Dark Are The Days @LovDancSubvrt ““I woke up this morning, with my Mind Set on Freedom!” #BlackSpring @OA_206 #Seattle
(If you’re unable to see Tweets in their entirety, hold down Control while pressing -, then +, and they should justify.)
@KeeganNYC · 4h 4 hours ago: “Just now: bus returning to NYC from Baltimore pulled over by Baltimore PD, all forced off bus w/hands up, all arrested“. #BaltimoreUprising (They’ve been released now)
Waging Nonviolence @wagingnv “If we must succeed at anything, we must succeed in not becoming them http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/faith-baltimores-criminals/ … #BlackSpring
I hear you.
sherlock homegirl @Seauxmali @tgirlinterruptd “they say #BlackSpring as if they aren’t ethnically cleansing indigenous black people from their lands as we speak.”
ColorOfChange.org @ColorOfChange “Because freedom and a movement that wins transformative change to end white supremacy is possible.” #BlackSpring http://engage.fergusonaction.com/solidarity_actions …
Collin Rees @collinrees #BlackSpring ”march stops for inner-city youth picking up trash; 100s join them. “This is what COMMUNITY looks like!”
Brother Jesse @BrotherJesse We’re headed up Westheimer now! Police on the move too... #Texas2Baltimore #BaltimoreUprising
Woot!
@akacharleswade 6m6 minutes ago “There’s gotta be at least 10,000 marching in #Baltimore right now!” #BaltimoreUprising
OccupyOakland Port of Los Angeles Police Chief Indicted on Tax Evasion, corruption charges http://www.dailybreeze.com//government-and-politics/20150430/port-of-los-angeles-police-chief-indicted-on-tax-evasion-corruption-charges … #laboragainstpoliceterror
And just for a little bit of har har:
Hillary For America @readyforHRC “Hillary Clinton wants to overhaul the criminal justice system in wake of #FreddieGray’s death”. http://on.wsj.com/1GIJd9x
Aw, shoot; how ‘bout a little moar har har?
https://twitter.com/TheJusticeDept/status/594160789856112641 (Loretta Lynch)
”Along with helping equip agencies with cameras, the program announced this week will also provide departments with $2 million worth of assistance and implement measures to make sense of the data being collected by the devices. The Office of Justice Programs’ Bureau of Justice Statistics will be given $1 million collect data on the camera usage, the DoJ said, and “will also design data collection forms that can be used in future surveys of prosecutors and public defenders to measure how body-worn camera footage is being used by the courts in criminal cases.”
The DoJ says agencies interested in applying for a body camera grant have until June 16 to do so.”
Julia Carrie Wong @juliacarriew “Folks are making black flowers with faces of people killed by police to “plant” around the city” #BlackSpring
Socialist Worker @SocialistViews “National guard posted all over Mondawmin Mall. They protect property, not people.” #BaltimoreUprising #PoliceState
‘My 49 hours in a Baltimore cell – for being a reporter; I was one of hundreds confined in squalid, overcrowded cells with inedible food and rights ignored waiting for a criminal charge that in my case never came’
@LondonBlackRevs “The #BlackSpring is upon us. Fire burns in our eyes, hearts and minds. Poised to scorch the enemies that lie in wait.”
(they will hold actions on May 3, it seems)
Seattle, yesterday:
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
$lick Hilly’s full Of BILL! I say, wedgie For Hillary!!
hey, bruce. i’m out for the night, see y’all in the mornin’. but yes, hillary may have inherited his teflon coating.
Curfew protest now
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/stackizshort
http://www.ustream.tv/z
:Many tweets about difference in treatment of black protesters and white solidarity protest
it’s good to see shortstack is out and about again after all she experienced from threatening trolls; isn’t it? thank you, marym. it looks like there’s plenty of evidence of that grotesque racialized injustice. arresting the legal observer seems a bit…crazy, no?
A little something for Sunday Morning:
Too damn real…
I was lucky enough to be watching RebZ’s livestream last night when the most amazing and wonderful moment occurred:
So real…
Leave us the fuck alone
good of you to give us the quote, amigo; i’ve tried three times to hear it, but i’m giving up for now.
i’d never clicked into that video fearing it would be ‘strange fruit’, and knowing i just couldn’t handle it. but my goodness, what fine video testimony! how good they included not only angela’s let’s get real quotes, but the restorative drums and boogies happening here and there, a la: ‘if you throw a revolution, and i can’t dance: count me out!’ that’s why i included the upbeat playing for change cover at the end.
i found a few more twitter pics from actions in various cities i’ll stick into the OP; the very viral nature of this (including golbally, of course) i very heartening, isn’t it?
folks on the ground are saying that miz mosby is the real deal, too; so good on her. someone included a pic of her at some civil rights protest, although they didn’t say where or when.
It’s at about 1:09:00 on this archived video…
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/61821831
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2015/05/03/baltimore-latest-mayor-lifts-curfew/
but…but…her “number one priority in instituting a curfew was to ensure the public peace, safety, health and welfare of Baltimore citizens”. but mayor hyphenated just hadn’t said which citizens. better late than never, i reckon.
will protestors at the maul be mega-fined for ‘lost profits’ as in minneapolis?
http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/28951094/organizers-of-peaceful-mall-of-america-protest-return-to-court
added:
@lex_looper “The curfew was another way of saying “We are going to oppress you even more for complaining about us killing you.” /hashtag/BaltimoreUprising?src=hash
I don’t know if this will embed. It shows a curfew protester in Baltimore being pepper sprayed and, when he keeps standing, clubbed with batons, knocked down, and dragged away. A CNN anchor tried to minimize the violence in a Tweet exchange with Deray McKesson. There is a still photo of these cops in a classic Lyndie England “smiling sadist” pose.
About the same time white residents of a neighborhood near the Hopkins campus had the police giving them three 5-minute warnings to disperse. No one was arrested.
Recent reports are that the Mayor of Baltimore has ended the curfew because of its disparate enforcement by the BPD. Political commentators are saying her political career ended with the “thugs” comment and the there is a growing sentiment for the return of Sheila Dixon, who was taken out in a strange scandal investigation. Batts, the Police Commissioner, is straight from Oakland; no surprise how quickly the BPD adopted Oakland tactics. And is producing the same delivery of lawsuits (even with the capped penalties) as he did in Oakland.
You have what I was trying to embed in your comment above mine. Excellent.
to embed one, click the timestamp, and a tweet’s own url will be shown on a separate page. copy that url, and paste it in the comment box to embed it. actually, this is what i’d meant to bring, rather than a duplicate of deray’s vine was this:
but this one shows how much bloody fun the grinning thug is having by way of oppressive sociopathy:
yes, so ché had reminded us about batts; i had no idea. remind me of sheila dixon? oops; here’s some of it:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0106/Baltimore-Mayor-Sheila-Dixon-resigns-as-part-of-plea-deal
your long comment on the charges and wherefores got away from me (on the other thread). thank you, i feel badly that i get so far behind for various RL reasons. like immediately ;-)
denver officers serve and protect their community: (are those guardsman in khaki?)
they are extra brave while mounted on huge motorcycles (hogs?) and armed with machine guns and mace:
elon james lays it out on cnn:
For the record, Denver po po are complete cowards.
They’re not the only ones, but they are some of the worst.
I have come across Donte’ Allen’s testimony several times. The most recent was in the refreshing DN! report this am. Amy Goodman’s summary of Donte’s story was “Well… There you have it.” and, so far, she has come the closest to what I get from ‘it’ :
Donte’ heard Freddie die.
The WaPo unverified hit piece aimed at Freddie, actually hit Donte’ Allen’s safety and integrity as ‘collateral damage’. First, you listen to the brother die, then the police tell lies about it in your name… in the national news. Ohhh, Baltimore, ain’t it hard just to live. I had forgotten that’s a Randy Newman song…
whooosh; ‘ain’t now where to run to’; ‘vans take us all away’. (dayum; you know how to create a hyperlink in html, too.)
well, yes: the wapo serves the ptb and corporate capitalism, doesn’t it? every now and again, though, you used to get an investigative piece by dana priest, et.al.
how vile that the police ‘leaks’ put words in danté’s mouth we knew had to be made up outta whole cloth, given all of the evidence finally presented by witnesses at the extra stops.
thanks for letting us know about the DN coverage, and linking to danté’s outraged testimony; this one has a bit more context, but he’s saying in both that they went straight to the police dept. does that track? i’d thought he was aboard on the third stop, but my memory is rotten.
two more items of interest (among so many): ‘Our Demand Is Simple: Stop Killing Us.’, a NYT interview with deray and nettaaaaa. Note that the quote is hers, and the end of a veryveryvery long piece.
also, david simon has been uttering plenty of rubbish about baltimore on his personal blog, but this piece has the ring of truth, at least as far as it goes: ‘David Simon on Baltimore’s Anguish; Freddie Gray, the drug war, and the decline of “real policing.”’
which makes this old tracy chapman tune all the more relevant, and it has the simone line: ‘ain’t no place to run to’. simon didn’t mention the CIA’s part in the drug war, one notes….
I have heard alot of people (including myself) talk about systemic issues with police forces, oversight and police policies. David Simon’s rap on how the drug war and ‘broken windows’ policing have out-and-out destroyed police morality and technique from within is the real deal – it is a full exposition of what went wrong and how it went wrong with the bad actors (who) named within the place that he knows (where=Baltimore).
When Simon uses oxymoron’s such as ‘police morality’ and ahistorical pleas such as ‘what went wrong’ he seems to be selling some snake oil about a past when things weren’t ‘wrong’. The Drug War and Stop and Frisk certainly increased repression when they became public policy and were institutionalized to feed the prison industrial complex but they existed long before this increased persecution. The cops, the institutions behind them and the people that make the policies were no more moral before their advent than they are now and changing these policies, which is unlikely, will do nothing to change that fact.
Here is a video version of the same rap from the Cut50 (halve the prison population) Bipartisan Summit that happened 3/27/2015 — http://www.cut50.org/summit1
Re: David Simon…
He issued a starkly stupid and white-privileged demand on his blog that the Baltimore rioters (read thugs or n-words) just “go home.” And he was promptly put in his place by dozens of highly incensed but very passionate and well-spoken commenters.
Most of those comments are no longer visible since he closed comments a few days ago.
He became very defensive, snarky and snippish, but the pushback against his blogpost was relentless — and largely correct. Simon insisted on maintaining his self-righteous position (reminding me a lot of Chris Hedges), claiming against all evidence to the contrary that only his version of non-violent resistance was called for and appropriate in Baltimore. He accused those who disagreed with him of “knowing nothing” of Baltimore (though it appeared many actually lived there) and of misconstruing what he wrote — though they didn’t do that, either.
When I’ve encountered this “only my way” attitude in other (nonviolence) contexts it is self-evidently a highly authoritarian and self-protective response to a deteriorating and violent situation. What was pointed out to Simon over and over again was that he was only expressing his outrage/disgust at the “violence” toward property — the burning and looting — and was apparently oblivious to the violence toward persons — such as the police violence and neglect that killed Freddie Gray and so many others.
This is typical of so many “non-violence” absolutists. They literally don’t care about police violence, they are only concerned with the “violence” attendant on “riots” and such — ie: property destruction and looting. Police violence is like background noise as far as they are concerned. It’s the property destruction and looting that really matters.
Well, David got hammered for that position, and he kept claiming that’s not what he said, but it was implicit in the blog post that triggered such a strong reaction. Eventually he did a seemingly 10,000 word sit-down with Bill Keller(!) to explain what he really meant.
In that interview — at least in what I read of it, admittedly I did not read it all — he did get into the issue of the drug war and the problematical policing and the corruption and destruction of lives and communities that results from it, but I didn’t find much condemnation of the violence police engage in as they conduct this war which he deplores. He may have meant to condemn it, but I didn’t find much expression of condemnation.
And that’s a problem for those who are forever insisting that others be “non-violent.” If they don’t address the violence inherent in the system (h/t Monty Python), and especially if they don’t address police violence head on, then they’re just blowing smoke.
It’s a con. Perhaps a necessary one for a man in his position…
Well, that’s my opinion, anyway.
thanks for explaining the rubbish simon had posted. ha; the interview did come two days later, an yes, he took deserved drubbing: good.
in the interview, he didn’t condemn the violence, but he certainly talked about the beat-downs of anyone who broke the ‘humbles’ code, be they young black males, the elderly, whomever. and spoke, as well, of the fact that the black cops were easily more brutal, and that it was safer for them to be so.
his narration of o’malley’s broken windows policies interfering with ‘legitimate’ police work was noteworthy, reminding me of sheriff joe arpaio in tuscon. unsolved rapes, murders, missing kids, and the like. (whether one believes in ‘legitimate’ police work is another matter, eh?)
‘running from cops’ will always end in brutalization was a theme that rang too true, although one thing he might have said was ‘since so many are so fat and out of shape’.
but to give a litany of grievances against o’malley, including how he cooked the books on crime stats (often s.o.p) then say he’d vote for him, sure leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth. ptui. but i liked that he said that the state’s attorney could announce an end to the drug war with a snap of the fingers, even knowing that another states attorney will follow.
but this is quite on point, and maybe you’ve seen it: ‘Baltimore Cops Break into Home Without Warrant, to Arrest Those Inside… For Curfew Violation?’
the video with the bloods member speaking of the truce with the crips is so fine that i reckon i’ll embed it. i’ve always found tourré a dolt, but then, there’s this; who knows?
final quote from nikko caldwell: “everything that we do right here…is not always a bad thing.” ;-)
Hm. I’m pondering it a bit. The police falsely accused the gangs of calling a truce so they could join forces to kill cops. Of course the police have been lying and instigating all along, but this one seemed so strange… but then it didn’t. Especially after the several interviews in which gang-members insisted they were calling a truce and getting together to “protect” the community…. self-police, in a word. Uh-oh. We’ll see how it plays out, but I’m not convinced, not yet. On the other hand, I’ve been calling for “self-policing” for quite a while, so maybe I have to be careful what I wish for…
Blaming O’Malley for the current situation in Baltimore is interesting. He hasn’t been mayor of Baltimore since 2007, but his policies are still in place? Hm. Long reach, that man. I think it’s human nature to blame him, because his policies were much more destructive than he anticipated, but there’s been ample opportunity to change the policies since he left office, and yet they haven’t changed substantively. Not even now. (Cf New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, St. Louis, etc.,all places where there has been intense protest against police violence and overpolicing, but where policies haven’t substantively changed.)
It’s a good deal more complex than just O’Malley’s policies, in other words. Those policies, based on ratcheting up the “Broken Windows” policies of Bill Bratton apparently have a constituency and are preserved no matter who is in the corner office at City Hall.
Somebody is benefiting from them.
Somebody who matters. O’Malley for his part is claiming his policing policies are gooooood and have “saved 1,000 lives”. How many have been lost? How many families have been destroyed? How many communities are living under siege? How much damage has violent policing done?
This podcast has an interesting perspective on the damage that’s been done
https://archive.org/details/BuildingBridgesBaltimoreProblemsAndConditionsPrecipitatingPolice
It’s not that hard a problem to address, but there are so many interests invested in keeping things the way they are or intent on making them worse.
Tough challenge, but Baltimore is a tough town…
i had to scan simon’s damned piece twice to find it, but he’d said that those policies had been in place since *the 60s*, when the ptb flipped their topknots over the violence of the drug scene. now one may ask ‘violence against whom?’ since i thought it had been well-documented that crack and cocaine had been introduced into inner cities precisely to increase black-on-black killings of the rabble class. one might have to factor in all of the other side benefits: fine, incarceration profits, ‘scary negro’ factor, etc. but he’d said o’malley had simply upped the ante during his tenure, and eep, he became gov, so my guess is that he had plenty of pull from that position of power.
his other point was that the cops became an occupying army, and no one living in those ‘drug free zones’ was safe at all, hence: “it’s so hard to live in baltimore’, i expect.
i can’t say at all what the crips and bloods truce was about, myself, but i did figure nikko caldwell’s final sentence stood for…some of the truth of it all.
but after scanning o’malley’s wiki, my guess is that his long time national political ambitions have and had a whale of a lot to do with his policies; keeping property safe from drug-crazed negroes would be a whole theme, wouldn’t it? just spit-ballin’ here.
wayoutwest may have a point as well, but the cops seem to not have gotten the memo, or else the no-knock, no warrant arrests for curfew violations might just have been another con.
A bit about O’Malley. He’s a lawyer. His wife is a judge. And he’s very devoted to Irish Culture (no, it’s not an oxymoron!). He’s devoted to the concept and majesty of The Law. To the ideal and fundamental necessity of Order.
His policies as mayor and later as governor were destructive of some parts of Baltimore and Maryland society but they built up others. Baltimore and Maryland became “safer” — safer for whom? For white folks, of course. And for the Good Negroes (“Good Darkies” my friend says, but if I said that it would be considered racist.) Same as it’s always been. Though he’s presented as a progressive, he’s very much a traditionalist. He wants things to be the way they’re supposed to be, world without end, amen.
He’s getting blamed for what’s been happening to some parts of Baltimore and to black residents of those parts of Baltimore. He’s being blamed for the destruction of lives and the hopelessness of despair found in those sections of Baltimore, but from my recollection, it was like that before O’Malley. Long before. The thing is, his policies failed to make things better where things had been so very bad before. They may have curbed some of the violent crime — apparently they did — but at what cost? Not so much the financial cost, but at what cost to justice, to families, to communities, and what cost to the future?
That bill is coming due, and O’Malley seems clueless, completely out of touch and oblivious to the damage his policies did and still do. I doubt it occurs to him that “damage” has resulted or could result from the kind of policing he let loose in Baltimore. He clearly doesn’t see it. It’s willful blindness but based in his belief system as well.
This is the same problem Bratton has, and David Grossman (Lt. Col, ret) and so many others who justify violent policing as necessary discipline for those who would otherwise be running wild. All those who say that you won’t get shot by police if you just obey the law, don’t run, and don’t sass. It’s just that simple, end of discussion.
Except even Good Negroes get beat up and shot by police. Day in and day out.
Their crime is not disobedience or running or sassing. None of which was subject to the death penalty in the legal system, but somehow is authorization for any number of street-kills by police.Their crime is their blackness per se. And all those apologists who insist that being good is good enough to protect a black man from wilding police are wrong.
O’Malley doesn’t get it. I don’t see any politician that does, not really, not deeply enough to actually change a badly out of kilter injustice system. Not even Mosby. Not yet.
She, by the way, is now being accused of “incompetence” by a former (deputy) state’s attorney on the august pages of the Baltimore Sun:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-freddie-gray-mosby-20150505-story.html
“Competence” would be letting police do what they will to control the savages in the hood.
Like they’ve always done.
O’Malley’s national political career has never been very likely in my humble estimation. But American politics is so screwy, ya never know…
i’ll agree with about everything you say and add that o’malley still performs with his celtic band. is it the de facto dixiecrats to whom he’s appealing with his policies? but as for mosby not getting it totally, here i am wondering again: why isn’t she charging the cops who beat down freddie gray *before they threw him the the van*? is she in effect saying that aside from the fact they were not following correct protocols on detaining ‘suspects’ there is no evidence that they made the first egregious assaults on his body that even then may have been killing him?
on twitter, a woman who said that she’s an ER neurosurgeon, held the opinion that it was more than likely it was so. that beefy cop with the full weight of his knee in freddie’s neck, coupled with the torsion and pretzeling of his legs would have put insane amounts of strain on his spinal cord (including meninges) and loads of spinal vertebrae.
but hey; loretta is in baltimore; i reckon we’ll hear some awesome things from her about how to ‘fix baltimore’.
as to even good negroes being assaulted and/or killed by police, yes, especially in ‘certain locations’.
i can’t find the photo of the black men protecting police that nomad put up, but is it possible those men were crips and bloods?
The Bloods/Crips truce and joint patrols to secure their territories struck me as odd initially but eventually it dawned on me that they have become a part of the system. This insurrection threatened their business plan that couldn’t survive with real citizen control of their neighborhoods These gangs/businesses cannot function without the conditions imposed by the Police State and you can be sure they pay their fees/bribes to the PTB to maintain their control on the streets.
The gangs only distribute the soma used to suppress the poor and the real profits are skimmed by the cops, politicians, businessmen and bankers who enjoy much more protection from the system that encourages, protects and profits from this business.
this should have come with a laugh track given the title (someone just tweeted the link):
“Hillary says what no other politician has the balls to say…; Hillary says what no other politician has the balls to say about police brutality, the justice system, and the killings of African Americans by law enforcement personnel.” (on c-span)
oh, she’s learning slick willy’s “ah feel your pain” schtick, albeit without biting her lower lip…so far. but the moar important message is to protestors: “stop the violence against property an police!”
Chicago reparations ordinance passed this morning.
thank you; here’s a guardian link, but this is confusing, if correct, as i thought it was known exactly how many living survivors there are, although i can’t recall the number:
“The funds will be used to pay up to $100,000 per individual for living survivors with valid claims to have been tortured in police custody during Burge’s command.”
yes, here it is, as per kevin g in mid-april:
“The People’s Law Office has identified at least 118 individuals who are survivors. It is believed that anywhere from 50-80 people may be eligible for financial benefits.
There are survivors who have already won settlements. Individuals who were given a small settlement under $100,000 will have an opportunity to pursue further compensation up to the agreed upon cap.
Paraphrasing Pullosi Punch: ‘Embrace the bagmen”! Watching $lick Hilly, ‘is our politicians reading?’ (at least as effective as brother-in-law from another family, “W”; at the teleprompt); she equivocates equal to BS (Bush Shadow) DingleBarry and thereby qualifies as his First BBW (Big Bollocks Woman) successor!
i admire strong women with huevos, bruce; that’s not my chich with her. it’s that she’s a lying neocon corporatist, trying to play the populist soooo worried now about wealth inequality. and there i go again, after wearing i’d not even get involved in her political maneuverings….
if calling her one of ‘the three harpies’ that brought us R2P libya makes me a sexist, so be it. but ha: i read somewhere this morning that john boner is calling her out on the ttp, as in: make a statement. oooh, tough tightrope for her to walk, no? maybe she’ll go with: ‘remove the investor state stuff’, call it good.
over at a centrist dem website that summarily executed me, they’re making lit of all the great things she’s done, barack’s done, for women and blacks. they even mention lily ledbetter at the top of every list. charles davies’ take on that. ‘drone court advantage‘. longish, put the payoff comes at the end.
unR̶A̶D̶A̶C̶K̶ted @JesselynRadack 4h4 hours ago
“#FBI #surveillance planes monitored area of #BaltimoreUprising using infrared tech to track movements of innocent ppl”
http://wpo.st/ZZuF0
small wonder, but what is a huge concern is that when they want to the ptb can cut off cell service anywhere they want.
if you let the tape run, you can see some of loretta lynch’s presser in baltimore. so many cameras whir-clicking it’s hard to hear.
The first report of it i’d seen at Killed by Police on facebook: ‘Transient man shot to death by LAPD in Venice after ‘disturbing the peace’ call’
He’s been identified now, and there is (sigh) already a #BrendonGlenn hashtag. Rest in Peace, Brendon; we’re so sorry.
citizen video after the killing
From cbs local, LA, the police commander even said: “we don’t believe he was armed”.
from krqe in ABQ: ‘Conflicting stories in fatal deputy-involved shooting’; yes, quite conflicting
“ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – Conflicting stories surround the death of a man shot by a Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Deputy.
Sheriff Manny Gonzales said that man wasn’t cooperating and had a gun. His girlfriend says that’s far from the truth.
“I saw the flash. I heard the bang. I saw the bullet holes in the window, the front windshield.”
Destiny Cardenas recalled the early morning hours and gunshots that rang out near Tapia and Arenal in the South Valley Sunday.
“My boyfriend is sitting up and then he just slumps over and falls over,” Cardenas said.
The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department confirmed one deputy shot that man.
“The male subject was not compliant with deputies commands and during that altercation the individual did produce a weapon,” Sgt. Aaron Williamson said at a news conference.
Cardenas told a different story. read more here.</
‘City of Albuquerque: Don’t give money to panhandlers’ (fook you, mayor berry):
“The city said it appears there are a lot more. In fact, Albuquerque Mayor R.J. Berry said he thinks panhandling has gotten so common in the Duke City that he has now started a new initiative called “There’s a Better Way.”
The idea is to for people to not give money to those asking for it on the streets.
“If you hand $5 out of your window to a panhandler today that panhandler can go down to a fast food restaurant and buy a hamburger and fries,” said Albuquerque Mayor R.J. Berry.
Instead, the city wants people to donate money to the United Way of Central New Mexico. The group will then use the money to feed the hungry, provide shelter for the homeless and help the mentally ill.” [snip]
“The city is also putting up about 30 signs around town to remind drivers to not give out money to panhandlers. The signs tell people to call 311 if they want to donate and have the charity’s website on them.
Police do not cite people for aggressive panhandling and it can be seen around Albuquerque all the time.”
kiss mah grits, mayor berry.
On the “this is what community looks like!” theme, this may seem a far cry from Baltimore, but I think the article homes in on that community-formation in the positive sense of awakening that is happening, only beginning, in parts of this country.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/07/in-horlovka-eastern-ukraine-a-donetsk-republic-rises/
I did see the tv news stating that ‘aggressive panhandling’ meme night before last – I guess it is a short Orwellian tiptoe towards ‘terrerrist’ and ‘us against them’.
and, oh, the Mayor is sooo proud that police don’t ticket them, but those indigents make people very uncomfortable while they’re trying to shop in the city, or are considering locating their new businesses here.
goodness, yes, juliania. i admit that due to time pressure i scanned some of it, but indeed, the pithiest ending, relating to the black lives matter (native lives, brown lives, too):
“To demand “improvements in life” when the front line is three km away from your house is like being indignant over the fact that your friend who was knocked down by a car has failed to show up at your party. Now the main task for Donbas is to survive and preserve what remains here. And preserve, as well, the hope that with the end of the war, we will be able restore our region.
One hundred and ten years ago, the left-wing Irish Republicans (people with varying political views, including some quite controversial) created a political movement for independence. It has a poetic name, ‘Sinn Fein’, meaning, ‘Ourselves, together’. These words reflect very well the feelings of our residents as the Ukrainian army and right-wing militias refuse to let us pass to a nearby town without paying a bribe or asking special permission, and as Kiev cuts off the pensions earned by our fathers and mothers.
“Alright,” we say, “then it’s ‘we ourselves‘.”
whooosh; that resonates and speaks to the increasing underclass: “leave us alone, police; well seek other alternatives.”
Now let’s hear from the mothers of the victims. listened to this yesterday. mother love and determination.
http://www.wpr.org/shows/local-mothers-march-washington-justice
oh, gosh, nonq; 50 minutes is more time than can spare, but others may love to listen. i had no idea that mother’s day is on the 10th this year; i’d figured later in the month. how good of your local npr station to have those fierce and loving mothers on. i look forward o the march, and will try to stick up a post to honor it. today i’m trying to honor brother cornell west and his bringing plato’s concept of ‘parrhesia’ to bear in his own life and witnessing.
thank you, darlin’.
it must be my reading failures. but i can’t see which video the LAPD chief has him so alarmed already. the FOP weighs in, of course.
added: a fox piece says the videos are from nearby stores…
Huh. From the interview with one of the witnesses on KTLA, sounds like it was a “double-tap” killing. Dude says the first shot might have ricocheted and wounded the officer, but Brendon Glenn went down, and then the officer shot him again as he was lying there. No wonder Beck is a bit iffy about justification, especially if, as witnesses are saying, Glenn was reaching for his ID, demanded by the officer, when he was shot the first time.
http://ktla.com/2015/05/07/lapd-to-hold-meeting-after-unarmed-man-fatally-shot-by-officers-in-venice/
However, note the way Beck is careful to question the justification for shooting an unarmed suspect — leaving open the issue of shooting armed suspects. Remember the guy on Hollywood Blvd, shot in front of hundreds of tourists as he ran from the police? That was apparently justified because a small folding knife was found in the street near enough to the body for him to be considered “armed” and therefore a threat to be neutralized.
http://ktla.com/2014/12/05/armed-man-shot-by-officers-near-hollywood-and-highland-lapd/
Oh, and what about Glenn’s dog? Did they shoot it too?
nice catch on the qualifier, ché. the one friend of brendon’s in the citizen video said something about the last word he and brendon spoke were about the dog, and maybe that he’d look after him…if.
turns out he is, or was, a black lab named ‘dozer’, i reckon for bulldozer. goddam, he’d been weeping about wanting his mum at the homeless center earlier, and grieving over her ‘not wanting him back’.
oh, yes, as soon as you spoke of that ‘big bad knife’ in the street, i remembered the lights reflected in wet sheens on the pavement from what must have been an earlier shower.
did they shoot it too? well, wouldn’t his friend have said? perhaps dozer took off, in fear for his own life.
and wth? with the sheriffs in abq siccing their k-9 on billy grimm? by now the news has him as a ‘career criminal’, of course, and that after they shot him (one of nine shots hit him??) anywhere from two to three hours passed before they took him to a hospital.
but yes, a double tap:
“Security video of a deadly encounter between two LAPD officers and an unarmed homeless man in Venice shows a brief struggle between the officers and the man but does not explain why one officer stepped away and opened fire, law enforcement sources said..
The recording shows the officer standing up and moving away from the Tuesday night altercation, ultimately standing a few feet away from the man when he fired what appeared to be two shots, the sources said.”
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lapd-shooting-venice-video-20150507-story.html
the blue shirt dude’s rant reminds me of the underlying reasons for mayor berry’s ‘don’t feed the wild bears’ signs in ‘burque. oddly enough, colorado may be one of the only states that’s passed a law specifically making homelessness *not* a crime.
ahem. i’ve spent most of my online time today creating a post for the #millionmomsmarch DC tomorrow, and i could include one of the four new killings by police in it, but for now, let me say this story is just plain wrong, and i reckon i’m going to believe the young man’s father and other witnesses, not ICE. in detroit:
‘Father Says Police ‘Assassinated’ Unarmed Teenage Son In His Own Home’
“Just a couple of weeks ago, back on April 25, nearly 40 police officers swarmed the Kellom’s home.
They were members of the Detroit Fugitive Apprehension Task Force and they said they wanted inside of the house. If Terrance Kellom’s father refused, they explained, they would “break down the door.”
The senior Kellom recounts that police ran upstairs, located his son, and “brought [him] down the stairs.” Then “they shot him in the chest. They executed my son in my face.”
Can you guess what the officer’s story is? The federal agent who shot and killed Terrance Kellom says that the teenager washiding in the attic, and jumped out at him, swinging a hammer over his head…
Seriously. read more here, and watch the video.
from fusion.net, and more probative video:
“The agent — with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — was participating in a fugitive task force operation with the Detroit Police Department. The task force sought to serve an armed robbery warrant at a home on the west side of the city, according to news reports.
Detroit Police Chief James Craig said he was informed the task force members did not force their way into the house and were allowed inside.
“I’m also told that the agent may have been faced with a threat, and it was at that point when he decided to use deadly force,” Craig told reporters.”
i’ve been too busy to look for updates, but kellom is being painted as ‘an expendable criminal’, of course.