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Bratton-de Blasio Back Off Machine Guns, Create Protest Task Force

February 4, 2015 Rocco Parascandola, www.nydailynews.com , ,
On Monday NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton announced a new heavily armed, machine gun carrying special force that would be used to fight civil disturbances and protests as part of an anti-terrorism unit. The article below reports they have backed off from the machine guns, no doubt because there was a lot of protest, but are still planning a new task force to respond to protests. According to the NYPD the task force will “handle the demonstrations and protests... respond to any sort of civil disorder. They'll also be able to respond to citywide mobilizations.” The announcement of the task forces was vague in how they would handle protests and what their special training would involve. Mayor di Blasio and Commissioner Bratton need to be forthright about the tactics they will be using. What kind of special training will this special task force have? How will they be armed? What role will infiltrators and disruptors play? Will police instigate violence and property damage? How will they protect the constitutional rights of protesters? The terrible record of the NYPD demands transparency. Take action to demand transparency and that your constitutional rights be protected...

New NYPD Unit Will Get Machine Guns To Police Protesters

January 30, 2015 Jen Chung, www.gothamist.com ,
Police Commissioner Bratton made the announcement earlier today at an event hosted by the Police Foundation at the Mandarin Oriental. He said that the new 350 cop unit, called The Strategic Response Group, will be dedicated to "disorder control and counterterrorism protection capabilities" against attacks like the hostage situation in Sydney, which the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence John Miller said was an inevitability in NYC. This new squad will be used to investigate and combat terrorist plots, lone wolf terrorists, and... protests. "It is designed for dealing with events like our recent protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris," Bratton said, according to CBS. "They’ll be equipped and trained in ways that our normal patrol officers are not," Bratton explained. "They’ll be equipped with all the extra heavy protective gear, with the long rifles and machine guns. . .

Rev. Billy: Radical Forgiveness In Grand Slander Station

January 26, 2015 Rev. Billy Talen and the Stop Shopping Choir, www.PopularResistance.org , , , ,
When I found in the papers that I “attacked a policeman” – I looked at my four year old daughter Lena and then I went to the window and looked at my neighborhood. I have police families who live nearby and they are reading that I attacked one their own? Even without witnesses, videotape evidence or even the willingness of the District Attorney to press charges - they would endanger me in this way. And now Lena has nightmares… It’s a wonder that I’ve been an activist for so long without this kind entrapment. Maybe the humor and music in our approach to protest has protected me. Ultimately, I’ll grow from this. Our singing activism will be braver.

#BlackLivesMatter Interrupts Capitol Hill Lunch

January 25, 2015 Christine Conetta and Dana Liebelson, www.huffingtonpost.com , , ,
Protesters interrupted lunch in a Capitol Hill cafeteria Wednesday, holding a "die-in" to honor Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager who was killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer. About 50 protesters congregated in a U.S. House of Representatives office cafeteria in Washington, D.C., chanting "Black Lives Matter" and taking over the space in front of the cash registers. They held signs reading "outlaw racial profiling" and "stop jump outs" and stayed on the floor for about four and a half minutes, recalling the four and a half hours that Brown's body remained face down in the street after he was shot. The protesters included Jewish, Christian and Muslim clergy and people of faith.

The Black Panthers, Revisited In Light Of #BlackLivesMatter

January 25, 2015 Stanley Nelson and Laurens Grant, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/opinion/the-black-panthers-revisited.html , ,
Founded in 1966 in Oakland, Calif., to combat police violence, the Black Panther Party and its story are a key part of our nation’s still-complicated racial narrative. When it was conceived, the Black Panther Party called for “an immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black people.” Relying on the right to bear arms contained in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, the Panthers organized armed citizen patrols to monitor police behavior. It was a controversial approach to an intractable problem, but it provoked important debate. Of course, the police violence and misconduct that inspired the founding of the Black Panther Party 50 years ago have not gone away. In just the last six months, the deaths of Michael Brown, John Crawford III, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice – and the lack of indictment of police officers for any of their deaths — have shaken black communities to the core. But today, unlike in the 1960s, there are no shootouts between protesters and police.

Thousands Rally Across The Nation To #ReclaimMLK

January 20, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , ,
Over 50 Cities Nationwide Rally Against Police Abuse and For Racial Justice on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Thousands of people across the country took to the streets to reclaim the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a radical who sought national transformation, not just voting rights for all but an end to militarism, challenged capitalism and an end to racism. Ferguson Action wrote “From here on, MLK weekend will be known as a time of national resistance to injustice.” Thousands of people took to the streets on Monday rebuking what they say is the "sanitized" version of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and calling to restore the legacy of a man whose protests, like their own, were never "convenient." The nationwide actions marked the birthday of the civil rights leader in a year that saw renewed calls for racial justice in the face of persistent inequality, discrimination, and police targeting of communities of color. Capping off almost a week of demonstrations, organizational meetings, and other pledges of resistance—all done with the intent to "Reclaim MLK"—grassroots coalition Ferguson Action issued a specific call for Monday: "Do as Martin Luther King would have done and resist the war on Black Lives with civil disobedience and direct action. Take the streets, shut it down, walk, march, and whatever you do, take action."

How Boston Activists Shut Down I-93

January 17, 2015 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org , , , ,
Activists protesting what they call "police and state violence against black people" chained themselves to concrete-filled barrels and blocked a busy Boston-area highway at the height of the Thursday morning commute. The protesters north of the city chained themselves together using plastic pipes. A total of 29 people were arrested at the two protest sites. A statement explaining the protest: "In the past 15 years, law enforcement officers in Boston have killed Remis M. Andrews, Darryl Dookhran, Denis Reynoso, Ross Baptista, Burrell “Bo” Ramsey-White, Mark Joseph McMullen, Manuel “Junior” DaVeiga, Marquis Barker, Stanley Seney, Luis Gonzalez, Bert W. Bowen, Eveline Barros-Cepeda, Daniel Furtado, LaVeta Jackson, Nelson Santiago, Willie L. Murray Jr., Rene Romain, Jose Pineda, Ricky Bodden, Carlos M. Garcia, and many more people of color. We mourn and honor all these lives. We must remember, Ferguson is not a faraway Southern city. Black men, women, and gender-nonconforming people face disproportionately higher risk of profiling, unjust incarceration, and death. Police violence is everywhere in the United States. A comment on the inconvenience " Disruptions are temporary. Structural racism in this country is ever-present. These disruptions don’t occur in a vacuum. Context informs them. To get that many people to disrupt life all across America means that the legal, less risky channels for addressing one’s grievances have been exhausted.

Newsletter: What It Means To #ReclaimMLK

January 16, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , , , , ,
This week, in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, people around the country are organizing actions to #ReclaimMLK as the true person he was; one that recognized the roots of the crises being experienced and who made connections between many issues. Dr. King was a critic of capitalism, racism and imperialism. He said: “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” Dr. King called for a “revolution of values,” meaning a shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. A new generation of young activists is embracing the radical Dr. King and rejecting the watered-down version presented in major media. We have no doubt that Dr. King would be part of the movement for social, economic and environmental justice. Many of us are already working on the issues of Dr. King, in many ways we have already reclaimed him.

#ReclaimMLK Protests Begin On Rev. King’s Real Birthday

January 15, 2015 Staff, www.PopularResisitance.org , , , , , ,
The #BlackLivesMatter movement is seeking to reclaim the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr in protests across the nation with the hash tag #ReclaimMLK. People are not focusing on his "I Have a Dream" speech but instead on his challenge to the United States as the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world" as well as his criticism of capitalism. When King was murdered he was preparing to lead an occupation of Washington, DC -- Resurrection City -- as part of the Poor People's Campaign. King had already shown himself to be a powerful organizer and mobilizer of people in the Civil Rights movement, but at the end of his life he had taken on other big causes and was mobilizing people to challenge capitalism and militarism. Since his death both of those issues have gotten worse and much of the world and many thousands in the United States are organizing to challenge them. King described three interlocking evils: "the sickness of racism, excessive materialism and militarism."

Obama’s Police Task Force: A Police Love Fest

January 14, 2015 Kymone Freeman, www.PopularResistance.org , , ,
Richard Beary President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police told a personal story of how as a child he saw Vietnam Veterans returning home from War only to be called baby killers or spit on. He compared that with the treatment of police officers in general in the current political climate. Sam Walker, Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska-Omaha went further to say that, “Skin Color doesn’t matter. If you have a bad department, its a bad department.” The latter notion was openly disputed by Jennifer Eberhardt, Associate Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and recent recipient of the famed MacArthur fellowship’s “Genius grant” who offered her award winning study on how race alters perception especially in the criminal justice context and stressed the need for Implicit Bias Training. Sherrilyn Ifill President and Director-Counsel NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund said it best, “When a cop rolls up and shoots a 12 year old kid in 2 seconds, then something is wrong.”

Coffins Brought To DC Police To Protest Police Killings

January 13, 2015 Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , , ,
The Washington, DC based Hands Up Coalition DC along with Witness Against Torture delivered coffins at its weekly 'Justice Monday Vigil' to the US Department of Justice and the DC Metro Police Headquarters on January 12, 4:00 PM. The two groups brought coffins marking the deaths of three African-Americans killed by police to the doors of the Justice Department. The coffins highlighted the deaths of two mentally ill African Americans recently killed in police custody, Tanisha Anderson and Matthew Ajibade. The protest honored the life of unarmed Emmanuel Okutuga killed by police. After marching and rallying at the US Department of Justice the groups marched to the DC Metropolitan Police Headquarters. Members of Witness Against Torture went inside the building and obstructed the entrance 28 minutes, in recognition that a person of color is killed by police or vigilantes every 28 hours in the United States. They recited the names of dozens of victims of police violence and spoke the words of men indefinitely detained in Guantánamo Bay calling for justice. Activists from the Hands Up Coalition DC stood outside chanting and singing.

Albuquerque Police Officers Face Murder Charges

January 12, 2015 Staff, www.inquisitr.com , ,
Two Albuquerque police officers are facing murder charges in the shooting death of a homeless man. Dominique Perez and Keith Sandy are accused of police brutality in the March 2013 death of 38-year-old James Boyd. According to reports, criminal charges will be filed against both Perez and Sandy on Monday. In March 2013, the Albuquerque Police Department responded to reports that a homeless man was camping in a restricted zone. As Boyd refused to leave the area, the officers eventually used a flash-bang grenade and a police dog to force him to comply. As reported by KRQU, Boyd continued to refuse the officers’ demands. Perez and Sandy then opened fire. The Albuquerque police officers shot the homeless man a total of three times. Boyd was transported to a local hospital, where he was later pronounced dead. As one of the officers was wearing a helmet camera, the grisly scene was captured on film. The resulting footage went viral within days.

Martin Luther King Friend & Photographer Was FBI Informant

January 11, 2015 Chris McGreal, www.theguardian.com , , , ,
Martin Luther King must have imagined that the man with the camera so often at his side was doing no more than recording history. But it has been revealed that Ernest Withers – who was on hand to capture King riding newly desegregated buses and the shock of the civil rights leader's allies immediately after his murder – was also an FBI informer. The double life of one of the most celebrated photographers of the civil rights era was exposed by the Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis, which reported that Withers passed on photographs to the FBI along with names and background information about activists and details of schedules.

Cleveland Public Safety Dept Official Resigns Over Tamir Rice Killing

January 11, 2015 Reagan Ali for Counter Current News, www.mintpressnews.com , , , , , ,
In a resignation letter obtained by the Northeast Ohio Media Group, dated December 17th, former fiscal manager Shawn Gidley explained that he once believed that his job “was making the City of Cleveland a better place to live.” The City of Cleveland’s fiscal manager for the Public Safety Department has just issued his resignation, citing his inability to work for a city that refuses to prosecute Officer Timothy Loehmann. Loehmann fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice on November 22nd of last year. Tamir had been “armed” only with a toy BB-gun, and had never aimed it at the officer who virtually shot him on sight, in spite of the 911 caller stating repeatedly that Rice was a juvenile and that the “gun” was likely a toy. In a resignation letter obtained by the Northeast Ohio Media Group, dated December 17th, former fiscal manager Shawn Gidley explained that he once believed that his job “was making the City of Cleveland a better place to live.” Gidley explains that the shooting of Tamir Rice, and the refusal of the City of Cleveland to prosecute him, as well as “years of mismanagement, poor leadership and improper training in the Public Safety Department” led to his disillusionment with the city administration and have “ended with a child paying the ultimate price.”

Judge Orders NYPD To Release Records On X-Ray Vans

January 11, 2015 Michael Grabell, www.propublica.org , ,
A state judge has ordered the New York City Police Department to release records on a secretive program that uses unmarked vans equipped with X-ray machines to detect bombs. The ruling follows a nearly three-year legal battle by ProPublica, which had requested police reports, training materials, contracts and any health and safety tests on the vans under the state's Freedom of Information Law. ProPublica filed the request as part of its investigation into the proliferation of security equipment, including airport body scanners, that expose people to ionizing radiation, which can mutate DNA and increase the risk of cancer. Richard Daddario, then the NYPD's deputy commissioner of counterterrorism, told the court in 2013 that releasing the documents would hamper the department's ability to conduct operations and endanger the lives of New Yorkers. Disclosing them, he said, would "permit those seeking to evade detection to conform their conduct to the times, places and methods that avoid NYPD presence and are thus most likely to yield a successful attack." But Supreme Court Judge Doris Ling-Cohan called the NYPD's argument "mere speculation" and "patently insufficient" to outweigh the public's right to know.
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