#Lesley McSpadden Head

[angelstills]

Lemonade (2016)

[lboogie1906]

Michael Brown (May 20, 1996 - August 9, 2014) his name became synonymous with the growing Black Lives Matter movement and a nationwide debate about unarmed Black men being fatally shot by law enforcement. He was born to Lesley McSpadden and Michael Brown Sr. in Florissant, Missouri. He grew up living alternately with his mother, father, and paternal grandmother. He graduated with his class in 2014 and planned to enroll in a trade school.

A convenience store security video captured him pushing a clerk into a display case as he stole a pack of cigars. He and a friend were walking in the middle of the street when they encountered Darren Wilson, a white police officer, who ordered them onto the sidewalk. It is unclear if Wilson was aware of the convenience store robbery. A physical altercation between him and Wilson ensued, resulting in Wilson shooting him at least six times, twice in the head.

Outrage in the community grew swiftly as his body remained face down in the street for four hours after the shooting. Some eyewitness accounts at the scene described him as having his hands up when he was shot. Angry residents peacefully protested in the streets using the phrase “Hands up, don’t shoot.” As the intensity of the unrest increased, Ferguson police were criticized for responding with heavy-handed tactics, including military-style equipment and weapons, which only served to further enrage the community.

On August 11, the FBI opened a civil rights inquiry into his death. Meanwhile, violent protests continued, and after Missouri Governor Jay Nixon’s attempt to impose a curfew failed, he brought in the National Guard on August 18 to help restore order.

His funeral was held on August 25. On November 24, 2014, the grand jury, made up of nine whites and three Blacks, decided not to indict Darren Wilson. The verdict sparked large-scale violent protests and destruction in Ferguson as well as demonstrations in dozens of cities across the US, resulting in several hundred arrests nationwide. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #blm

[thebsideofthings]

"Lemonade held space for women who had lost both people and time—women who found themselves having to bury both feelings and children. “Forward” honors to Lesley McSpadden-Head, Sybrina Fulton, Gwen Carr, the mothers of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Eric Garner. The women are at once majestic and deeply troubled as they hold pictures of their sons, victims of state violence fueled by racism. Lemonade reminds us of the power of women being in community and healing together. Healing is a journey of continually living and loving ourselves back to life, and we don’t have to do it alone.

- Four Years of Lemonade by Lauren Whiteman forn

And, as the chapter on resurrection ends, a Mardi Gras Indian passes through as if she is cleansing the energy, making room for hope. We need more of that. It’s hope that makes freedom possible."

[nevinitambay-blog]

Spin and the Unreliable Narrator, or: I promise this has more to do with writing than politics.

Hey, everyone! I hope you all had a good week and managed to recover from viewing There Will Be Blood! My apologies for the tardiness of today’s article; I had a bit of a late start due to a scheduling thing. Oh well. Ahem:

WE INTERRUPT YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED CONTENT FOR THIS IMPORTANT BULLETIN!

Well, it isn’t technically a bulletin, but it isn’t a close reading of a movie either. Last week’s movie drained me pretty hard, and I don’t have the energy to do one today. So, instead of doing a close reading of a film, I’d like to share with you an exercise to help you in developing or identifying an unreliable narrator through comparing and contrasting news articles covering the same event.

“Nev, I love you, but I write to get away from politics.”

I understand completely. However, you would be hard-pressed to find better material to compare and analyze. I suppose you could try to find short stories written by three different authors looking at the same picture or describing the same event, but that is a lot of work when we already have www.allsides.com to pull parallel material from. Also, it is much easier to see in what ways a narrator is unreliable when you know the intent behind the spin; knowing the platforms and general ethos informing the writing will help you see when you are getting a record of events or a subjective interpretation of those events posing as a pure record. While this doesn’t cover all unreliable narrators (such as the child narrator), it will help you see how people hide or highlight details, and how their biases, social and economic statuses, age, experience, etc. inform how they raise or bury certain details.

To begin, I have opened the AllSides website to its featured story list (https://www.allsides.com/story-list) and have picked a highly polarized, pre-Trump era story to look at (https://www.allsides.com/story/first-night-curfew-ferguson). I specifically picked this story because the selection of articles are rated far right and far left, thus the contrast between articles should be incredibly high, making our job of comparing them much easier. So, first things first, read both articles, then list what is different between the two. Here are the differences I found:

1. The titles are drastically different. The Fox article focuses on arrests, shootings, teargas, protestors, and defiance. The Huffington Post article focuses on tension (on edge) and evokes the connotations of night (scary, unsure, benighted).

2. The category header for the Fox article is “Midwest”. The category header for the Huffington Post article is “Black Voices”.

3. The media at the top of the articles are nearly polar opposites. Fox heads their article with and image of police against a blue sky. The Huffington Post heads their article with a video of protestors at night.

4. The associated text with the heading media is different. Fox focuses on police needing to don riot gear to face protestors (“Police in riot gear prepare to take up positions as people protest the police shooting death of Michael Brown a week ago in Ferguson, Mo.”) , while Huffington Post focuses on there being only a few protestors (“Raw: Few Protestors As Ferguson Curfew Begins”).

5. Each uses a different point of view reference. Fox approaches the article from the perspective of the police. The Huffington post approaches the article from the perspective of the protestors.

6. Only the Fox article mentions Alderman Antonio French, Lt. John Hotz, New Black Panther Party leader Malik Shabazz, Brian Fallon, Eric Holder, U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr., and Bob McCulloch. Only the Huffington Post article mentions other reporters, Renee Richardson, Lesley McSpadden (Michael Brown’s mother), Al Sharpton, and Benjamin Crump. Both articles mention Capt. Ron Johnson, Gov. Jay Nixon, Michael Brown, Darren Wilson, and Rebecca McCloud. It is unclear if Jayson Ross and Jason Ross are the same person. Here is a handy list of quotes that each article attributes to the people who are in both articles:

unidentified protestors:

(Fox) “No justice! No curfew!”

(Fox) “We have the right to assemble peacefully.”

(Fox) “Why is the focus on security and not getting justice? Why is there not an arrest?”

(HP) “fuck the police — we ain’t never going home”

(HP) “Shit shit shit. Those are shots. I just heard a bullet… I just heard something whiz past me.”

unidentified police officers:

(Fox) “You are in violation of a state-imposed curfew. You must disperse immediately. Failure to comply may result in arrest.”

Capt. Ron Johnson:

(Fox) “I was disappointed in the actions of tonight.”

(HP) “I was disappointed with the actions of the crowd tonight.”

(HP) “There’s people that are white, Hispanic and Asian, there’s a lot of people out here protesting and we’re asking for change. It’s not just us, it’s everybody.”

(HP) “We’re going to get some answers, I promise you. I promise you.”

(HP) “I could have just walked away. I could have ignored you. And you know what? I know in the past you have been ignored.”

(HP) “That walk they did will pass through Missouri all the way to the White House.”

(HP) “The long-term solution is healing. We can walk these streets again when we remember that we have made some changes here that can impact this nation. The community’s going to have to be involved in that transition, in how it works, and in making it work.”

(HP) “I love y’all, I love this community, and I’m really honored to be standing here with you and talking with you and just being a part of this week and listening to your voice.”

Gov. Jay Nixon:

(Fox) “It’s appeared to cast aspersions on a young man that was gunned down in the street. It made emotions raw.”

(Fox) “I am committed to making sure the forces of peace and justice prevail.”

(Fox) “We must first have and maintain peace. This is a test. The eyes of the world are watching. We cannot allow the ill will of the few to undermine the good will of the many.”

Rebecca McCloud:

(Fox) “Who would burn down their own backyard? These people aren’t from here. They came to burn down our city and leave.”

(HP) “The mixture is not helpful at all. They’re under the influence of something that’s going to tell them they’re strong.”

Jayson Ross/Jason Ross:

(Fox) “They got guns. We got guns. We are ready.”

(HP) “I need answers sir, like for real. I salute you, but … why did that man get gunned down in cold blood?”

7. The Huffington Post article links directly to Twitter and YouTube, shows images and video of both protestors and police, doesn’t use any partial quotes. The Fox article only referencing social media via quoting a tweet from Antonio French, who they also partially quote twice. The Fox article has no images of protestors.

8. The Huffington Post specifies that Michael Brown was accused of stealing $50 worth of cigarettes in the convenience store robbery, while the Fox article does not.

9. The Fox article includes clashes between protestors and other protestors, protestors and the police, and local authorities and federal authorities. The Huffington Post article focused on the clashes and cooperation between protestors and authorities with a brief positive mention of the FBI/Justice Dept. investigation through the Johnson quote.

There are other specific differences between these articles, but this will have to be enough for this post since I’m running out of word count. Now that we have all of this information collected, we need to ask why each article presented the record of events in the way they did (the events being: protestors in Ferguson broke state curfew, the police used tear gas to disperse them, seven people were arrested, one man was shot) and how that makes each author an unreliable narrator. Keep in mind that the political right is pro-police and anti-federal-intervention, while the political left is pro-social and anti-violence. (Before anyone gets on my case, these are generalizations and there will be outliers.) Please go through each of the differences between these articles and try to come up with a reason as to why those differences exist. (If you need clues, please ask in the comments!)

So, what makes these authors unreliable narrators? There are several ways in which a narrator can be unreliable.

First, they may be unreliable in that they don’t have all of the event information in the first place. We can see this at play in the articles when both authors mention that a man was shot but did not mention who shot him (presumably because they didn’t know).

Second, a narrator may be unreliable if they try to push the reader to certain unsubstantiated conclusions without outright lying. Both of the authors are guilty of this through attempting to suggest who shot the man without specifically saying. The Fox author tries to get the audience to assume that the man was shot by protestors by briefly mentioning that someone fired at a patrol car (presumably not a police officer), a man flashing a handgun in the middle of the street (also presumably not a police officer), and including the quotes that the protestors were also armed. The Huffington Post author tries to get the audience to assume that the man was shot by police by immediately stating that police also used tear gas after starting with the statement that the man had been shot.

Third, a narrator may be unreliable if they purposefully omit or include certain bits of information. This is what we call political spin. The Fox author tried to spin the events to make the police look good by stressing how dangerous the protestors were and how many times they tried to disperse the crowd before using tear gas, while omitting the interaction between Ross and Johnson. The Huffington Post author tried to spin the events to make the protestors look good by stressing that they were there to protest the murder of an unarmed black man who was only accused of stealing cigarettes, while omitting the people who had gotten onto the rooftop of a barbeque restaurant and the man flashing a gun in the middle of the street.

Finally, a narrator may be unreliable if they outright lie. While it is possible that either of these authors lied about the events of that evening, I don’t have enough material to catch them in that lie (although the bits concerning Rebecca McCloud are suspicious), so I don’t know if they are or aren’t. Being as it is, I must stick with the default of trusting these narrators to have been telling the truth until proven otherwise. If you’d like an example of this type of unreliable narrator, think of a person who constantly boasts of having a Maserati but it is at their mom’s house, or a person who says they met the president but later say that they only went to a rally that president also attended.

Now that wasn’t so bad, was it? And people say politics can’t be useful. (Do people say that? I have no idea.) Happy writing!

Does this help you understand how to write or identify an unreliable narrator? Do you have questions for me? Is there a topic you would like me to write about? Let me know in the comments! I look forward to hearing from you! I post new articles on Wednesdays. Please remember to upvote, like, subscribe, and/or follow me on other social media if you find these articles useful and want to see more!

[ant-stew-blog]

---Remembering Michael Brown

Only a few hours has passed since the blood was shed from an innocent African American youth, that Saturday – Sunday, a weeping town turns their tears into explicit action.

An officer responds to a call at approximately 11:51am, Saturday August 9th, the dispatcher claims that there is a robbery suspect walking toward the Quick Trip, a convenience story in the town of Ferguson Missouri. Officer Darren Wilson approaches the alleged suspect and his friend, 18-year-old Michael Brown – only one of the boys are able to leave with life, whilst the other perishes in a pool of his own blood. This African American teen lost his life in what is argued as cold hearted murder, however the St. Louis County Police Department releases a statement that his killing is a result of Brown reaching for Wilson’s gun. A crime that was eerily committed in the cul-de-sac of a neighborhood community, 12 shots fired and Brown’s body is left for hours in the unforgiving sun before proper examination.

The night air is thick with resentment, Sunday August 10th, in Ferguson – where the whole community of family, friends, passerby, and people who heard the story gather for a candlelight vigil. This predominantly African American town is growing weary of the prejudice they face and another young life lost due to police brutality. Many of the men who knew Brown or simply heard of what ensued, choke back angry tears & fears that what happened in broad daylight could happen to them as well. Anger burns in the hearts of the tired and those of the rebellious, reminiscent of the candles’ orange flames the vigil attendees are clasping parallel to the murky black sky. Within hours, the nerving still of the town progresses into mayhem.

Peaceful demonstrators of Ferguson  take the streets in everyday attire, clad with signs scrawled on cardboard and cardstock, pleading “Stop taking our boy’s lives”, “When will it stop?”, and little ones naive to the extent of the situation holding signs reading “Will you take me next?” Mixed in the group are the radicals, bandana tied, shirts around their heads, and black masks only exposing their angry eyes waiting for the slightest upset from the police and whomever may stand in their way.

Around 8:30 pm, Police officers from every jurisdiction in the St. Luis area filed into the scene, remaining stoic and unnerved by the passions of the demonstrators. Behind their bullet proof vests and shields were weapons for necessary protection which most of the crowd did not have – gases, bullets, batons, and dogs. Somewhere tear gas was thrown into the crowd to encourage people to return home, a recipe for immediate action taken part by either peaceful or militant protestors, and so it began, the smell of violence was in the air.

What seemed like a strive for anarchy and violence, was a strategic plan for many to finally seize what they felt deprived of, and show that they were no longer a victim. White owned businesses were looted, including places where their own were denied employment, or faced racial discrimination. These were the aggressors; they did everything but surrender with their hands up.

A glass bottle was hurtled into the police line-up sometime around 10pm, and it was clear that this fight was no longer just in remembrance of one life lost, but the deprivation of many. It was around two hours earlier that the hymns of church goers were heard in conjunction with the sobs of Michael Brown’s parents Lesley McSpadden and Michael Brown Sr – now to be replaced with the sounds of shattering glass, shrill of alarms, voices throttling in homicidal outrage.

[angelstills]

Lemonade (2016)