#but it’s giving… how people talk about the cops when they’re dismissing systemic brutality

[cicadaknight]

horizon drinking game where you take a shot of scappersap every time someone refers to a carjan as “one of the good ones”

[princessbubblegumandjustice]

What Can We Do to Fight Police Brutality and Protect Our Rights?

I see a lot of emotion and turmoil right now, and it’s understandable. Fear, anger, hostility, pain, sadness..

People are throwing around ideas and talking about what we need to be doing and how we need to feel, but all of it is a little abstract and some of it is counterproductive. 

What steps can we take to defend our rights that are concrete and could address the corrupt government and law enforcement system in a way that prevails?

Note: this is merely a starting point for discussion, feel free to add your own thoughts and resources

Here are some steps I think we should consider, support, and spread:

1. Eliminate Qualified Immunity

Qualified immunity protects officers from being sued for violating your rights. Originally meant to protect officers acting in “good faith,” this defense has morphed over time to make it exceedingly difficult to prove your rights have been violated by creating an almost impossible criteria: you need to identify a judicial decision that happened to involve the same context and conduct. Without that, the officer is shielded from liability and the case is dismissed, reinforcing the cycle and never establishing a precedent. 

U.S. Representative Justin Amash, a conservative independent from Michigan, is scheduled to introduce a new bill, the Ending Qualified Immunity Act, on Thursday (06/04/2020). Once it is officially introduced I will include a link, and we can all examine the bill and begin taking steps to support it (assuming the bill doesn’t have any riders).

Read: Qualified Immunity Explained Read: U.S. Lawmaker Prepares Bill Aiming to End Court Protection for Police Read: Justin Amash’s tweet on his Bill

2. Implement Police Liability Insurance

When settlements are paid out for injuries caused by officers, its rarely paid by the officer in question. We, the taxpayer, pay for it. We’re footing the bill for the officers violating our rights and the rights of others.

Mandatory police liability insurance has the goal of punishing cops that police badly: the worse their policing, the higher their premium. Eventually, those with very poor track records would either no longer be eligible for police liability insurance (and therefore be unemployable) or be priced out. It would be similar to nurses and doctors’ professional liability insurance, which pays to defend them against malpractice claims and protects them financially by paying out damages.

One major critique is that this method is simplistic and may cause police officers to be overly cautious (i.e. avoiding conflict since they’re afraid of their rate going up).

Read: Make Cops Carry Liability Insurance: The Private Sector Knows How to Spread Risks, and Costs

3. Demand Data & Transparency

Improved data collection and reporting is necessary to identify law enforcement trends. It should be mandatory for police departments to keep track of a list of policing metrics such as number of people killed, use of force and to what degree, and stop-and-frisks, and have the list of metrics standardized to enable direct comparisons between departments and ensure quality policing. This data should be collected and released publically every year. As of right now there is no federal or comprehensive database, but there is one created by the Center for Policing Equity.

Data like this can then be used to create tailored training programs for departments, whether that’s on de-escalation or implicit bias.

See: National Justice Database

4. Take a Stand Against Quota Policing

Quota policing, whether formal or informal, impacts how our actions are viewed by law enforcement and in turn how we view police officers. 

Quota policing is when officers are expected to or awarded if they meet certain quotas regarding arrests, stops, or tickets. Quota policing infringes on our rights as citizens as it can force police to manufacture illegality and dissuade them from using discretion, leading to more unnecessary stops and opportunities for brutality. 

Quota policing can be formal or informal. Event though some states, like New York, outlaw policing quotas they persist nonetheless. One example is in a recent lawsuit against NYPD, in which Officer Adhyl Polanco has accused the NYPD over alleged quotas, stating:

”’The culture is, you're not working unless you are writing summonses or arresting people,’ says Polanco.” ...

“Polanco says he encountered an unwritten rule that officers are expected to bring in ‘20 and one.’ That's 20 tickets and one arrest per month. But it was tough to get anyone outside the department to believe him, because NYPD officials would always deny there were any quotas. They still do.”

5. Fight Private Prisons

Police brutality is one aspect of the corrupt justice system. Private prisons play a role in how we are all treated and how we view and interact with the entire justice system. 

Private prisons are prisons that are privately owned and operated, or leased by private corporations that have total operational control. Private prisons have a financial incentive to incarcerate more while releasing and rehabilitating less. Inmates are not a commodity and never should have became one. 

With contracts that guarantee 65% - 90% occupancy in prisons it is evident that our system is broken. Leaders are pressures to act against their communities’ best interests and keep prisons filled to ensure that taxpayer dollars aren’t being wasted. How might this be done? Finding more people to incarcerate (more stops, which create more opportunities for brutality) and longer sentences. 

See: Abolish Private Prisons

6. Demand Change in Blue Blood Culture

Police officers have a tough job and face struggles non-officers don’t, and their shared experiences mold a culture unique to them. This, by itself, is not an issue. This is completely natural and part of the human experience.

The problem is that police officers play a vital role in society and hold a lot of power over the public. When an insular culture develops, it becomes very easy to pressure officers into complicity. The nail that sticks out gets hammered in. No one wants to be othered, seen as a snitch, or hated by all their peers. Officers want to be a part of the in-group, but that involves conforming and being trusted.

This means looking the other way when a fellow cop plants drugs, when they beat on people, when they commit fraud, when they break protocol, when they don’t even attempt to investigate, when they take or give a bribe, the list is endless—it’s the blue wall of silence.

Without accountability and transparency, cultures like this are allowed to proliferate. Culture is self-sustaining in the fact that it only continues to exist as those within it continue to perpetuate its existence. Previously listed measures are a necessary step before department cultures like this can be expected to change. Without accountability and transparency, we rely on the good of one’s heart alone. It’s been demonstrated that just isn’t enough. This is the only non-concrete step, but it is dependant on practical changes for it to be successful.

Please also check out: Campaign Zero, which outlines even more solutions than what I have here, researches policing practices, tracks legislation in different states, and enables you to reach out to your representatives.

[davidmann95]

Velvet's battle is a great choice, though I'll always have a special place in my heart for the fight against the Grimm Deathstalker and the Nevermore in Episode 8. That said, what do you think of the individual members of Team RWBY?

I decided to wait on this until I caught up on the series thus far, which I just finished doing the night before last in pretty much the only time in my life I’ve ever really properly binged anything other than comics, and…wow. I knew RWBY was a thing just as a matter of course from being on this site and Youtube, and from watching Death Battle, so I picked up some major beats by osmosis. But my main impression was that it was a charming pseudo-anime online thing of decent quality that unsurprisingly got heavier as it went along as such things tend to do, with extremely rad fights and music along the way; figured it’d be more than serviceable to watch while I was on the treadmill as a disposable distraction from the agony of propelling my wheezing, sweating, loathsome meat-scaffolding forward.

I did *not* expect it to eventually end up after growing pains a - while far from flawless - intensely engrossing story of all-consuming personal and generational pain and people who choose to love and do the right thing in defiance of that trauma and loss and hopelessness, where also occasionally a corgi gets fastball specialed at mechas. Though once it became clear that’s what it is, it pretty clearly sat at an intersection of a hell of a lot of my favorite things, especially when characters copped in-universe in both the main series and spinoff material that this is basically a superhero thing. My initial impressions re: the fights and music were on-point though.

I actually have quite a few thoughts on pretty much all the protagonists of note at this point (other than I suppose Oscar and Maria. Like them both though, and I do hope that nice boy’s brain somehow doesn’t dissolve into the blender of Ozpin’s subconscious), but I’ll just stick with the core four here as requested for now unless someone asks otherwise. Weiss is the simplest to get at the core of, I’d say: her arc is learning that fuck rich people, actually. She’s a seriously difficult character to get onboard for at first - especially if you’re watching those first episodes for the first time in 2019 - as the mean unconsciously racist rich girl who learns to be less mean and racist but still kinda mean. But after you’ve extensively seen the hideously toxic environment she grew up in, and fully understand her efforts to grow past the empty values it inculcated in her in favor of everything she was raised to think of herself as above, she becomes a hell of a figure to root for. Assuming RWBY is gonna go, say, a respectable 10 seasons given it was just renewed through 9, I could easily see the upcoming 7th be the climax of her arc with her return to Atlas and likely further reckoning with the consequences of her families’ actions beyond how they’ve hurt her personally.

Yang is also, in a certain abstract narrative sense, simple, in that she’s built around the very oldest trick in the book for characters whose main deal is ‘can punch better than absolutely anyone’: give them problems that cannot be solved by punching. Except in her case it’s less a material “well, this person is invulnerable to punching!” or “well, actually this other person can punch most best of all” issue blocking her path than “punching cannot solve depression, abandonment issues, questioning whether what she considers her purpose in life is one she’s truly pursuing for noble reasons or if she even has the resolve for it anymore after what’s happened to her, or PTSD”. Yet, while it may not be the kind that manifests in the form of punching people with a smirk and a bad pun anymore (much as she still definitely does that all the time) what ultimately drives her and defines her is still her strength: to move forward, to forgive, to let go, to do the right thing in spite of the risks. Which could easily come off as some unpleasant “you just have to get over your moping!” dismissal - there’s a bit with her dad that means it saddles riiiiight up to the edge of that - but there’s a weight to how her traumas remain a consistent factor in her life and have shaped her outlook even as her circumstances and day-to-day disposition improve that makes it feel thematically like it’s coming from a place of acknowledgment and endurance rather than denial, even if it’s not handled perfectly. Great to see her apparently recapturing some more of her joie de vivre based on the trailer for Volume 7, and how that’ll interact with how she’s grown should be interesting.

Blake is…tough, because you fundamentally cannot talk about Blake without getting into the Faunus, which is maybe the biggest aspect of RWBY that leaves it in the realm of Problematic Fave. It really, really wants to have something substantial to say about the proper response to racism, and every now and then it pumps out a “capitalism greases the wheels of systemic oppression and vice-versa” or “it’s perfectly reasonable for the oppressed to seek to fight back directly against their oppressors, and even the pacifist in the room can recognize that’s a defensible approach that deserves its place”. But then Abusive Boyfriend Magneto literally murders nuance in Vol. 5 episode 2, and it descends into some borderline “but what about black on black violence” respectability politics shit. It’s the classic X-Men setup - this persecuted race of often superpowered folks torn between pacifism and efforts to prove themselves to their oppressors, and those who think they should rise up and annihilate the flatscans - with most of the same pitfalls, but also we haven’t had over 50 years to get used to that just being how it works here, and it doesn’t have the excuse of having to expand as best it can on a metaphor that was originally devised before most of the people currently handling it were born. All of which would be rough enough, but given I watched this right as Jonathan Hickman’s been completely refining the entire X-Men paradigm outside that outdated binary, it especially grates. I’d love to be directed to any solid counterarguments - I’ve heard it might actually be an analogue, and a well-done one, for The Troubles, which I am one million percent unqualified to evaluate - especially since apparently one of the writers grew up in a mixed-race household, and at the end of the day I’m a white guy who may well be talking completely out his ass. But it sure comes off at a glance as some well-intentioned dudes stumbling through stuff that’s not their business, and that’s inextricable from Blake’s character when so much of her story is her navigating through that metaphor. Hopefully with new writers coming onboard this is something that can be navigated more insightfully in the future.

On a purely personal basis however, Blake’s a standout in terms of relatability when her story comes down to a pretty universal shared horror: how to climb back from having fucked up. She tried really hard to do the right thing, was taken advantage of and led into doing things she eventually realized were wrong, was so shaken that she couldn’t tell who to trust, and then the situation spiraled out of control on every possible front just as things finally seemed to be stabilizing. The way a single mistake - enabled and exacerbated by an abusive past relationship in her case - expands into a self-loathing far beyond the bounds of anything she could possibly be responsible for is brutal and completely understandable, and seeing her start put her self-esteem back together with the help of those closest to her and the power of her original convictions is arguably the single strongest, most clearly conveyed individual character arc in the series. I’m very curious where it goes from here: Adam���s finish represents a logical climax and the setup for a happily-ever-after with Yang (or Sun if they end up going that way after all) for her to coast through the remainder of the series on, but the way emotional consequences have played out in the series thus far I doubt her demons are going to be put to bed that simply.

Finally there’s Ruby, and I am contractually obligated to note up front: she is clearly not a Superman analogue. There is precisely zero percent chance that she was conceived as such or was ever deliberately executed in such a way that mirroring him was kept in mind. Though she IS a super-powered idealist raised in the middle of nowhere with a significant deceased parent who wears a red cape, flies, gives inspiring rallying speeches, has black-ish but primary color-tinted hair, and has a mysterious birthright that involves being able to shoot lasers from her eyes, plus she has a dog who also essentially has superpowers, plus she tells someone they’re stronger than they think they are, plus Yang basically quotes a bit from Kingdom Come regarding her in Rest and Resolutions. But it probably goes a ways in explaining why she works so well for me.

There’s more to it than that of course, though it does bring up the closest way in which she relates to the superhero paradigm: she doesn’t go through an arc in quite the same way as the others, instead being an already solidly-defined character who is simply illustrated by how she interacts with the people and situations around her. She learns and grows and matures, but her most basic motivations and goals and outlook haven’t really changed since the day she enrolled at Beacon. She’s a good, caring person, a leader archetype who still has more than enough personality to spare to keep from falling into the genericism that can often plague that role. A big part of the key I believe is that she’s the audience surrogate in a profound way beyond the obvious touchstones of her frequent awkwardness and self-doubt: the reason she does this is because she was inspired by stories. She’s a fan, ultimately, but one who learned all the right lessons, whether recognizing from day one the way reality falls short of the tales she was raised on but still believing in the ideals they represent, or openly holding up Qrow as a role model while being willing to call him on his shit when push comes to shove. It’s a romantic, hopeful perspective that stands out sharply from even our other heroes even as it mirrors their struggles, but as of yet there’s little to suggest it comes from a place of naivete so much as a belief that it’s the only way to bear the pain of the world and continue to believe in it. Bit by bit it’s clear she’s heading for a breaking point, but all signs point to that being a matter of her ability to withstand what she’s been through, rather than any doubt that it’s necessary, and should that time come she’s inspired plenty who’ll be able to help her back onto her feet the way she has for so many others. So while I understand her speeches apparently grate on some, as far as I’m concerned keep them coming, they’re the beating caring heart of the series and often the sole respite in the eye in the storm.

[obiternihili]

Ngo writes for the National Review and Quillette. Spins stories such as a hit and run into a group of BLM protestors as antifa attacking an old man. ( https://katu.com/news/local/driver-plows-through-protesters-in-downtown-portland | https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-leftist-mob-polices-portland-1539298766 ) . In the aftermath of that, right wing groups started protesting around Portland which led to what should be understood in democratic countries as normal outcomes of protest; groups A and anti-A arguing in the streets, occasionally breaking out into brawls in the same way drunks do in bars or sports fans do in parking lots. https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/10/13/portland-streets-descend-into-bedlam-again-as-proud-boys-and-antifascists-maul-each-other/

And because apparently now “militant” means throwing a milkshake, despite the A groups being known for literally killing people, despite far-A groups being known for stockpiling weapons. An informal, completely unorganized aesthetic some informal counter-protestors with all the coordination of football brawlers get the militant label while the people they’re reacting to, people who nakedly want to overthrow democracy and commit human rights violations discriminating against and deporting a reasonable chunk of the country, despite being nakedly in bed with explicitly white nationalist groups and pushing their agenda, one gets the label militant and the other doesn’t. Gee, I wonder why?

At this point I’m largely going to plagiarize the article I’m using as a middle man. Sorry I just figure if I lead with the source instead of putting the text down as is you’d dismiss it instead of considering the fact that the article draws its information from such horrifically communist tabloids as “a local sinclair broadcaster” or “the wsj” “ It didn’t end there. The flash march created new viral moments. A video of a left-wing activist harassing a woman claiming to be a 9/11 widow was posted days later to The Daily Caller, which was cofounded by Tucker Carlson. (The woman appears to have lied about being a 9/11 widow.) Efforts to doxx the man hurling invective resulted in a professional skateboarder from Portland being falsely identified and inundated with death threats. Eventually the man in the video was identified, which started a new round of harassment. One source says the social service agency that fired him over the video “was flooded with hundreds of harassing calls and Facebook messages that were explicitly racist and threatening to harm and kill staff.”

Carlson credited Ngo with publicizing the videos. Ngo was a bit player, but the incident bolstered him. The incident was an example of a disturbing media model for the Trump era: opportunists using biased reporting, social media, and wild accusations inflame vigilante and digital mobs to target “enemies” such as the media, Democrats, and left-wing activists. Figures like Carlson and Ngo reap followers, prominence, and income from the outrage and threats of violence. But to keep the ratings and the money flowing, the outrage machine must be cranked ever louder, risking greater violence.

One political organizer in Portland who has received death threats stemming from Ngo’s work says, “It’s an arms race for money, and the narrative isn’t the point — the grift is. The larger, more offensive thing you can do, the system rewards it.”

This appears to be Ngo’s model. He uses social media to push biased opinions in conjunction with selectively edited videos that play to the bigotry of his audience. His followers get worked up, and this is often followed by a deluge of threats against his subject.

[source] has talked to six people in Portland, including journalists, political officials, and activists, who described harassing messages and threats of violence resulting from Ngo’s work or political involvement in Portland. Friends of two other activists claim they went into hiding after Ngo spread their names and they became targets of harassment. Some individuals who’ve tangled publicly with Ngo are reluctant to go on the record. They say they want to avoid the “trauma” of being subjected to a new round of death threats.

In fact, Ngo appears to rely on people not speaking up about his effect on them. He often writes of how activists won’t talk to him or they take down social media profiles after he focuses on them, seeming to imply they have something to hide. What he doesn’t mention is many say they are doing so to avoid harassment and threats of violence.

Madison, a Portland activist who tracks Ngo, says, “Ngo signals this is a person that should be targeted, should be harassed, and should be threatened. Andy puts a target on them and that results in the person being doxxed. Andy is giving people explicit permission to unleash hatred and violence on people. He absolutely knows what he is doing.” 

Ngo is so intertwined with the specter of violence [writer I’m plagiarizing] encountered it after just a Facebook post.  [writer I’m plagiarizing] wrote a post with the headline, “Andy Ngo is no journalist.” The post was shared by notorious right-wing figure, Carl Benjamin, aka, “Sargon of Akkad,” who has been featured on Ngo’s podcast and was banned from YouTube for repeatedly “joking” about raping a British Labour MP. In the comments on Benjamin’s post were calls for violence against [writer I’m plagiarizing], Antifa, and others. Within hours  [writer I’m plagiarizing] started receiving threats directly, such as “You’re a bunch of retards and it will be a glorious day when you all are dealt with,” and “You are a disgraceful liar. If you or anyone of your ilk throws even a fucking tissue at me or my family watch what the fuck happens to your family lol.”

Now this model threatens to turn deadly. On June 29, Andy Ngo was attacked in Portland while videoing a Patriot Prayer rally heavily outnumbered by Antifa. A video shows him being punched, kicked, and hit with coconut milkshakes and silly string by masked individuals. Within minutes, videos of the attack and of a beaten Ngo narrating the incident were picked up by right-wing media such as Breitbart that have a dodgy relationship to facts. Headlines screaming brutal assault, vicious assault, and vicious attack by Antifa on Ngo were pumped out.

The sensationalism breached the mainstream with CNN’s Jake Tapper sending out an ill-informed tweet above a video of Ngo being attacked, writing, “Antifa regularly attacks journalists; it’s reprehensible.”

In a bizarre twist, the Portland police threw fuel on the fire by tweeting that some milkshakes thrown on June 29 “contained quick-drying cement.” The police never provided evidence and observers, including journalists, noted that many counterprotesters drank the milkshakes, making it extremely unlikely anyone could have laced them with concrete. But amplified by conspiracy theorists like Jack Prosobiec, the tweet went viral, whereupon right-wing media turned the disinformation into fact and the mainstream press treated it as a credible assertion. The police tweet incited the Right further and the group that made the milkshakes was deluged with death threats. It culminated in the city being flooded with death threats. Days after Ngo was attacked, City Hall was evacuated after a bomb threat. One source inside City Hall says the mayor’s office received “insane vitriol” and every office was receiving threats, including almost 100 harassing calls that tied up emergency service dispatchers.

Far-right figures responded to the June 29 attack on Ngo with graphic threats, and plan to hold an “End Domestic Terrorism” and “End Antifa” rally in Portland on August 17. Such is the level of far-right anger that many in the city fear the rally could become another Charlottesville, or worse — given the anti-Latino murder spree in El Paso and other foiled white nationalist plots since then.”

Here’s a point where I mildly disagree with the writer I’m plagiarizing:

“ To be clear, the attack on Ngo should be condemned. It serves no political purpose, and the Left should not be attacking media makers, even if they use dicey methods.”

Ngo doxxes people and sicks his far right buddies on them, and it’s known he doesn’t do the due diligence to make sure the people he’s targeting are actually guilty. If you think it’s wrong when left-wing adjacent people on tungle or twitter do it, it’s still wrong when right wingers do it, holy shit. If you think it’s dangerous, the type of action that gets people lynched, you’re right! Fuckers like him and Milo need to be silenced. Yes, legally it’s unfeasible to do this without opening people up to loosing their freedom to publish or accuse; which is what movements like antifa serve to do - they do the dirty work the law cannot do so the law doesn’t have to break over every item-line exception to the necessarily clumsy, overgeneralized, poorly thought out “““principle”““ put into place. It’s the same sort of deal as wide-eyed idealistic and overly-narrowly focused deontic reasoning and utilitarian thinking, you know, the ethics that actually deal with consequences and reality.

Does it break the law? Yes. Does it violate principles? Yes. That’s the point - the principles underlying this shit aren’t fundamentally different mechanically speaking from the principles that lead to people’s hands being chopped off for stealing a snickers bar or because they didn’t want to live as a serf or why people are content with sending ethnic minorities to concentration camps because the Party said so. A principle that doesn’t have the nuance or flexibility to recognize when it needs to let other principles take the lead is a bad principle; you’ve fetishized it.

Of course there are other issues too. If you’re not comfortable letting Nazis throw milkshakes too you should be comfortable with people getting arrested for it. But of course fuck all because the cops take one side in all of this, lying about wet cement mix as seen above, so this principle needs to be nuanced for the fact that some people receive more violence from law enforcement than others.

It’s late, I’m tired, lazy, mad, and exhausted. At some point before the last paragraph I was going to ask for evidence of antifa kills comparable at all to the number of far-right kills in the last decade in America. Because it’s a valid question that’s rarely answered. Because again antifa have all the organizational structure and systematization of belief as drunks at a bar. But I can’t remember my rhetorical point.

Continuing.

“Some Antifa activists in Portland also admit the attack played into right-wing hands by elevating him.

That is exactly what’s happened. Trump has beatified Ngo as one of his sinless followers — “A single man standing there with a camera who never got hit and never hit back before in his life” — under assault from the “evil” Antifa full of “sick, bad people.”

But it would also be a mistake to see Ngo as an innocent or as a journalist, considering that whoever he turns his camera, social media, or pen on is at significant risk of being inundated with violent threats from the far right.

Shane Burley is author of Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It, and a Portland-based journalist who covered the June 29 rally. He says, “I would never condone what happened to Andy Ngo, but I think there is a reason why he got in a conflict with protesters and dozens of other reporters present seemed to be left alone.”

Burley says, “One way to think of Andy Ngo is he is part of a far-right mediasphere that creates victimization narratives of conservatism and profit from it. It’s all about the embattled American man who is under siege at every turn, whether its trans children, immigrant criminals, anchor babies, or dangerous college campuses. ‘They are all out to destroy us and our values.’ It’s an entire infrastructure that’s moved from commentary like National Review to populist media hucksters drumming up a controversy. Ngo doesn’t seem to have many real journalistic credentials, and any he does is from creating controversy. He gets in the Wall Street Journal and New York Post from being a conservative celebrity. His actual reporting is very infrequent and sparse.”

Ngo adds a new element in facilitating violence, intentionally or not. Burley says, “He appears to target ideological opponents, which can make them fair game for harassment and violent confrontation.” The scale of the threats keep escalating. Now Portland is bracing for the August 17 rally.

                         Killing in the Name of Free Speech?                                      

For the last few years, the far right has used fascistic language about “cleansing” Portland, while its brawlers wore T-shirts proclaiming themselves kindred to South American death squads that killed thousands of leftists in the 1970s. But in advance of August 17, the language and memes from the far right have become more extreme. They’ve posted dozens of threats on social media pledging to kill Antifa and naming left-wing activists in Portland who should be shot during the End Antifa rally.

Individuals affiliated with Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys talk of wanting to “slaughter” Antifa. Others have posted hair-raising images of a Portland activist and his partner with crosshairs over their faces and the words, “End Domestic Terrorist’s [sic].” Another image is of a knife cutting the throat of an antifascist with blood spraying out. This is especially ominous. In April 2017 white supremacist Jeremy Christian attended a Patriot Prayer in Portland and threw Nazi salutes while yelling “Die Muslims!” Weeks later Christian allegedly slashed the throats of three men, killing two, after they came to the defense of two black teenage girls, one wearing a hijab, whom Christian threatened by saying, “Go home. We need America here!”

One organizer of the End Antifa rally is Joe Biggs, a former staffer at Alex Jones’s Infowars website who has “encouraged date rape and punching transgender people.” He shared an illustration for the rally of a Proud Boy punching an antifascist, warning, “Free speech was fought for and paid for with blood. It will not be lost for anything less!” Biggs, whose Twitter account was suspended recently, used the platform to advise his followers to bring guns and declared “DEATH TO ANTIFA!!!!!!”

After the FBI visited him, Biggs now says “he wants a peaceful demonstration and has told his followers to keep their weapons at home.”

But that may be too little, too late as the far right is encouraging potential mass shooters to come to the rally. Recently, Haley Adams, a provocateur in Portland who told a reporter last year, “Damn straight I support white pride,” said on Facebook she “couldn’t wait” to meet Thomas Bartram on August 17. Bartram is an Infowars fan who showed up in El Paso days after the anti-Hispanic massacre and was briefly detained after allegedly brandishing a gun and trying to enter a migrant solidarity center. The center claimed police did not search Bartram’s truck that was decked out with violent pro-Trump images, saying “he has rights.” After being released, Bartram told media he was headed to the End Antifa rally.

What connects these dots is Andy Ngo. He even did his bit to stoke right-wing paranoia in El Paso. In a July 29 tweet Ngo included an image of a flyer about an immigrant rights “border resistance tour.” Ngo claimed stick figures on the flyer represent “border enforcement officers being killed & government property fired bombed” as part of a plot by Antifa to “converge on a 10-day siege in El Paso, TX.” It’s been retweeted more than 11,000 times and hundreds of comments endorse violence against Antifa. Four days later Patrick Crusius allegedly killed twenty-two people in an El Paso Walmart in “response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

                         Gateway Bigotry                                      

Ngo’s ascendancy began as an editor at the Portland State University newspaper, The Vanguard. At a university interfaith panel convened in April 2017, Ngo tweeted a brief video claiming, “the Muslim student speaker said that apostates will be killed or banished in an Islamic state.” The entire clip shows the student gave a long answer in response to a hypothetical question about Quranic law. The panelists stressed they weren’t experts, and the Muslim student later said “he may have misspoke.”

Ngo’s tweet was picked up by Breitbart. The Vanguard fired him days later for a “dangerous oversimplification that violated very clear ethics outlined by the Society of Professional Journalists.” The Vanguard said Ngo’s actions “placed a PSU student in significant danger.” Ngo twisted his termination into an article for The National Review, “Fired for Reporting the Truth,” which the student paper said was a “misrepresentation” that resulted in “unjust threats” against them.

Critics see this episode as establishing a pattern in Ngo’s work: using charged language and selective facts on social media that stoke bigotry, putting his subject at risk of harassment while boosting his own reach and status. It worked because in 2018 Ngo graduated to writing a “racist” and “massively Islamophobic” travelogue to two Islamic communities in England for the Wall Street Journal.

But it’s in the city of Portland and state of Oregon that Ngo calls home where the most damage has been wrought. Zakir Khan is board chair of the Oregon chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy and civil rights organization. Khan says of Ngo, “That guy is obsessed with us.”

Ngo has tweeted dozens of times about CAIR, saying it “has done PR for terrorists & their families.” He characterized CAIR’s representation of the surviving child of the Muslim couple who committed the 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino as advocating for “the terrorists’ orphaned baby.”

Recently, in a sprawling New York Post opinion Ngo claimed a “suspicious rise” in gay hate crimes in Portland fits a pattern of hoaxes. (Ngo found space in his 2,100-word article to quote a member of the Proud Boys, which experts call a “gang” notorious for violence, as “the most welcoming organization that I have ever been a part of.”)

Khan says, “We are seen as experts on hate crimes reform, so I questioned Ngo’s groundless claims of ‘hate-crime hoaxes.’ He is not an expert in the field.” Ngo responded by accusing CAIR of “terrorism” and “terror.”

After the exchange with Ngo, Khan says, “We received dozens of threatening and harassing messages. We weren’t able to log them all.” One post that tagged Ngo, as well as Michelle Malkin (who signal boosts Ngo and started a “Protect Andy Ngo” fundraiser after the June 29 attack that netted him nearly $200,000), read, “CAIR IS HAMAS! If you stand with your Muslem neighbors; prepare to die with your Muslem neighbors. We will take our country back![sic]” Ngo frequently claims that Hamas, the governing authority in Gaza, is connected to CAIR.

The irony of all this is that after CAIR challenges Ngo’s claim of hate crime hoaxes, he responds with what could be considered hate speech, accusing them of terrorism. This appears to have incited his followers to threaten and harass CAIR, actions which might qualify as hate crimes.

For his next act, Ngo joined Quillette where he is a “sub-editor.” Described as the voice of the intellectual dark web, Quillette published a report on May 29 claiming fifteen reporters who cover the far right were really “Antifa journalists.” According to the Columbia Journalism Review, the article by “estabished right-wing troll,” Eoin Lenihan, was picked up by the neo-Nazi Stormfront website within a day, and a day after that a video was uploaded to YouTube containing “imagery of mass shooters intercut with images of the [Antifa] reporters.” The names of the journalists were put on a list called “Sunset the Media,” while the video ends with a notorious neo-Nazi saying he won’t “disown” anyone who kills the reporters.

Two journalists, including Shane Burley, wrote of the unnerving effect of being put on a Neo-Nazi death list. Another targeted journalist wrote that Quillette had crossed the line from being merely reactionary to “reckless endangerment” and bluntly stated that its list “could’ve gotten me killed.”

The article was so shoddy, Lenihan was suspended from Twitter. But Ngo promoted the article and more significantly continues to promote it — just as eight months after the fact, Ngo continued to claim that striking the protester from the Patrick Kimmons march is really evidence of Antifa taking their anger out on an elderly man.

In at least one instance it appears Ngo has doxxed activists himself. During May Day 2019, Ngo published a YouTube video that included him talking to members of the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America who were tabling for “Hands Off Venezuela.” The entire time Ngo points his camera at a sign-in sheet, not the person he is interviewing. In the video the sheet is digitally blurred. However, Connor Smith, a Portland DSA member, provided a still from what he claims is an earlier version of the video. The still includes a watermark of Ngo’s twitter handle, “@MrAndyNgo,” exactly the same as in the YouTube video. Eleven names can be seen on the sign-in sheet, including Smith’s, all of which have visible email addresses and six of which include phone numbers. Smith says at least one person on the list received threatening messages such as “Die commie.”

Smith claims it is a common right-wing tactic to doxx people on social media like YouTube and Twitter and then delete the offending material before it is removed for violating the platform’s rules. He says this cat-and-mouse game achieves the results the far right is looking for. “I’m sure some fascist has put all our names and phone numbers in a list.”

Ngo is more of a symptom, however.

Ngo couldn’t exist without social media companies which turn a blind eye to right-wing violence because having to monitor their platforms for hate speech would cut into their profits. Ngo also needs Murdoch-owned media such as the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and Fox News that allow him to masquerade his bigotry as journalism. These outlets, in turn, are amplified by the larger landscape of mainstream media, which often fail to distinguish between fact-based journalism and pro-Trump, white nationalistic propaganda. Add in police who collaborate with the far right and weak political leaders, as in Portland, and you have all the conditions needed for opportunists like Andy Ngo to grab the spotlight.

Ngo is just the latest inflammatory right-wing agent in Portland who’s tried to vault to the big leagues. Before him was Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson, who has seen his ranks of violent white nationalists dwindle due to infighting and long-overdue arrests.

Way back in 2016, before Gibson, was another media provocateur, Michael Strickland. Strickland shot his YouTube career — which mainly featured him doxxing and harassing local activists — in the foot after he pulled a gun on a Black Lives Matter protest while being armed with enough ammunition for a massacre.

That’s not to say the Left should ignore the likes of Andy Ngo or even Tucker Carlson. They are both the cause and effect of white nationalism and the violence that comes with it. Their synergy is also a reflection of the complex digital landscape. Legacy media like the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and even Fox News need Andy Ngo just as much as he needs them. They gave him a platform not for his shoddy reporting and tired bigotry, but for the audience he’s amassed, even if it’s a digital lynch mob.”

[ebizworldwide]

How Jury Selection Illustrates a Fascinating Approach to Unbiased Recruiting

Watching a court room situation unravel is an eye-opening event. Exactly what you could not recognize is that jury choice illustrates a remarkable strategy to unbiased recruiting. Just recently I was called after to act as a juror on a criminal situation. Certainly, lots of people dread starting that notification in the mail. I located the encounter interesting. As well as one of the elements that interested me most was the jury selection procedure, or "voir dire" as it's employed legal circles. There are many components entailed in this vetting and speaking with vehicle that we could possibly incorporate into our very own hiring approaches. With a little creativity and also adjustment, I think voir dire offers us with some outstanding methods for establishing an unbiased, informing and results-oriented method to prospect interviews.

Voir Dire - A Vehicle of Objective Recruiting

One of the cornerstones of the American justice system is an accused's right to a jury trial when dealing with criminal charges. This right is guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as well as the regulations of every state. Whenever we see lawful dramatization play out on movie or tv, they normally start with lawyers, sufferers and the implicated entering a packed courtroom. We're greeted by stress in the atmosphere, the demanding demeanor of a sheriff, the smart and also looking at face of the judge, and a row of jurors. Which's the part we typically miss out on - exactly how each member of the jury wound up there. It's not an easy issue of reacting to a summons, it's a deliberate and systematic choice process.

Not only do I assume voir dire associates to how firms could select skill, I think it could instruct firms a thing or two about how you can deal with bias from hiring. So just how does it work?

First, the court opens up the process by asking prospective jurors regarding their opinions, perspectives and backgrounds. He or she likewise tries to discover whether these thoes have any pre-existing understanding concerning the instance itself. The questions are made to elicit and also find any kind of predispositions that may avoid the court participants from making a reasonable as well as impartial choice in the situation, based solely on the evidence.

The judge in my situation did much more compared to that, nonetheless. He took time to explain the entire procedure to us in advance, aiding us recognize the questions as well as why they were being asked. He supplied a riches of context that eliminated any type of uncertainty or anxiety we could have about our roles.

Next, lawyers from the prosecution and also protection asked comparable concerns, likewise made to reveal encounters or qualities that could possibly create a juror to favor one side over the various other. In my case, each attorney asked the same inquiries, in the very same format. They were constant, well created and mutually agreed upon.

During these job interviews, counselors for both celebrations are likewise permitted to excuse prospective jurors through two sorts of obstacles: peremptory challenges as well as obstacles for reason. A peremptory challenge needs no reason. An attorney could try to reject a prospective juror that is certified to offer yet appears most likely to favor the opposing team. Legal representatives could not make use of a peremptory challenge to excuse prospects for the jury based on discriminating elements such as race, gender or class.

Challenges for source obtain even more nuanced. The most uncomplicated example would certainly involve a prospective juror that falls short to fulfill the fundamental standards to offer: age, residency in the jurisdiction, citizenship, capability to rest with as well as understand the trial, and also so forth. Beyond minimum qualifications, the majority of difficulties for source arise as the result of actual or suggested biases.

Actual biases materialize when a candidate for the jury confesses that they could possibly not be objective. Some spiritual beliefs avoid their followers from resting in judgment of others. A those that reveals this belief would most likely be excused for cause.

Implied bias is a little more difficult. This kind of obstacle comes when possible jurors have character qualities, jobs or individual encounters that make it not likely for them remain unbiased, no matter of their reactions throughout voir dire. An example would certainly be a retired law enforcement agent considered for a jury that will determine a case on cops brutality.

So how would certainly a court option model operate in employing? I see it as a two-part process. Since voir dire is meant to weed out prejudices, it would apply most straight to the way we pick our interviewers and decision-making boards for recruiting. There are also some vital components we can make use of for candidate selection.

Selecting Your Court of Interviewers

Poor hiring choices have extensive influences on company society: reduced spirits, winding down motivation and even deterioration of a work brand. Eliminating predisposition from the working with procedure is crucial. One of the very best methods to accomplish this is to create a jury of interviewers.

Create a decision-making board or hiring group, as well as after that exercise a collection of questions (no greater than 10) that you would certainly all ask prospects. Just as lawyers throughout court choice, your intention is to establish a consistent set of efficient inquiries with a global layout for all candidates. Additionally think about the notion of difficult employee for cause - noticeable prejudices that are real or implied.

For circumstances, say a hiring manager in the group confesses that she prefers to work with "individuals I can connect to, with an advanced education from top universities." This would likely count as an actual bias. Having a postgraduate degree or attending a prominent college is no warranty of efficiency, capacity or also a good fit with the company's broader society. By dismissing other qualified applicants with various skills and also academic backgrounds, this interviewer is overlooking the advantages of taking into consideration an extensive range of profiles. In doing so, she risks creating a destructive gap between the familiarity of the new hire and also the finest abilities for the job.

You could also uncover the capacity for indicated prejudices. Let's visualize that an additional member of the board is a young male from New york city with a previous background in sales. Despite the fact that he supervises the accountancy division for your organization, you discover that almost all of his hires are also male, never older than just him, come from the East Shore and all have previous job experience as salespeople. It's clear that he has a suggested prejudice, which could be costing your company the loss of far better matched employees with better ability sets.

Meeting in this fashion and also challenging for source provides you the possibility to identify and also extract predispositions within the group, systematize speaking with inquiries and also develop appropriate assessment standards that everybody could agree with. This procedure ensures that interviewers are on the same web page in determining just what a suitable candidate looks like. Much more significantly, this approach helps you formalize a set of checks and also balances.

Jury Selection for Candidates

Naturally, candidates are not visiting be grilled for talking to prejudices. Their situation is distinct due to the fact that, in this metaphor, they're not jurors, offenders or witnesses on the dock. Prospects typically aren't potential jurors undertaking the voir dire, yet being grilled by a hiring supervisor could evoke the sensation of a lawyer digging for dirt. As well as while they're not on trial, an interview can occasionally really feel like one.

In either case, the interview is a nerve-wracking experience that involves some level of uncertainty and judgment. My experience in jury choice instructed me some important lessons in exactly how to reduce this process.

First, like the judge, we ought to open up the procedures by asking candidates about their backgrounds and also perspectives - in this instance, that suggests past encounter, goals, occupation objectives, passions, skills and also success. We could additionally find whether candidates have any pre-existing expertise regarding the task itself. This can reveal a good deal: does the prospect understand the firm goal, the function, the society, the work brand etc? Is that those's assumption favorable or negative?

As the court in my instance did, we need to make the effort to describe the whole process to candidates before the concerns begin flying, helping them understand why they're being asked. If we give the same level of context, we can eliminate any kind of question or anxiety prospects could have concerning the position, firm or employing process.

When we finally start asking the questions, we'll currently have a consistent layout that's thoroughly developed, objective and agreed after by everybody in the employing committee. If we do our works properly, we'll quickly have the ability to recognize concerns that would certainly lead to challenges for cause. We could even discover "prejudices" of sorts.

Sometimes, a wealth of experience comes with an inflexibility towards change, or practices that could not contribute to a new market or company environment. It's less complicated to show excellent behaviors to new talent compared to force seasoned employees to unlearn theirs.

Too usually in the industry, we see employers homing in on job titles and also keywords, all which could be deceptive. Firms have actually relocated far from commonly approved titles for their positions, making it difficult for a resume to properly stand for the genuine skills of the ability. In some instances, towering and uncertain titles do not tell a reputable story. In other situations, overly simplified titles could mask the worker's real strengths. Because of this, some employers never ever straight test a candidate's capabilities, they just think that the lack of specific key words or titles means a risky hire.

The Decision: Mirroring Jury Selection Can Enhance Hiring

Selecting the best juror is a tough choice for any sort of judge or litigator. They have to find thoes who can be unbiased, reasonable and also joint. Choosing prospects, or even those who interview them, needs the very same degree of preparing, thoughtfulness and process. When we eliminate bias from employing, we reach the heart of what issues most: discovering talent who execute at the highest degree. We reveal our organizations to ability of all abilities, backgrounds, abilities and societies. We bolster variety and addition. We stimulate fresh ideas and technology. And we could also find that what an employee may lack in terms of recognized skills or durability, she or he makes up for via motivation, a readiness to learn and a drive to achieve.