The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: blacklivesmatter
A Black Republican Tackles The Police ‘Trust Gap’

A Black Republican Tackles The Police ‘Trust Gap’

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina was still learning the ways of Washington, he says, when he saw a police officer following his car near Capitol Hill.

“I took a left…,” he recalled in a speech Wednesday on the Senate floor, “and as soon as I took a left, a police officer pulled in right behind me.”

That was his first left turn. His second came at a traffic signal. The patrol car was still following him. Scott took a third left onto the street that led to his apartment complex.

It was his fourth left, turning into his apartment complex, that brought the blue lights on. “The officer approached the car,” Scott recalled, “and said that I did not use my turn signal on the fourth turn. Keep in mind, as you might imagine, I was paying very close attention to the law enforcement officer who followed me on four turns. Do you really think that somehow I forget to use my turn signal on that fourth turn? Well, according to him, I did.”

Oh, did I mention that Tim Scott is African-American? He’s the only black Republican in the Senate and the first to be elected from the South since 1881.

He did not get there by being a liberal or a Black Lives Matter radical. He’s a “pro-life,” anti-Obamacare and NRA-endorsed conservative.

He is also, whatever else you may think of his politics — which are more conservative than mine — a very likeable and thoughtful businessman from North Charleston whose family, as he likes to say with patriotic pride, “went from cotton to Congress in one lifetime.”

Yet, issues such as police conduct and public safety have become personal for Scott. It was in his hometown, North Charleston, S.C., last year that a cellphone video showed Walter Scott (no relation), an unarmed 50-year-old black man, shot to death by a police officer from whom he was running away.

Two months later a gunman fatally shot nine people, including friends of Scott, at Charleston’s historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Scott calls for a halt to abuses by police, but he also wants fairness for police and improved law enforcement.

One tragedy illustrated the dangers of bad policing. The other illustrated why we need good police.

So when Scott stood on the Senate floor to declare and decry a “trust gap” between law enforcement officers and black communities, he was worth hearing.

“Please remember that, in the course of one year, I’ve been stopped seven times by law enforcement officers,” Scott declared in the widely covered and retweeted speech. “Not four, not five, not six but seven times in one year as an elected official.

“Was I speeding sometimes? Sure. But the vast majority of the time, I was pulled over for nothing more than driving a new car in the wrong neighborhood or some other reason just as trivial.

“I do not know many African-American men who do not have a very similar story to tell,” said Scott, “no matter the profession, no matter their income, no matter their disposition in life.”

A young former staffer of Scott’s grew so frustrated over being stopped by District of Columbia police, the senator said, that he replaced the car with “a more obscure form of transportation. He was tired of being targeted.”

“There is absolutely nothing more frustrating, more damaging to your soul,” said Scott, “than when you know you’re following the rules and being treated like you are not.”

On that note, Scott asked for nothing in his speech, except empathy, a sincere effort to understand what others are going through — which in itself is asking a lot from some people.

“Today,” he said, “I simply ask you this: Recognize that just because you do not feel the pain, the anguish of another, does not mean that it does not exist. To ignore their struggles, our struggles, does not make them disappear. It simply leaves you blind and the American family very vulnerable.”

Well said. Folks who respond to complaints of racial discrimination by police by bringing up black-on-black crime need to hear what Tim Scott is trying to tell them. Fighting crime without fighting police misconduct leads to more crime. We need to get rid of both.

FBI Greenlights Crackdown On Black Lives Matter Protesters

FBI Greenlights Crackdown On Black Lives Matter Protesters

Published with permission from Alternet.

The violent events of the past week have placed the country at a decisive moment. Words matter but deeds matter more. Leadership matters. President Obama spoke about the need for real change and new “practices” following the murders by police officers of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.

He followed that by stating last weekend, “One of the great things about America is that individual citizens and groups of citizens can petition their government, can protest, can speak truth to power. And that is sometimes messy and controversial but because of that ability to protest and engage in free speech, America over time has gotten better. We’ve all benefited from that.”

But the real truth is that federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, under the Obama administration, are continuing to fuel and encourage a repressive crackdown on peaceful demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights and moving for social change in America.

Last weekend, Baton Rouge’s African-American community was repeatedly assaulted by the police as people attempted to peacefully protest the killing of Sterling. The Baton Rouge police were given the green light by President Obama’s FBI to approach this peaceful protest as they would an enemy force. This has been the dangerous pattern of the FBI and other federal law enforcement efforts in the past few years: to suppress social movements in coordination with local police departments.

While the arrests were carried out by local police, federal law enforcement agencies facilitated and laid the groundwork for the anti-free speech crackdown.

The suppression and dispersal of a peaceful protest is emblematic of the methods used to extinguish free speech rights of those communities seeking to redress issues of racial and economic inequality.

Here’s what happened and why:

More than 100 peaceful protesters were arrested by police on Saturday. Police repeatedly swept into the crowd like a paramilitary force dressed as robots, giving no audible instructions and snatching people for arrest. More were arrested on Sunday by police who moved in wearing riot gear and plastic face masks, and banged their batons against riot shields in threatening unison.

By 12am on Sunday, July 10, the city was under a virtual lockdown. Businesses closed down early in response to the police actions in the streets. Local law enforcement had clearly received the go-ahead to suppress those in the community who were demanding justice.

The police treated Baton Rouge’s black community like an enemy rather than Americans exercising the cherished rights. President Obama spoke about the right to assemble and redress grievances, but the message that the protestors were the enemy was broadcast by the FBI.

The FBI’s New Orleans Field Office circulated an alert to local law enforcement on July 7 titled “Violence Against Law Enforcement Officers and Riots Planned for 8-10 July 2016.” This document consisted of a few unsourced and inflammatory images that appear to be screen grabs from random social media postings. No such riots took place anywhere over the weekend, and despite widely circulating that the peaceful demonstrators were bent on violence, not a single law enforcement entity cited any credible evidence of such a threat or plot. But the bulletin gave local law enforcement—implicitly or explicitly—the green light for repression.

The message of repression is clear: If you rise up and protest against police abuse in Baton Rouge, be prepared to go to jail, be assaulted, have to come up with hundreds of dollars in bail money, find a competent attorney, and then to go through the system and endure the consequences of having a record marked by arrest and possible conviction. Many individuals who don’t have the resources end up having to plead out and accept some fine, probation or even jail time.

The Partnership for Civil Justive Fund’s (PCJF) Freedom of Information Act investigations carried out over the last five years in particular have shown that the FBI, DHS, Fusion Centers and other federal law enforcement agencies regularly label peaceful protest as terrorist activity, and also concoct violent potential scenarios to justify the widespread surveillance of and crackdown on the social justice movement and dissenters. Such an abuse of counter-terrorism authority, it should be noted, is accompanied by a wide abuse in counter-terrorism funding, in the form of billions of dollars in agency budgets and private federal contracts.

Relating directly to Louisiana, a PCJF investigation into federal monitoring of the Occupy Wall Street movement discovered that the ATF and U.S. Marshals Service were both actively involved in stimulating an “extremism” scare among local law enforcement. After soliciting 70 State Fusion Centers for information about violence stemming from the Occupy movement, the New Orleans ATF Field Intelligence Group received “overwhelming negative responses.” The agency nonetheless manufactured “several scenarios where escalation to violence could occur.”

A similar PCJF investigation found such conduct from the FBI in its decade-long monitoring of School of the Americas Watch, a human rights organization founded by pacifists aiming to end the U.S. role in the militarization of Latin America. Despite internal FBI reports admitting the “peaceful intentions” of the SOA Watch leaders, the agency justified their work on the basis that “a militant group would infiltrate the protestors and use of the cover of the crowd to create problems.” Yet they admitted that, “at this time, there are no specific or known threats to this event.”

PCJF exposed the role of the FBI in a national operation that involved field offices across the country targeting the peaceful Occupy movement, which was ultimately extinguished in cities and towns across the United States with more than 7,000 arrests.

Now that playbook is being followed with the Black Lives Matter movement. While the Justice Department and President Obama have repeatedly spoken of building unity between local police and the black community, and claim to be in favor of the right to dissent and protest, in practice the FBI, which is under their control, is ratcheting up tensions and laying the groundwork for repression.

The pattern is clear: Federal and local law enforcement target the First Amendment-protected activities of social justice movements because they pose a political threat, not a violent one. Regardless of the fact that the activities of these movements are constitutionally protected, U.S. domestic and federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies operate with a methodology that helps justify repression and a false media presentation. It also contributes to the right-wing and racist smear against the BLM movement amplified by talk radio and politicians.

The people of this country should not allow the Dallas shootings, which local and federal law enforcement all agree were carried out by a deranged lone gunman, to be manipulated into an attack on the Black Lives Matter movement.

PCJF demands that the FBI and other intelligence entities stop treating peaceful protesters as potential violent threats. It is well past time for the Obama administration and Congress to reign in the unchecked abuse of power and authority that lead to the circulation of last weekend’s false bulletin about Black Lives Matter protests. The federal agencies that are carrying out fear-mongering and circulating exaggerated and concocted reports about Black Lives Matter free speech actions are effectively giving a green light for local law enforcement to sweep protests off the streets.

It is not too late for President Obama, in his final months in office, to have his deeds match his words. In his speech last week, he reiterated that “America over time has gotten better” because people have taken to the streets to protest and “speak truth to power.”

No one should believe for a second that that this vital tradition of protest is going to stop. On the contrary, it is growing. The question is whether the FBI and other federal government law enforcement agencies are going to use their vast authority and power to set up pretexts justifying one confrontation after another with grassroots movements seeking change. That path will succeed only in intensifying polarization and ever-graver conflicts. Such tactics will not succeed in extinguishing social movements, whose existence is caused by unmet needs, racial and economic disparities, and the absence of justice for so many.

Note: As of Monday morning, the police have not filed charges or bail amounts for the release of many of those arrested. Loved ones of those arrested over the past two nights have been gathering in front of the Parish Prison to receive word. The National Lawyers Guild in Louisiana is playing a major role in defending those arrested.

 

Photo: Penn State student Zaniya Joe wears a piece of tape over her mouth that says “Black Lives Matter” during a Ferguson protest organized by a group of Penn State University students on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2014, in University Park, Pa. (Nabil K. Mark/Centre Daily Times/TNS)

‘We Want Safety, Dignity And Justice’: Black Lives Matter Protests Build Nationwide

‘We Want Safety, Dignity And Justice’: Black Lives Matter Protests Build Nationwide

Published with permission from Alternet.

“We don’t have the same rights as our white counterparts,” 17-year-old Myra Richardson, a student at Baton Rouge Magnet High School, told AlterNet over the phone. “There are still things holding us back. How can we call America the land of the free?”

Richardson is one of countless young people from Miami to New York to Minneapolis who took to the streets over the weekend to rally under the banner of Black Lives Matter, braving heavily armedpolice deployments and a charged political environment in which they are being demonized by some for exercising their right to protest.

For Richardson the cause is personal, as Alton Sterling was a known member of the community, and the Triple S Food Mart where he was shot to death by police is a popular spot.

“The youth have lived through so many atrocities, but we’re still optimistic, still trying to do work,” said Richardson, who is a member of a community organization called #thewave and said she speaks on behalf of fellow classmates Raheejah Flowers and Jeanette Jackson, both 15. “There have been marches and gatherings all over Baton Rouge. We’ve seen groups from all over the United States come down. We have all these things stacked against us, but there are still people mobilizing and trying.”

Richardson is part of a generation of young people who have grown up seeing images of black and brown youth who look like them shot and killed by police. Police killings of black people in 2015 outnumbered lynchings of African Americans during the worst year of Jim Crow, according to Quartz reporter Annalisa Merelli. During that year, 1,146 people were killed by police, the Guardian reports, in what is likely a conservative estimate due to theunderreporting of law enforcement killings. In 2015, young black men werenine times more likely to be killed by police than the general population, and black people overall were killed at twice the rate of their white, Latino and native American counterparts.

The fact that police killings are calculated by media organizations at all is a victory of the sustained protests of the Black Lives Matter movement. Yet, despite heightened visibility, the killing continues. According to the Guardian, 571 people have been killed by police so far in 2016. The Washington Post putthis number at 512.

These numbers were made painfully real with the back-to-back police killings of African-Americans Sterling and Philando Castile.

Campaigners say that now is an important time to mobilize. “Guided by love, we continue to stand together for justice, human dignity and our shared goal of ending all forms of state violence against black people,” declared the Movement for Black Lives in a widely circulating pledge. “We organize, occupy, demonstrate, march and chant for a new future: A future we can be proud of. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, who fought for their freedom and ours. Like them, we want a world where our lives matter.”

Yet in the aftermath of the Dallas shooting, protesters face an escalated crackdown, despite the fact that there are no proven ties between the gunman and the Black Lives Matter protesters. “Black activists have raised the call for an end to violence, not an escalation of it,” the Black Lives Matter network said in a statement released July 8. “To assign the actions of one person to an entire movement is dangerous and irresponsible. We continue our efforts to bring about a better world for all of us.”

Aesha Rasheed, a New Orleans resident and organizer with Southerners On New Ground, traveled to Baton Rouge over the weekend to join the protests. “In this moment, not only have we lost someone to police violence in such a wrong way, but we also are in position where they have made protesting illegal,” said Rasheed, referring to a controversial Louisiana “Blue Lives Matter” bill that will go into effect August 1.

“I was at the protest on the capitol steps and the youth from Baton Rouge were there telling their stories, making their demands about the change they want to see,” said Rasheed. “People are still dying, still being killed, don’t tell us to sit down and not continue to go out into the streets.”

Under the guise of public safety, police departments across the country have used the Dallas shootings to call for increased police militarization and surveillance nationwide. “This will cause complaints about violating people’s constitutional rights to free assembly, but it is the only way to guarantee safety,” Thomas Manger, president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, toldReuters.

But according to Mary Hooks, co-director of Southerners on New Ground and organizer with Black Lives Matter-ATL, “This is a moment to organize and challenge the conversation about what is public safety and who is defining it. We have to redefine it because it’s not the folks whose neighborhoods are being occupied having a say, instead it’s being defined by more police, more surveillance, more probation, being funneled into the municipal court system. Public safety feels like booby traps to us as black people. We pay a regressive tax with our time and our lives.”

“We want safety, dignity and justice,” Hooks told AlterNet. “For black folks in particular, we have a mandate: to avenge the sufferings of our ancestors, earn the respect of future generations and be transformed in the service of the work. That is what we are in the streets for. We’re going to take as much time as we need.”

Sarah Lazare is a staff writer for AlterNet. A former staff writer for Common Dreams, she coedited the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. Follow her on Twitter at @sarahlazare.

“We don’t have the same rights as our white counterparts,” 17-year-old Myra Richardson, a student at Baton Rouge Magnet High School, told AlterNet over the phone. “There are still things holding us back. How can we call America the land of the free?”

Richardson is one of countless young people from Miami to New York to Minneapolis who took to the streets over the weekend to rally under the banner of Black Lives Matter, braving heavily armedpolice deployments and a charged political environment in which they are being demonized by some for exercising their right to protest.

For Richardson the cause is personal, as Alton Sterling was a known member of the community, and the Triple S Food Mart where he was shot to death by police is a popular spot.

“The youth have lived through so many atrocities, but we’re still optimistic, still trying to do work,” said Richardson, who is a member of a community organization called #thewave and said she speaks on behalf of fellow classmates Raheejah Flowers and Jeanette Jackson, both 15. “There have been marches and gatherings all over Baton Rouge. We’ve seen groups from all over the United States come down. We have all these things stacked against us, but there are still people mobilizing and trying.”

Richardson is part of a generation of young people who have grown up seeing images of black and brown youth who look like them shot and killed by police. Police killings of black people in 2015 outnumbered lynchings of African Americans during the worst year of Jim Crow, according to Quartz reporter Annalisa Merelli. During that year, 1,146 people were killed by police, the Guardian reports, in what is likely a conservative estimate due to theunderreporting of law enforcement killings. In 2015, young black men werenine times more likely to be killed by police than the general population, and black people overall were killed at twice the rate of their white, Latino and native American counterparts.

The fact that police killings are calculated by media organizations at all is a victory of the sustained protests of the Black Lives Matter movement. Yet, despite heightened visibility, the killing continues. According to the Guardian, 571 people have been killed by police so far in 2016. The Washington Post putthis number at 512.

These numbers were made painfully real with the back-to-back police killings of African-Americans Sterling and Philando Castile.

Campaigners say that now is an important time to mobilize. “Guided by love, we continue to stand together for justice, human dignity and our shared goal of ending all forms of state violence against black people,” declared the Movement for Black Lives in a widely circulating pledge. “We organize, occupy, demonstrate, march and chant for a new future: A future we can be proud of. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, who fought for their freedom and ours. Like them, we want a world where our lives matter.”

Yet in the aftermath of the Dallas shooting, protesters face an escalated crackdown, despite the fact that there are no proven ties between the gunman and the Black Lives Matter protesters. “Black activists have raised the call for an end to violence, not an escalation of it,” the Black Lives Matter network said in a statement released July 8. “To assign the actions of one person to an entire movement is dangerous and irresponsible. We continue our efforts to bring about a better world for all of us.”

Aesha Rasheed, a New Orleans resident and organizer with Southerners On New Ground, traveled to Baton Rouge over the weekend to join the protests. “In this moment, not only have we lost someone to police violence in such a wrong way, but we also are in position where they have made protesting illegal,” said Rasheed, referring to a controversial Louisiana “Blue Lives Matter” bill that will go into effect August 1.

“I was at the protest on the capitol steps and the youth from Baton Rouge were there telling their stories, making their demands about the change they want to see,” said Rasheed. “People are still dying, still being killed, don’t tell us to sit down and not continue to go out into the streets.”

Under the guise of public safety, police departments across the country have used the Dallas shootings to call for increased police militarization and surveillance nationwide. “This will cause complaints about violating people’s constitutional rights to free assembly, but it is the only way to guarantee safety,” Thomas Manger, president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, toldReuters.

But according to Mary Hooks, co-director of Southerners on New Ground and organizer with Black Lives Matter-ATL, “This is a moment to organize and challenge the conversation about what is public safety and who is defining it. We have to redefine it because it’s not the folks whose neighborhoods are being occupied having a say, instead it’s being defined by more police, more surveillance, more probation, being funneled into the municipal court system. Public safety feels like booby traps to us as black people. We pay a regressive tax with our time and our lives.”

“We want safety, dignity and justice,” Hooks told AlterNet. “For black folks in particular, we have a mandate: to avenge the sufferings of our ancestors, earn the respect of future generations and be transformed in the service of the work. That is what we are in the streets for. We’re going to take as much time as we need.”

Sarah Lazare is a staff writer for AlterNet. A former staff writer for Common Dreams, she coedited the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. Follow her on Twitter at @sarahlazare.

Photo: Protestor Ieshia Evans is approached by law enforcement near the headquarters of the Baton Rouge Police Department in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S. July 9, 2016.   REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

Obama Says Attacks On Police Hurt Black Lives Matter Cause

Obama Says Attacks On Police Hurt Black Lives Matter Cause

President Obama has warned that attacks on police over racial bias would hurt the anti-racism Black Lives Matter movement, days after a sniper killed five police officers in Dallas in apparent revenge for police shootings of black people.

Obama said although most activists from the Black Lives Matter movement wanted to see better relations between communities and law enforcement, violence and overly broad criticism against police undermined the protest movement.

“I want to say to say to everyone concerned about … racial bias in the criminal justice system that maintaining a truthful, serious and respectful tone is going to help mobilize American society to bring about real change,” Obama said.

“Whenever those of us who are concerned about failures of the criminal justice system attack police, you are doing a disservice to the cause,” he told a news conference in Madrid where he is on a one-day visit.

Micah Johnson, a black U.S. military veteran of the Afghan war, opened fire on police officers on Thursday during a protest in Dallas against the fatal shootings of two black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota the previous day.

Johnson wanted to “kill white people, especially white officers,” Dallas Police Chief David Brown said after the attack on Thursday night.

The Black Lives Matter group said on Friday it advocated dignity, not murder, in response to the shooting that also left seven other police officers and two civilians wounded.

Obama said there was legitimate criticism to be made of the criminal justice system and that citizens should continue to protest against it.

“I would hope that police organizations are also respectful of the frustrations that people in these communities feel and not just dismiss these protests as political correctness or politics or attacks on police,” he said.

 

Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Writing by Angus Berwick; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky

Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama answers a reporter’s questions after meeting with Spain’s acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy at the Palacio de la Moncloa in Madrid, Spain July 10, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst