los anjalis

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action.

Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was written exactly 50 years ago, on this day. Do read it again if you can. A paragraph:

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

MLK Jr’s tone is conversational — he tries to reason with his readers — as well as indignant and righteous. And he takes great aim at the ‘white moderate’. His description of the white moderate feels… timeless.

First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Remember this speech from Charlie Chaplin, in The Great Dictator, a movie he wrote, directed, and produced himself? (did you know it was released in 1940, before we even went to war with germany?)

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not despair”…

…Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security.

happy labor day to all.

[if interested, here's the full text of the speech.]

Cross-posted at CureThis:

“This law will make me feel like a Nazi out there.  I have a great deal of contempt for it; I’m very emotional about it… This law is – pure and simple – a racist law.”

In the lead-up to the implementation of SB1070, the Arizona law known commonly as “papers please”, it is heartening to see a police officer in AZ speak up against it:

He very clearly states why this law is a huge health/human rights violation:

“So under SB1070 I know that people will not call officers in the case of a real emergency. I could see this type of scenario: a woman is being beaten by her husband or her significant other.  And, if I show up, and I develop reasonable suspicion, or LESS, even, that the person that is a perpetrator in this case, is in this country extralegally, i’m going to start heading in the direction of asking the victim of the case, are you here illegally?  I will have to arrest both of them — I’ll be required to — and both will be deported.  It violates our calling to serve and protect. It violates, under our Constitution, the requirement to serve and protect.”

Thanks to the savvy folks at Cuentame for collecting video testimonials. And check out Alto Arizona for actions in Arizona this week, and solidarity actions you can join in your own towns and states.

Below: Step 9 of the 10 steps a country takes as it moves towards fascism. The clip is from the forthcoming documentary The End of America, based on Naomi Wolf’s book and speaking engagements. Naomi Wolf = brilliant.

Also check out the official movie trailer at the official The End of America documentary website.

Damn. I’m moved by Rodney King’s forgiveness of the LAPD cops who beat him and who sparked the 1992 LA riots (killing 56 people and seriously wounding a city). Though I don’t forgive the cops for their brutality that continues through today (re: badly named “Safer Cities Initiative” and other forms of police brutality in Los Angeles).

Thanks to LAist for the video.

I lived in NYC for two years and nearby in Newark NJ for another few years, and the NY Post is not a reasonable publication by any means, and has never been. And this week it published a very controversial cartoon. Sam Stein and Baratunde Thurston are articulate and to the point with the connotations inherent in this cartoon. Check out the video above.

Baratunde Thurston also published an essay in the Huffington Post, where he expands on Dr Phillip Goff’s research on the very real brutality/racism effects of psychologically likening blacks to monkeys.

And Dr Goff’s full essay, “Little Things are Still a Big Deal” can be found here. It’s VERY interesting. Here’s a snippet:

For the better part of the past seven years, my colleagues and I have conducted research on the psychological phenomenon of dehumanization. Specifically, we have examined cognitive associations between African Americans and non-human apes. And the association leads to bad things. When we began the research, we were skeptical of whether or not participants even knew that people of African descent were caricatured as ape-like — as less than human — throughout the better part of the past 400 years. And, in fact, many were not. However, even those who were unaware of this historical association demonstrated a cognitive association between blacks and apes. That is, when they thought of apes, they thought of blacks and vice versa — when they thought of blacks, they thought of apes.

But the fact of this cognitive association was not the most disturbing part of the research. Rather, it was the fact that the association between blacks and apes could lead to violence.

In one study, participants who were made to think about apes were more likely to support police violence against black (but not white) criminal suspects. The association actually caused them to endorse anti-black violence. Most disturbing of all, however, was a study of media coverage and the death penalty. Looking at a sample of death-eligible cases in Philadelphia from 1979 to 1999, the more that media coverage used ape-like metaphors to describe a murder trial (i.e. “urban jungle,” “aping the suspects behavior,” etc.) the more likely black suspects, but not white suspects were to be put to death.

Something to mull over…

Army Unit to Deploy in October for Domestic Operations

Beginning in October, the Army plans to station an active unit inside the United States for the first time to serve as an on-call federal response in times of emergency. The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent thirty-five of the last sixty months in Iraq, but now the unit is training for domestic operations. The unit will soon be under the day-to-day control of US Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command. The Army Times reports this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command. The paper says the Army unit may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control. The soldiers are learning to use so-called nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals and crowds.

This unit’s supposed to be deployed in October 2008, but i SWEAR, i SWEAR i saw these guys last month — masked as riot police at the Republican National Convention, using “so-called nonlethal weapons to subdue unruly crowds”.  It didn’t go too well, as I last understood.

So this is what i’m wondering… Why now?  Where is this greater threat, or this perception of greater threat, coming from?  What’s the need for this internal deployment?  Who called these guys in?

Jon Stewart: 19 people flew into the towers. It seems hard for me to imagine that we could go to war enough to make the world safe enough that 19 people wouldn’t want to do harm to us so it seems like we have to rethink a strategy that is less military-based, in general.

Jon Stewart interviewed former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair this week. This above is part of the interview (the full interview is available on the daily show’s website). As I watched the full interview, I found myself increasingly angry at this likeable Tony Blair. I know, i just KNOW that he’s smarter than how he came off, that he knows as well as any others that the move to war in Iraq was a big sham, that the evidence behind all of it was completely created out of nothing. And yet he STILL says in this interview that Al Qaeda was in Iraq and that’s why we invaded. STILL says it. But you can see him becoming more and more miffed and flustered at Jon Stewarts questions. He finds himself going in circles at one point and catching himself in a lie, which makes him more flustered. But the most interesting piece was what blogger Dahle called the Jon Stewart Doctrine (at min 7:25 in this video):

Stewart: 19 people flew into the towers. It seems hard for me to imagine that we could go to war enough to make the world safe enough that 19 people wouldn’t want to do harm to us so it seems like we have to rethink a strategy that is less military-based, in general.

The photograph is a picture I took from Kellogg Street, overlooking Shepherd Road, while a mass arrest of peaceful protesters was underway. This was probably the first time during the RNC that the police used “unlawful assembly” to arrest hundreds of people who literally couldn’t escape. The police allowed a crowd to gather, locked down the escape routes, and arrested everyone for unlawful assembly. As I reported at FDL, I saw a simlar tactic deployed on 7th Street later in the week–the police blocked off both ends of the street, encircled the protesters, and then issued the order to disperse. When over a hundred people couldn’t vanish instantly, the cops seized the pretext to tear gas everyone. The trick worked so well they repeated it on Thursday night on the Marion bridge where about 300 people were told they would be allowed to march even though there permit had expired. The cops let them proceed to the bridge over I-94 and then locked down both ends of the bridge and arrested everyone, including about two dozen journalists, families with children, legal observers, and medics.

From first-hand documentation of the protests outside the Republican National Convention, as photographed and observed by LB. This should settle some more doubts about whether the protesters “deserved” what they got or whether they were inciting riots and hanging out in places where they shouldn’t have been. Also in almost every photograph I’ve seen like this (where a wide view is captured), there’s clear evidence of cops in riot gear outnumbering the protesters.

Thanks LB and the others who documented the situation outside the RNC with much more objectivity than the traditional press.

Some photos from a talented photographer who was arrested today at the peaceful protest outside the Republican National Convention. Apparently 43 others were arrested together, paraded to the press (as Webster states) and then cited for presence without a permit and then released. This was Day 2 of the RNC. On Day 1, the riot police arrested 300 people, 250 charged with CONSPIRACY to RIOT (including a few journalists). The second photo above is of a mass detention of 300 people on day 1 of the RNC protests. On both days — pepper spray and tear gas used indiscriminately, as per passers-by and protesters.

Also of note — LB on the Poor Peoples March (check out the photo):

Do these people look like a ravening mob to you? A few minutes later, the police tear gassed the whole block after pushed the crowd back about a block or two.

What you can’t see in the picture is that bicycle and riot cops were surrounding groups of people on the sidewalk and blocking the intersections at both ends of the block.

And LB on infiltrators:

When the anarchist checked the photographs she recognized the familiar-looking guy as one of the officers who had raided the Convergence Space on Smith Ave. the previous week.

The Pioneer Press traced the license plate of the unmarked sedan to the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office.

Court documents also show that the police relied heavily, in some cases exclusively on the testimony of paid informants to lay conspiracy charges against certain defendants.

Keep these facts in mind when assessing claims that anarchists are responsible for various misdeeds at protests. If the authorities can infiltrate, they can also instigate.

This morning on my drive to work, I tuned into Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman (who was arrested for asking the police why her colleagues had been arrested). Among the insightful reporting on the constitutional violations that the riot police committed, she shared an audio clip of her producer Nicole Salazar essentially filming her own arrest. The audio was almost unbearable. And then this evening I saw the actual video:

Absolutely unbearable and horrifying.

What’s happening in the video: Salazar is filming (she’s a producer for a well-respected tv and video show, and she has full official press pass information around her neck). Riot police come swarming in from 3 sides. You can hear her saying Where do you want me to go? as they’re rushing the crowd. She screams “I’m Press! I’m Press!” as she’s being pushed by them. They take her down to the ground, stomp her face in the asphalt, one officer puts his elbow in her back, the other picks her up by her leg, she tries to keep her face up off the ground so it doesn’t get macerated from being dragged while elbow is in back and other is holding her leg. She ends up with a bloody nose and a scratched up face. And she’s still detained. (info from witnesses)

Her charge?

CONSPIRACY TO RIOT. What was she doing? Videotaping the protests and interviewing people. She’s still being detained. The Department of Pre-Crime (Minority Report reference) is in FULL EFFECT.

Salazar is just one of the 250 people who were detained or arrested for conspiracy to riot. And she’s a journalist — so not only are the riot police attacking her, they’re attacking the right of the free press to report. As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, here’s a video of Amy Goodman on the situation a short while after her arrest:

Amy Goodman, world-reknown and widely respected journalist broadcaster of the show Democracy Now!, being arrested for ASKING the police why they were doing what they were doing.

Yes, a woman peacefully holding a flower, getting pepper sprayed. (thanks to BFP for the video)

Just two examples of the violent protesters being nicely moved away by our police state. If this doesn’t infuriate you then I don’t know how you can believe in a free America.

- – - – -

As the DNC and RNC created “Free Speech Zones” far from the actual conventions, and as police are now pulling out tasers, concussion grenades, and tear gas at peaceful protesters at the RNC in Twin Cities Minnesota, and as police horses are stampeding protesters, and as cameras and cellphones are being seized without reason, and as police in the twin cities in Minnesota are jailing some without reason and threatening others, and as a friend of mine is involved in the Northstar Collective (a group of medics and others who have been preparing for months to provide medical and psychological support for victims of the police during the RNC), and as I’m hearing about victims of tear gas streaming into the Northstar makeshift clinics, I don’t know what to think.

Protests SHOULD matter, but increasingly they don’t, and people are criminalized and made out to be america-hating anarchists for it. Folks around America should be enraged, but it’s a bit hard to when the media isn’t covering it (and the media who IS is being arrested for it) and when the convergence of Palin/McCain and RNC media and Hurricane Gustav are all occurring at the same time.

In any case, I’m really proud of the folks who are tirelessly covering it.

The ColdSnapLegal collective is live-twittering (short live-blog posts) about up to date arrests and civil rights violations occurring at the RNC protests. Check out their messages here. And check out their website here. Thank you so much ColdSnapLegal.

Here are some of their latest twitter posts:

Cops threatening to arrest everybody @ river walk – 300+ ppl inc. medics, legal observers, journalists, concertgoers, kids. Tear gas used.

Mass arrests on Jackson & 9th, including Democracy Now! journalists Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddou, Nicole Salazar.

Ramsey Cty jail on lockdown – no lawyers allowed inside. St. Joseph hospital also on lockdown, denying people water.

Steady stream of folks with pepper spray injuries at the Northstar clinic; medic headed to jail with supplies soon.

2 medics arrested at 6th & Wall

7th & Jackson arrests at 30-40. Democracy Now! journalists among those arrested at Temperance. Lots of police brutality among these arrests.

Anti-capitalist bloc being tear gassed on Jackson by river.

Pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, concussion grenades being used in more locations than we can write in one tweet right now.

Person tackled by 5 SPPD in riot gear for refusing a search. Media was present for this.

~300 people being stampeded by police horses on 2nd & Kellogg

Cops are getting ready to gas funk the war blockade at kellogg and wabasha. Legal observers needed there now.

Others reporting on this (because the mainstream media is late to it):

Firedoglake (with videos and up to date reports)

The Uptake

Amazing to see so many folks using YouTube, Qik video (upload from phone), Twitter, and other social networking means for the dissemination of this much-needed information.

Last I checked, I thought we were living in the free world, not Beijing…

Back when the two major Democratic candidates were vying for the place of THE presumptive democratic presidential nominee of the United States of America (TM), there was much discussion in the mainstream media about the so-called “Oppression Olympics” — the idea that we were too busy fighting over who was more oppressed. This was all a bunch of B.S. but the mainstream media was all over it (and i think clinton’s campaign and some supporters really played into it too, unfortunately). And of course, the Daily Show was all over the media’s being all over it, and produced a segment on this topic in quite fanciful style:

(thanks Susie for the link!)

But I digress a bit. An oppression olympics of a much more frightening kind (and one that the mainstream media isn’t all over) is the Summer Olympics in Beijing. Let’s just put it bluntly — shit is going down, but what we’re seeing is just the QUITE FANCIFUL show they’re putting on.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not dislike the idea of the olympics, I am not the grinch (well, sometimes i’m pretty close). But there’s so much to the story here that isn’t covered, and so many human rights and privacy violations wrapped up in this story that it’s alarming beyond belief (and i wont even go into the issue of tibet). This news – from before the olympics began:

Hua Huiqing – an underground Christian – told me that police bashed down his front door, dragged his family from their apartment, and instructed him to leave Beijing for the duration of the Olympics.

Gao Hongming, recently released after an eight year prison sentence for ‘incitement to subvert state power’ is being followed by a team of plain clothes policemen on a 24 hour shift pattern. Several others reported similar intimidation – all beginning at 8am on 28 July.

Wang Zhixin, a thirty-year veteran of China’s democracy movement, was given a contract by government officials. He and his wife were ordered to sign it. The consequences? If he speaks out during the games, she will be punished.

He told me: “To the outside world, the government says ‘don’t politicize the Olympics’. But they’re the ones who are politicizing the games.”

Much of what went on in preparation for the Olympics in Beijing is not unique to Beijing:

…a clean-up of the city which has involved laying out 40 million flower pots, festooning building sites with billboards painted with scenes of what the developments will eventually look like, and removing beggars, dissidents, the mentally ill, and hundreds of thousands of poor migrant workers from the streets of the city.

Oh yeah, and 2 million Beijing residents — TWO MILLION — have been displaced by the government’s efforts to clean up the city and create the right environment for the olympics.

The Olympics has an uncanny history of clean-up operations by host cities, whether in other countries or in the United States of America. But the new unique twists abound and they’re quite disturbing, including the above information about people being threatened or disappearing entirely; aggressive threats to journalism; and the threats to China’s own people going about their business:

Wardens yesterday were patrolling the park demanding that passing journalists not conduct interview with local people.

Among the stranger banners exhibited elsewhere is one that reads: “Go outside less – give our foreign friends some space.”

Yikes. Embarrassed by your own countrymen and women much? Or just trying REALLY hard to continue the balancing act of globalization and a militarily repressive type of communism? And… meeting success with that strategy.

Stephen Colbert and Nas bring it.

Lyrics to “Sly Fox” by Nas below…
(more…)

You can’t even make this stuff up.

According to British lawyer and writer Philippe Sands, Jack Bauer—played by Kiefer Sutherland—was an inspiration at early “brainstorming meetings” of military officials at Guantanamo in September of 2002. Diane Beaver, the staff judge advocate general who gave legal approval to 18 controversial new interrogation techniques including water-boarding, sexual humiliation, and terrorizing prisoners with dogs, told Sands that Bauer “gave people lots of ideas.” Michael Chertoff, the homeland-security chief, once gushed in a panel discussion on 24 organized by the Heritage Foundation that the show “reflects real life.”

John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who produced the so-called torture memos—simultaneously redefining both the laws of torture and logic—cites Bauer in his book War by Other Means. “What if, as the popular Fox television program ‘24′ recently portrayed, a high-level terrorist leader is caught who knows the location of a nuclear weapon?” Even Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking in Canada last summer, shows a gift for this casual toggling between television and the Constitution. “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. … He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Scalia said. “Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?”

From a great piece in Slate Magazine (“The Bauer of Suggestion” by Dahlia Lithwick)

(Photo: Sean Bell, fiance Nicole Paultre-Bell, and their daughter)

It was A cold cold day in February 2000. A few of us medical students, joined by a handful of members of the Newark, New Jersey community, stood on the main street outside the university hospital we worked at. We chanted, and we passed out information on Amadou Diallo’s wrongful death by cops in the NYPD, caused by 41 shots fired by plain clothed police officers who thought Diallo’s face matched that of a photo of a serial rapist they were after. He reached for his wallet as he ran up his apartment’s stairs, and they fired on him, killed him. 41 shots.

At several points we shouted on a megaphone: “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…” until we reached 41. In that light, 41 bullets seemed like SO. DAMN. MANY. The police officers were tried away from NYC, in Albany, without a jury, because of the negative press and therefore “biased” chance they would have. They were all acquitted.

8 years later, I’m equally livid and deeply saddened at the verdict of a trial of 3 plain clothed cops who shot 50 rounds of bullets (17 months ago) at unarmed men — killing Sean Bell on the night before his wedding, critically wounding Guzman, a passenger in his car, in a completely reckless and incompetent act. One of the officers even stopped to RELOAD his gun.

The NYTimes has a telling graphic, attached to an article on the Sean Bell case, profiling the cases of several victims of excessive force by the NYPD over the years. Most of the police officers got off completely scot-free, after committing heinous crimes. Also included is a list of all the charges against each officer — again, all 3 officers were acquitted of ALL charges against them.

The cops negotiated to have the case heard solely in front of a judge (no jury), stating that there was too much negative press around their case and therefore they wouldn’t have a fair trial if a jury was involved. Most others don’t get this “privilege”, especially folks from communities of color.

The judge, in his verdict acquitting the 3 police officers of ANY crime against Sean Bell and Joseph Guzman noted, “Carelessness is not a crime.” He also cited prior incarcerations of the victims, and noted that he didn’t like the demeanor of some of the witnesses on the stand. Wow.

Holly at Feministe has a great post about how this is a feminist issue:

somewhere out there, there certainly are some feminists who would not describe this as a feminist issue, despite the bereavement of Nicole Paultre Bell (who changed her name after her fiance’s death) and their daughter. Some writers might point to the fact that Sean Bell lay dead outside of a strip club in Queens where he was having his bachelor party, to his arrest record, or to his blood alcohol level. They could bring up the ugly, misogynist fact that one of Bell’s two friends previously pled guilty to hitting the mother of his child. Or the reports that Bell’s other friend got into an argument when pressured one of the club’s dancers to have paid sex with their entire group, which she didn’t want to do. Or they could just describe it as men killing men.

I feel kind of sick even mentioning all of these details surrounding an unarmed man who was gunned down with his friends on his wedding day. But I’m bringing them up precisely because I want to point out that these details do not matter and never have. All feminists should be familiar with victim-blaming and shifting the spotlight away from the executioners, the rapists, the impersonal forces that do their best to eliminate and kill women, the brown folks of the world, the poor, the different.

The problem here, as Delores Jones-Brown points out, is that there is a systemic pattern of police officers shooting unarmed suspects. The problem is that this disproportionately affects communities of color. The black men who are most often slaughtered by such violence, and all the women and children in their lives too, their loved ones, friends and relatives. A system that is all too eager to exonerate “the thin blue line” and continue business as usual. All of these are feminist issues. Racism must be a feminist issue, for any kind of feminism that counts. Police brutality must be; the biases of the criminal justice system must be.

Kai Chang shared an insightful comment on Holly’s blog post:

By complete coincidence, two nights ago I found myself sitting at a bar in Westchester next to one of the lead lawyers in the trial; indeed he was defending the cop who reloaded his weapon and emptied a second clip into the car. This lawyer was already celebrating; he was drinking martinis and boasting that it was over and the defense had won. I sat quietly and stared at my food as my stomach churned. The lawyer bragged to the bartender that the defense had successfully discredited the prosecution’s witnesses as drug dealers and drunks. He said the defense had made the case that when you’re firing at a car, the explosive impacts of bullets on the car give you the visual impression that there is return fire coming back at you, which explains why they kept on firing at unarmed men. He said that the cop who had fired 31 times was so flooded with adrenaline that he did not remember reloading and erroneously thought his gun had jammed which is why he kept pulling the trigger. It was big laughs and toasts all around.

This is what happens when the humanity of some is valued over the humanity of others, in ways large and small. This is why I talk incessantly about the cognitive indoctrination and perceptual prisms which are so central to racist socialization. We are bombarded all our lives with cultural propaganda which dehumanizes people of color in general and injects a fear of black men in particular into our society’s very brain stem. That’s how it works. One day, you’re a young child watching Saturday morning cartoons in which racial stereotypes are exploited for humor; the next thing you know, you’re a scared cop pumping bullets into a black man, or a judge giving leniency to that cop, or a society with a prison system which looks like ours.

One of the cops, Detective Michael Oliver, stopped to RELOAD his gun and then continued firing at the unarmed men in the car. Alexander Jason, a forensics expert, shared this video of what 31 shots (with reloading) using the firearm that Michael Oliver would look like. 12.3 seconds. Wow. (thanks to Kameelah for the link). Reminds me of what 41 bullets aimed at Amadou Diallo must have been like, back in 1999.

Now, while NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly was out putting cops in the streets to prevent violent responses to the verdict of the cops charged with the killing of Sean Bell, people were peacefully protesting around the city and around the nation. Below are photos from Indymedia NYC And a powerful 1 minute video of New Yorkers protesting at Jamaica station:

(Thanks to Rosa for the links to the video and the photos)

Where do we go from here? There will hopefully be another trial regarding Sean Bell. But how do we prevent this kind of event from occurring again and again in our communities, disproportionately in communities of color? Kevin Powell notes that we are all Sean Bell, and until we realize this we won’t overcome this kind of pathologic behavior:

Plain and simple, racism creates abusive relationships. It does not matter if the perpetrator is a White sister or brother, or a person of color, because the most vulnerable in our society feel the heat of it. Real talk: this tragedy would have never gone down on the Upper Eastside of Manhattan or in Brooklyn Heights. I am not just speaking about the judge’s decision, but the police officer’s actions. Those shots would have never been fired at unarmed White people sitting in a car. Until we understand that racism is not just about who pulled the trigger in a police misconduct case, but is also about the geography of racism, and the psychology of racism, we are forever stuck having the same endless dialogue with no solution in sight.

And until America recognizes the civil and human rights of all its citizens, systemic racism and police misconduct, joined at the hip, will never end. That is, until White sisters and brothers realize they, too, are Sean Bell, this will never end. Save for a few committed souls, most White folks sit on the sidelines (as many did when we marched down Fifth Avenue in protest of Sean Bell’s murder in December 2006), feel empathy, but fail to grasp that our struggle for justice is their struggle for justice. They, alas, are Sean Bell, and Amadou Diallo, and all those anonymous Black and Brown heads and bodies who’ve been victimized, whether they want to accept that reality or not. And the reality is that until police officers are forced to live in the communities they police, forced to learn the language, the culture, the mores of the communities they police, forced to change how they handle undercover assignments, this systemic racism, this police misconduct, will never end. And until Black and Latino people, the two communities most likely to suffer at the hands of police brutality and misconduct, refuse to accept the half-baked leadership we’ve been given for nearly forty years now, and start to question what is really going on behind the scenes with the handshakes, the eyewinks, the head nods, and the backroom deals at the expense of our lives, this systemic racism, this police misconduct, these kinds of miscarriages of justice, will never end.

We are all Sean Bell.

“If Gaza is the world’s biggest prison, this is the world’s biggest prison break.”
- a reporter

I heard about the massive break through the GazaStrip/Egypt border wall by Palestinians earlier today and couldn’t believe the radio. I knew that Israel had placed tighter restrictions on movement of food, fuel, and necessary medical supplies to Palestinians in the Gaza strip for a long while, and that for the last few days had completely cut off ALL supplies to Gaza (hence the prison reference) but I had to see it for myself. So now I share with you some video of the great 21st century prison break (juuuuust in case the mainstream media is focusing on clinton/obama or on the israeli government’s point of view).

Wow.

Some background from a physician in Gaza, blogging a few days ago at From Gaza, With Love:

In 2 hours all of the Gaza Strip will sink into darkness completely

Sunday 20 January 2008
I am writing to let you know that in less than 2 hours the last turbine of the Gaza Strip’s only power plant will stop working. The fuel for the power plant fuel will run out in 2 hours.

I hurried to recharge my laptop and my mobile and to wash the clothes. I checked my candles and rechargeable lights !!!!!! I telephoned Al-Awda hospital and was really panicked to learn that we have only have enough fuel for 4 days for the electrical generator!!!!! What more details shall I give?

No electricity leads to no pumped fresh water and no proper sewage system which in turn leads to more diseases and more needs for different surgical operations. But after 4 days no emergency operations can be conducted in our hospitals.

Israel sealed the Gaza Strip completely and strictly on Friday. Even the UN food supplies are not allowed to enter Gaza. 80% of the population at the moment depends on the UN aid and different international aid agencies. The UN staff are also not allowed to leave or enter Gaza. And while Israel is sealing the Gaza Strip it is at the same time intensifying air raids and military ground operations against Gaza. In the last few days 37 people were killed and 120 were injured. Most of them are civilians. It is a desperate attempt to stop the rockets from Gaza against the Israeli villages where the Israeli citizens are complaining of panic attacks. This response with such overreacted operations against Gaza is unjustified. The cutting off of power and fuel is frank collective punishment.

I AM WRITING TO TELL YOU PLEASE DO SOMETHING FOR US IN GAZA
1.5 million of Gaza are dying slowly. They need your help and support. Tell the world that Israel’s search for peace and security will not be achieved by this collective punishment against us.

and 1 month ago she wrote this:

The siege against Gaza has completed its six months 1.5 million of population are not allowed to travel outside Gaza ,many essential medications are not on the local pharmacies shelves as well as the hospital drug stores , tens of necessary goods are lacking only 15 kinds of goods are allowed to enter Gaza regularly , severe shortage of detergents, no cars spare parts , irregular electrical power ,most of local small industries has closed down due to lack of raw materials hundreds of local employees were made redundant , 39 patients have died before getting permit to leave Gaza for treatment in Israel , at least 2000 patients with different urgent health needs, including children with heart diseases and cancer patients , are waiting to be referred for further treatment outside the Gaza strip.

In related news, a member of the former israeli government was on the radio, on NPR’s show Which Way LA, and he commented that Palestinians were given the potential to transform their land’s worth/economy into a Singapore, but had decided to ruin it all, and therefore could not be trusted to govern their own land. He forgot to mention the noose tied just tight enough around palestinian land and the walls built left and right and the limitations of everyday necessary goods into Palestine. Minor details, eh?

A few days ago, on the eve of the 1 year anniversary of the Olympics (that China’s hosting), a group of activists performed a HUGE banner drop of a Free Tibet banner ON the Great wall of China! My friend Nupur Modi participated in it, and there are videos and other links on the Students for a Free Tibet website. Lhadon Tethong, the executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet was also in China blogging about her experiences there (which I hear is illegal to do in China) during and after the event. She runs a text and video blog at Beijing Wide Open, it’s phenomenal (and she’s hot too). :>

They were all detained after the event, by Chinese authorities, but now are safe and home in the US and Canada. Lhadon writes:

I know we did this and got off pretty easy. And while I appreciate that some people think I did something brave, I’m not sure I did. Bravery is standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square. Bravery is getting on a stage in Tibet and calling for the return of the Dalai Lama. Bravery is going to Beijing to petition to get compensation for your confiscated farmland to the very same government that probably took it in the first place. All this, with no protection. No foreign passport, government, or official body that will defend you.

What I did, what we did, it was nothing in comparison. But I hope and I pray that somehow we have made a difference in the battle for human rights and freedom in Tibet and in China. The Olympics spotlight is on the Chinese leadership now and they want the world to believe they are open and free. But they are not. They demonstrated this by deporting me at the very moment that the one-year countdown to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games was taking place in Tiananmen square. Paul and I just wanted to attend. To see it for ourselves and to blog about it like one should be able to in any place that truly enjoys freedom.

Some people have said we got what we deserved. Others have suggested we got off to lightly and should act more responsibly next time. I think it is the regime in Beijing – unelected, unaccountable and tyrannical – that should act more responsibly. I think our government, governments around the world, corporations doing business in China and the IOC itself, should act more responsibly. They are the ones who have clear and direct influence over Beijing. They are the ones who could make a huge impact by doing just a little in the way of speaking up for and promoting human rights and democracy.

Until this happens, we will keep doing what we have to do – challenging China’s control over Tibet and working to make the occupation too costly to maintain. One thing is clear in all this Olympics mess, the Chinese government cares what the world thinks. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t spend so much time trying to get us all to like them with slogans like “One World One Dream.” Knowing this, we must push them to change. And if our direct actions are seen as stunts by a few, I trust the vast majority will see them for what they really are, nonviolent expressions of dissent and protest to bring positive social and political change to people living under brutal oppression.

For Tibetans, Uighurs, Southern Mongolians, Taiwanese, Falun Gong, Christians, Catholics, farmers, factory workers, lawyers, doctors, journalists and every other person who lives under fear of persecution by the Chinese Communist Party and their goons, I say, we will never give up.

We stand with you.

Definitely check out her blog Beijing Wide Open. She’s inspired a little part of me to start videoblogging. But not yet, i’ve gotta marinate on it a bit.

My friend Nupur Modi, who was one of 6 who actually performed the banner drop, writes this:

We had the glamorous jobs. We were the ones to hang a banner on the Great Wall and make sure the footage got out to the world. I’m not saying that doing the action, and then being detained in China, being interrogated, and facing extreme consequences wasn’t hard and challenging.

But the hardest part is the unknown. And you all had to face the most of that. We were dealing with the situation minute-by-minute in bite-sized pieces. But not knowing what was happening to people you care about and not hearing from them for days, that can be distressing.

I truly appreciate all of your amazing strength, support, thoughts, and prayers through the process.

While we were in police custody trying to find the most comfortable position to sleep and pass the time in old Chinese police station chairs (answer: there is none), we found comfort and strength knowing that folks on the outside were working nonstop: getting media and the word out, pulling strings via diplomatic channels, calling and pressuring the embassies, providing emotional support to friends and family, etc., etc., etc. The six of us weren’t the only ones in that action, it was a whole community effort. I probably will never know about all the people who were involved and all the crucial roles they played, but I owe you all a sincere THANK YOU.

I truly appreciate all of emails and phone calls of commendation for my courage and “bad-ass-ness”. But let us please not forget the issue at hand. I am a US citizen, and with it comes innumerable benefits, resources, and privileges. I had it easy. Tibetans are struggling and taking action every single day, facing constant repression and violent rule. They don’t have freedom of speech or religion, and they are trying to preserve their culture. They are the true heroes.

Thank you, thank you, Nupur and the rest who participated in this action.

Oh I also wanted to add this — check out an interview on Canadian TV with Lhadon — what’s the most phenomenal, i think, is the amount of airtime they devote to this human rights issue. Would you EVER see this much time devoted to Tibet in the US? We’ve gotta break down the mainstream media, it’s brainwashing us all.

Think about supporting Students for a Free Tibet in whatever way you can. Whether that’s being the media (spread the word) or otherwise…

On my way home from work, I heard an NPR report on the bedouin struggle for keeping their land in the Negev desert, while the state of israel bulldozes it. [Amazing report, listen to it here] I was almost moved to tears, before finding myself enraged. Enraged.

Check out the NPR story (just a few minutes long), then think — does this remind you of anything? A people with no “formal” claim to their land, though they’ve lived there for centuries. A people with no significant amounts of money to their name. A state bulldozing these peoples’ lands in the name of the state, for their other projects they’re pursuing (scientific research in the desert, expansion of housing, etc). A state wanting to displace people from the land they live off of, and thinking it’s no big deal to move these people to government sponsored housing projects where these people will be concentrated in an area with few jobs, poor education, and very poor housing… ghetto love. A state spokesperson saying hey look, we’ve gotta do this, we don’t have enough resources for water, sanitation, etc to share with them in the desert so we have to raze their communities. A state spokesperson saying hey, look, we had to do this, we’ve tried negotiating and we’ve tried to make them compromise. Since they’re not compromising we had to bulldoze their land for the betterment of the state. Bedouins on record saying “i’m a farmer, my family is uneducated, my son is uneducated, *I* am uneducated” I grew up farming as did my parents and beyond. What am i going to do in an urban bedouin ghetto?

Ah, what rights do the bedouins have? They are nonviolently resisting.

Colonialism. Racism. Classism. This pattern is repeating. I’m reading a book about urban injustice and the things that were done to Black Americans in the name of all of the above. Arundhati Roy so articulately and passionately lays out the India/Narmada Dam vs the people situation in her essay The Greater Common Good. And there are numerous other stories, happening every day, on this issue. And I’ll say this again — It shocks me how much harm the Israeli state can inflict on others after the Holocaust that they went through. Displaced people displacing others, it breaks my heart.
The struggle for land/home/neighborhood/peace. Ongoing…

From “In Los Angeles, Where the Police Were Unable to Contain Themselves” (NYTimes editorial, May 12, 2007)

Helped along by its own words and actions, and a way of dealing with the public that can feel more remote than professional, the force has a poor reputation with minorities that predates the Watts riots of 1965, set off by white officers arresting a black man for drunken driving. In 1982, Daryl Gates, then police chief, set a tone the city has yet to live down when he explained — after a black motorist was rendered unconscious by a police chokehold — that blacks might be more likely to die by chokehold than “normal people.” The mayor, Tom Bradley, was African-American, as were the next two police chiefs. That hardly mattered. The South Central unrest in 1992 that followed the acquittal of officers who beat Rodney King, a black man, was the worst in the nation’s history.

In these days of heated national debate over immigration, the police’s edginess seems heightened when immigrants congregate, and in California, that is frequently. Some 600 officers were assigned to the demonstration in MacArthur Park on May 1. They included dozens of officers equipped with face shields and enough body armor to resemble a small army of Robocops.

Immigrant advocates said the riot unit cast a pall over the crowd, which posed no threat and included undocumented workers who prefer to avoid law enforcement altogether. Before long a group of about 30 people at the fringe of some 25,000 demonstrators threw plastic bottles and cans at the police. The police failed to isolate the troublemakers, instead managing to push them into the larger crowd.

Officers seemed clueless or unconcerned about procedures for crowd control and even about allowing journalists to do their jobs. They ineptly ordered the crowd to disperse, in English, from a helicopter that may have been too far away for anyone on the ground to hear.

Several people were wounded by so-called rubber bullets, batons or general manhandling, including working journalists, some of whom are themselves immigrants. An officer caused a hairline fracture to the wrist of a local news camerawoman. Her camera was flung to the ground, but images from other cameras, including from cellphones, showed the police out of control. One video showed an officer using his baton more than once to strike a boy who appeared no older than 12.

19 years wrongfully imprisoned. Wow. I heart the Innocence Project. Below is yet another reason to abolish the death penalty, and above is a photo that captures so many emotions for me (photo by Mike Derer), if news earlier this month wasn’t enough of a reason.

ELIZABETH, N.J., May 15 — A man who served 19 years in prison for the sadistic murders of his companion’s two children walked out of the Union County Courthouse flanked by his family members after a judge vacated his convictions on Tuesday…

Prosecutors contended that DNA evidence in the case would probably change the mind of the jury that convicted the man, Byron Halsey, 46. They also said that the DNA evidence pointed instead to Cliff Hall, a neighbor who testified against Mr. Halsey at his 1988 trial and who is currently in prison for three sexual assaults…

His release comes at a crucial time in the state’s debate over abolishing the death penalty, which has not been carried out since 1963. Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill to replace the death penalty with a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for the most serious crimes. A similar bill was introduced in the Assembly last November. There are nine men now on death row in New Jersey…

Mr. Halsey contacted the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, after exhausting his appeals. Advanced DNA techniques that were not available at the time of the trial showed that the evidence had no link to Mr. Halsey. It did, however, show a match with Mr. Hall, whose DNA samples were already in the state’s database because of his convictions in sex crimes that occurred after the Urquhart children were killed…

Mr. Scheck noted that in about a quarter of the 201 wrongful convictions that have been overturned with the use of DNA evidence, people had confessed or admitted to crimes they did not commit. Mr. Halsey signed a confession after 30 hours of interrogation, Mr. Scheck said. Mr. Halsey’s lawyers said he had a sixth-grade education and severe learning disabilities…

Another lawyer for Mr. Halsey, Raymond Brown, said his client was looking forward to one thing in particular after being released.

“He said something about taking a bath,” Mr. Brown said. “He hasn’t taken one in 20 years.”

Death Row Killer Orders Pizza for Homeless as Final Meal
By Ashley Fantz
(CNN) — Just hours from his execution by injection, Tennessee death row prisoner Philip Workman ordered his final meal Tuesday — pizza for a homeless person.

The 53-year-old requested a vegetarian pizza be delivered to a homeless person in Nashville, Workman’s attorney confirmed.

Riverbend Maximum Security Institution will not deliver the pizza, said Riverbend spokeswoman Dorinda Carter. “We can get some special things for the inmate but the taxpayers don’t really give us permission to donate to charity.”

According to the state’s protocol, a last meal’s cost cannot exceed $20.

Workman is scheduled to die at 1 a.m. (2 a.m. ET) Wednesday.

Carter said Workman was meeting with a spiritual adviser Tuesday evening and he has also spoken in person with his brother.

Although Tennessee law gave him the option to choose between the electric chair and lethal injection, the 53-year-old refused to make that choice.

“I’m not going to play no killing game,” he told CNN in an exclusive interview last month.

Last Minute AppealsWorkman was convicted in 1982 of shooting and killing Memphis Police Lt. Ronald Oliver during a botched 1981 robbery of a Wendy’s restaurant in Memphis, Tennessee. (Read about Workman’s case)

His defense says that new ballistics evidence suggests Oliver died from friendly fire at the robbery scene.

They also point to the recanted statements of a key eyewitness who now says he lied when he testified at Workman’s trial that he saw Workman shoot Oliver.

A flurry of appeals have been filled in the past few days as Workman’s lawyers and Tennessee prosecutors battled over the convict’s fate. (Read about the last-minute appeals)

Workman’s last and only appeal now rests with the U.S. Supreme Court, on the basis that the state’s newly instituted set of lethal injection procedures are not sufficient to ensure that Workman’s death will be peaceful and painless.

Kelley Henry, Workman’s primary attorney, said late Tuesday that she is not optimistic the appeal will save her client.

‘Deficiencies’ in lethal injection proceduresSaying there were “deficiencies” in Tennessee’s lethal injection instruction manual, Gov. Phil Bredesen rescinded it in February and gave the state’s commissioner of correction 90 days to write a new one.

On April 30, the state issued a new set of lethal injection procedures, but the “cocktail” of lethal drugs remained unchanged.

A study published in April by the Public Library of Science — a nonprofit organization of scientists and doctors — found the three-drug lethal injection protocol probably left prisoners subject to immense pain before they died.

Even the creator of the cocktail told CNN he feels that it should be reexamined as a method of execution. (Read about Dr. Jay Chapman reconsidering the execution method he created)

In his talk with CNN, Workman said he feared what lethal injection might feel like. (Watch what Workman thinks about his execution method)

“It almost makes me want to choose the electric chair,” Workman said.

“They are saying in this report that a lot [of prisoners] have suffered, they wouldn’t be able to speak. You can’t move to say anything. You’re frozen.”

How do you react, reflect, live a normal life after reading something like this? Ironies, hypocrises, inconsistencies, state-sponsored killings… and a man who wants to donate his last meal to a homeless person. Who said taxpayer money can fund this expensive state sponsored killing (and how dare the spokeswoman deny the wish for a $10 pizza to a homeless man, in the name of conserving taxpayer $$?) I’m not against punishment for crimes. I’m against the death penalty funded by the people, for crimes that we don’t have 100% evidence for.

More from the Tennessee Coalition against State Sponsored Killing, including vigils to be held tomorrow, during the schedule taking of this man’s life in the name of the law.

Thanks to my brother for sharing this article with me.