?

    DM: Through some apps I’m connected to about 15 different protestors and organizers around the country. We talk throughout the day and that represents about 15, 16 cities, and that is positive…So much of our fight in the beginning was convincing people and exposing the problem, that was so much of what we were doing here. Like telling you that there is a crisis and you need to focus on it. And what I believe to be true is that the strategy to expose and convince people of the crisis will be different from the strategies we need to solve the crisis. So in terms of what does the work look like, I think that it’s a lot of capacity building to making sure that people have the tools and resources to do work, such as the infographics that we put out. And then it’s how do we connect people to each other in ways that empower them. And how do we connect people to resources in ways that empower them?

    More at the link.

    Death of Georgia man hit by police stun gun under investigation, Raw Story.

    Investigators are probing the death of a man shocked with a stun gun while fleeing police in suburban Atlanta, authorities said on Friday, hours after a grand jury declined to indict another Georgia officer in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man.

    The stun gun incident occurred in DeKalb County, outside Atlanta, on Thursday when police fired at a man as he fled through the passenger side of a car during a traffic stop, WSB television station reported, citing witnesses. Authorities have not yet identified him.
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    DeKalb County police spokesman Steven Fore said the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is examining the incident. A spokeswoman for the bureau did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

    The death follows a county grand jury decision on Thursday against indicting a former police officer in the 2011 shooting of an unarmed black teenager, the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office said. It was the second time a grand jury declined to bring an indictment.

    The education isn’t a buffer against racism. Shopping while black?

    In preparation for a summertime family reunion in Boston, Jamaica Plain resident Robert Johnson Jr. stepped into a Centre Street liquor store July 16 to pick up a bottle of good-quality cognac. Relatives from Cleveland had arrived in town, and Johnson and his cousin Clem have a tradition of getting together over a glass of cognac.

    At the store, he inquired about selection and price, chose Hennessey, paid the approximately $36 price and left the store.

    But 24 hours later, two Boston police officers — one black, one white — rang the doorbell of Johnson’s apartment on Lakeville Road near Jamaica Pond. They arrived while Johnson and additional family members just in from Florida were getting ready to go to a picnic dinner. They said they were looking for Robert Johnson. He was told he needed to come to the District 13 station.

    “I was thinking, ‘What is this about? We gotta get to my cousin’s house,’” Johnson told the Banner.

    He asked more than once before the officers would say what the problem was, he recounted in a written statement and in a telephone interview. Eventually one of the officers revealed that the visit was related to a larceny.

    “When the guy said ‘larceny,’ I said, ‘You’ve got the wrong guy’ — I figured with a common name like mine, they just had it wrong,” said Johnson, 66, who is professor and chair of Africana Studies at University of Massachusetts-Boston as well as an attorney and author.

    He felt it wise to cooperate, and agreed to come to the station on his own.

    “I just wanted to get it resolved so we could move along,” he said. “And I didn’t want to alarm the neighbors. I’m the only black person in my building and on my street, so I was concerned about the police taking me out in handcuffs and all that stuff.”

    He got accused of stealing 20 bottles of cognac a couple months previous. A case of all black men over 40 look alike. Even when they don’t.

    Texas officer on burglary call shoots unarmed black teen

    A white officer-in-training shot and killed an unarmed college football player who drove an SUV through the glass doors of a car dealership, police said.

    The Arlington Police Department has no video of the incident because the department has not yet put in place a pilot program in which officers will wear body cameras, said a police spokesman, Sgt. Paul Rodriguez. It also was unclear whether the dealership’s security cameras captured what happened.

    Police responded at about 1 a.m. CT Friday to Classic Buick GMC dealership on an Interstate 20 service road after reports of a sport-utility vehicle being driven through the front of the building, Rodriguez said. Authorities initially called the driver a burglary suspect.

    “Officers established a perimeter and approached the suspect inside,” he said. “As officers confronted the suspect, there was an altercation during which at least one officer discharged his weapon.”

    Christian Taylor, 19, of Arlington, Texas, died at the scene, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office. It was not immediately known whether Taylor was intoxicated.
    […]

    Late last month, about two weeks after his record was wiped clean, he tweeted: “I don’t wanna die too younggggg.”

    Just read that sentence again, before moving on:

    Miller had no prior police experience before joining the Arlington department, Rodriguez said. He is on administrative leave during separate criminal and administrative investigations.

  280. rq says

    19-Year-Old Unarmed College Student Fatally Shot by Texas Police – in some headlines, he is a burglary suspect; at least here he gets to be a student.

    New Ferguson police chief Andre Anderson emerged from PD at his first protest. Gave some orders, ignored my questions.
    #Ferguson officers in less casual uniforms. They’re in white polos, deliberate decision by new chief, officers say.
    Which reminds me, pictures of protest at the Ferguson PD will not be in chronological order.

    Here’s something fun: #StraightOuttaCompton basically gave the Internet Photoshop and the memes are hilarious. Basically, you have to go look at the pictures. There’s one for the GOP debate, too.

    Michael Brown’s father: ‘I think of him every single day’

    The barber gets into a groove, electric clippers gliding back and forth over Brown’s head, before I ask about the upcoming anniversary.

    The question takes Brown back to that August day when it was hot and sticky as it is this evening, the haze so thick that the air-conditioning vents are blowing puffy clouds.

    He had stood waiting, numb, about half a mile from here on Canfield Drive, with his wife of three weeks, Calvina. He rushed there after the police called him and his son’s mother, Lesley McSpadden. They all stood before a body covered by a sheet, surrounded by police cars, flashing lights, yellow crime scene tape and a crowd that grew larger by the minute.

    He was there for four hours and 32 minutes before the sheet was lifted and he saw his son, and what he did not want to believe was confirmed. His 18-year-old boy, named after him, had been shot dead by Darren Wilson, a white police officer in Ferguson.

    One year later, Brown utters the same words he uttered then: “I should have been there to protect him.”

    From the afternoon of August 9 to the funeral of “Mike Mike” 16 days later, Brown felt as though he were in a trance. On the funeral program, he wrote:

    “I think of you day and night and just wish I was there to save you from harm. I always told you I would never let anything happen to you. And that’s why it hurts sooooo much. I will never let you die in my heart.”

    When the casket was finally lowered into the ground at St. Peter’s Cemetery, Brown let out a pitched scream of anguish.

    No more jokes. No more smiles. No more tussling with his big, burly son. No more talk of the future.

    That’s how every day has been since. Empty.

    Empty through the months of anguish and protest and violence in Ferguson, through a grand jury decision not to indict Wilson, a scathing Department of Justice investigation report and the deaths of other black men across America. Empty as he led marchers on the streets and watched a movement blossom around the memory of his son.

    He is thankful his son’s death was not in vain, that Mike Mike launched a discussion for the ages that perhaps will lead to the change he thinks is needed in America. Perhaps one day, black parents won’t have to have difficult talks with their sons — like he did — about how to behave in front of police.

    This is a topic burning in the forefront of Brown’s mind but especially so now, a few days after returning from protests in Chicago and a meeting of the Black Lives Matter movement in Cleveland. He has traveled to other cities as well, including a pilgrimage to Selma, Alabama, earlier this year on the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday.”

    Selma gave him chills. “You can feel all that in your soul,” he says.

    He stood and listened to Barack Obama give what many believe was the President’s most powerful speech to date. In it, the President acknowledged the nation had a long way to go to defeat racism but also noted the many gains that had been hard won.

    “What happened in Ferguson may not be unique,” Obama said, “but it’s no longer endemic. It’s no longer sanctioned by law or custom, and before the civil rights movement, it most surely was.”

    That may be true but in Brown’s view, the law failed him and his family. And other black families. That’s why he keeps going from city to city, from protest to protest.

    He’s kept busy but the loss is acute.

    “I think of him every single day.”

    More at the link.

    Prosecutor comments in Ohio fatal traffic stop draw critics

    The blunt prosecutor overseeing the murder case against a University of Cincinnati police officer has expressed outrage over the shooting, but some say his scathing comments could jeopardize the officer’s right to a fair trial and have antagonized police.

    Prosecutor Joe Deters said Samuel DuBose’s shooting came after a “chicken crap” traffic stop over a missing front license plate, was “asinine” and was “without question a murder.” He also said the university shouldn’t be in the policing business at all.

    “I think he lost his temper because Mr. DuBose wouldn’t get out of the car,” Deters said.

    Now-fired Officer Ray Tensing has pleaded not guilty to murder and voluntary manslaughter charges. His attorney says Tensing feared he would be dragged under the car as DuBose attempted to drive away.

    Eugene O’Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, thinks Deters’ comments could be considered unduly prejudicial and inconsistent.

    “His major headline-grabbing claim was that it was basically an act of vengeance for not cooperating,” O’Donnell said. “But he also indicated it was done out of stupidity and for no reason. Which is it?”

    O’Donnell believes Deters’ statements could jeopardize the ex-officer’s right to a fair trial.

    Tensing’s attorney agrees.

    “He basically tried and convicted Ray Tensing without benefit of a trial,” said the attorney, Stewart Mathews.

    Some Cincinnati residents also are concerned that Deters’ widely publicized statements could hamper efforts to find jurors without preconceived opinions.

    “The prosecutor is calling it murder without leaving room for other scenarios,” said Virginia Miller, 69, a Colerain Township woman who commented similarly in a letter to the editor of The Cincinnati Enquirer. “I don’t see how the officer can get a fair trial anywhere.”

    Watch the video. It’s pretty clear.

  281. rq says

    More barricades going up on S Florrisant across the street from #Ferguson PD

    “It’s heavy to be back” said @deray about being in #STL for the 1 year anniversary of Mike Brown’s death #Ferguson

    March to Canfield to honor one year anniversary of shooting of #MikeBrown

    Protesters marching on Chambers Rd blocking traffic headed to police station

    Feels like October out here.

    Hundreds gathered outside the #Ferguson police station tonight to mark the anniversary weekend of #MikeBrown’s death.

  282. rq says

    A reminder of how the story broke on mainstream media: More than 1,000,000 Ferguson tweets were sent before CNN covered the story in prime-time, 3 days after the shooting. With graph.

    John Crawford. #BlackAugust via @ColorOfChange;
    Tamir Rice. #BlackAugust via @ColorOfChange. See the pictures.

    If anyone wants to spread my work, thank you, but please just retweet this instead of reposting without giving credit – art comparing white vs. black.

    only a handful of people in front of #Ferguson PD now. it’s calm, very peaceful. Police opened the street back up

    And while we’re here, here’s how it all began, via Storify: August 9th – August 11th #Ferguson Coverage on Twitter. #neverforget. It’s right from the beginning. It’ll break your heart to read it again. Includes links to the original media stories, too, though I haven’t checked to see if they still work.

  283. rq says

    Covering Ferguson, a collection of articles by Sarah Kendzior, whose work has appeared here several times, from over the past year. Specifically on Ferguson. Some very good reading (also, she has a book of essays on Amazon out now, The View from Flyover Country).

    Attorney General Loretta Lynch: Ferguson ‘Opened the Eyes of America’. Tragically, that’s what it took. And those eyes aren’t completely open yet, either.

    A year after Michael Brown’s death, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said she believes the attention the shooting cast on Ferguson gave a voice to people all over the country who have long felt they are not respected by authorities.

    Lynch said she thinks the relationship between law enforcement and citizens in Ferguson, Missouri, have improved since Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer on Aug. 9, 2014, sparking protests in that town and nationwide. But, she said, “I believe that they are still undergoing a great change.”
    […]

    “I think that the importance of that report was that it showed the world what people in Ferguson and similar situations had been saying for years,” Lynch said. “They just weren’t believed because it was … outside the reality of people who didn’t share the situation or didn’t share their background or hadn’t had those experiences happen to them,” she said.

    The report following Brown’s death and the response that followed — from both officials and residents — shed light on an underlying issue that wasn’t limited to Ferguson, Lynch said.

    “I think it opened the eyes of America and frankly, the world, to what many minorities are saying when they talk about feeling a level of disrespect and a lack of inclusion in their own government,” she said.

    Why I’m suing the Chicago Police Department

    On Wednesday, I filed suit against the Chicago Police Department because of its refusal to release the police car dashboard camera video that shows an officer fatally shooting Laquan McDonald on the city’s southwest side last fall. The 17-year-old was shot 16 times, according to an autopsy conducted by the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.

    On the night of the shooting, October 20, police received a report of a man breaking into vehicles in the Archer Heights neighborhood. Responding officers allege McDonald was carrying a knife he was using to stab tires, that the teen posed “a very serious threat,” that they ordered McDonald to drop the knife, and that he reacted by lunging at the officers.

    An eyewitness, Alma Benitez, described the scene differently: “It was super exaggerated. You didn’t need that many cops to begin with. They didn’t need to shoot him. They didn’t. They basically had him face-to-face. There was no purpose why they had to shoot him.”

    In early June, the city settled with McDonald’s family for $5 million after their lawyers obtained a copy of the video. According to the details of the settlement, the attorneys themselves can’t release the video to the public until the Independent Police Review Authority completes its investigation. (For perspective, IPRA’s investigations have taken years.) Back in April, Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell talked to Jeffrey Neslund, one of the McDonald family attorneys who had seen the video. In her column, Mitchell interpreted Neslund’s description of the footage:

    Laquan McDonald, 17, is walking west in the middle of Pulaski Road at 40th Street. He has a knife in his right hand.

    He is not running.

    He is not lunging.

    He is walking.

    Two Chicago Police officers jump out of a Tahoe with their guns drawn.

    McDonald is still walking west toward the sidewalk with a full lane of traffic separating him from one of the officers.

    When the officer begins shooting, the first shots spin McDonald around. The officer continues to fire from a distance of between 12 and 15 feet.

    McDonald falls.

    The only movement is the puffs of smoke coming from the teen’s torso and his head.

    The police officer comes into view and kicks the knife out of the boy’s right hand.

    The officer who pulled the trigger—his name hasn’t been released—has been assigned to paid desk duty.

    CPD tells me the department has received and rejected 15 Freedom of Information Act requests for the footage of McDonald’s shooting, including my own. The department has denied all of those requests, citing the ongoing investigation. But according to Matt Topic, a civil rights attorney from Loevy & Loevy handling my suit, it’s the government’s burden to prove that releasing something like video footage would harm an investigation.

    My fight for the release of the dash cam video began back on May 26. (You can follow the e-mail correspondence in this PDF of the complaint .) Police took ten business days before answering, which is typical. As the first deadline approached, a FOIA officer asked for an additional month to respond, which I granted. A day after the department blew that deadline, on July 9, I was asked for a July 31 extension. Instead, I granted the department two days. I received no response until July 31, at which point a FOIA officer said a reply would come no later than August 3. And when that day rolled around I received the same denial all other reporters have been given.

    But I’m not taking no for an answer—particularly in light of Kalven v. Chicago, an Illinois Appellate Court decision last March that established information about police misconduct is public, except in limited circumstances that don’t apply in the case of the McDonald shooting video.

    That case was brought by Chicago civil rights journalist Jamie Kalven. After he prevailed, he and his lawyers helped the city craft a more thorough transparency policy in accordance with the court’s decision. Apparently the Chicago Police Department believes the Kalven ruling doesn’t apply in the case of the shooting of Laquan McDonald.

    I’d like to hear what the courts think.

  284. rq says

    Stop and search is a disgrace across the UK – not just in our cities. Interesting though, while racism is definitely a problem in the UK, the police manage to kill a lot less people…

    Figures published today show black people are up to 17.5 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by the police in certain areas of the UK. This enormous disparity is no great surprise. The issue of stop and search has dogged the police service for decades, sparking riots in Brixton in 1981 and in various parts of the country in 1985. Despite Theresa May, the home secretary, pledging to tackle the issue, there has been little faith that much would change. What is surprising about these figures, however, is which police forces are the worst offenders.

    Police forces in large urban areas such as London, the West Midlands and Greater Manchester have received a myriad of complaints and protests over their dealings with black communities. It is in these areas that tensions and resistance have sparked, creating uneasy relationships between the police and the community, which go beyond stop and search to include issues such as deaths in custody and harassment.

    Urban police have, at times, been compared to an occupying force, overseeing black communities. But in the latest figures, while black people are still two to three times more likely to be stopped by police in cities, it is in rural areas that the biggest disparities are found. In Dorset, black people were 17.5 times more likely to be stopped and searched, in Sussex 10.6 times and Norfolk 8.4 times. Given that the last response to stop and search figures by some forces was to attempt to stop collecting the data, some will suspect urban results might reflect forces being better able to massage the figures. But whatever the case, the rural numbers are illuminating.
    […]
    Over-policing of black communities in urban areas is important because it reinforces what Professor Elijah Anderson calls the “iconic ghetto” in the popular imagination. Anderson explains that “the ghetto is where ‘the black people live’, symbolising an impoverished, crime-prone, drug-infested, and violent area of the city.” The importance of the ghetto taking on iconic status is that it comes to define black people even when they are far from the inner city. In the US, the young black man Trayvon Martin was seen as a threat when he visited a gated community in Florida because he represented, for some, the menace of the iconic ghetto. In the UK, the power of the symbol is just as important and frames how the police deal with black people even in areas where there are very few of us.

    The disproportionate rates of stop and search for black communities continue to demonstrate institutional racism in British policing. These stops are just one part of a wider criminal justice system in which black people are more likely to be arrested, charged and to receive a custodial sentence. As the latest figures show, this is a national problem that cannot be dealt with by focusing on the problems of a few urban police forces. It requires wholesale reform of the entire criminal justice system.

    #JonathanFerrell and #ChristianTaylor are two college athletes who have been executed by the cops after car crashes.

    After the block party, meet us at the ready room for the #ferguson rocks concert #unitedwefight

    314 Black Americans Have Been Killed By Police Since Michael Brown’s Shooting

    It’s been almost exactly one year since Michael Brown was fatally shot by a police officer named Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. In the last 365 days, 314 more Black Americans have reportedly lost their lives during interactions with law enforcement. Of course, that’s not a statistic that’s easy to find. In fact, it’s not one that the federal government publicly tracks at all.

    “This is not a tech issue. This is easily doable,” Ezekiel Edwards, director of the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project, told Refinery29 during a discussion about over why the government doesn’t make the police’s fatal-shooting statistics available. “Over the last 23 years,” he went on, “we have had the ability to collect and collate and analyze many different kinds of data points electronically.” Which leads to the question: Why hasn’t it been done?

    The answer is manifold and complex. At least one reason has to do with the fact that the numbers themselves are fairly damning — and therefore, in the minds of many, worth keeping off the radar. Mapping Police Violence (the organization that gave us the figure of how many Black people have been killed by police in the days since Michael Brown died) began researching and compiling fatal encounter accounts in the wake of the Ferguson tragedy. What it found is nothing short of frightening.

    More at the link.

    15 U.S. cities with the lowest unemployment rates for African Americans and other surprising facts. A bit of positive news, for a change.

    Are you thinking about moving to a new city or staying in your current one? Well check out this list of the cities with the lowest unemployment rates for African Americans. Hopefully this list and the links to job banks around the country can push you one step closer to the job and city of your dreams. This data is based on the United States Census 2013 American Community Data Survey.

    The Disruptors, via CNN.

    A shift has occurred in the year since Michael Brown’s death sparked unrest in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014.

    National conversations have arisen around issues affecting the black community in America: police brutality, economic injustice, racial inequality.

    Names that might have made little more than local headlines have become national stories: Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Sandra Bland.

    It didn’t happen on its own. A grass-roots network of activists and allies is mobilizing through social media to shine a national spotlight on the struggles that come with being black in America.

    Their rallying cry: Black lives matter. Their slogan: A movement, not a moment.

    “They put things on the agenda that people were not talking about before,” says author and UConn history professor Jelani Cobb.

    Some critics are skeptical of their means and motives, saying it’s not clear who’s in charge and what they want. But the movement seeks to be intentionally broad to allow everyone to meet specific needs in their communities.

    These activists reside outside traditional institutions and power structures. Many are social media influencers, better known by their Twitter handles than their real names, who can start a trending hashtag or a rally in the streets with a single tweet.

    They have gotten the attention of many 2016 presidential candidates, though whether any of those candidates can secure the black activist vote remains to be seen. Observers say their next move is to create meaningful change in communities where they live.

    Here are the stories of 13 of these “disruptors” who are rallying together and agitating for change.

    Video also available at the link.

  285. rq says

    March going down N Mount thru the #FreddieGray neighborhood but hook left towards downtown b4 the W Dist Station
    #Baltimore – #Ferguson Solidarity March Going south on Fulton ave through the Gilmor Homes neighborhood

    Today. 8/8. 7pm. Arlington, TX Police Station, 620 West Division St. #ChristianTaylor
    At 8pm his Candle light will be at Koinania Christian Church 2455 SE Green Oaks Blvd Arlington TX

    From Palestine to Ferguson. Shaw. #vonderritmyers #Ferguson #MikeBrown

    [FERGUSON FORWARD] Resistance Is Black Tradition

    I was raised to believe that God’s grace and the wealth of Black tradition placed in me all the things I will ever need. This year since August 9th , 2014, has been a lesson in just how deep that well runs.

    This year has deepened my understanding of our collective responsibility to resist. I was raised in a tradition of social justice. My first protests were as a toddler. Our dinner conversation never shied from politics and religion. My first films were Hampton’s Eyes on the Prize, my first Bible an Afrocentric one. Still, like so many good Black mothers and fathers meaning to do better for their children, the socio-economic comfort my parents diligently strove could have threatened to lull me into sleepy comfort and willful ignorance. It’s far too easy for those of us living the Black bourgeoisie experience to believe our freedom was granted with our temporary social status. Such illusions can trick us into abandoning the duties of our Blackness in America, convincing us that our resistance, our agitation will indeed threaten our ability to maintain even our most cosmetic privileges. Sadly, this year, I saw too many of us make that choice.

    But resistance is Black tradition. It’s tradition I was raised never to desert, and August 9th reminded me of precisely why: because nothing can save me from the terror meant for Black bodies except the dismantling of systems of oppression through direct, strategic means. My title isn’t bulletproof. My Master’s degree is not made of Kevlar. Mike Brown’s diploma did not save him, and the exasperating reality that any of our sons could be Tamir, and I could one day be Sandra can not be ignored. Resistance is our responsibility. My career-long efforts to help dismantle educational inequity through formal organizations are nothing if I am not willing to be physically and emotionally proximal to the students I serve and the struggle of Blackness in America. So this year, I learned to resist in ways I once knew, and on August 9, were revived.

    In this year of struggle, I have been reminded of the rich paradox of Black tradition, in our unique and unmarred ability to find- and indeed, grow love in the midst of pain. Love bonds us in our resistance – love for the community that raised us. Love gives us the strength to stand and defend our dignity in the streets of Ferguson and the halls of power. Love allows us to proclaim our humanity without qualifiers or apology. Our protest t-shirts – my generation’s version of the demonstration sign – quote our great heroes and broadcast our love for our Blackness.

    Our ability to stare our destruction in the face and answer with music, laughter, joy, love, beats, hope, and relentless fortitude for our freedom is the very best of our tradition. In the many faces of this movement, I see those fruits of our triumphant Black spirits coming alive as we shout the call of our elders: Justice. Now.

    I will be forever indebted to Michael Brown, Jr. for reviving my spirit and revealing our strength.

    We have everything in us we need to win.

  286. rq says

    LostVoices heading toward Mike Brown Memorial #WorldWatchesFerguson

    Family and supporters marching in #Ferguson on the anniversary weekend of #MikeBrown’s death.
    STL County Police Chief Jon Belmar and Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson are on West Florissant observing the march. #Ferguson

    Michael Brown Sr surrounded by supporters where his son #MikeBrown Jr was shot dead 364 days ago #Ferguson #MO @KMOV

    Around 400 begin marching in #shaw #StLouis #UnitedWeFight #VonDerrittMyers #MikeBrownAugust #BlackAugust #Ferguson

    And here’s some music: Various Artists Never Silent Mixtape (remembering Mike Brown)

    Lou Gotti Boyz Presents #NeverSilent The Mixtape Remembering Mike Brown @Lou Gotti Boyz @DJSirThurl @DJCuddy

  287. rq says

    Will You Join the Day of Resistance on August 10th? #UnitedWeFight See poster for details.

    Virginia recalling specialty license plates featuring Confederate battle flag

    Virginia is recalling the 1,691 specialty license plates featuring a Confederate battle flag, state officials said Thursday.

    But it’s unclear how quickly the flag tags will disappear from roadways.

    The affected motorists will be sent new Sons of Confederate Veterans tags along with a letter telling them they have 30 days before the old plate is invalid, said Department of Motor Vehicles spokeswoman Brandy Brubaker.

    However, the replacement tag doesn’t exist yet. The DMV will work with the heritage group to come up with a new flagless plate design, Brubaker said. Then the plate has to be manufactured and sent to holders of the specialty plate.

    “We’re working as quickly as possible to get this done,” she said.

    The flag plate is being retired after a federal judge ruled July 31 that Virginia can once again enforce a state law banning the use of the battle flag on specialty plates.

    The state had been blocked for 14 years from banning the tags because of a federal injunction won by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The group had argued it had a First Amendment right to use the plates.

    But that argument was rejected last week by U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser, who was reacting to a new edict from the U.S. Supreme Court.

    The high court ruled earlier this summer in a Texas case that specialty license plates are a government function and not individual free speech protected by the Constitution.

    Kiser made his initial ruling from the bench July 31.

    Late Thursday, Kiser filed his written order, paving the way for the state to begin the flag recall, said Michael Kelly, spokesman for Attorney General Mark Herring, who sought to lift the injunction.

    Well done, Virginia.

    Prosecutors: Gray case defense attorneys have mole in BPD

    The state’s attorney charges a police investigator is providing defense attorneys with an arsenal of material. The issue is raised in the latest prosecution motion seeking court sanctions against defense attorneys “for misusing subpoena power to secretly obtain a prosecutors’ personal cellphone records.”

    The Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office claimed a police investigator is supplying inside information to lawyers representing the six officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray.

    It’s listed as a footnote in the latest prosecution motion: “At least one member or former member of the Baltimore City Police Department has been actively working with defense counsel and has provided counsel with an arsenal of material, some true, some false … to use in their campaign of public relations warfare.”

    Defense motions fuel prosecutors’ concern that defense attorneys have a mole inside the Police Department. They declined to discuss the allegation made in their latest filing.

    The question remains, how did the police officers’ attorneys get screen grabs of text messages between an assistant state’s attorney and a police detective if those texts are only known to the two people engaged in the conversation?

    Uh oooooh…

    Seneca police: Officer who shot Zachary Hammond was defending himself. From what, his back?

    Zachary Hammond was in danger of backing over a Seneca police lieutenant when the veteran officer fired shots that killed the teen to protect himself and the public, the officer’s attorney said Friday.

    Ah. I suppose merely getting out of the way was out of the question.

    Children Caught in a Racist System

    Now comes another Justice Department report, issued last week, documenting equally deplorable violations in the county’s juvenile court system, where children, often without basic legal representation, are routinely railroaded and mistreated.

    The department opened the investigation in 2013 to protect the constitutional rights of children in the justice system and to discourage unnecessary incarceration. The department has undertaken similar investigations in Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas.

    In St. Louis County, officials examined 33,000 juvenile court cases over a three-year period and found that the system regularly treats black children more harshly than white children and routinely denies indigent children — no matter their race — basic constitutional rights.

    After controlling for relevant factors, including the severity of the offenses involved, a Justice Department analysis found that “black children are subjected to harsher treatment because of their race.” For example, black children were two-and-a-half times as likely as white children to be held in custody before their trials.

    Black children were also more likely to be placed in the custody of the juvenile system than white children were and less likely to be diverted into community-based programs. White children were significantly more likely to get less restrictive sentences, like probation with services provided to them at home. This disparate treatment may not be intentional, but it is clearly racist in its effect.

    The Supreme Court has ruled that states must provide lawyers to defendants who can’t afford them and that juveniles have the same rights as adults. But the very structure of St. Louis County’s family court system seems designed to deny due process and representation.

    Magazine: Black Panther cub on new era of civil action. Nice typo there.

    What I remember most viscerally is the fear.

    It had been almost four hours, and I couldn’t get the handcuffs off. The lights in the underground subway station were flickering, and I had an almost phobic fear of the dark. The white cop who had cuffed me to the gate inside the subway station was gone, and I didn’t know when he was coming back. He did return, sometime later, letting me go with a lecture and a hefty fine I had no way of paying. I had peed on myself. I was 11 years old.

    It wasn’t the first time I had been illegally detained by a police officer. In fact, in the US, arbitrary detention is one of the most common ways for police officers to initiate contact with black people of all ages. The overbroad nature of the law, and the subjectivity of those who enforce it, supports judgment calls by police, despite the fact that they consistently choose to be more brutal than is necessary in the act of subduing the black body.

    I think of that night often, especially these days, when the photograph of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old child gunned down by police in Cleveland, Ohio, stares back at me. I think that, no matter how young we are, we are perceived to be something other than children.
    […]

    Had I been alive during the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, or in 1963 during the non-violent marches in Birmingham, Alabama; had I witnessed the rise of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), watched when Dr King and Malcolm X were assassinated, or participated in the rise of the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s, I might have understood that, for a people emerged from American chattel slavery to sharecropping, to the industrialisation of a manufacturing economy that all but bled their labour dry, a deep knowledge of one’s own humanity was a pre-requisite to speak the words “Black Power” aloud.

    Instead, my teenage years were lived at the end of a decade of death and the beginning of a decade of mass incarceration. My childhood was spent sandwiched between two wars, Aids and crack, both of which seemed to deliberately and systemically ravage black bodies, first and worse.

    Instead, I watched as some of the most vibrant national civil rights organisations began to become part of an existing status quo. Instead, I came out as a black lesbian into a decade that hated me, into a movement so narrowed by cultural nationalism and class divides that it had dashikis but no demands.

    I left New York and moved to California, searching for a movement.

    Like many thousands of black activists, I waded through the multicultural waters of the last 20 years. Even as black organisers and activists actively built a solidarity movement with other communities of colour, anti-blackness prevailed without an organised counter.

    Until now.

    Before my mother joined the Panther Party, she joined SNCC. It had emerged from a student meeting organised by Ella Baker and subsequently escalated the tactics of the Civil Rights Movement from lunch counter sit-ins and boycotts to an era of black direct action opposing segregation and white vigilante violence in the American South and throughout the United States. It was this energy and agency that brought us the Freedom Rides, Freedom Summer and the birth of the Black Panther Party in 1966. It is this political moment that radicalised my mother and motivated her to become a leader in the New York Chapter of the Black Panther Party.

    We are in a similar moment of black radicalisation today, one in which self-organised groups of black millennials will – with deft, precise and coordinated direct action tactics – shape a narrative on race and power that, in the process of uplifting black lives, will improve conditions for everyone.

    From the 1970s ‘culture of poverty’ theories to the mass criminalisation of black communities in the 1980s and 1990s, black people have long been the subjects or objects of debate. This moment of direct action, however, rejects the forcible control of black racial identity, political power and economic position through biased and brutal policing. Instead, it casts black people as the leading protagonists in a story about race, power and resistance where we are both character and author.

    There is more at the link.

  288. rq says

    Tensing family: Officer ‘needed to protect himself’ – again I ask, FROM WHAT?

    The family of Ray Tensing says the former University of Cincinnati police officer “needed to protect himself” and that the public will eventually understand why he shot and killed Samuel DuBose last month.

    The Tensing family broke its public silence about the incident in a short letter sent to The Enquirer late Friday afternoon – nine days after Tensing was charged with murder in the shooting death of the unarmed DuBose during a traffic stop in Mount Auburn.

    Tensing and his family are “grieving deeply and praying” for DuBose’s family, and the 25-year-old ex-officer “is a committed Christ follower and respects all of God’s children,” according to the letter.

    Stew Mathews, Tensing’s attorney, confirmed the letter was written by the family. Tensing’s family and Mathews had no further comment, the attorney said.

    Tensing, who was fired last week by UC, is free on a $1 million bond and awaiting trial.

    “Ray believes that once the community learns all of the facts of this incident; the community will have a better understanding of what happened, and why he felt that he needed to protect himself,” the letter said.
    […]

    In his four-year law enforcement career, Tensing received good performance reviews with the village of Greenhills and UC. He also served briefly as an unpaid, part-time officer for Colerain Township for three months in 2012. The Ohio State Highway Patrol hired Tensing away from Greenhills in September 2013, but he quit after one day and returned to his old job.

    In his resignation notice to the state, Tensing said he could not “adapt to the training environment.” He did not participate in an exit interview, according to his patrol personnel file, which was released to The Enquirer this week. Tensing received an unflattering reference from the Colerain Township Police Department, according to state records. The Colerain reference said Tensing acted like a “know it all” and “did not accept criticism very well and would take it personally.” Otherwise, references mostly praised Tensing and he cleared the state’s extensive background check.

    I’m going to end there, with the references to his arrogance, rather than his dedication to the job, as per his family. Here’s a hanky, blow your nose, own up.

    Officer on trial told investigators Jonathan Ferrell wasn’t fazed by first shots – so he needed to be shot several times. MAKES ALL THE SENSE.

    During a recorded interview some four hours after he fatally shot Jonathan Ferrell, Randall “Wes” Kerrick described a man “with crazy-looking eyes” who ignored his commands and didn’t stop when the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer fired his first shots.

    “I was giving him commands. ‘Don’t move. Don’t move.’ But he wasn’t paying me a bit of a attention,” Kerrick tells investigators in a filmed interview shown Friday at his voluntary manslaughter trial.

    “When he got within, say, 10 feet of me, I fired my duty weapon. It did not faze him. He kept coming toward me. I fired again.”

    Eerily, eerily, eerily reminiscent of what Darren Wilson said about Mike Brown. Remember?

    Ralkina Jones: CLE Heights Police body cam video released after Cleveland woman died in jail

    Cleveland Heights Police released 30 minutes of body camera video that shows Ralkina Jones inside a holding cell just hours before she died.

    In the video, Cleveland Heights Police calmly go over the arrest and instructions with Jones, just hours before she was found dead inside holding cell number four on July 26.

    Ralkina was arrested and charged with domestic violence after she was caught on surveillance video attacking her ex-husband with a tire iron outside a Cleveland Heights bar.

    The cause of Ralkina’s death is still under investigation.

    Newly Revised AP US History Standards Take Softer Tone on Racial History of America. So they’re going ahead with that. I don’t think that will help.

    The College Board, the company behind Advanced Placement courses for U.S. high school students, released a revised set of standards for AP U.S. history on Thursday morning. Though the number of mentions of the word slavery remains roughly the same, the new document significantly alters the original framework’s tone around slavery, racism, and Native American relations.

    Passages that previously cited racial attitudes, stereotyping, and white superiority in early American history have been rewritten or deleted, and some passages that previously implicated early European colonists in racism and aiding in destructive Native American warfare have been softened and replaced with more passive language.

    The word “bellicose,” where it was used in the prior edition (p. 79) to refer to President Reagan’s rhetoric, was also removed. That passage was pointed out specifically by conservative critics of the the prior framework. A section on American identity has also been amended to include “American exceptionalism” (p. 11).

    Passages that referred to the Progressive Era and the New Deal were also changed, adding qualifying statements to mentions of inequality, characterizing the New Deal’s legacy as one of “regulatory agencies,” and adding a section to explain that “the Progressives were divided over many issues,” among other changes. Whereas in the prior version, progressive-era journalists and reformers worked to address “social problems associated with an industrial society” (p. 66) in the new version, those journalists “attacked” “what they saw” as corruption and inequality (p. 69).

    More at the link. So it goes, education.

    if we get stopped by the police. Cartoon. Short synopsis: play dead.

    Suspect with replica gun killed in Fresno County officer-involved shooting. He just got released from prison, too.

  289. rq says

    This. When an 18 year old boy feels the need to tweet this in 2014 and is killed by police in 2015, it’s a crisis. “I don’t feel protected by the police”, tweeted #ChristianTaylor in 2014.

    1yr ago this weekend Mike Brown was shot dead in Ferguson. At Storyful, this was the first video we had of protests, at the link.

    ‘We do this for Mike Brown’: a year on, Ferguson is a wound that won’t heal

    Their swift action followed the similarly rapid unveiling of murder charges against police officers in Maryland and South Carolina over the killings of Freddie Gray and Walter Scott, two more African American men. In Baltimore, the shock announcement by state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby halted a period of intense unrest. In North Charleston, the decision answered protesters’ demands practically before their feet reached the pavement.

    Such responses would have been unthinkable a year ago, before the extraordinary fallout from the fatal shooting in Ferguson of 18-year-old Brown, the first anniversary of which falls on Sunday. The loud and dogged protests of activists who chanted “from sun up to sun down, we do this for Mike Brown” – and kept their word – have put American cities on notice that their streets could be next.

    And yet a year later, the events in Ferguson on the afternoon of 9 August 2014 themselves seem doomed to remain suspended in permanent dispute. Tragically lacking in the decisive video evidence that would have settled the ambiguity at their centre, Brown’s killing has instead been claimed as a banner by both sides in a battle whose lines continue to be predicted largely and troublingly by race among the wider American public.

    For a predominantly African American protest movement, even as police officers elsewhere are charged with crimes for other killings, Ferguson remains a deep wound, whose refusal to heal serves both as a reason to fight on and as an emblem of systematic racial persecution by American authorities that they perceive as persisting virtually unmolested 50 years after the bloody Sunday of Selma, Alabama.

    Among mostly white police leaders and their supporters, however, Ferguson is the creation myth of the Black Lives Matter movement – a sadly necessary and grossly misrepresented shooting by an officer who felt his life threatened by a physically stronger rival, and who was then cleared by both a state grand jury and a federal civil rights inquiry by investigators from the Obama administration’s Justice Department.

    Change has, in any case, crept in. Ferguson’s criminal justice system, blamed by residents for the simmering anger brought to boil by Brown’s shooting, was condemned as institutionally racist in a scathing report by the US Department of Justice, which will soon demand a detailed overhaul under threat of legal action. The city’s police chief, city manager and municipal judge, among others, have been removed from their jobs. City authorities project that revenues from hated court fines will roughly halve this year.

    Elsewhere, Baltimore’s police commissioner was fired following sharp criticism of his handling of riots and a crime spike after Gray’s death. Cleveland agreed its own contract with the federal government to overhaul its policing after a series of shocking incidents of brutality. An officer in Texas promptly resigned after footage of him manhandling a black teenage girl and pointing his gun at two boys outside a pool party dominated TV news for days. Improvements to training were introduced in New York and other cities.

    Moreover, the militarised response by police led by St Louis County to the demonstrations following Brown’s shooting, which saw nightly televised barrages of teargas, smoke and stun grenades shot at young black Americans by a largely white police force shipped around in armoured vehicles intended for the streets of Iraq, was roundly condemned from the political left and right as excessive and dangerous.

    A White House policing taskforce convened by Obama following the unrest, meanwhile, produced a 63-point list of recommendations for more reform, including better training on the de-escalation of confrontations, improved collection of data on police encounters with civilians, and independent inquiries into deaths caused by officers. Obama secured $20m for police body cameras and announced some restrictions on the much-criticised program by which surplus US military equipment is transferred to police departments.

    The rise of Black Lives Matter has also latterly coincided with – and perhaps encouraged – Obama’s political liberation. Freed from the constraints of potential re-election, the president has begun speaking with a frankness about race that he had earlier eschewed out of an apparent fear that the first black president might be defined by nothing else.

    Even before he broke into Amazing Grace, Obama’s eulogy at the funeral in Charleston, South Carolina, for a pastor and statesman who was among nine African Americans murdered by a white supremacist at a prayer meeting became his most strident speech on racial justice since entering the White House. He spoke of his hope that the US could “embrace changes in how we train and equip our police so that the bonds of trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve make us all safer and more secure”.
    […]

    Yet despite all the signs that opinion on racial equality in general has shifted, and an intense media focus on the actions of police officers during the past year, there has in fact been remarkably little movement in the view of law enforcement among white Americans.

    A CBS/New York Times poll published at the end of July found 58% of white people thought police were no more likely to use deadly force against black people than against white people – the same figure recorded shortly after Brown’s death in Ferguson. It also found 51% of white people thought the criminal justice system either treated black people fairly or was even biased in their favour – a fall of only two percentage points since 2013.

    A Pew poll published at the end of April found the proportion of white Americans reporting a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the police to treat black and white people equally had actually risen slightly since 2009, while falling among black Americans. And while the share of white Americans with very little confidence in the police applying equal treatment rose slightly as well, it jumped sharply by 12 points among black people to a level approaching half of all respondents.

    These views are prevailing stubbornly despite mounting evidence to the contrary, such as the Guardian’s investigation The Counted finding that black people were more than twice as likely as white and Latino people to feature on the list of those killed by law enforcement so far this year – and twice as likely to have been unarmed when they died.

    Despite being so sharply criticised, militarised policing made a teargas-fogged return to American streets in April in response to furious protests and riots in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray from a broken neck sustained in the back of a police van during a so-called “rough ride” with no seatbelt.

    With the White House policing taskforce effectively toothless, regional agencies have been free to ignore its suggestions and continue, for instance, to blight investigations into controversial killings by police officers with the potential for serious conflicts of interest for local prosecutors who work closely alongside the same officers. Obama’s rollback of the Pentagon’s equipment transfer program left police departments free to continue receiving many of the sort of guns, body armour and mine resistant ambush protected vehicles (MRAPs) seen on the streets of Ferguson.

    Meanwhile, continued support in the White House – and continued victories – are no sure thing. Donald Trump, the current frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary, has played down the relevance of the protests. “We have to give strength and power back to the police,” he said. “You’re always going to have bad apples.” Asked about the issue on Thursday, Jeb Bush, the establishment favourite to become the party’s nominee, insisted that injustices were limited to “isolated cases” and said: “I don’t think that’s the norm.”

    Much else remains unresolved – and therefore unchanged – in the eyes of activists. In only the most prominent among dozens of cases, the $5.9m paid by New York City to avert a lawsuit from the family of Eric Garner, who died on video after a chokehold by an officer on Staten Island last July, was dismissed as insignificant next to a grand jury’s decision there to bring no criminal charges against the officer whose actions killed him.

    Silence still prevails over whether an officer in Cleveland will face criminal charges for shooting dead Tamir Rice, a black 12-year-old, for playing with a toy gun in a park. This despite the passage of more than eight months and a municipal judge declaring himself “thunderstruck” by surveillance footage of the killing, which, as Judge Ronald Adrine said, showed the child was given “little if any time” to respond to any kind of police command before being gunned down.

    Across Ohio in Beavercreek, near Dayton, a 22-year-old African American man called John Crawford had in August been shot dead with similar haste inside a Walmart for handling a bigger pellet gun, which he dared to pick up from a store shelf. A white shopper called 911 and claimed Crawford was pointing the gun at people, including children, before later altering his account in an interview with the Guardian. The officer who fired the fatal shot, who had also been responsible for his department’s only other fatal shooting, was cleared by a grand jury.

    And the seething response to the death in jail of Sandra Bland in Waller County, Texas, last month laid bare the extent to which little alleged by police in contentious circumstances is believed or taken in good faith by thousands of young people around the US. The official finding of suicide has been dismissed by activists convinced she was murdered by the officers smarting at her objections to being jailed following a small-fry traffic stop.

    Jamal Bryant, a Baltimore pastor and activist who delivered the eulogy at Gray’s funeral before hurrying to the scene when Bland died, described her case as “an exclamation point on the reasoning of why it is that black Americans feel disdain and distrust for police”. A year after Ferguson, Bryant told the Guardian: “People simply do not believe them.”

    More at the link.

    #Ferguson March was 5 miles in big heat. No one complained. Not even her. Just a reg Monday for Montgomery Vets.

    Report: Texas Cop Who Fatally Shot Unarmed College Student Christian Taylor Was Still in Training. Five months on the job, I hear.

    A 49-year-old Texas officer with just 11 months on the job shot and killed unarmed college student Christian Taylor, 19, who police claim broke into a car dealership early Friday morning, according to the Dallas Morning News.

    Arlington Police Officer Brad Miller, 49, started in the department in September, the report says. Until now his performance had been fairly unremarkable, the report says, noting that he had “no commendation or discipline record at the department.”

    Miller, who had no previous police experience, graduated from the police academy in March, writes the News.

    [FERGUSON FORWARD] Leslie McSpadden: ‘Honor My Son’

    It’s hard to say how I want the world to remember my son because you have to really know someone to honor the person properly. The world didn’t get to know my son on a personal level. It didn’t get Michael Orlandus Darrion Brown, aka “Mike Mike,” was a devoted son, brother, grandson, nephew and cousin who had a great sense of humor. It didn’t know that he had big dreams and loved tech gadgets. The world met him on August 9, 2014 when he was 18 years old. Since only friends, family and maybe his teachers and pediatrician knew Mike Mike on an intimate level, what I asked of everyone is simple: keep me your prayers and hearts because now I must be the voice for my son.

    Mike Mike was a young man coming into his own. Most people turn 18, they think they’re adults – “Hey, I can make my own decisions! “As his mother, I can tell you he wasn’t there yet, but I’m proud to say he was headed that way until he was taken from us. My son was on his journey of transitioning from a boy to a man.

    I want the world to be inspired by the impact of Mike Mike’s death, which has awakened this country not only to the disparities in our justice system and communities but also the need for us to pay attention to the younger generation. Let our kids know it doesn’t matter where they come from, or how much money they have, or who raised them. Tell them, “You’re still good enough. You matter! You can be a mayor, a lawyer, a scientist or a teacher—you can even be a police officer, but be a good, decent and fair one.” Bottom line, our kids can be anything they dream of, but it takes encouragement and that starts at home. I’m proud to say I always instilled positivity and Mike Mike and my other kids. I hope this moment reminds us to do that.

    Please honor my child’s memory by encouraging our young people, and building them up so that everything we’re trying to do with the protests and marches is not in vain.

    People will ask me how all this will “end.” I don’t know because I’m still very much in this fight and in this moment. The public support gives me strength, and I’m getting stronger by the day. My son is a legend. People become legends because they make history, and that’s what he did. It brought the hidden, painful truths of this country to light for new generation, and people across the world will be better for it.

    Good night.

  290. HappyNat says

    #ChristianTaylor

    Not surprisingly the original police/media reports are already riddled with lies. He wasn’t breaking into a car, there was no “altercation”(unless it happened in 1.3 seconds), and looks like he only crashed into the dealership AFTER being shot. A lot like Sam Dubose “dragging” the UC cop only after being shot.

    Shaun King posted a great break down of the security and police audio
    https://t.co/YQ0chXG7co

  291. rq says

    HappyNat
    I’ve also seen many, many online tributes to him via tweets from friends, highlighting how much of a good friend and overall generous person he was. Along the lines of ‘I dare anyone to call him a thug’ (paraphrase of actual tweet).
    So stupid.
    And I’ve been thinking, Miller is 49, and only recently decided to join a police force. I seriously, seriously, seriously question his motives for doing so – maybe he wasn’t an obvious, outright white supremacist, but I think a fear of black people was definitely behind his decision. [/personal opinion]

  292. rq says

    Watch: Guest Editor and Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter Patrisse Cullors on The Root Takeover

    We at The Root are honored to have Patrisse Cullors as guest editor today on our site. Cullors is an artist, organizer and freedom fighter. She is the founder of Dignity and Power Now, co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter, and director of truth and reinvestment at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Her Facebook page says she’s ‘in a relationship’ with Harriet Tubman, her spiritual link to the iconic historical figure is so strong.

    The movement for black lives has become a national conversation online, offline and even on the campaign trail heading into 2016. With her creative sensibilities as an artist, writer and thought leader, we could think of no person better than Cullors, an essential and inspirational person, to take over our site for the day as we approach the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death and Ferguson, Mo.’s tragic events.

    Here is Cullors on Ferguson:

    On Aug. 9, the entire world was forced to open its eyes to the level of hatred and racism that still exists inside America’s borders. Night after night we witnessed the ferocity of St. Louis and Ferguson protesters challenge their local law enforcement, all while being teargassed and rubber-bulleted. The #BlackLivesMatter movement has been one of the most vibrant, courageous and beautiful moments I have been able to be witness to and participant of, and it’s such an honor to be alive during this time to help usher in a new generation of leadership. We are in a state of emergency and we all must act on behalf of saving black lives.

    She has brought to The Root three powerful voices from the movement: Bree Newsome, a community organizer in Charlotte, N.C., works with several organizations, including the Tribe, Ignite NC and the local NAACP chapter; Newsome made headlines recently when she took down the Confederate flag in Columbia, S.C. Janaya Khan, known as Future in the Black Lives Matter movement, is a black, queer, gender-nonconforming activist, staunch Afrofuturist, social-justice educator and boxer based in Toronto; as the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto, they are committed to black liberation, transformative justice and indigenous sovereignty and operate through a black transfeminist lens. Tanya Lucia Bernard is a Los Angeles-based organizer and fine artist. She’s a testament to the fact that “black” and “Latino” are not mutually exclusive terms.

    Protesters march against police brutality on anniversary of Ferguson unrest

    The protesters, organized by the Peoples Power Assembly group, chose the intersection that became the epicenter of Baltimore’s April riots, for the rally commemorating the one year anniversary of the shooting death of 18-year-old-Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

    The corner buzzed on Saturday as residents danced to music blasted from speakers and the smell of marijuana drifted through the air.

    Interim Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, appointed last month after Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake fired Anthony W. Batts, attended the rally and spoke with people there.

    “My presence hopefully makes a statement,” he said, adding that he too wanted to acknowledge the anniversary of Brown’s death, which resulted in rioting in Ferguson.

    “A lot of people have pain, not just with the Baltimore police department but with policing in America,” Davis said. “We’re in the moment of a sea change in policing in this country, and the whole world is looking at the Baltimore police department to see if we’re going to get it right. So I want to just acknowledge the pain, acknowledge the frustration.”

    A few residents who weren’t participating in the rally confronted him. Some talked about times they had been roughed up by police, while others encouraged him to respect the community.

    “I don’t necessarily have an answer today that I’m providing people beyond this: I know that the community won’t trust the police department until the community knows the police department respects them,” Davis said. “That’s why I’m here.”

    That’s in Baltimore.

    Officers Will Face Grand Jury In Shooting Death Of Kevin Allen

    The police officers who shot and killed 36-year-old Kevin Allen inside the Lyndhurst library in May will face a Grand Jury, according to a member of Allen’s family. Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli informed the family of the decision to seek an indictment earlier this week.

    Allen, 36, of Lyndhurst was shot and killed by two officers inside the library on May 29, 2015. Police recognized Allen and followed him into the building. Allen had an outstanding warrant for failure to return to the Bergen County Jail’s work-release program where he was incarcerated for unpaid child support.

    Police say that Allen had a box cutter when they confronted him and reports also say that the officers had used MACE on Allen prior to shooting him.

    Rev. Robert Walker of Garfield, Allen’s second cousin, told the Bergen Dispatch that Allen often used the computers at the Lyndhurst library to look for jobs, but he was having trouble finding work and had fallen behind in his child support payments.

    Rev. Walker said that Allen was not violent or aggressive, he was kind-hearted and friendly. “The picture that the media has given of Kevin, we don’t know that person,” he said.

    Just arrived on scene in #brookshire and heavy police presence. Officer involved shooting. One person dead #KHOU11
    #brookshire police confirm 2 brothers were fighting. Somehow gunfire hit officer car and officer returned fire #KHOU
    Yep, that was yesterday, too.

    Peace disrupted in Ferguson as man shot, vehicle window shattered, at Family Dollar store – also last night.

    Ask a neighbor, a marcher or the ice cream man watching in a parking lot on West Florissant Avenue.

    They’ll tell you that during the daytime, Saturday looked a lot different than a year ago.

    Police officers handed out Popsicles. Protesters took rides in Missouri State Highway Patrol ATVs. Children played in the street and sprayed each other with water bottles.

    About 100 people walked about five miles from Canfield Green apartments to Normandy High School on a sultry Saturday morning.

    Michael Brown Sr. led the planned march, accompanied by a police escort. Despite temperatures in the low 90s, there were no injuries or health-related incidents reported.

    “God is good,” said Jana Gamble, a spokeswoman for the Brown family’s Chosen For Change nonprofit organization. “It all came together like it was supposed to.”

    Sunday marks the one-year anniversary since Brown’s son, Michael Brown Jr., was fatally shot by then-Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson. The death occurred just days after the 18-year-old officially graduated on Aug. 1 from Normandy High.

    Saturday’s march was part of a series of events that the Brown family is organizing through their nonprofit group.

    Just before midnight, the peaceful tone of the day’s events was interupted when gunshots were heard at the Family Dollar on West Florissant Avenue.

    Police said a man was shot and the back window of an unmarked police vehicle was also shattered by gunfire.

  293. rq says

    Here’s some thoughts on allyship, accomplices, and what this means: Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex

    The ally industrial complex has been established by activists whose careers depend on the “issues” they work to address. These nonprofit capitalists advance their careers off the struggles they ostensibly support. They often work in the guise of “grassroots” or “community-based” and are not necessarily tied to any organization.
    They build organizational or individual capacity and power, establishing themselves comfortably among the top ranks in their hierarchy of oppression as they strive to become the ally “champions” of the most oppressed. While the exploitation of solidarity and support is nothing new, the commodification and exploitation of allyship is a growing trend in the activism industry.

    Anyone who concerns themselves with anti-oppression struggles and collective liberation has at some point either participated in workshops, read ‘zines, or been parts of deep discussions on how to be a “good” ally. You can now pay hundreds of dollars to go to esoteric institutes for an allyship certificate in anti-oppression. You can go through workshops and receive an allyship badge. In order to commodify struggle it must first be objectified. This is exhibited in how “issues” are “framed” & “branded.” Where struggle is commodity, allyship is currency.
    Ally has also become an identity, disembodied from any real mutual understanding of support.
    The term ally has been rendered ineffective and meaningless.
    […]

    The risks of an ally who provides support or solidarity (usually on a temporary basis) in a fight are much different than that of an accomplice. When we fight back or forward, together, becoming complicit in a struggle towards liberation, we are accomplices. Abolishing allyship can occur through the criminalization of support and solidarity.

    While the strategies and tactics of asserting (or abolishing depending on your view) social power and political power may be diverse, there are some hard lessons that could bear not replicating.
    Consider the following to be a guide for identifying points of intervention against the ally industrial complex.

    “Salvation aka Missionary Work & Self Therapy”
    Allies all too often carry romantic notions of oppressed folks they wish to “help.” These are the ally “saviors” who see victims and tokens instead of people.
    This victimization becomes a fetish for the worst of the allies in forms of exotification, manarchism, ‘splaining, POC sexploitation, etc. This kind of relationship generally fosters exploitation between both the oppressed and oppressor. The ally and the allied-with become entangled in an abusive relationship. Generally neither can see it until it’s too late. This relationship can also digress into co-dependency which means they have robbed each other of their own power. Ally “saviors” have a tendency to create dependency on them and their function as support. No one is here to be saved, we don’t need “missionary allies” or pity.
    Guilt is also a primary ally motivating factor. Even if never admitted, guilt & shame generally function as motivators in the consciousness of an oppressor who realizes that they are operating on the wrong side. While guilt and shame are very powerful emotions, think about what you’re doing before you make another community’s struggle into your therapy session. Of course, acts of resistance and liberation can be healing, but tackling guilt, shame, and other trauma require a much different focus, or at least an explicit and consensual focus. What kind of relationships are built on guilt and shame?

    Keep reading, it’s quite interesting – no ally cookies to be found within, though. Sorry-not-sorry.

    Protesters take to Ferguson streets to mark anniversary of Brown killing, Reuters.

    More than 200 protesters carrying bullhorns, drums and signs demonstrated against police in Ferguson, Missouri, on Saturday night, with some placing the roasted head of a pig on a barricade in front of officers.

    The protest in front of police headquarters took on elements of a street carnival ahead of the first anniversary of the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a white officer in the city.

    Demonstrators of all ages, with some children in the group, blocked traffic but were mostly peaceful. Some danced on cars and others stood on concrete barriers, cursing at officers through bullhorns.

    Police mostly stayed behind a barricade.

    “The whole idea is for people to be able to vent, to express themselves,” said Ferguson police Sergeant Dominica Fuller, one of five African-Americans on the 50-member police force.

    “They are getting their message out,” Fuller said.

    One group of protesters carved up a barbecued pig and placed its head on the barricade in front of officers.

    Civil rights activists, religious leaders and others from around the United States have converged on Ferguson, a mostly black community of about 21,000 people, to commemorate the life and death of 18-year-old Brown, who was unarmed when he was shot in a confrontation with a white police officer on Aug. 9, 2014.

    The public events, many organized by Brown’s father, include a moment of silence at midday on Sunday on the street where Brown died.

    “I am out here because I never want what happened to Mike Brown to happen to a friend of mine or their kids,” said Christopher Woods, a 34-year-old white Ferguson resident who said many of his friends are black.

    Unruly protests, they say within. Nary a mention of who, exactly, was unruly.

    Said in reference to #BlackLivesMatter members protesting anti-Blackness in Seattle. “Go ahead. Taser ’em.”

    Ferguson marks Michael Brown shooting anniversary, the BBC.

    D.C. Police: Officer Shoots Woman Armed With Knife. What a crazy weekend. For some reason that article is not co-operating with me.

  295. rq says

    Michael Brown’s grave in St. Peter’s Cemetery. A year later, still no headstone

    FBI to probe police shooting of college football player in Texas

    Local authorities have called in the Federal Bureau of Investigation to review the fatal shooting by police of an unarmed college football player during a burglary call at a car dealership in Arlington, Texas.

    The shooting reportedly occurred during an altercation that followed police response to a call early Friday morning by the company that manages security cameras at the Classic Buick GMC in Arlington, a Dallas suburb. Surveillance video shows Christian Taylor, a black college student who played for the Angelo State University football team, jumping on cars and running around the dealership before police arrived.

    The incident took place two days before the anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., an event that has galvanized the “Black Lives Matter” movement and sparked protests – sometimes violent – against the use of police force on the black community. Like others before it, Mr. Taylor’s death has resonated on social media and quickly became part of the public debate, The New York Times noted.

    Four times as many protests have taken place in the past year than happened in 1965. #Ferguson
    980 protests have happened since August 9th. There were 240 in 1965. @MichaelSkolnik
    Second tweet with graph.

    Petition: CHANGE THE NAME “STAPLETON”! For the Denver City Council.

    The Denver neighborhood currently called “Stapleton” was named after card-carrying Ku Klux Klan member #1,128, Benjamin Stapleton. He was the KKK candidate elected for mayor of Denver in 1923 and served for twenty years. During his terms, Stapleton made numerous Klan appointments, including two Klansmen as Managers of Safety and a Klansman Chief of Police. The neighborhood’s name is a shameless tribute to oppression and hatred.

    We call on the Denver City Council: Change the Name “Stapleton”!

    What it’s like to be a black cop in Ferguson

    Three years ago, Robert Kirkwood stood before an interview board, explaining why he wanted to be a cop in his hometown. The 6-foot-4 black Army veteran with a master’s degree in criminal justice said he wanted to patrol the streets he had known as a kid and make them safer.

    “He was really overqualified for the job,” recalls Ferguson police Sgt. Harry Dilworth, a member of the hiring committee. But Dilworth, Ferguson’s most senior African-American officer, knew minority candidates for the department were rare, especially those with Kirkwood’s credentials.

    “It was a no-brainer,” Dilworth says. “He got the job.”

    It’s been one year since this once-obscure St. Louis suburb became a flash point in the national debate about police tactics against African-Americans following the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a white police officer. The controversial killing prompted a wave of national soul-searching and activism that is still going on today. And it’s been no less transformational for the black members of Ferguson’s embattled police department.

    Kirkwood — the last African-American patrolman hired by Ferguson, and one of just four black officers on the 55-member force a year ago — is now gone. He recently resigned, just shy of his third anniversary, a casualty of the city’s new fame as a national symbol of racial strife.

    “What caused me to leave?” Kirkwood asks, before bellowing a hearty chuckle. “Last year.”

    But the man who helped hire him, Dilworth, a Ferguson employee since 1992, has become a passionate defender of the department, despite contemplating early retirement last fall. “Now I will probably stick it out,” Dilworth says of the only job he’s ever had.

    The muscular sergeant nearly spits his disgust over the way that Ferguson has become a household name. “We have monikers that we don’t need to bear,” he says of the once-quiet community. “Calling it the Ferguson Syndrome or the Ferguson Effect. There are Ferguson Commissions. It is just ridiculous.”

    The death of Michael Brown Jr., followed by a November decision by a grand jury not to criminally charge Officer Darren Wilson, sparked months of riots in Ferguson, where two-thirds of the 21,000 residents are black. Protesters went toe-to-toe with police, who met them with tear gas and police dogs. Local anger boiled over as some residents burned down buildings and looted businesses. And Missouri law enforcement was criticized for reacting with heavy-handed military tactics.

    “From a protest perspective, yes, Ferguson was out of control,” says Kirkwood, recalling the random gunfire and Molotov cocktails thrown in the direction of police. “Every officer out there was putting their life on the line.”

    But when it came to verbal abuse, by all accounts, the blacks in blue got it far worse. “My God,” said Dilworth, “threatening your families, getting very specific on what they were going to do to your daughter and your wife. If you have a unique name, they can Google it, go to records, and find out [personal information].”

    Dilworth and Kirkwood are both 45-year-old natives of St. Louis with graduate degrees. And both have served the country at war. Twenty-four years in the Army reserves have taken Dilworth to Iraq and Afghanistan. Kirkwood left the Army not long after returning from Iraq in 2009.

    “I’ve been cussed out by drill sergeants, so words pretty much don’t faze me 99 percent of the time,” Kirkwood said of protesters shouting “Uncle Tom” at him and worse. “They started calling me the Robocop because I would never respond.”
    […]

    Now an officer with another St. Louis-area department, Kirkwood makes it clear that he was never the target of racial harassment within the Ferguson department. “There was a great group of guys over there,” he says. “But some officers just … I don’t know, man. They just did certain things there that I’m like, ‘Um, that’s interesting.’ There was some things done there that I know they wouldn’t do with a camera on them.”

    Specifically, Kirkwood said he witnessed officers handle potential crime victims differently depending on race. Responding to a call from a white resident, he says, “their questions are a certain way, their speech is a certain way, and what they do from a job perspective is a certain way.”

    But someone in the same situation who is black, they’re like “OK, what happened? That’s no big deal. It’s a NRN [no report needed].”

    Told of Kirkwood’s discomfiting experiences, Dilworth says that he wishes the rookie officer had come to him. “If he was subjected to that, then I need to apologize to him,” says Dilworth, who was not Kirkwood’s supervisor. “I would have got him transferred to another squad. Because you treat people the way you want to be treated — black, white, grey, I don’t care what color you are.”
    […]

    A year after Brown’s death, Ferguson has lost nearly one-fifth of its force. Some officers were forced to resign in the wake of the federal investigation; others, like Kirkwood, transferred elsewhere. “The pressure has been detrimental,” says Dilworth. “Morale has been low.”

    Losing a good soldier like Kirkwood doesn’t sit well with him. “I like Bobby. I don’t have a thing bad to say about him,” says Dilworth. And the veteran officer is also disturbed that he never had an opportunity to defend the department — investigators never asked him if he had observed questionable racial practices. “I can’t speak for [Kirkwood], but I’m speaking for myself and the department. The report has a lot of glaring statistical data that was not right.”

  297. rq says

    And in New York,
    #BlackLivesMatter banner at the Barclay ‘s Center memorial for #MikeBrown, NYC.
    Panorama: 4.5 minute die-in for #MikeBrown in front of the Barclay’s Center, NYC.
    NYC #MikeBrown march tried to cross the short 138th St Bridge to the Bronx but instead the NYPD totally shut it down.
    The NYC #MikeBrown march has crossed the 138th St Bridge and taken the streets of the Bronx.
    #MikeBrown rally now holding a speakout in front of a Bronx Juvenile Detention Center.
    #NYC #BlackLivesMatter march is being threatened with arrest by #NYPD’s strategic response group!

  298. rq says

    Un-intimidated by Officer Lombardo, the NYC #MikeBrown march has re-taken the streets.
    Ending the #NYC #BlackLivesMatter march with some Assata! #MikeBrown #Ferguson

    Silence for the death of #MikeBrown death in #Ferguson

    White people: if Black people would just shut up and let this White guy do his job, everything would be fixed for them.
    And the Bernie Sanders released this: Racial Justice.

    Addressing Physical Violence

    It is an outrage that in these early years of the 21st century we are seeing intolerable acts of violence being perpetuated by police, and racist terrorism by white supremacists.

    A growing number of communities do not trust the police and law enforcement officers have become disconnected from the communities they are sworn to protect. Violence and brutality of any kind, particularly at the hands of the police sworn to protect and serve our communities, is unacceptable and must not be tolerated. We need a societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter, and racism cannot be accepted in a civilized country.

    – We must demilitarize our police forces so they don’t look and act like invading armies.
    – We must invest in community policing. Only when we get officers into the communities, working within neighborhoods before trouble arises, do we develop the relationships necessary to make our communities safer together. Among other things, that means increasing civilian oversight of police departments.
    – We need police forces that reflect the diversity of our communities.
    – At the federal level we need to establish a new model police training program that reorients the way we do law enforcement in this country. With input from a broad segment of the community including activists and leaders from organizations like Black Lives Matter we will reinvent how we police America.
    – We need to federally fund and require body cameras for law enforcement officers to make it easier to hold them accountable.
    – Our Justice Department must aggressively investigate and prosecute police officers who break the law and hold them accountable for their actions.
    – We need to require police departments and states to provide public reports on all police shootings and deaths that take place while in police custody.
    – We need new rules on the allowable use of force. Police officers need to be trained to de-escalate confrontations and to humanely interact with people who have mental illnesses.
    – States and localities that make progress in this area should get more federal justice grant money. Those that do not should get their funding slashed.
    – We need to make sure the federal resources are there to crack down on the illegal activities of hate groups.

    Political Violence
    Disenfranchisement

    In the shameful days of open segregation, “literacy” laws were used to suppress minority voting. Today, through other laws and actions — such as requiring voters to show photo ID, discriminatory drawing of Congressional districts, not allowing early registration or voting, and purging voter rolls — states are taking steps which have a similar effect.

    The patterns are unmistakable. An MIT paper found that African Americans waited twice as long to vote as whites. Wait times of as long as six or seven hours have been reported in some minority precincts, especially in “swing” states like Ohio and Florida. Thirteen percent of African-American men have lost the right to vote due to felony convictions.

    This should offend the conscience of every American.

    The fight for minority voting rights is a fight for justice. It is inseparable from the struggle for democracy itself.

    We must work vigilantly to ensure that every American, regardless of skin color or national origin, is able to vote freely and easily.
    Addressing Political Violence

    – We need to re-enfranchise the more than two million African Americans who have had their right to vote taken away by a felony conviction.
    – Congress must restore the Voting Rights Act’s “pre-clearance” provision, which extended protections to minority voters in states where they were clearly needed.
    – We must expand the Act’s scope so that every American, regardless of skin color or national origin, is able to vote freely.
    – We need to make Election Day a federal holiday to increase voters’ ability to participate.
    – We must make early voting an option for voters who work or study and need the flexibility to vote on evenings or weekends.
    – We must make no-fault absentee ballots an option for all Americans.
    – Every American over 18 must be registered to vote automatically, so that students and working people can make their voices heard at the ballot box.
    – We must put an end to discriminatory laws and the purging of minority-community names from voting rolls.
    – We need to make sure that there are sufficient polling places and poll workers to prevent long lines from forming at the polls anywhere.

    And more at the link on legal violence and economic violence.

    And another analogy for privilege: This is awesome.

  299. rq says

    Mecklenburg County plans to protect vandalized Confederate monument. Maybe they can put another box around it.

    After paying twice to clean a Confederate monument defaced near Central Piedmont Community College, Mecklenburg County plans to find ways to safeguard the historic pillar against future vandalism.

    While there are no concrete plans in the works just yet, a county spokesman said Friday that one idea includes installing security cameras overlooking the granite marker, which sits perched on a hill under a tree at the Grady Cole Center on North Kings Drive.

    “The cost of putting in a video surveillance system is less than cleaning it,” said county commissioner Bill James, a history enthusiast. “If people allow Confederate monuments to be vandalized, it will give a license to people to vandalize MLK monuments or monuments of pretty much anybody anyplace. … You have to find a way to protect the monuments that exist.”

    [FERGUSON FORWARD] ‘I’ve Spent More Time In Jail Than Darren Wilson’

    In an open letter titled, To My People, Assata Shakur said, “It is our duty to fight. It is our duty to win. We must love and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” Each night before we left St. Mark’s Church (a safe haven for Ferguson protestors), to march on West Florissant Avenue, we would recite this quote in a circle, in unison. Each morning for the past few weeks, the moment I rise, I look in the mirror and say this to myself.

    This is what I believe in.

    I was in Phoenix, Arizona visiting family when Mike Brown was killed. I checked Twitter on August 9th, 2014 and the first thing I saw was one of my childhood friends live tweeting the death he had just witnessed from his living room window. Within hours, I watched St. Louis catch on to what had happened. As more time passed, I watched as the nation began to discover what occurred and just a few short days later, the entire world had its eyes squarely on my city.

    I witnessed countless tweets, pictures and video recordings of people being tear gassed, arrested and being both shot and shot at. Not just any people, my people. My people were being treated like animals, in my backyard, and I was losing sleep from the guilt of not being out there beside them. I have not missed a day on the ground since I returned home on August 13th.

    The first place I went upon my return was Canfield Road, right to the spot where Mike died. The situation would not become real for me until I experienced it for myself. A week later, the crime scene still made my heart clench within my chest. Even without seeing his slain body on the ground, my heart continued to ache. It still aches for Mike Brown and his family. I went to the Ferguson Police Department the following day and every day since. We march. We chant. We vent. The anger and vigor in our combined voice has not and will not waver.

    In the 34 days since I began protesting, my First Amendment rights have been violated and snatched from me. Local law enforcement has spoken to me as if I was an animal and I have been arrested…twice.

    I was told by police officers if I crossed an invisible line they created in front of the Clayton Justice Center, I would be arrested. I looked down to where the officer pointed his finger and walked over the line with my hands up, chanting “This is what democracy looks like.” I was held, processed, booked and released within a few hours.

    I was arrested again at the Highway 70 shutdown. There was no invisible line this time. My crime was apparently standing near the curb, not ON the curb. I was put onto a corrections bus with about six other people and transported to St. Louis County Police Headquarters. I was held for five hours and released without being charges or an explanation for my arrest.

    My family members could not understand the purpose behind my arrests. They still cannot fathom how I was detained for peacefully protesting, yet Darren Wilson was not detained for killing an unarmed 18-year-old young man and still remains free. I have to remind them that this is what taking a stand looks like. That this is what fighting for your life, and the lives of those to come after you, looks like. Change is nothing but the process of discomfort in order to one day become comfortable. If being uncomfortable in a holding cell for a few hours is a step towards my newborn nephew’s life being treated with some priority, so be it.

    People often ask me, “What do you want to come from all of this?” I always answer with the same response: “I want Mike Brown’s parents to be able to wake up one day and finally be able to mourn the loss of their son.” I wake up every morning, fighting the best way I know how. I wake up each morning, fighting to prevent another family from having to grieve the loss of their child due to his or her skin color. I fight for justice for this young man, because his parents deserve the moment they are able to finally grieve, peacefully, for their child.

    I fight because it is my duty.

    From September 2014, worth a re-read.

    Canfield Dr. after the ceremony in Ferguson

    White Kids Get Medicated When They Misbehave, Black Kids Get Suspended — or Arrested

    In recent years, as a national conversation about racial discrepancies in American policing has heated up, a depressing subplot has also emerged: a pattern of similar discrepancies in how discipline is meted out in schools. Black students made up just 18 percent of students in the public schools sampled by the New York Times in 2012, but “they accounted for 35 percent of those suspended once” and 39 percent of those expelled — examining federal data, the Times also noted that “nationwide, more than 70 percent of students involved in arrests or referrals to court are black or Hispanic.” Even black preschoolers were not exempt: They made up the same 18 percent of the student population, but constituted half of all suspensions.

    As everyone from the Times to the ACLU has noted, the enactment of tough “zero-tolerance” policies in schools has led to the criminalization of what had previously been viewed as minor disciplinary issues. Zero-tolerance often mandates that students be suspended — even referred to law enforcement and arrested — for minor transgressions: Until a 2013 rule change, Los Angeles students routinely received automatic suspensions for refusing to take off their hats (this fell under a category of violation called “willful defiance”), while a Florida district, the sixth largest in the country, set a state record for student arrests in a jurisdiction in 2011, primarily on charges of possessing small amounts of marijuana and spraying graffiti. The ACLU has called this phenomenon the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

    Now, a new paper in SAGE takes a closer look at how race and class affect school districts’ approaches to punishment, but also examines another important element of school discipline: Some disruptive kids, rather than being punished, are “medicalized” — that is, eventually given diagnoses, therapy, and/or medication as a result of behavioral problems. As “problem behaviors such as inattention, hyperactivity, and defiance of adult authority have received increased attention” since the 1990s, the study notes, schools have increasingly sought treatment and made special provisions for disruptive students through mental-health provisions in state and federal legislation.

    For the study, David M. Ramey, of Pennsylvania State University’s department of sociology and criminology, used data from over 60,000 schools in 6,000 districts to examine trends in how schools’ racial and socioeconomic makeup impacted how they dealt with misbehaving students.

    Among other things, he found that:

    If you’re a black student or you’re poor, you’re far more likely to be punished than offered behavioral treatment when you misbehave.

    There was a strong correlation between the percentage of black students in a school and the rates of punitive discipline, and an inverse relationship between the percentage of black students and the rate of behavioral treatment. “Schools with more black students relative to other schools in the district had higher rates of suspension or expulsion and police referral or arrest” than other in-district schools, the study notes, and also had substantially lower rates of enrollment in mental-health and special education programs. Students in more socioeconomically disadvantaged districts are also far more likely to face criminalized punishment than kids in more affluent areas, in part, Ramey thinks, because criminalized punishment is cheaper than mental-health treatment, and these districts are often strapped for cash. Here, race and class are — as is so often the case — inextricably linked.

    Ramey draws on prior work in the field to demonstrate that the far higher rates of criminalization black students experience may be the result of endemic bias on the part of school officials. An American Psychological Association study found that black boys are perceived as older and less innocent than their white peers, and some studies indicate teachers can suffer from the fundamental attribution error, attributing minority children’s misbehavior to different causes than they do white children’s. Ramey notes how one study found that schools blame “poor parenting, cultural deficiencies, and poor character” for bad behavior among racial minority children, and see that behavior as permanent and leading almost inexorably to involvement with the criminal justice system. Further, a study on enrollment in special education programs found that “teachers and administrators are less likely to attribute minority students’ misbehavior to underlying behavior disorders,” which could be ameliorated with mental-health treatment.

    When school officials are given more leeway in how they discipline students, the role of race is more apparent in their decision-making.

    “In disadvantaged districts,” says Ramey, “the school board tends to have a lot more power in setting disciplinary policy, in particular at the top, and it’s followed relatively uniformly across the schools.” A district might mandate metal detectors or zero-tolerance policies, for example, and every school follows those policies, regardless of the makeup of the student body. In more affluent districts, things are different. There, Ramey says, “The schools and administrators are allowed a greater degree of autonomy.” School boards outline a disciplinary guideline (usually tied to government funding through state or federal law) that they want to meet, but individual schools have more flexibility in how they meet them, be it through tougher punitive discipline or the expansion of mental-health programs. “This is where you see race really mattering,” Ramey says. “The predominantly black schools in advantaged districts have much higher levels of suspension than predominantly white schools in advantaged districts. Conversely, predominantly black schools have much lower rates of [mental-health-program] enrollment than predominantly white schools in advantaged districts.”

    A note: Lot of folks saying trans WOC Amber Monroe was not killed on Friday b/c no media. Most media refers to trans women as men, use birth names.

    And a look back, here’s the first I suppose official-like document released by the protestors in Ferguson, a response to the Most Common List of Misconceptions in Ferguson, released by Ferguson officials: Protester’s Response to “Misconceptions” 92514 FINAL.

  300. rq says

    Cops in Ferguson shot someone last night during protest actions.
    Fatally.
    There is no way this is going to end well.

  301. rq says

    Amend the previous: Michael Brown anniversary: Police say man shot near Ferguson protest critically injured. So not dead, but in critical and unstable condition.

    Michael Brown’s death commemorated with 2nd weekend march

    Michael Brown shooting and Ferguson aftermath timeline, worth a review!

    Man shot by police at Ferguson protest, the Toronto Star.

    Michael Brown’s father says anniversary of son’s death brings back grief, raw emotions

    Michael Brown’s death marked by march, moment of silence on anniversary

  302. rq says

    Just a heads up, there’s a state of emergency in Ferguson, and protestors are being arrested – I have some catch-up to do before that, but in case anyone wants to get out and find some info on that while I do this.

  303. rq says

    Canfield Drive. 365 days later. #Ferguson
    Hundreds gathered on Canfield Drive for 4 1/2 minutes of silence on anniversary of Mike Brown’s death – same crowd, different view.

    Police killings since Ferguson, in one map

    Straight Outta Rape Culture

    When N.W.A.’s mega-hyped biopic Straight Outta Compton opens next Friday, the brutalized bodies of black women will be lost in the predictable stampede of media accolades. While early reviews have lauded the “prescience” of the group’s fierce critique of anti-black state violence and criminalization — epitomized by its de facto theme song “F– Tha Police” — they fail to highlight how the group’s multi-million dollar empire was built on black women’s backs.

    Yet, as national outrage over state violence grows, the release of the film should prompt fresh reconsideration of how institutionalized sexual and intimate partner violence against black women continues to be all but invisible in mainstream discourse about black self-determination. As gangsta rap pioneers and beneficiaries of the corporatization of rap/hip hop in the 1990s, N.W.A. played a key role in yoking rape culture and rap misogyny. Throughout their career they’ve been hailed as street poets and raw truth tellers mining the psychic space of young urban black masculinity. In song after song, gang rape, statutory rape, the coercion of women into prostitution and the terroristic murder of prostitutes are chronicled, glorified and paid homage to as just part of the spoils of “ghetto” life. The 1988 song “Straight Outta Compton” trivializes the murder of a neighborhood girl (“So what about the bitch that got shot, fuck her, you think I give a damn about a bitch, I’m not a sucker”) while its outlaw male protagonists go on an AK-47 and testosterone fueled killing spree. “Straight Outta Compton” was an early salvo for such popular fare as “To Kill a Hooker,” “Findum, Fuckum & Flee” and the rape epic “One Less Bitch” in which N.W.A. co-founder Dr. Dre lets his boys gang rape a prostitute then notes, “the bitch tried to ‘gank’ me so I had to kill her”.

    In a recent L.A. Times profile on the group, writer Lorraine Ali extols Dr. Dre’s role as a businessman and entrepreneur while conspicuously omitting his history of vicious misogyny and violence against black women. Sidestepping the importance of misogynoir to the group’s body of work, Ali argues that “it’s the film’s depiction of police brutality, and the tense dynamic between law enforcement and the urban neighborhoods they patrol, that makes it so topical”. Ali’s near reverent profile of the group is yet another example of white America’s double standards when it comes to the brutalization of white women versus that of black women.

    More at the link. By Sikivu Hutchison.

    A year after Michael Brown’s fatal shooting, unarmed black men are seven times more likely than whites to die by police gunfire, Washington Post.

    5 months today since Anthony Hill was taken away from us… We fight for him.

  304. rq says

    So there’s one in moderation for bad language, sorry.
    Michael Brown Sr. and the Agony of the Black Father in America

    #SamDubose. How is his rap sheet relevant to him being murdered? Link to the link within. I don’t feel like it,.

    A year after fatal shooting of Michael Brown, residents in Ferguson says something must be done, but still not sure what, Sarah Kendzior for the New York Daily News.

    Calling on 10,000 people to join us at the #MikeBrown memorial site today in #Ferguson #STL #MB2MW @deray

    These Tweets By Christian Taylor Are Heartbreaking In Light Of His Death, Vibe.

    Ferguson and beyond: how a new civil rights movement began – and won’t end

    Mike Brown should be alive today. He should be home from his first year at college, visiting friends and enjoying summer as he prepares to return to campus.

    The movement began one year ago as Brown’s body lay in the street of Canfield Drive here in Ferguson, Missouri, for four and a half hours. It began as the people of St Louis came out of their homes to mourn and to question, as the people were greeted by armed and aggressive officers. And the movement was sustained by a spirit of resistance that refused to be silent, that refused to cower, that refused to bow to continued hostility from the state.

    We did not know each other’s names last August, but we knew each other’s hearts.

    I will always remember that the call to action initiating the movement was organic – that there was no organizing committee, no charismatic leader, no church group or school club that led us to the streets. It is powerful to remember that the movement began as everyday people came out of their homes and refused to be scared into silence by the police. It is powerful, too, to remember the many people who came to stand with us in Ferguson, the many people who were radicalized in the streets of St Louis and then took that deep spirit of resistance to their own cities and towns, leading to sustained unrest across the United States.

    In those early days, we were united by #Ferguson on Twitter – it was both our digital rallying cry and our communication hub. Back then, we were on the cusp of learning how to use Twitter as an organizing tool in protest. And once the protests began to spread, we became aware of something compelling and concise, something that provided common language to describe the protests: the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.

    As marginalized people, we have always faced erasure: either our story is never told, or it is told by everyone but us.

    If not for Twitter and Instagram, Missouri officials would have convinced you, one year ago, that we simply did not exist. Or that we were the aggressors, rather than the victims. That we, and not they, were the violent ones.

    But social media was our weapon against erasure. It is how many of us first became aware of the protests and how we learned where to go, or what to do when teargassed, or who to trust. We were able to both counter the narrative being spun by officials while connecting with each other in unprecedented ways. Many of us became friends digitally, first. And then we, the protestors, met in person.

    Social media allowed us to become our own storytellers. With it, we seized the power of our truth.

    By Deray McKesson for the Guardian (incidentally, he appears to be one of those currently arested in Ferguson, along with Johnetta Elzie.

  305. rq says

    Thx to all who volunteered/participated/showed up 2 make this a great event for area kids #Ferguson #Unity #Education

    A Year After Ferguson, Housing Segregation Defies Tools to Erase It, New York Times.

    When Oppression Is the Status Quo, Disruption Is a Moral Duty, by Bree Newsome.

    Site of #MikeBrown killing right now #FergusonRemembers #Ferguson

    10 Outrageous Excuses Cops Have Used to Kill Unarmed People Over the Past Year, FreeThought Project.

    D.C. police shoot woman who brandished knife near fire scene, Washington Post.

  306. rq says

    Has justice come to Ferguson since Michael Brown’s death? No. (Article from Fusion.)

    Denver: #BlackAugust Memorial March for Victims of State Violence @ Lawson Park #Feguson #MikeBrown #DefendDenver

    Half of Druid Hill Park is blocked off, cops on both ends of the 3300 block of Reisterstown Rd, chopper overhead
    Capt Ron Johnson & other officers watch from a distance as traffic slows people gather along W Florissant #Ferguson
    This is all still last night, yesterday, before anyone got shot.

    March Marks Anniversary of Michael Brown’s Death , youtube video.

    USA: SWAT team arrives in Ferguson after gunfire, youtube video.

  307. rq says

    Speaker: “We’re in these streets cuz I don’t want my daughter to grow up in this world.” #Ferguson @ W. Florissant

    The military-style vehicles are back in Ferguson. Just rolled into W Florissant Ave after several bursts of gunfire

    People walking up to cops with hands up, they are pointing guns saying get back.

    #Ferguson

    West Florissant #ferguson glass bottle sails through the air, people run, more police cars arrive @kmoxnews

    Snapped this pic during my Istanbul travels. #Kardesimsin roughly translates to “you are our brother”. <3 #MikeBrown

  308. rq says

    Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter and the racial divide in Seattle. You can also join the discussion over at PZ’s post on the matter.

    On Saturday, Bernie Sanders came to Seattle for a fundraiser and rally. At the rally at Westlake Park to celebrate the 80th birthday of Social Security, two Black Lives Matter protesters took the stage, and the microphone, and demanded to be heard. Their disruption led to boos from the crowd and some calls for their arrest, as well as the end of the rally.

    For the rest of the afternoon and evening, social media was in an uproar over the actions of these two women. Many stated that the women were just hurting the #BLM cause, others wondered why Sanders was targeted and not other candidates. Some claimed that the women were plants paid by the Clinton campaign to stir up trouble.

    The reaction to these protesters shed light on the hidden Seattle that most black people know well — the Seattle that prefers politeness to true progress, the Seattle that is more offended by raised voices than by systemic oppression, the Seattle that prioritizes the comfort of middle-class white liberals over justice for people of color.

    Many black people in Seattle have long felt the racial divide that the city tries so hard to ignore. Regardless of whether or not you think that the protests could have been carried out differently, the local reaction to them shows why they are so very necessary.

    More at the link.

    #ChristianTaylor. Arlington, Texas. Gonna be protesting there, too, toomrrow night.

    Everyday racism: My white pastor was stopped by the cops because they thought his black wife and son were kidnapping him. #Amerikkka

    Ferguson And America: One Year Later, The Fader.

    #BlackAugust #DenverMemorialMarch #FergusonisEverywhere #UnitedWeFight Undercover cop found in Denver memorial march. Heh. And he wasn’t the only one.

    Streets of #Ferguson now. Pouring rain. Lightning. No CNN. No one cares. #WorldWatchesFerguson This is again before any shooting or riot cops.

  309. rq says

    Not on any planned Mike Brown agenda today. Just spontaneous. #WorldWatchesFerguson
    Just to be clear. Protesters Weren’t blocking full traffic lane. Only police did like this. #WorldWatchesFerguson
    Just an unscheduled march.

    We remember you in Denver! #BlackLivesMatter #MikeBrown @deray @ErikZeusDenver

    The @BaltimorePolice surrounded peaceful protesters yesterday with Semi riot gear and sticks.

    Ex-Baltimore Cop Gives Brutally Honest Interview On Police Corruption & How The System Is Engineered Against Blacks & Latinos!, video at the link.

    ‘Black Lives Matter’ and the G.O.P., Charles M Blow for the New York Times.

    Only one candidate in last week’s Republican presidential debate was asked to directly address the Black Lives Matter movement and that candidate was Gov. Scott Walker.

    Moderator Megyn Kelly asked Walker:

    “Governor Walker, many in the Black Lives Matter movement, and beyond, believe that overly-aggressive police officers targeting young African-Americans is the civil rights issue of our time. Do you agree? And if so, how do you plan to address it? If not, why not?”

    Walker responded with an answer about sufficient training of officers “not only on the way into their positions but all the way through their time” and about “consequences” for those who don’t properly perform their duties.

    Both the question and the answer focused an inordinate amount of attention on police conduct and not enough on revealing that they are simply the agents of policy instituted by officials at the behest of the body politic.

    This deficit of examining systems exists all across this debate. It fails to indict society as a whole, as I firmly believe it should. It puts all the focus on the tip of the spear rather than on the spear itself.

    Look at it this way: Many local municipalities experience budgetary pressure. Rather than raise taxes or cut services in response, things that are often politically unpalatable, they turn to law enforcement and courts to make up the difference in tickets and fines. Some can also increase the number of finable offenses and stiffen the penalties.

    Officers, already disproportionately deployed and arrayed in so-called “high-crime” neighborhoods — invariably poor and minority neighborhoods — are then charged with doing the dirty work. The increase in sheer numbers of interactions creates friction with targeted populations and ups the odds that individual biases will be introduced.

    Without fail, something eventually goes horribly wrong.

    We look at the end interaction, examining the officers for bias and the suspect for threatening behavior, rather than looking at the systems that necessitated the interactions.

  310. rq says

    UPDATE: Family identifies 15-year-old shot, killed by IMPD officers

    One person was shot and killed by IMPD officers on the northeast side Sunday night.

    The person’s family says the teen killed is 15-year-old Andre Green.

    Shots were fired around 11:15 p.m. at 34th & Butler. Three officers were involved.

    The officers were following a car from a carjacking earlier in the night when the suspect turned down Butler Avenue then turned around, started heading toward police and actually rammed a police cruiser in the driver’s side, according to an IMPD spokesperson.

    Officers say that’s when several passengers took off running and police ordered the driver out of the car. He drove toward them, so they fired fearing for the lives.

    “We can say with confidence that officers were faced with aggression and they met that aggression head-on,” said IMPD Ofc. Chris Wilburn.

    He said the entire situation was and still is quite traumatic for the officers.

    “They are in shock physiologically,” Wilburn said. “They are coming off of this physiological high in that their bodies have had a huge adrenaline dump. But they acted in a professional manner. No other lives were lost as a result of this and no officers were injured.”

    Police records show Andre Green has a history of running away from home and car thefts.

    HE’S FIFTEEN!!!!!! And yes, that is ONE MORE for THIS WEEKEND. Who’s keeping count? I can’t.

    #BlackTwitter After #Ferguson,

    On the anniversary of Michael Brown’s death, three prominent activists read their tweets from the past year and reflect on the challenges and legacy of the Black Lives Matter movement.

    >
    Video at the link.

    And we have caught up with events more or less, though I have a small gap in the timeline, but anyway, here’s a recent photo of Ferguson: More gas deployed down #Canfield in #Ferguson
    Protestors and livestreamers being arrested.

  311. rq says

    If Ferguson PD knew difference between suspected armed shooter and protesters, why are they kettling and tear gassing peaceful protesters?

    @stlcountypd HOW CAN PEOPLE “LEAVE THE AREA” WHEN YOU’VE HAD THEIR CARS BLOCKED IN FOR THE PAST 3 HOURS?! THEY ARE TRAPPED IN THE TEARGAS!

    While SWAT shoots teargas down the street, police are still processing the crime scene from earlier.

    Belmar: They did not give the victim first-aid because they feared more shooting and the situation was “dynamic.” #WorldWatchesFerguson

    Storms don’t stop protesters, incl @shethestreet in #Ferguson. #MikeBrown

    Man shot by police in Ferguson after he fired at officers, police say, the St Louis Post-Dispatch. The young man killed was a friend of Mike Brown’s.

  312. rq says

    Police still here in Canfield, still from last night. Rtaher, early this morning.

    We can’t let the selfish, violent actions of a few overshadow the peaceful actions of thousands more. #Ferguson

    Last night: Activist @search4swag arrested at the scene of the shooting. He was later released. TW ON THE VIDEO LINKED.

    If this photo doesn’t speak to you maybe nothing will. #Ferguson

    Black delivery driver says Lowe’s replaced him when racist customer complained, Raw Story.

    Bernie! In Seattle! PZ’s post.

  313. rq says

    Christian Taylor’s father says police ‘won’t even talk to me’ after son’s death, the Guardian US.

    Emergency Declared in Ferguson After Shooting, New York Times.

    Sandra Bland: Texas records show racial breakdown of those stopped by same trooper, LA Times.

    Racialized Nerdiness: Does Race Play A Role In Being Nerdy? Black Girl Nerds.

    @ShaunKing @deray inconsistencies in the story from the killing of 15 year old Andre Green in Indianapolis, see attached texts.

    Police clear hundreds of dirt bikers from Druid Hill Park, Baltimore Sun.

  314. rq says

    Alright, folks, here’s the deal: we’re moving this business, even though the thread is not dead, over here. I will not be posting on this thread anymore.
    Sounds depressing? Don’t worry.
    That’s only point number 1.
    Point number 2: My postings will slow down, and I welcome any and all comments, stories, anecdotes, articles, etc. from everyone out there reading and willing to share. Tony welcomes this, too.
    This is not to say I will stop posting at all or paying attention, but my work schedule is changing and I will have no more free days to do this work, so I will have to settle for whatever I can do in the evenings. (After two trial days I have already realized that there is just no physical way I’ll be able to keep up at previous volume, apologies for that. It’s up to you to follow the right people on twitter from now on! :) )
    Point number 3: Thank you to everyone still following and reading. I hope that, up until now (and in the future, of course), this has been a memorable and educational experience for everyone, as it has been for me. I think much of the material here will come in handy for the impending racist crisis about immigrants that seems to be brewing in this country, as a lot of the basic ideas are transferable.
    Point number 4: This is everyone’s work, but mostly white people’s work, because white supremacy is on our shoulders. Me, I’m not necessarily USAmerican, I’m not necessarily a member of the white community that has been an oppressor class (though shifting in that direction locally, ho ho), but you can’t tell that just by looking at me, because I look like your average white person with eastern European roots. And that makes this my work. So, white people, I invite you to learn more, challenge more, speak up more, do more – within your schedule, energy levels, capabilities, skills, etc.
    We can change things, a little bit at a time. I hope these threads have helped change your minds and your attitudes, as they have mine.
    Yes, this feels a little like saying goodbye, but as I said, things will go on, so let’s do this together!!!