Beyond appalling.
Please post useful links, pics, videos. I will update this post with more.
Video of demonstration, police firing teargas and rubber bullets.
Ferguson Is 60 Percent Black. Virtually All Its Cops Are White.
Google News Realtime coverage of Ferguson
It might just be the internet because historically this has been going on a very long time. It’s depressing, it’s awful. I don’t think I can even imagine the amount of pain, anger and grief black Americans have felt throughout the years.
On Twitter, people from Gaza and the West Bank are sending advice for the demonstrators in Ferguson about defending against tear gas. This is real solidarity.
Links: 1, 2 and 3
Yeah, I lean towards it always being that way, but I think that the ever increasing militarization of the police since 9-11 has increased the level of violence. POC have always been the target of cops but I don’t think this many people have been blatantly murdered since the Jim Crow days.
Alright, one more and I’ll stop (for now). A moving piece from Stacia L. Brown on parenting as a POC in America when so many young POC are killed so young:
BTW, Anonymous doxxed the police chief of St. Louis, and they found out that he has a Confederate flag in his house.
Okay, as a POC, I am both angry and scared. Luckily for me, I’m a woman and lighter skinned, so I will get racist crap sometimes, I am less likely to get shot, at least where I live. I just hope when/if I have biological children and if they happen to be boys, things will be better. Then again, they’ll probably be mixed race, like me, so maybe they’ll be lucky in the genetics department.
And just having that thought depresses me, I don’t want to be hoping that my children ‘pass’ so they’re less likely to be harassed in this day and age.
An unarmed black man should not signal danger. Especially when we have armed white people walking around with shotguns bitching about their lack of freedom to carry said shotguns. *has nephews that are still small and worries what will happen when they grow up*
St Louis alderman Antonio French has been arrested and jailed while live tweeting the protests. http://reason.com/blog/2014/08/14/ferguson-police-may-have-arrested-st-lou
Alderman, for those who don’t know, is the same as city council member.
Here’s the only discussion I see of the case on the front page of r/mensrights:
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/2dhnnj/legit_question_regarding_the_demonstrations_in/
Wait, wait, wait, I am not familiar with the law in St. Louis, but what are these people being arrested for, exactly? Last I checked we still have free press, so on what grounds are the reporters and French being arrested?
Unlawful assembly. The cops have decided people shouldn’t protest after sundown. Why you should need a permission to protest when the first amendment explicitly states a right to assembly is beyond me. I guess French wasn’t in a free speech zone :/
I have no words. I’ve just got nothing.
Reporters are being arrested because their presence is seen as inimical to “safe” police operations. In other words, the St. Loius police department is actively censoring them so that they don’t face any repercussions for their brutality. It’s also why they have helicopters right now circling over all of Ferguson.
Certainly a lot of racist discourses (particularly Islamophobic ones, for obvious reasons) in the US gained prominence after 9/11, but the police has always been a brutal, violent force in this country (and basically everywhere else, too) – long before 9/11.
To elaborate on my earlier comment: the foundation of law enforcement in the US has always been white supremacist. Cops in America are literally agents of genocide. We often talk about how genocide only happens via imperialism, or that it refers only to the sudden mass killing of an entire group, but that’s wrong.
The mass murder aspect of genocide is simply its most extreme form: genocide exists in “lesser” forms as well, such as trans-generational socioeconomic exploitation, slavery, unrelenting violence against individuals belonging to that group, cultural erasure, narratives of dehumanization, and more. Genocide attacks the foundations of a people’s harmonious and peaceful existence.
And so society actively commits genocide against all black POC. There are very few and often zero safe places for black people. Black men are constantly targeted, profiled, and murdered by cops. This is how cops have always treated black POC, and unfortunately it is a cornerstone of US history. The US is actively built on genocide and supports those like them, such as Israel and South Africa during the South African Apartheid.
I’m just fuckin heartsick right now. In these last two years we’ve had so many black men and women killed by police and white people, but of course it’s black people protesting this that are at fault.
Jonathan Ferrell
Renisha McBride
Michael Brown
Eric Garner
Trayvon Martin
John Crawford
and I’m pretty sure that the list goes on
Also, I’d really like to reiterate this
It’s this vs this.
links borked
this vs this
Image linked for relevance
http://www.eiu.edu/~eiutps/billofrights_void.jpg
There’s no way to tell what’s actually going on in Ferguson. Reading Twitter feeds yields unconfirmed or even false information. Getting solid and reliable information is impossible. Mainstream reporters should’ve been on the ground covering this story days ago. The media has completely failed here, and it’s shameful.
[CN: rape]
And of course, we can’t forget rape as a tool of genocide. It’s no coincidence that black WOC comrpise a large number of victims. And black trans WOC even moreso.
I’ve also had this song on repeat all day because fuck this bullshit
Here’s a good comprehensive article about police brutality and misconduct
http://www.mintpressnews.com/us-police-murdered-5000-innocent-civilians-since-911/172029/
A lot of those tweets come with photographic evidence though.
Also, a lot of the tweets have actually come from local news stations. For example, the Antonio French has been confirmed by several news outlets.
@ shadow, pretty off topic, and off color:
http://latest.com/2014/07/more-boobs-less-guns-open-carry-activists-complain-over-skanky-topless-libtards-ruining-their-protest/
It is legal to carry long guns openly in Texas. It is legal to take off one’s shirt, regardless of gender, in Texas.
A few Austin women decided to bring some more boobs to the boobfest. Bless ‘ em.
Aren’t the local cops actively trying to keep mainstream news reporters out? That’s what I’ve been hearing.
Ooooo, those Open Carry Texas people make my blood boil. They’re allowed to run around without fear of any sort of repercussions from law enforcement. The Bundy Ranch…debacle was also evidence for this. Certain portions of America deemed that idiot a fucking hero. If Bundy were a POC, America would declare it the fucking END OF DAYS. POC, however, don’t even need to be armed to be deemed suspicious. Existing in America is enough to get them killed or arrested.
Also, did you guys see the news about the 14 year old kid in NYC I think who the cops tackled and took down when he was quite literally holding a damn puppy? Watch out, that child is armed with a puppy. Clearly he’s dangerous.
@blahlistic
That is awesome, and on any other thread I would say thanks for sharing, but not on this one. Please don’t go off topic on this thread. And please don’t try and bring levity on to this thread. This is too important, and too raw to too many people for off topic posts not to be dismissive