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hedgehog-moss · 2 years ago

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(TW POLICE VIOLENCE)

France has been feeling like a police state this week, there were 5000 cops deployed in Paris yesterday (watch this video and tell me this is a normal amount of cops and they're behaving normally) and they keep acting like they have total immunity*, to beat up protesters, to arrest protesters, or just random people walking in the vicinity of a protest. My 70+-year-old dad tried to go to a peaceful protest and had to abandon the idea because of all the tear gas being used by police.

*Which they do—as Le Monde pointed out, the cops who are violent risk nothing because they can't be identified because almost none of them wear their identification number even though it's supposed to be mandatory. They're not being penalised for not wearing them, so why should they?

If you can stomach it, please have a look at the photos and videos on this Twitter account documenting French police brutality against protesters—as I write this, the most recent tweet is about a journalist who was beaten up by a BRAV-M cop* using his steel baton; he had his head cracked open and his hand broken.

(* BRAV-M is a motorised repression corps—cops on bikes—a unit that was dissolved in 1986 after some of them beat a student to death, who wasn't even attending a protest but walking near one. Macron changed the unit's name, from Voltigeurs to BRAV-M, and reestablished it to suppress the Yellow Vests protests. This week, a BRAV-M cop deliberately drove over a 19-year-old's leg at a protest after chasing him on his bike. The victim said he heard a cop say to others "Smash him." Another BRAV-M punched a protester unconscious on March 20. And today Le Monde published an article about BRAV-M cops being recorded bragging about "breaking elbows and faces.")

In Paris last week the CRS arrested a 14-year-old kid because they took him for a dangerous black bloc protester I guess?? A child spent a night in police custody without knowing why. They've also arrested several 15 / 16 year-olds. Let's teach the youth what happens when you exercise your right to protest!

On March 16th in Paris, within one evening, they arrested 292 people, and 283 were released without charges, which means they're mass-arresting people for peaceful protests as a strategy of intimidation. The student I mentioned in my post the other day, who spent 48 hours in custody and was eventually charged for refusing to have his DNA samples taken and filed, asked the cops why they were arresting him + 4 other people who were walking down the same street and they said "Because you look like fucking leftists."

The government tells us "We fully support our brave police forces" when the cops are arresting people for "looking like leftists." How are we still a democracy? The guy also mentioned that during the time he spent at the police station, the police was mostly arresting Maghrebis, though they made an exception for him, a Black guy. There are videos from the past week of cops beating up women, tear gassing protesters in the face from 20cm away, kicking protesters in the face when they're already on the ground, crushing their heads under their boot, brutalising a homeless man and old ladies, tear gassing crowds with young children in them. I'm having trouble finding links to these specific incidents I remember because there are so many videos circulating.

Look at this video, they're violently striking the back of people's heads with steel batons even when the protesters are already going in the direction they're told to. The little old lady shoved around and trying to protect her head from the strikes is breaking my heart.

Surely at the point when enforcers of state authority are arresting middle schoolers, beating up citizens for exercising their rights and gassing and pepper spraying elderly people, children and babies in strollers, the government might want to make some sort of statement condemning this state of affairs, but instead they have been telling us they're proud of & grateful for their police forces, which of course angers people and makes protests more violent. The Minister of the Interior, who supervises the police, praises them wholeheartedly and excuses all instances of deliberate brutality as 'isolated incidents' due to 'tiredness'.

Here's a thread in English describing a protester's experience—"Yesterday (March 23) the level of arbitrary police violence clearly leveled up. I was tear gassed three times without being able to move in a very dense crowd; policemen took advantage that people were unable to move more than 20cm to pounce on us and bludgeon us in a totally arbitrary manner." (you can see an example of this behaviour in this video from a different protest)

Yesterday, after a day of nationwide protests that brought a fresh new wave of video evidence of cops beating up protesters and making reckless use of tear gas—at the end of a day when a special ed teacher at a protest got her thumb torn off by a tear gas grenade—this is what the French Prime Minister said:

They're not even trying to play it off like "both sides made mistakes" they're telling us they condone everything the police is doing, that this is what they're deploying them for:

(screencap from this video)

(this is from this video, in which you can hear a woman screaming "Stop it! You're strangling him! You have no right! I'm filming you!" The cops don't seem to care about being filmed. They're beating up citizens with the government's full blessing after all.)

Macron's government is trying to intimidate people into giving up their right to protest, by deploying cops in huge numbers and publicly voicing complete support for their behaviour, by allowing them to beat and arrest hundreds of people and to use tear gas indiscriminately. Tear gas has been completely normalised as a means of state violence, it's very practical that it doesn't leave traces of blood or broken bones I guess, but it's still violence, it burns, it's a chemical whose effects on people's health we don't know a lot about.

^ Paris (from this vid; caption: "one tear gas grenade after the other")

Macron condescendingly told us there's no "magic money" which is why the pension reform is needed, but he did find the money to stockpile these apparently unlimited amounts of tear gas grenades to suppress protests against his reform to make poor people work longer.

^ Nantes (screencap from a vid in which the cops throw three or four grenades at once and you can hear people say "oh come on, seriously? this is crazy. Why? go fuck yourselves" in a tired tone)

We've also found out yesterday that three Corsican MPs were pressured not to support the Assembly's no-confidence vote against the government—by being told if they didn't vote it, a teaching hospital would be built in Corsica.

The island of Corsica is the only region of France that doesn't have a teaching hospital; due to lack of medical resources Corsicans often have to travel to mainland France for healthcare. Just last month the Minister of Health said sorry, still no teaching hospital for Corsica, it's just not possible right now. Then last week some "magic money" was apparently found to build it but only if the Corsican MPs didn't support the no-confidence vote. I know this kind of thing isn't exactly unique in politics but Macron has been slashing hospital budgets to the point that 20% of French hospital beds are closed due to lack of staff, and he used the health of 340,000 French citizens as a bribe to save his ass. The three Corsican MPs ended up voting in favour of the no-confidence vote despite of that, as it was what their constituents wanted (honour to them). Macron's government survived the no-confidence vote by only 9 votes.

Whatever legitimacy Macron has as a President right now is being clung to by MP corruption and police repression. How do we move forwards knowing that, I don't know. How does he have legitimacy to govern on any issues after the way he handled this reform and the following protests? His police forces are drowning city centres in tear gas, a chemical whose effect on birds and other fauna is not known, and we're supposed to listen to him talk about the environment? They're wasting thousands of litres of water using water cannons to disperse protesters, and we're supposed to listen to him talk about low groundwater levels and how we need to save water? I was going to say, what about his legitimacy abroad but other Western governments don't seem too bothered so far by his handling of the protests—though I'm grateful that Amnesty International did condemn it, and that a Belgian deputy made a speech in Parliament this week asking his government to condemn Macron's use of violent police repression.

[Wait, I just saw that as I was writing this post, the Council of Europe condemned the "excessive use of force" in France. Saying that 'sporadic acts of violence' of some protesters can't 'justify the excessive use of force by agents of the State' or 'deprive peaceful protesters of their right to freedom of assembly'. This is the opposite framing as the one our government is standing by—sporadic acts of violence by cops that are either justified or excusable—it's refreshing.]

Between that and Charles III cancelling his visit (and lots of tourists cancelling trips to Paris which is bound to piss off the tourism industry) and our own media waking up and starting to talk about the government's brutality, I hope Macron starts being held accountable. He has been fanning the flames of this crisis at every turn, by telling us that the crowds protesting in the street have 'no legitimacy', by sending cops to break strikes even though striking is a Constitutional right (but the only part of the Constitution he cares about is the one that starts with 49.3), by condemning the protesters when asked to condemn police violence—saying "When [protesters] use violence, unregulated, absolute, we're no longer in a Republic." I agree, but he's describing himself.

When you resort to using article 49.3 to bypass the National Assembly for the 11th time this term to impose a reform that 70% of the country is against (and 93% of working people) that will force the poorer classes of the population to work longer, and your only response to people's distress at being told to work until they die is to force them to accept it by allowing your police forces to beat up protesters, to arrest them and to gas them, you have failed as a democratic leader.

The next organised protest and strike is next Tuesday (if you want to give something to the strike solidarity fund, here it is); in the meantime spontaneous protests are still erupting pretty much every day and cops are getting burnt out (good! There are fun videos from yesterday's protests of cops accidentally tear gassing one another, or a police car accidentally running into another as people laugh and clap.) And yes some protesters are getting more extreme and destructive, but Macron is the one choosing to stand by his reform at all costs and let this country burn. And when I look at what we're being expected to tolerate and to normalise, I'm kind of proud that French people's gut reaction was "burn it all."

Some popular Twitter hashtags for the protests:

#ToutCramer - Burn everything #CensurePopulaire - People's no-confidence vote #MacronDémission - Macron resign #OnLâcheRien - We won't cede an inch.

#frpol #i know french people who aren't following this closely aren't aware of how bad things got #as i said our media is finally commenting on CRS and BRAV-M behaviour but seeing the videos #for the protests is kind of necessary i feel to see how omnipotent the police feel thanks to macron #his ''fuck you i've already passed the reform idgaf about your protests'' attitude in the face of all this is unforgiveable #even if he somehow sees the light it won't erase all the violence and destruction that he caused #and that he doesn't care about #not to mention the damage done to democracy

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theinfinitedivides · 17 days ago

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wi papa look a thing there for me. awa.

prefacing this with a PSA that i'm going to try and keep short but basically regardless of anything i say here let me make it known that i do believe he should apologize. whether or not he's still actively saying that word in 2024 it is something he's used in the past even if he isn't performing said play anymore/saying things like that so flippantly. granted if he does apologize there's always going to be a section of fandom that's like 'he only apologized bc he got caught' yes?????????? that's what always happens????????? lbr you're not going to get on IG and announce you killed your ex two decades ago and you'll be turning yourself in when there's an entire true crime community in the depths of the internet who will dig up the cold case + the suspiciously convenient alibi anyway without you lifting a finger. politicians who get called out for blackface in college do not go around telling people they did blackface in college. celebrities who were homophobic on this hellsite in high school back in the early 10s before they realized they were gay are not going to let you know what their handle was. this is how the world works.

that being said i must confess i caught wind of the stirrings of this a bit early bc during the clusterfuck that was the Jam vs Zamasian RPF poll (i did not go in the notes. rancid ass shit) someone had taken a screenshot of a reblog made as a 'gotcha' to Zamasian voters by implying that they were anti-Black for voting for a ship featuring an actor that said the n-word in a play he hasn't performed for several decades since, with a short taped example that the general public was not going to know how to find unless they were on a mission. i poked around, saw a couple hints here and there that implied that the clip actually existed, marked that down for future ref and went about my business. disappointing? sure. run of the mill especially among people his age in the industry from that time period who are perceived to benefit from white privilege? absolutely. the former bird identified app dragging all of this back into the light (including the interview with Chris Rock. which i have not seen though there's no way it was within the last few years for AMC to still hire Eric if they had seen it. correct me if i'm wrong pls) is unexpected but tracks for the fandom on there.

generally i don't believe in cancelling someone for things they said or did more than ten years ago if they are no longer the same person they were back then. i don't believe Jacob or Assad or any one of the staff of color who may have been working behind the scenes would have agreed to continue interacting with Eric if he had the same attitude as he did when he first wrote and performed the play. i don't believe his Black comedian niece would continue to talk about him and share photos with him if he was calling her or the Black side of her family the n-word. i am willing to give the 'Eric Bogosian n-word' reply tweet he reportedly made before deleting it shortly after the brief benefit of the doubt bc it was 1. supposedly under someone else's tweet talking about the play incident and 2. i cannot count how many times i have accidently commented/almost posted something on here or YouTube or Reddit or ao3 bc i was on mobile and once the keyboard's open the app/browser flips the fuck out and puts the search bar and the comment box too close together. now if his ass shows up and shows out and stands ten toes down while he's currently on time-out or doesn't address any of this we're dealing with a different story. if more examples of him acting like this come out i'll drop him faster than you can call the election it will be that serious.

anyway for now i'm choosing to keep an eye on this while acknowledging that us Black folks do have the right to be upset and pissed as fuck. we deal with enough racism/microaggressions in fandom spaces as it is we definitely don't need new ones, and we don't need them from the past career choice of the main cast of a show a lot of us enjoy. amen

#tv: interview with the vampire #interview with the vampire #iwtv #eric bogosian #what a lovely start to the 5th already (derogatory)#i've said what i needed to say. i'm leaving reblogs on for now but if people start clowning in my notes it's going off i ain't here #for any of that shit. bitch if this was another cast member we were talking about i'd say the same thing don't get it twisted #if i even smell one of you about to be like 'i always knew—' 'i never liked him—' 'DM fans—' it's an instant fucking block. shut up.#you're not helping thank you #edit: typo located in the second to last paragraph that i just fixed..................... this is what happens when you type out what #you thought out in the shower i'm cryingggggggggggg

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