Four teenage girls in Chicago made history happen, using social media to ignite a mass sit-in against police brutality that drew more than 1,000 people to Millennium Park.
Said one organizer, Eva Lewis: “Because we’re like, small—we’re 16 and 17—it just hadn’t resonated that we could do something like that.”
ThemurderofGeorge Floyd is exactly what it looks like. I cannot tell you if you should watch the whole excruciating video. I can tell you that you have seen enough to know exactly what it is.
This is the wolf-watcher-who-cried-wolf problem that we keep having with Trump. A lot of people sounded the alarm years ago that Trump would take us to this point. A lot more people with a lot more power heard the warnings, mocked everyone who was worried about things that hadn’t happened yet, and got used to the idea that those things could happen. And so when Trump does exactly what he what he has always said he would do, they’re surprised but not shocked – when what they need to be is shocked but not surprised. Pooh-pooh, you’re just hysterical, the humvees on the streets of the capitol aren’t tanks yet.
That’s one of the most encouraging responses to Trump’s dictatorial cosplay earlier this week. The other is the fact that, you know, it didn’t work. The next day, even more demonstrators turned out. The crowd was just as peaceful, just as resilient, even larger and more diverse. If Trump felt like his actions the day before had helped him, he would have doubled down. Instead, he spent the night having his usual Twitter tantrum.
When you have to worry about state violence against peaceful protesters, every day that demonstrators aren’t terrorized by the government is at least a short-term win. But more than that, it’s proof of concept. Some combination of top-down pressure from military top brass and bottom-up pressure from demonstrators can make him back down. That’s good to know.
It can be complicated to trust your eyes and ears when the real work is long term, slow, and therefore invisible. Sometimes you have to witness a symbolic gesture and be encouraged to turn it into something more. Despite the violence perpetrated by local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, there were a lot of police who took a knee with the protesters, or even marched with them arm in arm. That is not a substitute for systematic reform, but if it were only a meaningless gesture to deflect criticism, they wouldn’t have resisted doing it before. That helps to validate the protests for people who aren’t paying attention, which makes the necessary changes more doable politically.
Peoplesinginganddancing in the streets of American cities are exactly what you want them to be: giant crowds of people from all walks of life refusing to let the bastards grind them down.
“Loi sécurité globale, le grand FLOUTAGE de gueule”
For context, and since the pun is difficult to translate:
The French government is currently trying to pass a very controversial law (Loi Sécurité Globale - Global Security Law) that would forbid to film police officer and make the blurring of their faces mandatory, just as cases of Police brutality are multiplying.
The graffiti is a pun between “Floutage de gueule” (”Mug blurring”) and “Foutage de gueule” (something like “total bullshit”).
No one is fucking talking about it but another black man was killed by the same police department that killed George Floyd they killed him 9 minutes after entering his apartment. No knock warrants are fucking bullshit. He was wrapped in his blanket he was innocent they had the wrong address there is body can cottage you cannot fucking deny this bullshit.
This is being hushed up and covered up and I cannot believe it took me until TODAY, SIX DAYS AFTER IT HAPPENED to find out about it.
Everyone should be talking about this shit.
All the BLM protests and here we are again. We cannot let a single one of these slide because that’s how nothing changes and that’s how innocent people are being killed at the hands of assholes who are happy to pull the trigger without hesitation. I’m so fucking upset right now and so should you be.
As a black woman, I’m personally at a loss for words. I hope his family and his community will be able to find some peace. And I hope that one day we can all finally live in a world where these things can stop happening.
I should also mention that in my original post I said 9 minutes when I meant to say 9 seconds. He was shot after 9 seconds of them entering the apartment. Heartbreaking.
Also some other information:
- the cops that did this were denied a no-knock warrant in their own precinct so they went to another precinct not very close by to get it. Intent was had.
The cops involved have a very dark and unsettling past.
I will reblog this version of the post with some more information since the post I made with information is getting zero traction.
Briefly want to mention that this case should not be confused with the murder of Isaiah Tyree Williams, who was killed in almost the exact same way on January 10th.
Riot cops attack students protesting against the creation of university police
⭕ Tuesday 10 May 2022, Thessaloniki, Greece: Asphyxiating gas, deafening flash-bangs grenades inside buildings, attacks with batons, arrests, the torture of a student with blows to the head, fire extinguisher blows to the face, not letting him walk but dragging him on the pavement, as if he were a thing and not a person, 10 men in armour against one who does not resist. Armed cops with guns, dressed like soldiers in khaki inside a university campus, attacking students on a rampage.
There has been so much violence almost every day, for the past 3 weeks, by the rectorial authorities of the university and the greek riot police against the university community, that the only thing that is certain is the necessity of having a university asylum, where the police cannot enter.
The situation with the paroxysmal violence of the riot police inside the AUT, (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) has gone out of control. The images from Thessaloniki are both an experiment and an insight into the future of higher education institutions in Greece. The ideal of the free movement of ideas in universities - although never implemented - has been replaced by the violent movement of the police, along with all their lethal equipment, guns and bullets, flash –bang grenades, batons and asphyxiation gas. In essence, the Golden Dawn neonazi party and the rest of the fascist flock in Greece, (more than 50% of cops are voters of fascist parties in Greece), armed and free to commit acts of grave violence, entered the universities through the “back door”.
Anyone who sacrifices a piece of freedom for safety deserves neither freedom nor safety and will eventually lose both.
[Video footage by Alexandros Litsardakis in Thessaloniki, Greece, Instagram: @alex.litsardakis]
This is what Greek Democracy looks like‼️
Riot cops attack students protesting against the creation of university police
⭕ Tuesday 10 May 2022, Thessaloniki, Greece: Asphyxiating gas, deafening flash-bangs grenades inside buildings, attacks with batons, arrests, the torture of a student with blows to the head, fire extinguisher blows to the face, not letting him walk but dragging him on the pavement, as if he were a thing and not a person, 10 men in armour against one who does not resist. Armed cops with guns, dressed like soldiers in khaki inside a university campus, attacking students on a rampage.
There has been so much violence almost every day, for the past 3 weeks, by the rectorial authorities of the university and the greek riot police against the university community, that the only thing that is certain is the necessity of having a university asylum, where the police cannot enter.
The situation with the paroxysmal violence of the riot police inside the AUT, (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) has gone out of control. The images from Thessaloniki are both an experiment and an insight into the future of higher education institutions in Greece. The ideal of the free movement of ideas in universities - although never implemented - has been replaced by the violent movement of the police, along with all their lethal equipment, guns and bullets, flash –bang grenades, batons and asphyxiation gas. In essence, the Golden Dawn neonazi party and the rest of the fascist flock in Greece, (more than 50% of cops are voters of fascist parties in Greece), armed and free to commit acts of grave violence, entered the universities through the “back door”.
Anyone who sacrifices a piece of freedom for safety deserves neither freedom nor safety and will eventually lose both.
NPR is talking about how “cops should be able to take people in if they show mental health problems.”
People are actively suggesting we criminalize mental illness. This is where your bullshit narrative of painting this as a mental health problem gets us.
Cops kill people with mental illness. So yay, thanks for that target on our backs.
This attitude ruins lives.
I have a tic disorder that causes me to move or vocalize in a way that makes me look Very Crazy and when my disability gets bad I literally cannot be in public without an escort because Concerned People can and will behave violently towards me. I have been locked up because people were ~concerned~ before.
And yeah… getting assaulted or killed by a cop is a very real worry of mine.
So fuck this noise and fuck the people commenting on this thread talking about how we’re not talking about ~actually~ criminalizing madness because, buddy, I already live that life. The only difference between a locked ward and a prison is that a nurse gets paid more than a prison guard.
I got detained for “weird behavior” once. Pulling bark off a tree on public property because it relaxes me when I’m stressed. These two cops pulled up and nearly drew their guns to shoot me because I reflexively reached for my phone to record them. They took my ID to check me for criminal history and asked me a bunch of questions about if I was gonna hurt myself or others. Then they gave me my ID back and told me I wasn’t technically doing anything illegal but I was making people uncomfortable.
I almost fucking died when I wasn’t even breaking the law because people are TERRIFIED of the mentally ill. Now whenever I’m in public and a stranger asks me if I’m okay I have a goddamn panic attack because I’m afraid they’ll call the cops on me again and maybe this time they actually will kill me.
Teargas is the most popular choice for the police to disperse the protesters, also their preferred weapons.
Since June, there are cases where people (including protesters, journalists and passersby) were hit by the teargas can and injured.
The worst thing is, the latest batch of teargas used by the police is made in China, and journalists and experts have noticed the dioxin it releases is high, whenever the police use the teargas, they are poisoning all the people in the scene. And the chemical is also affecting the ecological environment in Hongkong.
(Trigger warning)
Dead bodies of birds, squirrels and hawks are founded in districts that were bombarded with teargas.
The use of teargas not only is damaging to people’s health (dioxin can caused cancer and miscarriages) , it is having an irreversible impact on our environment.
Words and Offense by Kinsey Hope Ah slurs. Amazing little linguistic fragments of nastiness, they are one of the most misunderstood elements of oppression in existence.
Slurs are systemic and offense is personal. This we can all agree on (unless we are quite ignorant about how these things work).
So now I drop the bomb on you. I do not give a single flying or landbound fuck, when it comes to fighting slurs, about offense.
[…] You see, offense isn’t the actual problem. It never has been. It isn’t the thing that makes slurs so ungodly harmful. Furthermore and this is important, offense is not limited to the marginalized and oppressed. Oh. Yes. That’s a bit of a problem isn’t it? Because you see, privileged people can be offended just as easily by marginalized and oppressed people as we can be by them. The effects of the offense may be different (power always adds extra harm to stuff) but there’s no doubt that we offend the privileged every day of every week of every month in any given year. Our anger offends the privileged and hurts them. Our self expression and living our lives offends the privileged and challenges their worldview painfully. […] Offense is a very eclectic concept and it is open to anyone, even the oppressor. Even worse, offense is built entirely around direct effect. If a tree falls in the woods it does in fact make a sound, but if no one is there to hear it, no one will cringe at the crash. Likewise if a slur is said in a completely privileged group, without any supporters of oppressed people around (or people who just don’t think words are an issue) who exactly is it offending? No one. No one is there who would be affected. I’ve heard of too many people who just avoid using the phrases and slurs around people they know it will offend and then go and use it around people they know it won’t.
So one of the biggest problems with just concentrating on offense is because offense can be used just as easily against us as it can for us when it comes to getting rid of slurs being spouted by the privileged.
The frighteningly direct way that words influence behavior and in turn directly and effectively boost the effects of oppression on a huge scale is a much bigger concern then whether someone is personally offended. It means that no matter where someone says that slur, even if no one is around that could be offended, it still hurts us overall.
So no, it’s not about offense. Not entirely. Words really do have astounding power.
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can mobilize an entire society in violent hate against me. And we should never forget that fact.
On a related note, one of my favorite podcasts lately has been CounterSpin, which critically looks at the past week’s news and how mainstream media covered it. It “exposes and highlights biased and inaccurate news; censored stories; sexism, racism and homophobia in the news; the power of corporate influence; gaffes and goofs by leading TV pundits; TV news’ narrow political spectrum; attacks on free speech; and more.”
A World Without Police!? by Ryan Higa Inspired by all the police brutality videos going viral these days causing even more hatred towards police.
So, this is an example of something that is not politically correct. A quick summary so you don’t have to give this video any more views: Police brutality is a serious issue, but people nowadays are going out and deliberately antagonizing police. Police are human, too! They deal with assholes every day, so they’re bound to be asshole-ish sometimes. #NotAllPolice are racist – just like we want to avoid stereotypes that Black people are thieves, Asians are bad drivers, and Muslims are terrorists, we shouldn’t judge a group of people based on a few bad ones! The very minorities who are mad at being discriminated against are discriminating against the police! The world couldn’t survive without police anyways, we’d descend into a Netflix-less hell (don’t ask)!
Yeah. This was basically a #NotAllMen about the police. Somehow he decided to compare police with oppressed minorities. The police are not an oppressed minority – the police are the oppressors, or at the very least, the enactors of oppression. They’re part of a corrupt system.
Moreover, who else deals with assholes every day? Retail workers. Restaurant workers. Janitors. Housekeepers. Minimum wage workers. They don’t have the luxury of acting like assholes. It’s really frustrating to see this video have nearly two million views. Literally no one was asking him to comment on police brutality, but I guess he wanted to cash in on it (just like the supposedly antagonistic people filming police he was criticizing).
Unfortunately due to TV shows that stress forensic investigation, juries are demanding this kind of evidence at trial, and have little idea of how untested and unreliable it really is.
Hair analysis alone has been used in thousands of trials. The FBI is reviewing 2500 cases out of “21000 federal and state requests to the FBI’s hair-comparison unit between 1972 and 1999″. Even if this review exonerates some of those convictions, that doesn’t even begin to cover the hundreds of state and local “experts” trained by the FBI in this bogus “hair analysis” technique to do things like this:
Santae Tribble served 28 years for a murder based on FBI testimony about a single strand of hair. He was exonerated in 2012. It was later revealed that one of the hairs presented at trial came from a dog.
So anyway remember anytime you hear about “forensic evidence” that a lot of it is bullcrap and not scientifically validated and a lot of so-called experts are just pulling conclusions out of their ass.
the forensic hair analysis thing is terrible, the FBI literally invented a branch of forensic psuedoscience with no evidence behind it in order to boost conviction rates, then taught the bogus technique to thousands of forensic investigators in the us and around the world. we have no idea how many people have been wrongfully convicted, and this is just one in a very long list of forensic techniques that lack rigorous scientific evaluation
The Prosecutor General’s Office in Goiás requested that the Federal Highway Police (PRF) reinstate classes on human rights for officers, after three marshals in the northeastern state of Sergipe killed a 38-year-old man.
After being pulled over for riding a motorcycle without a helmet, Genivaldo Santos (who relatives say was mentally ill) was locked inside the trunk of a police car. Agents then threw a tear gas bomb inside — killing Mr. Santos by asphyxiation.
Prosecutors ask civil servants caught in illegal activities to retake the course, which should focus on policing techniques in approaching vulnerable groups, such as those with mental illnesses as well as black and peripheral populations.
Anger and protests in Brazil have followed the death of a Black man who was gassed in police custody. After a traffic stop, officers in the city of Umbaúba put the man in the back of a police car, then set off a gas grenade, the Guardian reports. “Police officers turned a car into a gas chamber and executed a mentally ill man,” Renata Souza, a Black activist and politician, posted on Twitter. Highway police said in a statement that officers employed “immobilization techniques” and “instruments of minor offensive potential” when the man became aggressive. The funeral for Genivaldo de Jesus Santos, 38, was held Thursday.
A wave of protests has swept Brazil, sparked by the brutal death of a Black man at the hands of police. The 38-year-old died of asphyxiation after he was held inside the trunk of a police car as it filled with tear gas.
Black folks are wrong if we sit down during the national anthem or riot. The only thing that’s accepted is complacency. Colin Kaepernick is well within his right to opt out of the national anthem. Isn’t that what freedom is all about?
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