Tag: anti gun activist
Ferguson Activists Change Tactics, Targets

Ferguson Activists Change Tactics, Targets

By Matt Pearce, Los Angeles Times

FERGUSON, Mo. — Fulfilling a promise he made to hundreds of activists the night before, Cornel West on Monday did exactly what he came to Ferguson to do: got arrested.
The activist and academic was among a crowd of dozens of clergy and other demonstrators who descended on the Ferguson police station Monday to protest the Aug. 9 police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, as well as the deaths of other black men across the U.S.
West, locking arms with several clergy from various denominations, marched toward a line of police in riot gear protecting the police station. They requested a meeting with Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson, and then stepped forward into a line of officers who refused to budge.
After West and the other clergy were arrested, another line of clergy peacefully stepped forward and provoked their own arrests. By Monday afternoon, St. Louis County police said 48 demonstrators had been arrested at the police station and six had been arrested for sitting in a nearby intersection.
The Monday demonstration was among an array of scheduled protests in Ferguson and St. Louis called “Ferguson October,” which drew hundreds of activists from St. Louis and around the country. Other protests were held at a mall and at St. Louis City Hall, where at least one young man with a banner was arrested. Protesters converged on a Wal-Mart to acknowledge the August police shooting of John Crawford III at an Ohio store. And they showed up at a political fundraiser.
Earlier, crowds marched through the streets of St. Louis after midnight and occupied the campus of St. Louis University.
Joining the early-morning protest were the parents of 18-year-old Vonderrit Myers, who was shot and killed by an off-duty St. Louis police officer last week in the nearby neighborhood of Shaw. Myers’ family has said he was unarmed; police said they recovered a gun at the scene and three bullets Myers had fired at the officer, prompting 17 rounds of return fire.
No arrests were reported for the SLU protest, which drew some students from out of their dorms.
“The protesters were peaceful and did not cause any injuries or damage,” said university President Fred P. Pestello. “In consultation with St. Louis Police and our Department of Public Safety, it was our decision to not escalate the situation with any confrontation, especially since the protest was nonviolent.”
The protest movement that has emerged since Brown’s death in Ferguson has become more organized and diversified in its tactics and targets. Demonstrators have protested outside St. Louis Cardinals games, sometimes prompting ugly responses from fans; they have also unfurled a banner in a concert hall during a St. Louis Symphony Orchestra performance. Some protesters have angrily cursed officers to their faces, others have prayed before lines of club-bearing police.
“The movement has matured. We are different protesters than in August,” said DeRay McKesson, 29, an activist from Minneapolis who travels to Ferguson for demonstrations.
In August, he said, the protests had emerged organically, fed by anger and a sense of injustice. “Now, it’s all of those, plus strategy,” McKesson said.
A generational fissure between young demonstrators and the older protest establishment broke open Sunday night, when a crowd of hundreds interrupted a rally of older speakers and heckled the president of the NAACP. Young speakers then came to the stage and spoke of a need for people in the streets, rather than platitudes.
From that viewpoint, Monday morning’s clergy protest could be viewed as a nexus between calls for street action and America’s tradition of civil disobedience.
Some pastors’ suits and frocks were drenched with rain as they sang “Wade in the Water,” an old spiritual. Where younger demonstrators had previously been stopped by a wall of riot police, the clergy marched deep into the Ferguson Police Department’s parking lot, sparking a few moments of confusion as some officers failed to stop them.
“We’re standing against the criminalization of young black men … and we believe as people of faith that our faith is supposed to look like something in public,” said Rev. Ben McBride, 37, of Oakland, Calif., after lining up with other clergy to force their own arrests.
Asked about the criticism from the youth the night before, McBride said, “The reality is, our young people are expressing some justified frustration with the faith community, with the world, with the status quo, so we’re here in solidarity. … It is a new movement, it is a new day, and we are not going to hold our young people back.”
Elle Dowd, 26, a youth missionary for the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri, was among those arrested outside the police station, tweeting a “selfie” of her handcuffs.
Over Twitter, she told the Los Angeles Times that she was “here out of a deep love for both Black youth and police officers. We all deserve a better system aschildrenofgod (sic). Black lives matter. We stand (with you) & won’t stop til it’s better. We love you.”
When given the goodbye commonly shared during demonstrations in Ferguson — “stay safe” — Dowd responded, while still under arrest, “God doesn’t always call us to safety. God calls us to faithfulness.”

Photo via Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/MCT

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Reagan Spokesman, U.S. Anti-Gun Activist James Brady Dies, 73

Reagan Spokesman, U.S. Anti-Gun Activist James Brady Dies, 73

By Robert MacPherson

Washington (AFP) — Former White House spokesman James Brady, a tireless advocate for gun control after being severely wounded during a 1981 attempt on the life of his then-boss Ronald Reagan, has died at the age of 73.

In a statement to U.S. news media Monday that specified no date or place of death, Brady’s family said he passed away “after a series of health issues.”

“We are enormously proud of Jim’s remarkable accomplishments — before he was shot on that fateful day in 1981 while serving at the side of President Ronald Reagan and in the days, months, and years that followed,” they said.

Brady was among four people shot and wounded — including Reagan himself — when John Hinckley Jr. tried to kill the newly-inaugurated president on a rainy day outside the Washington Hilton hotel on March 30, 1981.

His serious head wound left him with partial paralysis and slurred speech. Unable to return to work, the Illinois native nevertheless retained the title of White House press secretary throughout the Reagan administration.

– Sought tougher gun laws –

With his wife Sarah, Brady took a front-and-center role in efforts to enact tougher handgun laws in the United States, notably through an advocacy group that came to be known as the Brady Campaign.

Success came in November 1993 when President Bill Clinton signed the Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act, which required background checks for anyone buying firearms from a licensed retailer in the United States.

He remain committed to gun control throughout his life, saying on Capitol Hill in 2011: “I wouldn’t be here in this damn wheelchair if we had common-sense legislation.”

“Jim was the personification of courage and perseverance,” said Reagan’s widow Nancy Reagan in a statement.

“He and Sarah never gave up, and never stopped caring about the causes in which they believed.”

More than two million attempts by prohibited individuals to buy firearms have been foiled since the “Brady Bill” — which did not extend to gun sales between individuals — came into force, said Brady Campaign president Dan Gross.

“Jim never gave up fighting and never lost his trademark wit,” said Gross, whose own brother suffered a traumatic brain injury during a shooting at the Empire State Building in New York.

– ‘Saved many lives’ –

“In fact, there are few Americans in history who are as directly responsible for saving as many lives as Jim,” he said in a statement.

At the White House, where in 2000 the press briefing room was renamed in Brady’s honor, spokesman Josh Earnest told journalists he was “saddened” by the news.

“He was somebody who showed his patriotism and commitment to the country by being very outspoken on an issue that was important to him and that he felt very strongly about,” Earnest said.

“He leaves the kind of legacy that, I think, certainly this press secretary and all future press secretaries will aspire to live up to.”

For his attempt on Reagan’s life, Hinckley — who got his .22 pistol from a pawn shop in Texas, and claimed he was trying to impress actress Jodie Foster — was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Now 59, he resides at a Washington mental hospital, but has court permission to pay regular visits to his mother’s home in Virginia.

AFP Photo/Mandel Ngan

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