State Violence

Supreme Court Rules Against Workers In Arbitration Case

May 22, 2018 Nitasha Tiku, Wired.com Educate! Class Struggle, Labor, Repression, State Violence, Supreme Court, Workers

ON MONDAY, THE Supreme Court slowed recent momentum to give workers—including many in the tech sector—the right to a day in court. The Supreme Court case centered around clauses in employment contracts that require employees to resolve disputes through arbitration, and preclude them from joining with others to file class-action lawsuits. In a 5-to-4 decision, the court ruled that those clauses are enforceable under federal law, which means companies can prohibit employees from banding together both privately or in court. Such binding-arbitration clauses are widely used at technology companies, and critics say they helped allow sexual harassment to flourish by hiding complaints. More recently, some firms have taken steps to limit the practice. Uber last week said it would eliminate arbitration agreements for employees, riders, and drivers with sexual misconduct claims.

“Killing Gaza” Captures Culture Of Resistance

May 21, 2018 Max Blumenthal, Electronicintifada.net Educate! Gaza, Massacres, Palestine, State Violence

Westerners witnessed Israel’s massacre of protesters at the culmination of Gaza’s Great March of Return on 14 May mostly through bytes of imagery transmitted onto flat screens and smartphones. They saw montages of horse-drawn carts carrying bloodied bodies and zig-zagging through thick clouds of teargas, flashes of young men charging at the high-tech fences and militarized fortifications that hold their lives in a soul-sapping stasis, rescue workers overwhelmed by the sheer number of casualties, and grainy footage of snipers in olive drab hunting their prey with laser range finders and terminating 62 lives with the flick of a trigger.

Police Union Is Lobbying To Expand Powers To Tase People Who Don’t Pose A Threat

May 21, 2018 By Michael Arria, Inthesetimes.com Educate! Lobbying, Police, Police violence, State Violence

The San Francisco Police Officers Association is aggressively pushing a ballot measure that would allow police to use tasers on members of the public even if they aren't violently resisting. If passed, the city’s police officers would be able to electrocute people who pose no physical threat or resist arrest as a result of mental illness. Last November, San Francisco’s Police Commission approved tasers for the city’s police. This March, it finalized a policy for how those tasers should be used. That policy, which is backed by Police Chief Bill Scott and San Francisco Mayor Mark Farrell, requires police to implement de-escalation tactics before using their tasers. However, the San Francisco Police Officers Association, with a membership of roughly 2,200, believes that these criteria are too narrow.

Fatal Encounters: 97 Deaths Point To Pattern Of Border Agent Violence Across America

May 4, 2018 Sarah Macaraeg, Theguardian.com Educate! Border, Immigration, State Violence, Undocumented

In the last 15 years, agents with Customs and Border Protection have used deadly force in states up to 160 miles from the border, from Maine to California. For six long years the family of Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez have been caught in a legal saga seeking justice for the 16-year-old who was killed by a US border patrol agent who fired 16 times from Arizona into Mexico. Ending criminal proceedings that have dragged on since 2012, a jury last week cleared agent Lonnie Swartz of second-degree murder and could not agree on a verdict for two lesser charges of manslaughter. The shooting has compelled judges up to the US supreme court to deliberate whether the American government can be sued in civil court for wrongful deaths on Mexican soil – placing the incident, and eight other cross-border fatal shootings, at the center of scrutiny surrounding the use of force by agents in response to allegedly thrown rocks.

Israel: Arms Embargo Needed As Military Unlawfully Kills And Maims Gaza Protesters

April 30, 2018 Staff, Amnesty.org Create! Gaza, Israel, Nationalism, Palestine, Protests, State Violence

Israel is carrying out a murderous assault against protesting Palestinians, with its armed forces killing and maiming demonstrators who pose no imminent threat to them, Amnesty International revealed today, based on its latest research, as the “Great March of Return” protests continued in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military has killed 35 Palestinians and injured more than 5,500 others – some with what appear to be deliberately inflicted life-changing injuries – during the weekly Friday protests that began on 30 March. Amnesty International has renewed its call on governments worldwide to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel following the country’s disproportionate response to mass demonstrations along the fence that separates the Gaza Strip from Israel. “For four weeks the world has watched in horror as Israeli snipers and other soldiers, in full-protective gear and behind the fence, have attacked Palestinian protesters with live ammunition and tear gas.

Brazil Gov’t: ‘Probable’ Police Involvement In Franco’s Murder

April 19, 2018 Staff, Telesurtv.net; Telesurtv.net Educate! Brazil, Latin America, Racism, State Violence

Brazil's government declared Monday that human rights activist Marielle Franco was “very likely” killed by “militias,” according to Minister of Public Security Raul Jungmann. “There are basically one or two promising leads: I would say that in one of them, investigators have moved forward significantly. The most probable hypothesis is the involvement of Rio de Janeiro's militias,” said Jungmann in an interview with local radio CBN. Militias refer to criminal groups whose members are former police officers or active and corrupted officers, controlling large parts of the city. They function as paramilitary groups and compete with other drug-trafficking groups over the control of favelas, affecting primarily the marginalized populations living there.

Palestinians Will Not Cease To Demand Their Rights

April 1, 2018 Basem Naim, Counterpunch. Resist! Human Rights, Palestine, State Violence

The West has long been enamored with the specter of passive resistance with tens of thousands of unarmed demonstrators facing off against a heavily armed and ruthless force in pursuit of justice. Today hundreds of thousands of peaceful unarmed demonstrators marched towards the rim of the sealed off Gaza Strip. They got no closer than several hundred yards from Israeli snipers before shots rang out leaving hundreds of Palestinians injured and at least ten dead. This is not a movie. It is Gaza. It is Palestine.

Israel Arrests Child With One-Third Of His Skull Missing

February 28, 2018 Ali Abunimah, Electronicintifada.net Educate! Israel, Nationalism, State Violence

Israeli occupation forces raided the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh in the predawn hours of Monday in the latest episode of Israel’s premeditated revenge campaign against the Tamimi family. They detained Muhammad Fadel Tamimi, the 15-year-old boy shot in the head with a rubber-coated metal bullet at close range and seriously injured by Israeli forces in December. Bassem Tamimi, the father of detained teenager Ahed Tamimi, wrote on Facebook Monday morning that a large force of Israeli soldiers armed with weaponized bulldozers and skunk water raided homes in the village during the night and detained 10 people. Six of those arrested were children, the youngest aged 14, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society. They included Muhammad’s 17-year-old brother Tamim. Bassem said that Muhammad Fadel Tamimi’s detention put the child’s life at risk.

Palestinian ‘Beaten To Death’ In Custody By 20 Israeli Troops

February 24, 2018 Staff, Telesurtv.net Educate! Israel, Occupation, Palestine, Repression, State Violence

Security camera footage shared online and picked up by local media showed the soldiers hitting the 33-year-old repeatedly in the head, stomach and back. A Palestinian man died Thursday after a brutal confrontation with Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank that the Palestinian Authority condemned as a "cold-blooded execution" after security camera footage showed at least 20 soldiers beating and kicking the man after being shot. In the footage posted on social media and carried by Israeli news sites, the troops could be seen kicking and striking a man shortly after shooting him, identified by Palestinian officials as Yassin Omar Serda, after detaining him in the town of Jericho. The Palestinian Information Ministry said about 20 soldiers had administered a "heavy beating" to Serda, especially on his stomach and back. "The Information Ministry views (his) martyrdom ... shortly after his arrest a cold-blooded execution," it said.

Argentina’s Government Tries To Suppress Anti-Austerity Protests

February 22, 2018 Staff, Telesurtv.net Resist! Anti-Austerity, Argentina, Protests, Repression, State Violence

Argentina’s main worker unions, social movements and human rights groups have planned a massive protest in Buenos Aires to oppose President Mauricio Macri’s economic policies, layoffs, the recent pension reforms, judicial persecution of social leaders, and other intended labor reforms. A series of actions and mobilizations against the austerity measures started on Feb. 15. The various groups, including the General Confederation of Labor (3 million members) and the Argentine Workers’ Central Union (1.5 million members) and the Association of State Workers (roughly 250,000 members) will arrive downtown at noon on Wednesday. Transport union leader Hugo Moyano, will address the crowd. The union called Camioneros (or truckers) has roughly 200,000 members and is reported to have the capacity to paralyze the country.

2018 Begins With US Police Reign Of Terror

February 2, 2018 By Niles Niemuth, Wsws.org Educate! Police, Police State, Repression, State Violence

While largely ignored by the mass media, the reign of terror by police officers continues to rage across the United States. The entire state apparatus, from local cops to immigration agents, has been unleashed by the Trump administration to beat, maim and kill with impunity. During a speech to hundreds of uniformed officers last July, Trump urged the police to not be “too nice” and to treat detainees “rough.” The Justice Department has at the same time ended the toothless pretense of federal oversight over a handful of police departments put in place by the Obama administration. In the year since Trump was sworn in as president, at least 1,223 people have been killed by police. Since the beginning of 2018, according to killedbypolice.net, 3.5 people have been killed on average every day.

Honduran Anti-Fraud Protesters Clamor For Justice As State Killings Continue

January 26, 2018 Sandra Cuffe, Towardfreedom.com Educate! Honduras, Protests, State Violence

Virgilio Yareth Ávila loved to sing. The 16-year-old high school student also played drums at his church. That’s where he was headed on a Monday afternoon last month. Ávila left the simple family home and walked up to the gravel road to cross the highway that bisects the town of Agua Blanca Sur, 10 miles south of El Progreso, Honduras. Minutes later, gunshots rang out. Ávila’s mother started running up the road after her son. When she reached the highway, she found one of her older sons weeping in anguish. Police had opened fire on residents blockading the highway as part of ongoing nationwide protests against election fraud. Ávila had been shot in the head. “He was still breathing, but in my heart I knew I was going to lose him,” Ávila’s mother told Toward Freedom. As she approached, she asked police not to shoot.

Coalition Seeks To Hold Police Accountable For Use Of Force

January 3, 2018 Wakíƞyaƞ Waánataƞ (Matt Remle), Lastrealindians.com Create! Activists, Police, State Violence

Olympia, WA – On December 28th, 2017 a broad coalition of police accountability activists turned in over 355,000 signatures for ballot measure I-940, known as De-escalate Washington that if passed would allow police to be prosecuted for unjustified use of deadly force, to the Washington Secretary of State to qualify for consideration. The effort was driven by family members who have lost loved ones to police violence in Washington State, largely from the Native and African American communities. The Puyallup Tribe, in particular, was a driving force behind I-940. Last year, Puyallup Tribal citizen Jacqueline Salyers was murdered by Tacoma police. Salyers was pregnant at the time of the shooting.

Twitter & FB Reward Military Violence Over Small-Time Threats

January 3, 2018 By Eleanor Goldfield, Artkillingapathy.com Educate! Facebook, Military, Social Media, State Violence, Twitter

In December 2017, Twitter released new rules against violence and physical harm. Included in those rules is a focus on “Accounts that affiliate with organizations that use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes…This policy does not apply to military or government entities…” As an example then, when the U.S. dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb in our arsenal (sickly nicknamed the Mother of All Bombs or MOAB) on Afghanistan, corporate media couldn’t get out their praise fast enough. Be it referring to Donald Trump as presidential or the Fox News show Fox & Friends playing footage of the bomb dropping to Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue,” the clear cut and grotesque promotion of large scale violence was blatant. And according to Twitter, totally fine.

Beyond Prisons: Crisis At McCormick Correctional Institution

November 1, 2017 Brian Sonenstein, shadowproof.com Petitions and Online Actions Prisoner rights, Prisons, State Violence

By Brian Sonenstein for Shadow Proof - Journalist Jared Ware interviewed people incarcerated at McCormick Correctional Institution in South Carolina regarding the ongoing crisis there for a special edition of Beyond Prisons. McCormick has been on lockdown for weeks. At the end of September, incarcerated people reported officials were withholding drinking water and engaging in excessive force after a water main broke outside the facility. For three days, people on the inside reported they did not have drinkable water. This caused tensions in the facility to boil over into multiple incidents, which were met with more repression by prison staff. Incarcerated people feel staff are intentionally trying to provoke them to justify worsening brutality and repressive conditions. One man was reportedly shot with rubber bullets multiple times after leaving the shower. He has been transferred to another facility after he was taken the prison’s medical center. On Monday, October 30, advocates reported people had briefly taken over the restrictive housing unit and set fires before returning to their cells. Few news outlets have covered the crisis from the perspective of people on the inside, instead relying exclusively on reports from corrections officials, who claim the violence was a product of unruly prisoners and staff shortages. This claim has been used to justify the lockdown as well as the presence of riot squads and officers from nearby prisons.

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