Black Lives Matter blm

SEE TWO

MERRI OK

we may have to add eco to econ terror to extremists

beginnings of student movement: student debt; divest FF? palestine?

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tucker loses it over minnesota

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an no lnx

Trump admin hits protesters with terrorism charge

FILE PHOTO: Protesters march during a brief rally after the sentencing of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis policeman found guilty of killing George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. June 25, 2021. REUTERS/Eric Miller/File Photo

:{Jordan Green and Raw StoryDecember 21, 2025

Two Alabama Black Lives Matter activists accused of setting a shopping cart on fire as part of a protest against the fatal police shooting of a young Black man have been charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, in what one supporter calls a “railroading.”

The federal charge unveiled as part of a superseding indictment against Mercutio Southall, 41, and Lillian Colburn, 26, alleges that the pair committed terrorism through an arson at a Walmart Supercenter in Homewood, a Birmingham suburb, on Aug. 22.

“They’ve been trying to label Black Lives Matter a terrorist movement,” RaShaun Whetstone, a friend of Southall and Colburn, told Raw Story. “This is a railroading.”

The indictments come as President Donald Trump attempts to paint left-wing activism as “domestic terrorism,” through a national security memorandum that accuses activists of undermining “support for law enforcement” in order “to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution.”

This month, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo instructing the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which include local law enforcement partners, to prioritize investigations of antifascist groups.

Echoing Trump’s national security memo, Bondi claimed: “These domestic terrorists use violence or the threat of violence to advance political and social agendas, including opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity.”

‘Not even Mercutio’s MO’

Luke Baumgartner, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Raw Story the Alabama case is, as far as he knows, the first time the federal government has applied the material support to terrorists charge to Black Lives Matter protesters.

Southall and Colburn pleaded not guilty.

Whetstone told Raw Story he believes Southall and Colburn to be falsely accused. He said the alleged crime was completely out of character for Southall, who as an early leader of Black Lives Matter became one of the most high-profile racial justice activists in the Birmingham area.

Whetstone added that Colburn doesn’t match the person seen in store surveillance video.

Homewood has seen protests since June, when an 18-year-old Black man, Jabari Peoples, was fatally shot by an unidentified police officer at a city park. Police said the shooting followed a struggle, after which Peoples attempted to retrieve a handgun from his car, according to WVTM 13. Peoples’ family and a young woman who was with him say he was unarmed.

Community members have held several protests resulting in multiple arrests, WVTM 13 reported. The news station quoted a leader of the Birmingham chapter of Black Lives Matter as saying they planned to disrupt businesses until their demands, including the release of police body camera video, were met.

Homewood police said in a press release shortly after Southall’s arrest on state charges that detectives obtained evidence he attended a protest at the park on the day of the alleged arson.

The police allege Southall traveled from the protest to Walmart, and accuse him of filling “a shopping cart full of rags, blankets, charcoal bags, small engine fuel, and paint thinner,” then pre-positioning “the shopping cart in a clothing aisle,” before returning to the protest.

Southall was charged in state court with arson and first-degree criminal mischief.

The police said at the time they were working with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms “on pursuing federal arson charges.”

Colburn was arrested on identical charges.

AL.com reported that detectives testified that Colburn accompanied Southall from the protest to Walmart and the two loaded the cart together, then left in a car that investigators determined was registered to Colburn.

Later, investigators said, a woman wearing a blond wig, identified as Colburn, returned to the store and ignited the cart.

Whetstone told Raw Story he doesn’t buy prosecutors’ claims.

“It’s not even Mercutio’s MO,” he said. “Never has he done anything like that. Being who he is, he’s going to set a shopping cart on fire? What the hell kind of sense does that make?”

Federal prosecutors obtained an indictment for arson in late October. A month later, a grand jury returned a superseding indictment adding the charge of material support to terrorists.

Southall and Colburn could not be reached for comment.

An announcement by the FBI’s Birmingham office last week did not mention the defendants’ ties to Black Lives Matter, but characterized them as “violent actors.”

“Let it be clear: While peaceful protesting is a protected right, arson and destruction of property are violent crimes that will not be tolerated in our community,” Special Agent in Charge Dave Fitzgibbons said.

Baumgartner told Raw Story: “It’s not surprising they would levy this charge given that their focus has shifted [to the left]. They’re focusing on these left-wing or anarchist groups. Coming at them with all the tools in their toolkits is definitely in line with their stated strategy.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Northern Alabama did not respond to a question about whether AG Bondi played any role in the decision to charge the defendants with terrorism. A spokesperson said the office did not comment on ongoing litigation.

‘Federal crime of terrorism’

Federal statute makes it a crime to act in support of “an offense identified as a federal crime of terrorism.”

Federal prosecutors have applied the material support to terrorists charge to white supremacist groups and activists, recently including Dallas Erin Humber, the leader of Terrorgram Collective, who is linked to a mass shooting targeting LGBTQ+ people in Slovakia and a deadly school shooting in Brazil, in addition to plots to assassinate politicians and attack the power grid.

The United States, Canada and New Zealand have all designated Terrorgram as a terrorist entity.

In another case, in 2022, four white supremacists pleaded guilty to material support to terrorists, for plotting to carry out coordinated attacks on the power grid in an attempt to instigate race war.

The charge is also being used to pursue violent nihilist groups.

Writing with Barry Jonas, Baumgartner noted in the journal Just Security that in October, for the first time, federal prosecutors indicted a leader of 764, a nihilist network, for conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.

The government alleges that 764 leader Baron Martin manipulated child victims to self-harm.

Baumgartner and Jonas wrote: “By charging Martin with conspiring to provide material support for terrorists, the shift represents a long-overdue recognition that such conduct is not just depraved — it is terrorism.”

Last week, Canada became the first country to list 764 as a terrorist entity.

A closely related and better-known statute making it a crime to knowingly support “a foreign terrorist organization” has been used frequently since the Sept. 11 attacks to prosecute American citizens who attempted to join jihadist groups such as al-Qaida and ISIS.

Baumgartner said federal prosecutors now appear to be utilizing the material support charge with increasing frequency against defendants across the ideological spectrum.

Last month, prosecutors in Texas obtained an indictment against eight defendants for providing material support for terrorists, regarding an attack on an ICE facility.

The government has named one defendant as firing a weapon at law enforcement, while alleging others ignited fireworks, destroyed a surveillance camera, and vandalized vehicles and a shed.

‘Cause of justice’

Birmingham is a Southern city known as a cradle of the Civil Rights movement, where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. launched a massive desegregation campaign in 1963, in which child marchers were met with police dogs and firehoses.

In his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King excoriated “the white moderate” and called himself an “extremist for the cause of justice.”

Of the two activists now facing federal charges, Southall has a long history of activism — which has seen him singled out by Trump for verbal abuse.

In November 2015, the activist was forcibly ejected from a Trump rally in Birmingham.

After Southall disrupted the event by chanting, “Black lives matter,” the Washington Post reported that video showed him falling amid a throng of white men who appeared to kick and punch him.

A Post reporter observed a man put his hands on Southall’s neck and a female onlooker shout, “Don’t choke him!”

“They said, ‘Go home, n-----, and somebody punched me,” Southall told Al.com.

Speaking to Fox News, Trump reportedly said: “Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.

“I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy who was a troublemaker who was looking to make trouble.”

‘Untethered from reality’

Despite Trump’s hostility, conservative efforts to get Black Lives Matter designated as a terrorist group did not gain traction in his first term.

In 2017, the FBI drew criticism for an internal assessment that appeared to classify BLM activists as “Black Identity Extremists” who posed a threat of lethal violence.

Three years later, a law enforcement training group characterized BLM protesters as “terrorists.”

It also drew rebuke, one advocate for police reform calling the characterization “untethered from reality” and worrying that it could lead “to people dying unnecessarily.”

In the South, the Ku Klux Klan long waged a campaign of terror which succeeded in intimidating Black people from exercising their right to vote and ousting multiracial governments. Whetstone noted that the U.S. government has never designated the Klan as a terrorist organization.

“Black Lives Matter ruffles a few feathers, and they want to call us terrorists,” he said. “This is just one small step in how they normalize punishing anyone who is associated with any liberation movement. They’re trying to criminalize it.”

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mma 520

after the president threatened to massacre civilians, Fox News focused on Twitter’s warning sticker on the tweet

WRITTEN BY ERIC KLEEFELD

PUBLISHED 05/29/20 10:25 AM EDT

Shortly after midnight, President Donald Trump tweeted about the ongoing civil unrest in Minneapolis, following protests over the police killing of an African-American man, George Floyd: “Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

On the Friday morning edition of Fox & Friends, however, the big story about the inflammatory tweet was this: Twitter soon hid that message behind a warning, declaring it violated the service’s rules about “glorifying violence,” but still allowed the message to be viewed after the user pressed a button on the screen.

One discussion over Twitter placing a flag on the tweet lasted for over eight minutes...

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5/20 hmn yikes

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/far-right-boogaloo-militants-have-embedded-themselves-in-the-george-floyd-protests-in-minneapolis-they-want-their-civil-war/

raw story

young, white men dressed in Hawaiian-style print shirts and body armor, and carrying high-powered rifles have been a notable feature at state capitols, lending an edgy and even sometimes insurrectionary tone to gatherings of conservatives angered by restrictions on businesses and church gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic.

Just as many states are reopening their economies — and taking the wind out of the conservative protests —the boogaloo movement found a new galvanizing cause: the protests in Minneapolis against the police killing of George Floyd.

A new iteration of the militia movement, boogaloo was born out of internet forums for gun enthusiasts that repurposed the 1984 movie Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogalooas a code for a second civil war, and then modified it into phrases like[big igloo] “big luau” to create an insular community for those in on the joke, with Hawaiian-style shirts functioning as an in-real-life identifier. Boogaloo gained currency as an internet meme over the summer of 2019, when it was adopted by white supremacists in the accelerationist tendency. In January, the movement made the leap from the internet to the streets when a group boogaloo-ers showed up at the Second Amendment rally in Richmond, Va.

It’s not just the jittery aesthetics and pop-culture irony that sets boogaloo apart from an older generation of militia activists, but also its unbridled hostility towards law enforcement. In late 2019, the movement spread beyond private Discord servers to multiple Facebook groups with names like Thicc Boog Line, Boojahideen of Occupied Appalachistan and, in North Carolina, Blue Igloo. Some of the memes generated and shared on the Facebook pages contain overt signals towards white nationalists, including images of the German Wehrmacht during World War II and references to the failed war to preserve white rule in Rhodesia during the 1970s. But others signal an interest in building bridges with the political left by lifting up the names of black victims of police violence like Oscar Grant, Eric Garner and Breonna Taylor, alongside right-wing martyrs like LaVoy Finicum, Sammy Weaver and Duncan Lemp, the latter a boogaloo-er who was killed by police in March during a no-knock raid at his home in Maryland.

AD REMOVED FOR SUBSCRIBED USER

When protests against the police killing of George Floyd escalated into clashes between police and protesters on Tuesday night, a significant segment of the boogaloo movement was electrified.

At 8:38 p.m., an anonymous Discord user identified as [MN-TC] Jimmydean338 posted in the#SOS channel for the private Citizens Liberty Organizationserver. The post displayed a red button inscribed with the words, “Send help!” followed by the address 3000 Minnehaha Ave., which is the location of the Minneapolis Police 3^rd Precinct. “Police opening fire on protesters breaching precinc [sic],” Jimmydean338 wrote. “Not a drill.”

At about 11:30, the Big Igloo Bois Facebook group posted a photo of a young man holding the trademark boogaloo flag depicting an igloo and palm tree in the protests.

“If there was ever a time for bois to stand in solidarity with all free men and women in this country, it is now,” the admin for the page wrote. “This is not a race issue. For far too long we have allowed them to murder us in our homes, and in the streets. We need to stand with the people of Minneapolis. We need to support them in this protest against a system that allows police brutality to go unchecked.”

Benjamin Ryan Teeter, a resident of the coastal community of Hampstead in southeastern North Carolina, reshared the red button panel posted by Jimmydean338 on his Facebook page at 11:44 p.m., writing, “Lock and load boys. Boog flags are in the air, and the national network is going off.”

Teeter, who is active in the North Carolina Libertarian Party and has participated in weekly armed excursions through downtown Raleigh with a group organized through the Blue Igloo Facebook group over the four weeks alerted his friends that he would be driving, not flying to Minneapolis.

Tom Bailey, a Libertarian candidate for Congress in 2018, commented, “Grim.” To which Teeter replied, “Exactly! I love it!”

Another private Discord server set up for boogaloo users — named “We should all Led(better)” — had designated special channels for different functions: #on-scene-only (for users on the ground), #off-scene-intel (for remote users sharing information), and #location-want-to-repond (for users across the country to coordinate travel to Minneapolis).

Boogaloo activists who showed up for the first night of protests on Tuesday met with mixed reaction.

One, a white man identified on Facebook as Michael Solomon, posted photographs of himself and another friend holding high-powered rifles while posing alongside black protesters, including one wearing a Black Lives Matter hoodie. But another, Tyler Scott of Minnesota man, warned in the Big Igloo Bois thread: “This is not the time for boog, this is how a race war starts.” He added that the protesters “jumped one of our 3%ers” — a term that denotes an older generation of militia activists — “earlier tonight and stole a firearm. They are not with us. They’ve made it clear they don’t want us.” Scott’s statements were met with skepticism, with other commenters suggesting he was making it up or speculating that the older militia activists were racist and had it coming.

“I think for a lot of boogaloo-ers, their primary interest is resisting the state, what they believe to be state tyranny,” said Alex Friedfeld, an investigative researcher at the ADL Center on Extremism in Chicago. “They have this hostility towards law enforcement…. They oppose these [pandemic] directives. They’re upset about no-knock raids, police brutality. The George Floyd case — this is an example of police brutality, this willingness of the state to execute those who disobey — so it’s not surprising that they showed up to protest.”

The nascent boogaloo movement is not monolithic, Friedfeld said, and it draws from spectrum of groups from the right wing to the far right, from militias and anarcho-capitalists to white supremacists. An internal struggle is underway to define the movement’s relationship with race, he said.

“You see this in the Facebook comments,” Friedfeld said. “You’ll see very strong condemnations of racism and homophobia. Then there are people who use racially charged phrases such as, ‘Vote from the rooftops.’ It’s a reference to Korean shop-owners who went to rooftops to fire on looters [during the 1992 Los Angeles riots], who are presumed to be black. There’s this debate: Why are we accepting Black Lives Matter when they won’t accept us? There’s a good deal of social distrust.”

Antifascist Twitter accounts on Wednesday issued a steady stream of stern warnings against making common cause with boogaloo.

“It’s a right-wing thing; it’s a neo-fascist thing,” said Daryle Lamont Jenkins, a veteran antifascist organizer based in New Jersey, in a Twitter video. “And they’re trying to use what’s happening in Minneapolis as a jump-off. Do not let them. They are not our friends.”

Jenkins told Raw Story that he fears that boogaloo-ers are bringing their apocalyptic fantasies about civil war to Minneapolis and will leave residents to pick up the pieces.

“They can be more aggressive, and they can cause the police to be more aggressive,” he said. “They can get people hurt because they want their civil war…. People who are in the community, all they know is they have to defend themselves. The people they hate get hurt, and they walk away scot-free. So, it’s kind of a win-win for them.

“You don’t even necessarily have to be interacting with anybody in order to pop something off,” he added. “You’re going to be one with the crowd.”

Jenkins noted that Minneapolis has rocky track record with armed white men interposing themselves in protests against police brutality: In 2015, five people at a Black Lives Matter protest were shot, resulting in non-life-threatening injuries. A white man from Bloomington named Allen Scarsella was later convicted in the shootings.

Jenkins charges that the boogaloo-ers are operating in bad faith, citing a fellow New Jersey resident named Paul Miller who was recently involved in a Memorial Day reopen protest. Miller identifies himself as a “Boogaloo Boy” on his Instagram account, which also includes the Latin Catholic motto “Deus vult,” or “God wills [it],” generally associated with Islamophobia.

On Wednesday, Miller re-shared livestreams from Minneapolis on his Instagram, while refraining from providing his views on the action underway. A previous post includes a whimsical video of armed protesters during an April 30 reopen protest at the Michigan state capitol captioned, “When the boogaloo kicks off cuz the boys had enough.”

Others more definitively signal that Miller’s politics don’t align with the protesters in Minneapolis. One calls for the release of the white father and son who are charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery, a black jogger in Georgia, while another contends that the media is burying coverage of migrants “rioting throughout France.” Miller frequently uses boogaloo hashtags with Instagram posts, including #bigluau, #boogaloomemes, #boogaloo2020, #Boogvirus, #boogaloosidequest and #boogaloobois.

“There’s two versions of boogaloo,” said Friedfeld of the ADL. “There’s the white supremacist burn society down and build a white ethno-stage. And then there’s the anti-government resist tyranny at all costs, and if it creates a civil war, so be it version.”

So far, the wing of the boogaloo movement that’s shown up in the streets is the more mainstream, outwardly inclusive version.

But some white supremacists, especially in the accelerationist tendency, are likely cheering events in Minneapolis from the sidelines, or looking for ways to melt into the crowd.

A user identified as “Terrorwave Refine” messaged at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday: “Boogaloo boys are reportedly on [sic] place. If someone really wanted to kick off the boogaloo, now would be a fine time to fire some shots and frame the crowd around you as responsible.”

Earlier in the evening, a user named “The Shitpost Facility (Dick)” wrote, “I hate that I support the n****** over the pigs at this point, get some you dumb monkey f****ot. This is absolutely the end goal of our philosemitic society. Imagine giving n****** ‘civil rights’ hahahha.”

Another, named “Uncle Paul,” forwarded Dick’s message, adding, “I don’t support either the n****** or the pigs… certainly not the k****. However, I’ll do some pushups and pull-ups while I watch them redacting each other.”

Benjamin Ryan Teeter, the North Carolina man traveling to Minneapolis, said he is motivated to join the protests out of genuine solidarity with black residents who are oppressed by police violence. Teeter, who describes himself as an “LGBT left-leaning anarchist,” said he plans to “defend the protesters.”

He deflected when asked if he and other boogaloo-ers are consulting with local residents to see how they can best support them, as opposed to pursuing their own agenda.

“I think trying to get the police to stop killing people is trying to support the people of the community,” he said. “If we’re not willing to stand up because we might hurt someone, how bad are we going to allow things to get?”

Teeter insisted the share of white supremacists in the boogaloo movement is no greater than any other group or political party. But he pleaded ignorance when asked about Dillon Goad, a North Carolinian who attended the first Raleigh boogaloo walk on May 1 wearing a Hawaiian-style shirt. In addition to his primary Facebook page, Goad has an alt page under his name that pays tribute to Hans Friedrich, a member of the SS Infantry Brigade accused of murdering Jews and communists in the Soviet Union.

Teeter posted a breathless update at 1:23 a.m. on Wednesday.

“Baltimore cop shot,” Teeter wrote. “Chicago is a powderkeg. MN police are planning an emergency exit if the building is breached.”

Goad was the first to comment: “It’s all coming together.”

Reached on the road nine hours outside of Minneapolis on Wednesday evening, Teeter demurred when asked about Goad.

“Dillon is someone I’m not familiar with,” he said. “I don’t want to speak to the account without knowing. I don’t know if it’s a satire account or something else.”

Whether their movement is infiltrated with neo-Nazis or not, there’s little doubt that the boogaloo-ers want to see an escalation in Minneapolis.

In a post that has now been removed from the We should all be Led(better) server, (KS) RugbyIsLife lamented at 11:38 p.m. on Wednesday: “Looks like it’s just a bunch of looting that should have been booging. Are people going to wake the fuck up and start laying down lead or just steal TVs and shit?”

odd inclusion? dylann roof shot up blk church? esteemed gentleman?

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an 520

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/here-are-the-top-6-reasons-why-police-are-cracking-down-on-black-protesters-while-treating-white-reopeners-with-kid-gloves/

Here are the top 6 reasons why police are cracking down on black protesters while treating white reopeners with kid gloves

https://www.salon.com/2020/05/18/emails-show-uc-santa-cruz-police-used-military-surveillance-to-suppress-grad-student-strike/

Emails show UC Santa Cruz police used military surveillance to suppress grad student strike

UC police used "friendly force trackers" and FBI tech to surveil grad student strikers protesting for a living wage

NICOLE KARLIS

MAY 18, 2020 11:45PM (UTC)

The University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) Police Department, with assistance from the Alameda County Sheriff's Office and the California National Guard, used military surveillance to suppress the UC Santa Cruz graduate student wildcat strike earlier this year, according to emails acquired through the California Public Records Act.

Vice first reported the content of the emails on May 15 which provided insight into the coordinated efforts between the UC Santa Cruz Police Department, Alameda County Sheriff's Office, and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, to police the protests. As Salon has previously reported, police and campus officials reacted to the nonviolent labor action with threats, arrests, firings, and violence from the police with batons, according to grad students at the strike, for months as grad students demanded a Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) to help alleviate the rent burden of living in a pricey coastal California town.

The new emails, which have been reviewed by Salon, dive deeper into the efforts to police the protests that went beyond what the grad students observed on the picket line. They show the UC Santa Cruz Police Department requested mutual aid from the Alameda County Sheriff's Office to police the protests as early as December 31. Notably, UC Santa Cruz is located in Santa Cruz County, not Alameda County — which is about 40 miles north.

"It's disturbing to be part of a labor action like this and to see the militarized nature of the university's response," Will Parrish, a PhD student in UCSC's History of Consciousness program, told Salon in an interview. "I felt disturbed to see both the level of militarization and the casualness of their discussions in their email threads."

Specifically, the UCSC Police Department requested deputies, trucks and vans in the case of arrests. All expenses, including food and lodging, were paid for by UCSC police for at least 65 officers. At the time, grad students were on a wildcat strike, withholding final grades for the fall quarter until their demand for a Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) was met. Withholding grades evolved into a full wildcat teaching strike in February, meaning they withheld teaching, grading, and office hours, as their demands continued to be dismissed.

According to emails dated February 11 and 13, the California National Guard provided "friendly force trackers," which is a military surveillance technology, as part of the effort. Police also had access to a federal surveillance portal operated by the FBIcalled LEEP, an acronym for "Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal." The FBI's page on LEEP describes it as "a secure platform for law enforcement agencies, intelligence groups, and criminal justice entities" that "provides web-based investigative tools and analytical resources" to help said groups "collaborate in a secure environment, use tools to strengthen their cases, and share departmental documents." Some of the sample use cases for LEEP that the FBI cites include "active shooter incidents," "child abductions" and "takedown operations."

The emails don't specify exactly how these technologies were used, nor do they specify the amount spent on the efforts. However, grad students believe that it could be in the millions.

"Rather than meet us at the bargaining table the UC instead spent close to five million dollars in deploying dozens of UCPD from across the state, California Highway Patrol, and Alameda County sheriffs, and even solicited assistance from counterterrorism intelligence agencies," UCSC Literature PhD student Hannah Newburn said in a statement. "Since when did asking for a raise become a threat to Homeland Security?"

Carlos Cruz, a UCSC PhD student in the history department, told Salon he was given evidence, and an audio clip that Salon listened to, to add to speculation that he was being surveilled by police during the protests. In the audio clip, presumably a police officer is stating Cruz's whereabouts and said his name "Carlos." He also had an alarming in-person encounter with a sergeant.

"I had a sergeant who was able to identify me by first, middle and last name and date of birth," Cruz said, adding there were racist undertones to the exchange. "It's really scary to see how they got my info and knew who I was."

In an emailed statement to Salon, Scott Hernandez-Jason, the Director of News and Media Relations at UC Santa Cruz, told Salon: "Throughout the strike, UC Santa Cruz police officers were focused on supporting the safety of our community on and off campus and protecting the rights of everyone in our campus community, including those engaged in expressive activity."

Hernandez-Jason said the department used the trackers "to know the location of on-duty officers who were helping keep people safe."

"To infer anything else about the use of the trackers would be erroneous. UC Santa Cruz is built across 2,000 acres of hilly land with two entrances, so understanding the location of officers was vital to coordinate their efforts," Hernandez-Jason said. "There was no tracking of students or strikers."

The emails also revealed that after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted on February 19 in support of striking graduate students at UC Santa Cruz, an officer from the Governor's Office of Emergency Services emailed the California State Threat Assessment Center commander Eli Owen to request assistance to "verify/validate Mr. Sanders schedule." The email referred to the tweet as "intel" that Sanders might appear on the UC Santa Cruz campus.

Hernandez-Jason said about this email that "UC Santa Cruz was paying attention to his publicly posted campaign schedule so that it could begin planning in case he chose to visit the campus."

This isn't the first time military tactics have been used to spy on protesters. The Intercept previously reported on how FBI emails and intelligence reports suggested federal surveillance of Black Lives Matter protests. Similar surveillance happened in the 1960s and 1970s during anti-war protests. Sara Hinkley, a Policy Research Specialist at UC Berkeley Labor Center, told Salon in an emailed statement that whether such a move was worth it for UCSC will be calculated by how tarnished its reputation is for the handling of the wildcat strike.

"In the case of UC, the loss of reputation and academic stability will likely have repercussions for many years," Hinkley said. "It's unfortunate that they chose to treat their own students and employees as an enemy meriting military surveillance."

Hinkley added: "I think it's likely that decision will end up costing them much more than if they had recognized the students' demands and fairly bargained a solution to the real financial stress that graduate students are experiencing."

NICOLE KARLIS

Nicole Karlis is a news writer at Salon. She covers health, science, tech and gender politics. Tweet her @nicolekarlis.

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Is hiring more black officers the key to reducing police violence?

Jennifer Cobbina, Michigan State University

Diversity among officers lags behind the general population. But is police culture a greater problem when it comes to combating excessive force?

:{:{Charlton McIlwain, "Black Software"New York University professor Charlton McIlwain looked at the impact of…}::{}:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?466932-1/black-software

DECEMBER 4, 2019

Black Software

New York University Professor Charlton McIlwainlooked at the impact of social media and the internet on racial justice movements, including Black Lives Matter.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/how-pro-trump-memes-mirror-the-frightening-ways-nazi-propagandists-got-their-message-to-the-people/

no lnx

How pro-Trump memes mirror the frightening ways Nazi propagandists got their message to the people

Written by Christopher Brauchli / Common Dreams October 27, 2019

150

[A]fter the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace. . . which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.

—Atlantic Charter issued August 14, 1941

It was all in good fun It took place for Trump supporters the weekend of October 14, 2019, at the Trump National Doral Miami. That was the Trump-owned resort that was to be the site of the G-7 meeting in 2020, until it wasn’t. It had been selected by Trump for the meeting of the G7 because, as Mick Mulvaney, Acting Chief of Staff explained: “Trump still considers himself to be in the hospitality business.”

The event was organized by American Priority, a group that pretends to promote free speech. It was attended by, among others, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and Donald Trump Jr. In a room adjacent to the main ballroom at the hotel, a video that was produced by an anonymous person operating under the name of: “The GeekzTeam” was shown on a revolving loop. The video includes the logo for the trump 2020 campaign. According to the New York Times‘s description of the video, Mr. Trump’s head is superimposed on the body of a man entering the “Church of Fake News. ” As he walks down the aisle he stops, pulls out a gun, and opens fire on parishioners who have the faces of his critics, or the logos of media organizations superimposed on their bodies. Among his victims are “Black Lives Matter”, and “Vice News.” He continues walking down the aisle and as he approaches the alter, he is shown striking John McCain in the back of the neck, hitting Rosie O’Donnell in the face, and then stabbing her in the head. He sets fire to Bernie Sanders’ hair. The video ends with Trump standing on the church altar and admiring the victims of his violent behavior.

Reports suggest that there are many similar memes, as they are known, available on the internet, all depicting violent acts against critics of trump. The Trump himself tweeted a video in which he participates in a wrestling match and body slams and beats up the CNN logo. That tweet went viral among his supporters.

Although lacking internet, the Nazis knew the value of film in order to get their message to the people. In 1930 the party established a film department. In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote that: “The picture, in all its forms, including the film, has better prospects. In a much shorter time, at one stroke I might say, people will understand a pictorial presentation of something which it would take them a long and laborious effort of reading to understand.”

In 1932, Hans Traub, a Nazi propagandist, said that film is a “formidable means of propaganda.” Explaining its importance he said that: “Achieving propagandistic influence has always demanded a ‘language’ which forms a memorable and passionate plot with a simple narrative. . . . the most effective is the moving picture. . . . it has an unimaginable richness of rhythm for intensifying or dispelling emotions.”

Discussing films made in Nazi Germany, “Facing History and Ourselves” observes that although many films were made to glorify the Nazis, others were made to “dehumanize, criminalize, and demonize vulnerable minorities-particularly Jews.” The Trump and his supporters know how that works.

Noel King of NPR conducted an interview of Taika Waititi, the director of the movie, “Jojo Rabbit” on October 18, 2019, the date the movie was released. The movie is a satire of Nazi Germany, and is about a 10-year old boy named Jojo Rabbit. Jojo is in the Hitler Youth Movement and he wants to be the best Nazi he can be. In the film Jojo says “I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to the savior of our country, Adolf Hitler.”

The NPR interview concludes with a lengthy commentary from Mr. Waititi, that is especially timely in today’s world. “So we think we live in the safety of 2019? Yes, we don’t have to worry about Hitler and his retribution on us for making jokes about him. [But} I mean, this film shouldn’t really need to be made. In 2019 do I really need to make a film with the heart of the message being, you shouldn’t be a Nazi. At the end of World War II, there was a very clear and simple law. If you’re a Nazi, you go to jail because there’s no room in this world for you and those ideas. Now, sadly, in America and other places, the law now is, if you’re a Nazi feel free to go down to the town square and have a little rally because we’ve got this thing called freedom of speech. And you can sort of say what you want, and you’re protected by that. It’s become very twisted. And if anyone says [about this movie] “oh, well, another World War II film-we get it. That was 80 years ago.” Well, we obviously don’t get it-because we’re getting dangerously close to this sort of thing happening again. And we’re living in a world where there are world leaders who are very happy to promote hate and intolerance and ideas that were prevalent in the ’30s.'”

Mr. Waititi got that right. Think Orban, Assad, Duterte, Putin, Xi, el Sisi, Erdogan, and, Trump, the spoiled, petulant, mendacious occupant of the White House, to name just a few. It’s frightening.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/furious-former-white-house-official-blasts-trump-video-of-church-slaughter-mass-shootings-are-not-jokes/

former White House official blasts Trump video of church slaughter: ’Mass shootings are not jokes!’Tom Boggioni / Raw Story

no lnx

Furious former White House official blasts Trump video of church slaughter: ’Mass shootings are not jokes!’

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story October 14, 2019

A CNN panel was equally appalled and furious about a video that was shown at the conservative conference held at a hotel owned by Donald Trump that showed the president slaughtering church worshipers who represented CNN, NPR, MSNBC and Black Lives Matter in the “Church of Fake News.”

Speaking with hosts John Avlon and Alisyn Camerota, former President Bill Clinton communications director Joe Lockhart seemed visibly angry that it was shown at a conservative sanctioned event that featured Sarah Sanders and Don Trump Jr. as speakers.

Asked by Avlon, “Has there been anything remotly like this in American political history or something truly new and dangerous?”

“This is something truly new,” Lockhart responded. “We haven’t had the internet for that long of time, if you’re going over the sweep of history. that’s what allows this to be distributed widely. But we’ve had presidents who have denounced the media. We’ve had every president in the history of the country who has at times wanted to denounce them and probably had thoughts in their head about what they’d like to do.”

“But kept them inside their head,” Avlon prompted.

“This isn’t a case where some over-enthusiastic supporter did something,” Lockhart continued. “This is Nixonian in the sense that the campaign was sanctioning dirty tricks like Nixon did. Here the president is not blameless — he has retweeted these people’s memes. He has retweeted memes with things hitting CNN reporters in the head — they’re not funny.”

“What struck me from this video is this all happened in a church. The president — probably the biggest part of his base are churchgoers, evangelicals,” he added. “And they are now making fun of someone coming in and committing vicious murders in a church. I don’t care what the president does, he’s already lost his credibility on this. People who went to church yesterday who are going to wake up this morning and wake up and see the president and his supporters think it’s funny to commit violence in a church. ”

Watch below:

new cointelpro blk extremists

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/the-fbi-appears-to-be-engaged-in-a-modern-day-version-of-cointelpro-aclu-racial-justice-program-deputy-director/

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many pix twit

Newsmax host elevates far-right conspiracy theory accusing two Democratic presidential candidates of staging a hate crime

Blog ››› 2 hours 41 min ago ››› ALEX KAPLAN

293

Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

Newsmax TV and Rebel Media host John Cardillo amplified a far-right conspiracy theory that originated from message boards and social media accounts and accuses Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) of staging the alleged anti-queer and racist attack against actor Jussie Smollett. The conspiracy theory contends that the senators' intent in drawing attention to a case like Smollet's was to help pass their proposed anti-lynching legislation. The baseless claim connects with the far-right narrative that Smollett's alleged attack -- which reportedly included the attackers wrapping a rope around the Empire star’s neck -- was a hoax in efforts to minimize the importance of anti-lynching legislation.

Harris and Booker, both of whom recently announced their 2020 presidential candidacies, introduced the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act of 2018 with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) last summer. The bill, which unanimously passed in the Senate, would classify lynching as a federal hate crime. Earlier attempts to pass anti-lynching legislation in Congress failed repeatedly during the 19th and 20th centuries when the act of racial terrorism was widespread across the country. Both Harris and Booker have called the attack on Smollett a “modern-day lynching.”

Here’s how the conspiracy theory bubbled up from the fever swamps to Cardillo’s Twitter feed:

Twitter account @hankentwhistle:

4chan’s “politically incorrect” message board known as /pol/:

YouTube:

Reddit’s “r/conspiracy” forum:

4chan’s /pol/:

Reddit’s “r/The_Donald”:

Voat, a Reddit clone populated mostly by alt-right trolls:

Gab:

Multiple Twitter accounts:

Newsmax TV host John Cardillo:

Short Link

http://mm4a.org/4s6

copy link

Posted In

Diversity & Discrimination

Network/Outlet

4chan, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Gab

Person

John Cardillo

Stories/Interests

Fake News, Alt-right and pro-Trump trolls

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tabloid? 2015?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2899325/Ex-NYPD-cop-pointed-gun-Twitter-selfie-response-blackbrunch-suggests-protesters-committed-hate-crimes.html

no pix linx vid

Move along now, I'm really enjoying these Eggs Benedict': Ex-NYPD cop sparks outrage with gun-selfie response to #blackbrunch protests

John Cardillo, a former New York officer who served in the 1990s, is now a self-styled, right-wing media commentator

He posted a picture on Twitter pointing a gun and the message: 'I'm really enjoying these Eggs Benedict so move along now. #BlackBrunchNYC'

Mr Cardillo, 45, who lives in Florida, said on Tuesday that it was 'ludicrous' to suggest he was threatening protesters by posting the photo

He also said of the protesters: 'I found those protesters to be blatant racists because they targeted ''white faces'''

By LOUISE BOYLE FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 15:49 EST, 6 January 2015 | UPDATED: 17:24 EST, 6 January 2015

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A former cop who posted a picture on Twitter of himself pointing a gun has denied the photo was a threat against anti-police violence protesters and claimed that the activists were 'blatant racists' for demonstrating in places they deemed 'white spaces'.

John Cardillo, who served as an officer with the NYPD in the 1990s, is now a self-styled, right-wing media commentator and runs a data analytics company.

On Sunday, demonstrators showed up at popular brunch spots in New York and California to protest the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Carrying banners, the chanting activists entered a number of venues that they had identified as 'white spaces'.

In response, Mr Cardillo took a selfie in his American flag baseball cap, with the camera looking down the barrel of a gun. He added the words: 'I'm really enjoying these Eggs Benedict so move along now. #BlackBrunchNYC'

Scroll down for video

Inflammatory: Former cop John Cardillo posted this picture on Twitter in response to anti-police violence protesters storming restaurants in New York and California on Sunday, organized by #BlackBrunchNYC +3

The chanting #BlackBrunchNYC activists entered a number of venues that they identified as 'white spaces' on Sunday to protest police violence, including the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner +3

The chanting #BlackBrunchNYC activists entered a number of venues that they identified as 'white spaces' on Sunday to protest police violence, including the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner

Mr Cardillo, 45, who now lives in Florida, told Daily Mail Online on Tuesday that it was 'ludicrous' to suggest he was threatening protesters with a picture of himself raising and pointing the gun.

He said: 'My photo is protected by the First Amendment. I was sitting in my own home, with no one else there, pointing an unloaded firearm.

'I published the photo as an experiment to expose the left-wing protest community - those people who support violence, encourage and cheer the murder of police officers, along with rioting and looting.'

'Those same people who were offended by my photograph, weren't offended by people being hurt in the real world.'

Mr Cardillo said that he was a fan of legitimate protests - even if he didn't agree with the message. However he slammed the activists who descended on restaurants on Sunday.

He said: 'I don't support what they were doing because they entered private businesses and harassed people.

'I found those protesters to be blatant racists because they targeted ''white faces.'' What is more racist than finding a place that certain races go to and targeting those places?'

Video playing bottom right...

Click here to expand to full page

Mr Cardillo said on Tuesday that Sunday's protesters were blatant racists because they targeted 'white faces' +3

Mr Cardillo said on Tuesday that Sunday's protesters were blatant racists because they targeted 'white faces'

'A war on black lives': Alongside an image of protesters inside a New York restaurant, Sharmin Ultra (above) tweeted: 'We interrupt your brunch time to let you know there is a war on Black lives. We will not stay silent'

Zane Jones offered a simple message to Mr Cardillo on Twitter following his gun selfie picture

Mr Cardillo added: 'You could argue because of the level of criminal harassment that their actions were hate crimes.'

The former police officer went on to say that he did not believe that his Twitpic was inflammatory but was 'controversial', adding that it had brought him widespread media coverage.

He said that he felt the image had nothing to do with his former job as a member of the NYPD.

He added: 'It's my First Amendment right and was absolutely the right thing to do. I posted the picture to spark debate. It's controversial but harmless.'

However some fellow Twitter users appeared to disagree with the former cop's defiant stance.

?@TillmanRaymond tweeted: 'should protesters take this as a threat for there lives? B/c it would taken as one for cops if they did this.'

While ?@zanejones426 wrote: 'some people just don't get it there enough pain in the usa right now think I pray u and other just grow up.'

A Twitter user called Ted wasn't pleased with the disruption and tweeted: 'How dare folks go out for an omelette with friends and family on a Sunday! #BlackBrunchNYC #BlackBrunch'

Dozens of demonstrators stormed restaurants and targeted white diners in New York and California as part of a 'Black Brunch' protest against alleged police violence at the weekend.

Once inside, they 'disrupted' customers' meals by reading out the names of African-Americans killed by police, including Michael Brown, 17, who was shot dead by officer Darren Wilson last August.

Addressing staff and patrons, they shouted: 'Every 28 hours, a black person in America is killed by the police. These are our brothers and sisters. Today and every day, we honor their lives.'

Throughout the day, many of the three dozen protesters - who also targeted 'predominantly white' restaurants in Oakland, California - posted photos of the 'Black Brunch' demonstration online.

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Alongside an image of protesters inside a New York restaurant, Sharmin Ultra, tweeted: 'We interrupt your brunch time to let you know there is a war on Black lives. We will not stay silent.'

Although the demonstration were largely peaceful - with no arrests made - there were reports of protesters getting into heated discussions with staff and customers.

And while many have applauded the nonviolent tactic online, other social media users mocked it and some have even criticized the protests as 'pathetic' and 'ridiculous'.

Bob Owens said: '#BlackBrunchNYC is the most desperate and pathetic cry for relevance I've seen in a long time.'

And a user called Ted added: 'How dare folks go out for an omelette with friends and family on a Sunday! #BlackBrunchNYC #BlackBrunch.'

Bob Owens said the protest was 'the most desperate and pathetic cry for relevance I've seen in a long time'

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/5/23/the_new_cointelpro_meet_the_black

In Texas, a black activist says he is the first person to be targeted and prosecuted under a secretive U.S. surveillance effort to track so-called black identity extremists. On December 12, activist Rakem Balogun awoke to armed FBI agents storming his Dallas apartment. He was then jailed for nearly six months without the possibility of bail as the FBI investigated him for “domestic terrorism,” in part because of his Facebook posts criticizing police brutality. He was released earlier this month, after U.S. attorneys failed to prosecute him. For more, we speak with Rakem Balogun, who was released earlier this month after being jailed for nearly six months. And we speak with Malkia Cyril, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice and a Black Lives Matter Bay Area activist.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we end today’s show in Texas, where a black activist says he is the first person to be targeted and prosecuted under a secretive U.S. surveillance effort to track so-called black identity extremists. On December 12th, activist Rakem Balogun awoke to armed FBI agents storming his Dallas apartment. He was then jailed for nearly six months without the possibility of bail as the FBIinvestigated him for “domestic terrorism,” in part because of his Facebook posts criticizing police brutality. He was released earlier this month, after U.S. attorneys failed to prosecute him.

Balogun is a founding member of the groups Guerrilla Mainframe and the Huey P. Newton Gun Club. The groups coordinate meals for homeless people, organize youth picnics, run self-defense classes, protest police brutality and advocate for the rights of black gun owners. The Guardian reports investigators began tracking him after he was part of a 2015 protest against police brutality and that the FBI learned about the protest from a video on InfoWars, the far-right website run by Alex Jones.

Balogun’s arrest comes after a leaked August 2017 report from the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit revealed that the FBI claiming, quote, “it is very likely Black Identity Extremist perceptions of police brutality against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement and will very likely serve as justification for such violence.”

AMY GOODMAN: Civil liberties groups have slammed the FBI report, comparing the memo to the FBI’s covert COINTELPRO program of the 1950s, '60s and ’70s, Counterintelligence Program, which targeted the civil rights movement. Many have also noted the FBI memo was dated August 3rd—only a few days before the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists, Ku Klux Klan members and neo-Nazis killed an anti-racist protester, Heather Heyer, and injured dozens more. The FBI does not seem to be surveilling and targeting white people whopost violent things to social media, including multiple white men who have recently carried out mass school shootings. Dimitrios Pagourtzis, who shot dead eight students and two teachers last week at Santa Fe High School in Texas, had posted on his Facebook page a picture of a T-shirt reading “born to kill.” Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old man who killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine's Day had shared numerous posts on social media so disturbing, he was reported to the FBI multiple times, yet they never arrested him.

Well, for more, we go to Texas, where we’re joined by Rakem Balogun, who was released earlier this month after being held for nearly six months. In San Francisco, we’re joined by Malkia Cyril, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice and a Black Lives Matter Bay Area activist.

Let’s begin with Rakem. You were arrested December 12th. Describe what happened.

RAKEM BALOGUN: Well, pretty much, on December 12th, around 6 a.m. in the morning, me and my son was at home resting, when FBI agents rammed our door and immediately rushed us outside in our underwear, you know, under gunpoint, to be arrested and for me and my son to be separated and, overall, me be hauled off to jail.

AMY GOODMAN: And what did they tell you? On what grounds? What were you charged with?

RAKEM BALOGUN: I was charged with 922(g), which is prohibited possession of a firearm.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And did you have a license for the firearm?

RAKEM BALOGUN: Well, in the state of Texas, we don’t—you don’t need a license or even have to register firearms to have them legally. Long as, you know, you’re not a felon or considered a prohibited person, you’re able to have firearms within your home or your vehicle. And if it’s a long-barrel rifle, you’re able to open-carry that without any licenses or anything of that nature.

AMY GOODMAN: Why were you held for almost a year, Rakem, a half a year?

RAKEM BALOGUN: Well, the reason why I was held is because the FBI was pretty muchsurveillancing me for over two-and-a-half years as a domestic terrorist. And from surveillancing me for being a domestic terrorist, you know, they overreached and tried to use a previous charge from 2005 to say that this charge made me prohibited of having a firearm, which the elements of that charge actually didn’t. But the reason I was able to be detained for so long is because, when I initially got locked up, I went to a magistrate hearing with a magistrate judge for a bond, and the judge denied me bond based off of me using my First Amendment right to criticize police officers on Facebook.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how was your case ultimately resolved?...

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https://www.democracynow.org/2018/2/8/black_lives_matter_activist_muhiyidin_dbaha

kia

https://www.alternet.org/abortion-foes-hijack-racial-justice-black-genocide-argument-particularly-dangerous

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/16/cointelpro_2_fbi_targets_black_identity

cointelpro "extremist"

http://www.alternet.org/activism/st-louis-cops-taunt-demonstrators-chilling-chant-after-clearing-streets

Police officers in riot gear gathered alongside a St Louis boulevard late on Sunday night, chanting “whose street, our street”, a common refrain used by those protesting the acquittal of a white former officer in the death of a black man, after successfully clearing the street of demonstrators and onlookers.

Hundreds of officers had mobilized after another day of peaceful protests over the acquittal of Jason Stockley in the death of Anthony Lamar Smith. After nightfall there were reports of property damage and vandalism in the streets.

Authorities said police made more than 80 arrests, after people ignored orders to disperse after the peaceful protests. The St Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Mayor Lyda Krewson told reporters early on Monday “the days have been calm and the nights have been destructive”. Krewson said that was “unacceptable” and that “destruction cannot be tolerated”.

During the protests on Sunday night, several windows were broken at a Marriott hotel and at other nearby businesses. Concrete planters were knocked over and trash cans tossed into the street.

A judge ruled on Friday that Stockley, a 36-year-old who left the St Louis department and moved to Houston three years ago, was not guilty in the 2011 death of Smith.

Stockley shot Smith after Smith fled from Stockley and his partner on a high-speed chase as they tried to arrest him for a suspected drug deal. Stockley testified he felt endangered because he saw Smith holding a silver revolver when Smith backed his car toward the officers and sped away.

Prosecutors said Stockley planted a gun in Smith’s car after the shooting. The officer’s DNA was on the weapon but Smith’s wasn’t. Dashcam video from Stockley’s cruiser recorded him saying he was “going to kill this motherfucker”. Less than a minute later, he shot Smith five times.

Stockley’s lawyer dismissed the comment as “human emotions” during a dangerous pursuit. St Louis circuit judge Timothy Wilson, who said prosecutors didn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Stockley murdered Smith, said the statement could be ambiguous.

The ruling set off raucous protests throughout the weekend. Another peaceful demonstration was expected on Monday. Early in the day, a racially mixed crowd of more than 150 blocked a busy street on the western edge of downtown....

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econ update 3/17

ike hwy massive subside to car corps; ferg Mo one of 1st? golf course outside city, white flight?

milo y

on ~ blm cites

https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-johnson-803b7428

http://dolanconsultinggroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Dispelling_the_Myths_July18.pdf

http://rfkcenter.org/media/filer_public/7d/84/7d8409c1-588f-4163-b552-1f6428e685db/iachr_thematic_hearing_submission_-_excessive_use_of_force_by_police_against_black_americans.pdf

Executive Summary & Recommendations A. Executive Summary In 2015, police officers killed at least 1139 people in the United States.1 Over 25 percent of these victims of police violence were Black Americans2—a number grossly disproportionate to the share of the national population that is Black. 3 Statistically, Black Americans are significantly more likely to die at the hands of police than white, Latino, and Asian Americans.4 And among those people killed by the police, Black victims are more than twice as likely as white victims to have been unarmed at the time of their death.5

Pervasive and Disproportionate Police Violence against Black Americans Online databases documenting the deaths of those killed by police officers in the United States are helping to expose discrimination against Black Americans and increase pressure for urgent reforms. In the wake of high-profile police killings in the past three years, media outlets have begun to collate this information in order to paint a more complete (and heretofore unavailable) picture of police violence in the United States. Sites such as “Killed by Police” and databases published by the Washington Post and the Guardian provide invaluable information about those who have been killed and the circumstances of their deaths.14 These databases reveal the disparate treatment of Black Americans by the police. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Black Americans constituted 13.2% of the country’s population in 2014.15 The proportion of individuals killed by police in 2015 who were Black, however is far higher: At the end of 2015, the Guardian counted 1139 people killed by law enforcement that year, of whom 302, or 26.5%, were Black.16 Among unarmed victims, the discrepancy is even greater: Of the 223 unarmed people killed by the police during the same period, 75, or 33.6%, were Black.17 The Washington Post reported similar numbers: As of December 22, 2015, the newspaper counted 954 people fatally shot by the police in 2015, of whom 242, or 25.4%, were Black.18 Among the 88 unarmed people shot dead by police, 34 were Black: 38.6% of the total.19 All except one of these unarmed Black victims were men.20 While police violence affects Black women as well as men,21 the figures regarding the rates of killing of Black men are particularly stark: Although Black men constituted approximately 6% of the national population according to 2013 figures,22 they made up 25.5% of all victims of police violence in 2015 (according to the Guardian23), and 24.4% of those fatally shot by police 2015 as of December 22, 2015 (according to the Washington Post24)—a rate more than four times their share of the national population. Police violence not only affects people differently based on their race, but also based on their socioeconomic status, mental health, gender identity, and sexual orientation, among other characteristics. Intersecting forms of discrimination and structural biases compound one another, exacerbating rights violations. For example, cities where some of the highest-profile police killings have occurred in the past two years, such as Baltimore, Maryland, have long histories of economic inequality that falls along r

AN 1/1

NEWS & POLITICS

5 of the Most Cynical Libertarian Stealth Campaigns of 2015

Read the fine print and there's someone trying to make a buck.

...

Using Black Lives Matter to push Uber in New York City

Back in July, the head of the decidedly libertarian Silicon Valley goliath Uber, trotted out several members of New York’s black clergy class, including a member of Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, to sell the anti-regulation car service as good for black communities. The effort, headed up by Uber PR frontman and former Obama speechwriter David Plouffe was a fairly crass exercise in libertarian piggybacking off Black Lives Matter:

There’s a lot of discussion in this city by some leaders about progressive politics, economic equality and economic opportunity,” David Plouffe, Uber’s chief adviser, said. “What they’re doing is killing over 10,000 jobs.”

The press conference, which included one member of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, came one day after Plouffe met with Sharpton, reportedly to enlist Sharpton to oppose the growth cap. Sharpton, a friend and occasional political ally of Mayor Bill de Blasio, "has questions" about the bill’s impact on the city’s minorities, Crain’s reports.

Things took a turn for the worse when Brooklyn-based bishop Gerald Seabrooks, presumably reading off of Uber’s PR script, made the rather vulgar claim that police killings of black men were somehow a result of “lack of jobs”, jobs that Uber could in theory provide. “If [Eric] Garner had a job, today he would be alive,” Seabrooks said. “We’re talking economics here. We’re talking jobs.”

The article reads like a perfect parody of what happens when #BlackLivesMatter becomes #BlackLivesMatter™. The amount of cynicism it takes to parlay Eric Garner’s death into a commercial for a car service with a $50 billion market cap is truly a masterclass in marketing pap. The reality is, job status had nothing to do with Garner or any other African-Americans death at the hands of cops.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/fox-news-war-black-lives-matter-draws-real-blood

The Associated Press is reporting [3] that five people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Minneapolis were shot by a group of white supremacists [4] on Monday evening.

This is not a surprise.

The appeal and power of old-fashioned, overt and transparent white racism is growing in the United States. The prime example of this phenomenon is the rise of Donald Trump, but the GOP front-runner is but one data point in a longer trend. Since the election of Barack Obama, white supremacists have increased their enrollment of new members [5]. To that end, they have infiltrated Tea Party organizations [6] to recruit [7] racially resentful [8] and angry white people who are beginning to think about politics in terms of “white group interests.” [9]

While anxiety about ISIS dominates the American news, the FBI has in fact identified domestic terrorism from white, right-wing Christians as the greatest domestic terrorism threat to the United States [10] since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The right-wing news-entertainment media complex routinely uses eliminationist and violent rhetoric [11] to describe liberals and progressives. There, the implicit (and often explicit) narrative is that those people who are not members of the American right-wing are “traitors,” “un-American” and deserving of whatever violence comes to them. This is not empty talk, hyperbole or “playful” rhetoric designed to cheer on Republicans and build up morale before a presidential election. The right-wing media has actually weaponized its followers. The results are those black folks killed by Dylann Roof in Charleston, the women’s reproductive health doctor George Tiller [12], and the other victims of right-wing domestic terrorists shot dead at Sikh Temples, Jewish Community Centers, and elsewhere in the United States.

And as I wrote in an earlier essay here at Salon, Republican 2016 presidential primary candidates, as well as Fox News personalities such as Bill O’Reilly [13], have referred to members of the human rights advocacy group Black Lives Matter as “terrorists” or the new“Ku Klux Klan.” [14]

On Monday, I wrote a piece about how a Black Lives Matter protester was beaten upon [15] by Donald Trump supporters at a Birmingham, Alabama, rally over the weekend. Trump endorsed that thuggery and was proud that his supporters were so spirited. Adding to the grotesqueness of Donald Trump’s embrace of political violence, Robert Kiger, a fundraiser aligned with a group backing Trump, made the bizarre suggestion that he, as a white man, would be beaten up if he went into a black church [16]. Therefore, the violent attack on a Black Lives Matter protester at Trump’s rally was expected, understood and reasonable in Kiger’s twisted, demented and profoundly racist imagination.

Ultimately, when Black Lives Matter’s basic claim for equal human rights and dignity is met by racist slogans such as “All Lives Matter” — what is just a new and more polite version of “White Power!” — the question is no longer “if” white on black and brown racially motivated violence will take place, but rather when, and to what extent?

The 2016 presidential primary season has seen Republican candidates endorse internment camps for Syrian refugees, an enemies list for Muslims, making Christianity the official state religion of the United States, establishing a Gestapo-like force to eject “illegal immigrants” from the United States, and other actions that are unworthy of what is supposed to be the world’s greatest democracy.

Those men and women who seek the office of the president of the United States should be responsible, reflective, and intelligent individuals. While they are members of a political party, these individuals should also be ambassadors of the Common Good who first and foremost want to advance and protect the General Welfare of the United States and its citizens. To this point in the campaign, the Republican 2016 primary presidential candidates, as a group, have not shown that they are capable of honoring that obligation.

The presidential primary season is not over. There is still time for the Republican Party to rise to the occasion.

To that end, will the 2016 Republican primary presidential candidates denounce Donald Trump’s rhetoric and the violence of his supporters or condemn last evening’s shootings of the Black Lives Matter protesters by white supremacists?

Will this crop of potential GOP presidential nominees demand that their peers, as well as the right-wing Fox News propaganda machine, tone down their collective racist, nativist, xenophobic and violence-inducing rhetoric?

The answer is likely to be “no.” Instead, the Republican 2016 presidential candidates will ignore the violence and bigotry they have encouraged or instead play the “victim” of the “liberal media.” The right-wing Fox News echo chamber will also likely spin fictions of “liberal infiltrators” or “agent provocateurs” that are actually committing violence at Donald Trump rallies or shooting Black Lives Matter activists in Minneapolis.

As they have repeatedly done in recent American history, movement conservatives and their media will continue to strike a match in a room full of gasoline vapor and act surprised when it explodes.

This is their version of the American Way. It is an agenda that retreats from normal politics, consensus-building, and an embrace of conservatism not as a reasonable respect for traditions and standing norms, but, rather as an embrace of a radical, destructive, and reactionary behavior that leaves the United States less safe, less secure, less prosperous and weaker than it was before.

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mizzou coach (cancer?) backed team, walkout leverage top guys resigned

Tens of thousands of students at dozens of universities across the United States protested Wednesday against racism on campus in a day of action called #StudentBlackOut. The campuses included Yale University, Harvard University, Dixie State University in Utah, the University of California-Berkeley, Tufts University and Stanford University, where students held black balloons, which organizers said symbolize the weight and burden of being voiceless. The day of action was called for by the Black Liberation Collective, which issued a series of demands ahead of the mobilizations, including reparations in the form of free tuition for black and indigenous students, and school divestment from for-profit prison companies. Each university also issued a local set of demands, which range from increased funding for health services for students of color to renaming campus buildings commemorating leading proponents of slavery, such as residential dorm Calhoun College at Yale University, named after Vice President John Calhoun, one of the most prominent pro-slavery figures in history. At Princeton University in New Jersey, students occupied the president’s office, demanding cultural competency training for all staff, that the university rename buildings named after Woodrow Wilson, and that there be a cultural space dedicated specifically for black students. Inside the president’s office, Princeton students recalled how profits from the slave trade helped build the university itself.

In Gary, Indiana, the for-profit prison company GEO Group has dropped plans to build an 800-bed immigration detention facility after widespread resistance from the group the Northwest Indiana Federation and Black Lives Matter Northwest Indiana-Gary. On Tuesday, Gary City Council members applauded when they heard GEO Group had withdrawn its zoning request to build the facility.