Violence

Dear White People: Our State Of Emergency

November 21, 2014 Dennis Trainor, www.acronymtv.wordpress.com Educate! Ferguson, Michael Brown, Police abuse, Violence

As you know, a preemptive State of Emergency has been called in Ferguson, Missouri as the country waits to hear if officer Darren Wilson will be charged with the murder of Michael Brown. Let’s focus on another State of Emergency for a moment. Like me, you are the beneficiary of unearned white privilege. I’m not going to insult your intelligence, nor should you insult other members of this club we were born into, by cataloguing the laundry list of data that point to the clear fact that, taken as a whole, people who are or who present as white, experience privileges that are regularly denied to people who do not present as white. It is a fact. Deal with it. It is from that place of privilege that you and I will watch events unfold when the grand jury comes back with, as all indications seem to point, something less than a murder charge for another member of the white privilege club, Officer Darren Wilson.

Transgender Day Of Remembrance: Stop The Deaths

November 20, 2014 Maya Dusenberry, www.feministing.com Resist! discrimination, Transgender, Violence

Today is the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance when we memorialize those who were killed by anti-trans violence in the past year. Here is this year’s list of those we’ve lost and here is where you can find an eventhappening in your area. As Morgan Collado wrote at Autostraddle, trans women of color dominate the list of lives lost — this year and every year — and simply spending one day honoring them after they’ve been killed is not enough. “The names of trans women of color will be in the mouths of the queer community after they’ve been murdered,” Collado wrote, “but support for us while we are still alive is sporadic at best.” Last year at Jacobin, Samantha Allen echoed that idea that remembering must be paired with “interrogating the present” and imagining a different future. She asked the vital question: “How could we shorten this list of the dead? What kind of politics would that goal require?”

Contact Mexican Embassy: Justice For Ayotzinapa

October 23, 2014 #YoSoy132, www.popularresistance.org Petitions and Online Actions Ayotzinapa, Students, Violence

We scholars, students and academics from Mexico and elsewhere who live and work outside of Mexico join the voices of concern and distress for the violence that prevails in Mexico. The events that took place in Iguala on September 26, 2014 are one of the most deplorable moments in the country’s history. There are no words to express the horror and fury that we feel at the murder of six people, three of them students at the “Raúl Isidro Burgos” Normal School in Ayotzinapa (one of them by the most savage of means), and by the disappearance, at the hands of the government and the local police, of another 43 students. We express our solidarity with the demands for justice being expressed and we share in the pain of the families, friends and colleagues of the Ayotzinapa students. We are profoundly indignant at the magnitude of the events and the fact that the Mexican government has offered contradictory statements and presented results that are not only meaningless but actually quite worrisome: the irregularities of the investigation grow by the day without shedding any light on the capture of the perpetrators or the whereabouts of the 43 students and, instead, more mass graves are discovered and many more bodies found.

‘We Want Them Alive:’ Search For Mexico 43

October 21, 2014 Andalusia Knoll, www.wagingnonviolence.org Educate! Mexico, Students, Violence

The flames started to engulf the municipal palace of Chilpancingo in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero as the rage built within the students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College who, for over two weeks, have received no answers concerning the whereabouts of 43 of their fellow students. The last time the group of missing students were seen was in the custody of Mexican municipal police forces, who detained them after opening fire on their caravan in an attack that killed six people and injured dozens more. This massacre and subsequent disappearance of the students, known as “normalistas,” has sparked an international movement demanding that the 43 students be found alive. But it has also called into question the deep ties between drug cartels and Mexican politicians. To understand the political significance of the Ayotzinapa case, it’s important to understand who the students are.

San Fernando Migrant Massacre: Governments Share Responsibility

October 8, 2014 Camilo Perez Bustillo and Azadeh N. Shahshahani, www.truth-out.org Educate! Immigration, Latin America, Mexico, US, Violence

The jury concluded that the US and Mexican governments are jointly responsible for a generalized pattern of grave human rights violations committed against migrants in transit on Mexican territory, on their way to the United States, between 2010 and 2014. The jury also concluded that the massacre was the predictable and thus preventable result of actions and omissions by Mexican authorities responsible for systematic, egregious and recurrent human rights violations against migrants in transit. These violations include the Mexican government's failure to protect migrants in transit from death or injury due to serious abuses committed by drug traffickers and human traffickers in complicity with Mexican authorities.

Report: 40,000 Migrants Have Died Since 2000

October 1, 2014 International Organization for Migration, www.iom.int Educate! Immigration, Violence

“Our message is blunt: migrants are dying who need not,” said IOM Director General William Lacy Swing, “It is time to do more than count the number of victims. It is time to engage the world to stop this violence against desperate migrants.” The research behind “Fatal Journeys,” which runs to over 200 pages, began with the October 2013 tragedy when over 400 migrants died in two shipwrecks near the Italian island of Lampedusa. The report, compiled under IOM’s Missing Migrants Project, indicates Europe is the world’s most dangerous destination for “irregular” migration, costing the lives of over 3,000 migrants this year.

Understanding Our Many Fergusons

October 1, 2014 Noel A. Cazenave, www.truth-out.org Educate! Ferguson, Law, police brutality, Racism, Violence

One way of looking at this conflict from the perspective of European-American police officers and vigilante-type individuals who kill African-American youth is as a very highly racialized and macho game of lines drawn in the sand. Here the lines in the sand are drawn in blood and the game is over when they get to shoot to kill with impunity. Indeed it is useful to think in terms of there actually being three lines: The will to kill line - based on highly racialized and genderized emotions of anger and hatred; the right to kill line - what that person can reasonably expect to get away with based on existing norms, laws, policies and practices, and their enforcement, and the need to kill line - rooted in a threat to that person's life or the lives of others.

When Trust Breaks Down: We Must Turn Unrest Into A Movement

September 6, 2014 Antonio French, www.stlamerican.com Educate! Ferguson, Movement, Police, Violence

The events of the past few weeks in Ferguson and the surrounding St. Louis community have forced us to ask ourselves some tough questions. Many young African Americans are asking themselves, “How do I feel about my city? And how does my city feel about me?” Many white St. Louisans – who have long considered themselves “liberal” or “progressive,” yet have been surprised by the unrest they’ve seen on their televisions – are asking themselves, “Why are they so angry?” and “Has this anger been there all the time? And if so, how did I not see it?” All of us should be asking questions about the role of government and police departments, and the danger that arises when those bodies so grossly do not reflect the populations they are supposed to serve. What we have witnessed these past few weeks is the result of broken trusts. The trust between government and the people is sacred. Trust between a community and their police is absolutely required for police to effectively serve and protect it. Without it, police become something more similar to an occupying force, which is what the images from Ferguson last month resembled. People need to trust that if they call police for help, the police will arrive ready to serve and fairly enforce the law. People should not fear that their call to report a simple shoplifting could result in a young man being gunned down on the street by the very officers they called for help.

Protest In Albuquerque Over Killer Cop Competition

August 29, 2014 David Correia, www.wordpress.com Resist! Albuquerque, Militarization, Police, Protest, Violence

A group of anti-police violence activists and family members of victims of police violence gathered at City Hall yesterday to demand Mayor Berry cancel the “Killer Cop” competition scheduled for next month. The Albuquerque Police Pistol Combat Tournament is designed to test efficiency in the lethal techniques that police use. Protesters claim that it celebrates militarized policing and the use of lethal force, and are demanding that the competition be shut down. A letter to the mayor signed by family members of victims condemns his insensitivity to the human cost of police violence. Family members emerge from City Hall after trying to deliver the letter to the Mayor. After the press conference, family members went to the 11th floor of City Hall hoping to tell the Mayor why he should cancel the police shooting tournament. They found the offices closed, the doors locked and police guarding the foyer outside the elevator. Once again, Mayor Richard Berry refused to meet with grieving families of victims of his police department. Sylvia Fuente’s son Len was killed by APD. “This militarization of police must stop,” she said. “My son didn’t have to die. And the Mayor says he’s met with family members of victims. He’s lying. He hasn’t met with me. I haven’t met a family member he’s met with.”

More Police Depts Consider Using Drones

August 28, 2014 Nadia Prupis, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! Drones, Police, Violence

Police departments in the U.S. are increasingly considering the use of drones as a law enforcement tool, even as civil rights groups and media turn up scrutiny of police militarization in the wake of brutal crackdowns on anti-brutality protesters in Ferguson, Missouri and other cities. The Baltimore Sun reported on Sunday that agencies in several Maryland counties are considering testing drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), for intelligence gathering and “high-risk tactical raids.” That news comes less than a week after anti-war activists in California protested against “mission creep” by the Los Angeles Police Department, which recently acquired several of their own drones. Indiana police departments also recently announced their plan to pursue adding drones to their weapons arsenal. In a letter (pdf) to LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, Drone-Free LA spokesperson Hamid Kahn expressed “deep concerns about the recent ‘gifting’ of two Draganflyer X Drones” by the Seattle Police Department to the LAPD. “We believe the acquisition of drones signifies a giant step forward in the militarization of local law enforcement that is normalizing continued surveillance and violations of human rights of our communities,” Kahn wrote.

Burying Our Babies: Letter From L.A. To Ferguson

August 28, 2014 Sikivu Hutchinson, www.blackfemlens.blogspot.com Organize! California, Ferguson, Race, Violence

In South Los Angeles’ Crenshaw District, there are three funeral homes within a one mile radius of each other. On bright sunny days young people pour out from their doors after viewing hours, lingering on the steps reminiscing, sporting t-shirts with pictures and art work commemorating the dead. In a thoroughfare that epitomizes L.A.’s deification of the car, cars are often rolling R.I.P. memorials of the dearly departed, the tragedy of stolen youth ornately inscribed on rear windows for the world to see. Death is intimately woven into the experience of being a black child in America. The regime of “Black death”, as rapper Chuck D once described it, has its roots in slavery and the violent occupation of black bodies for profit and control. On Monday when Michael Brown’s family buries their precious baby it will be yet another reminder that the sacrosanct space of childhood is a white supremacist fantasy. As part of the legacy of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, the Ferguson, Missouri uprising has seared this into black peoples’ consciousness anew.

A New Approach To Ending A Civil War

August 28, 2014 Constanza Vieira, www.ipsnews.net Educate! Civil War, Columbia, Peace, Restorative Justice, Violence

Three major advances were made over the last week in the peace talks that have been moving forward in Cuba for nearly two years between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas, while the decades-old civil war rages on. On Saturday Aug. 16, a group of relatives of victims of both sides met face-to-face in the Cuban capital. It was the first time in the world that victims have sat down at the same table with representatives of their victimisers in negotiations to put an end to a civil war. And on Thursday Aug. 21 an academic commission was set up to study the roots of the conflict and the factors that have stood in the way of bringing it to an end. That day, the unthinkable happened. High-level army, air force, navy and police officers flew to Cuba, under the command of General Javier Alberto Flórez, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the 24-hour technical mission they met with their archenemies, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which emerged in 1964) to discuss “how to implement a definitive bilateral ceasefire, and how the FARC would disband and lay down their arms,” said President Juan Manuel Santos.

Protesters March On West Side After Fatal Police-Involved Shooting

August 28, 2014 Jeremy Gorner, www.chicagotribune.com Resist! Chicago, Police, Protest, Violence

About 500 people marched on the West Side this evening to protest a police-involved shooting that claimed the life of an 18-year-old man on Sunday. Roshad McIntosh, 18, was pronounced dead at Mount Sinai Hospital after being shot by police at about 6:30 p.m. on the 2800 block of West Polk Street in the Lawndale neighborhood, officials said. Tonight, a crowd of people marched to the Harrison District headquarters, 3151 W. Harrison St. and then ended their journey through the neighborhood in a vacant lot right next to the two-story apartment building where McIntosh was shot. Police said he was armed. Organizers rallied the crowd from one of the back porches with chants through loudspeakers like "WHO ARE WE! WE'RE CHICAGO!" Tio Hardiman, the former head of the anti-violence group CeaseFire Illinois, was one of the speakers.

People In Los Angeles Demand Information On In-Custody Deaths

August 27, 2014 Bethania Palma Markus, www.truth-out.org Resist! LA, Police, Protest, Violence

Community activists continue to push the Los Angeles Police Department for transparency after two unarmed men died within days of each other as a result of violent stops by LAPD officers. But to date, no information has been given. Ezell Ford, 25, and Omar Abrego, 37, died on August 11 and August 2, respectively. Police placed a "security hold" on the autopsy reports of both men on August 15, meaning neither report will be released to the public until the hold is lifted. As of now, the LAPD has not released the names of the officers involved. The deaths happened within blocks of each other, and community outrage coincided with civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri after police there shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown to death on August 9. Anger in Los Angeles has taken the form of peaceful marches and rallies seeking legal action against the officers involved. Keyanna Celina and community members rally in front of LA District Attorney Jackie Lacey's office on Thursday, August 21, demanding criminal charges for LAPD officers that killed unarmed Ezell Ford and Omar Abrego. (Photo: Bethania Palma Markus)Keyanna Celina and community members rally in front of LA District Attorney Jackie Lacey's office on Thursday, August 21, demanding criminal charges for LAPD officers that killed unarmed Ezell Ford and Omar Abrego. (Photo: Bethania Palma Markus)"It's an outrage and a disgrace; they're abusing their power," said Keyanna Celina from the Coalition for Community Control Over the Police. "There's nothing democratic about a family being denied the autopsy report and the officers' names."

Police Response In Ferguson Rooted In Systemic Violence And Militarism

August 27, 2014 Brian Trautman, www.commondreams.org Educate! Ferguson, militarism, Violence

The police response to public protests in Ferguson, Missouri in the wake of the deadly August 9 shooting of Michael Brown, Jr., an unarmed eighteen-year-old black man killed by a white police officer, was a prime illustration of the hyper-aggressive nature of policing in America today. The residents of Ferguson fed up with hostile and abusive police behavior continue to flood the streets to demand justice for Mike Brown and other victims of police brutality. They have been joined in solidarity by people of conscience in other cities (e.g., Oakland, NYC). Their anger and frustration was exacerbated by the heavy-handed tactics used against the mostly peaceful protestors in Ferguson during the first week or so of the demonstrations – tear gas, rubber bullets, smoke, deafening sirens as well as assault rifles fixed on protestors were some of the violent methods employed by law enforcement. In addition, a mandatory curfew imposed by the Missouri governor, verbal threats of physical harm from police, and arrests of journalists, among other ill-advised and counterproductive reactions, only escalated the tensions between protestors and police. The police action in Ferguson sparked a much-needed and long overdue national discussion about the rise of the police-industrial complex. One important outcome of this conversation has been an increased awareness among the American public of how local and state police became armed with equipment meant for war.

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