#murder panther supremacy?

[1zashreena1]

I have questions, concerns, and even a theory

[roga-el-rojo]

Assata: An Autobiograhy - Assata Shakur

Hello friends!

I’m incredibly excited for this week’s recommendation as we start Black August, a month dedicated to highlighting the history of revolutionary Black political prisoners and their comrades in and outside the US. I’ll be highlighting a crucial radical Black woman’s experience today: “Assata: An Autobiography” by Assata Olugbala Shakur.

While Assata needs no introduction, here’s a quick biography before delving into the text. Assata Shakur, born JoAnne Deborah Byron on July 16, 1947, is a New Afrikan revolutionary and former member of the Black Liberation Army and Black Panther Party. She grew up between New York and North Carolina, experiencing the worst of Jim Crow, and was radicalized by the Vietnam War in college. After joining the BLA for a while, she was present in a shootout on a New Jersey Turnpike that left a state trooper dead in 1973. She was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, but she escaped in 1979 and fled to Cuba, where she was granted political asylum and lives in to this day.

There are too many aspects of Assata's storied history to highlight here, all of which deserve serious reflection. I'll start by noting her incredible bravery and fortitude throughout her harrowing encounters with white supremacy, patriarchal violence, and settler capitalism in and out of prison. As her name shows, she is one who thankfully struggles for the people.

Her position as a socialist revolutionary is important to highlight. She was a part of a militant black freedom struggle rooted in communist thought which sought to upend global imperialism and colonialism to free all peoples, especially black women as some of the most exploited Third World Women (seeing New Afrika as a colony). She also criticized white chauvinist elements of the Left which sadly still exist.

I also want to mention her solidarity with Lolita Lebrón, an incredibly important Puerto Rican nationalist, in prison when no one else would. She knew that decolonization for Puerto Rico was a part of a global struggle for liberation.

I highly recommend everyone read this book to gain first-hand insight into a Black revolutionary's struggle for freedom!

[dailyanarchistposts]

Picking Up Where the State Falls Through

None of this is new. The Black Panthers focused much of their work around meeting the needs of the Black community that the capitalist state and market had failed to fulfill. Projects like the Free Breakfast Program and ambulance services give credence to the extensive history of this type of mutual aid. It was the Panthers who exposed the extensive sickle cell anemia epidemic in the Black community by carrying out the work that the state should have done.

The concept of “revolutionary intercommunalism,” theorized by Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton, helped develop a strategy for structured community service programs also known as “survival programs.” These programs were meant to address the lack of helpful institutions and services in Black communities serving the needs of the people. The current situation demands proper respect given to its purpose. Intercommunalism focuses on and prioritizes Black self-determination outside of the state’s failures to adequately look after the needs of the Black community. The survival of underserved people is understood to be a part of the necessary politics of transformative change. Aside from the glitz of revolution that fuels popular depiction in the media, politics and culture, our current pre-revolutionary situation requires the everyday survival of those of us who would do the revolting in the first place. Intercommunalism pays respects to revolution as a process, and not merely an overnight reaction.

Across communities Black and all colors, we see a persistent need to address whatever shortcomings white supremacy delves out to us. It is not necessarily new for communities in the US dealing with white supremacy to support each other and build resistance from within. Starting our own services and building up each other is an everyday revolutionary politics of survival. However, what can and often does happen is that maintaining our own institutions within the bounds of capitalism becomes the objective when ending capitalism should be a necessary outcome. More than simply reacting to capitalism in anarchistic ways, we should be proactively working to overcome it by making our very models of resistance anti-capitalist. Depending on the likes of sympathetic capitalists and liberal elites is counterproductive in this respect. Instead of building ways to consistently respond to disaster, we must be proactive in ending the crisis of capitalism rather than solely attempting to counter it one day at a time.

A proactive pre-revolutionary situation will raise the consciousness of people to realize that they are already carrying out the radical politics they are often told to despise. Ahistorical liberal reimaginings of the past make tragedy into a necessary stepping stone for an empire that is learning at the expense of the oppressed. Real resistance positions people to build movements that undo the violence that oppression inflicts. We are not in need of excuses; we are in need of a better world. If we want that better world, we have to align our politics with a radical imagination, with sustainable everyday resistance and innovative strategy.

The task of making the planet a better place is a great task, but it is the only choice we have — lest we allow capitalism to destroy the carrying capacity of the one we currently inhabit. We can no longer afford to let crisis keep us entangled in this current state of disarray. Instead, we should charge our suffering to a system that must pay with its unacceptable existence.

Over 150 people worldwide have been murdered this year while defending the environment. This piece is in loving memory of those who have died and will die doing so. Thank you for all that you did for us.

[laresearchette]

Thursday, January 04, 2023 Canadian TV Listings (Times Eastern)

WHERE CAN I FIND THOSE PREMIERES?: ONE NIGHT STAY (BET +) REYKA (BritBox) SANCTUARY: A WITCH'S TALE (Sundance Now/AMC+) THE GOLDEN BACHELOR: THE GOLDEN WEDDING (City TV) 8:00pm THE FIRST 48 (A&E Canada) 8:00pm THE POWER OF FILM (TCM) 8:00pm CASEY ANTHONY'S PARENTS SPEAK: THE LIE DETECTOR TEST (A&E Canada) 9:00pm BARNWOOD BUILDERS (Magnolia Canada) 9:00pm

WHAT IS NOT PREMIERING IN CANADA TONIGHT: GENERAL HOSPITAL: 60 YEARS OF STARS AND STORYTELLING (ABC Feed) SWAMP PEOPLE (Premiering on January 11 on History Canada at 9:00pm) DAUGHTER OF THE CULT (Premiering on January 11 on Disney + Star) SWAMP MYSTERIES WITH TROY LANDRY (TBD - History Canada)

NEW TO AMAZON PRIME CANADA/CBC GEM/CRAVE TV/DISNEY + STAR/NETFLIX CANADA:

NETFLIX CANADA BOY SWALLOWS UNIVERSE (AU) THE BROTHERS SUN SOCIETY OF THE SNOW (ES)

2024 IIHF WORLD JUNIOR CHAMPIONSHIP (TSN4) 5:00am: Relegation: Germany vs. Norway (TSN/TSN3/TSN4/TSN5) 9:00am: Semifinal: Sweden vs. Czechia (TSN/TSN3/TSN4/TSN5) 1:30pm: Semifinal: U.S. vs. Finland

NHL HOCKEY (SNEast/SNOntario) 7:00pm: Penguins vs. Bruins (TSN2) 7:00pm: Sabres vs. Habs (SNPacific) 8:00pm: Canucks vs. Blues (SNWest) 8:00pm: Flames vs. Predators (TSN5) 10:00pm: Sens vs. Kraken (SNEast/SNOntario) 10:30pm: Panthers vs. Knights (TSN3) 10:30pm: Jets vs. Sharks

NBA BASKETBALL (SN1) 7:30pm: Bucks vs. Spurs (SN1) 10:00pm: Nuggets vs. Warriors

DRAGONS’ DEN (CBC) 8:00pm: A West Coast duo arrives with precious cargo; an Ontario business owner freshens up the Den; an entrepreneur revamps the Dragons' credit cards; a West Coast entrepreneur puts a new spin on an old product.

ALMOST PARADISE (CTV2) 8:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): A local priest is murdered over a long-lost ancient cross, the cross which Magellan held in his hand the day he was killed by Lapu-Lapu in the Battle of Mactan.

HEARTLAND DOCS, DVM (Nat Geo Canada) 8:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): The Schroeders scramble to save a farm dog after it ate rat poison.

THE NATURE OF THINGS (CBC) 9:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): The human voice is a very sophisticated communication tool, but most lack knowledge of how to unlock its potential.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THAT HOUSE? (HGTV Canada) 9:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): A New York couple overwhelmed by their water problems are ready to bring in professionals to correct them for good; Joe Mazza discovers the source of their issues while designer Noel Gatts takes their Cape Cod home from cluttered to classic.

SUPERCHEF GRUDGE MATCH (Food Network Canada) 9:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): Darnell Ferguson welcomes four culinary masters to settle their turf wars. Matt Klum calls out former boss Dana Downs to prove she made a huge mistake letting him go, while Danny Wilson challenges Jay Ducote in a battle of Southern cuisine supremacy.

THE GHOST TOWN TERROR (DTour) 9:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): Karen calls Tim and Sapphire back to Gunslinger Gulch to investigate a shocking, fire-branded omen; when Tim repels deeper into The Pit for answers, a confrontation with his own dark nemesis leads to painful revelations about the living and the dead.

CANADA'S DRAG RACE (Crave) 9:00pm

MARRIED TO REAL ESTATE (HGTV Canada)10:00pm/11:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): A couple living with their two children and mother are bursting at the seams and want a bigger home with character; Egypt and Mike find the right place in Roswell and look to turn the sterile house into a dream with a new kitchen and yoga studio. In Episode Two, with behind-the-scene details and never-before-seen footage, Egypt and Mike revisit their favorite family renovations, including an old family home turned into a chic short-term rental, to refreshing a Southern-charm haven.

LAST OF THE GIANTS (Discovery Canada) 10:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): Cyril Chauquet and his team are dropped into the middle of the wildest environments on the planet with the sole mission of collecting vital specimens that could save species from extinction.

A HOME AWAY (Magnolia Canada) 10:00pm (SERIES PREMIERE): Harrison House is a 130-year-old Victorian bed and breakfast that Bryan and Catherine are converting into a boutique hotel; the plan is for a quick renovation, but they soon find out that they're in for a challenge.

CANADIAN REFLECTIONS (CBC) 11:30pm: Shallots & Garlic; Promotion

[cosmicanger]

❍

❍ It’s still white supremacy if the c*ps were Black

❍ “Black people: don’t kill us

America: but the snuff film ratings are incredible”

❍ “The fact that the officers in Memphis were Black is further evidence of systemic racism not counter evidence to it. If you don't understand this statement please take a sociology class.”

❍ “Why do we have to keep fucking dying for people to listen , if only temporarily”

❍ “I don't understand how you can, almost 11 years after Trayvon Martin, still be the sort of person calling for more p*lice-reform efforts like body-cameras. These guys did this to Tyre Nichols with all the cameras rolling.”

❍ “Why are people even watching the the video... it's literally snuff”

❍ “If you think the Memphis p*lice officers had to be white in order to exhibit anti-Blackness, you need to take that AP African American Studies course Ron DeSantis just banned.”

❍ “Seems like the real solution to all this is: more training for p*lice; more body cameras; more community policing programs; more black officers who are blacker than the black officers who preceded them; more thoughts and prayers; more "peaceful" protest; and more consent decrees.” We should also consider: More black p*lice chiefs; more black prosecutors; more black city council members; more black mayors; more white allies; more op-ed pieces about "The Talk"; ... and a few more black people dying on camera for people to really get the scale of the problem”

❍ “I can’t believe folks are still talking about modifying p*lice weaponry as a solution when cops murdered George Floyd & Tyre Nichols with their bare hands.”

❍ “In an interview, I was asked about the #TyreNichols situation. I said it was a result of white supremacy. The host's response was "But the c*ps are Black". I replied, "guardians of the white power structure come in all shades". No complexion is required for oppression.”

❍ “Any Black person who has ever encountered Black c*ps could have told you that the representation angle was nonsense to begin with”

❍ “Can irl otg organisers just get off Twitter then like why are you here if you’re so busy off doing the important things than us chronically online people, does punching down just give you stress relief from working with those poor people all day or”

❍ “You don’t have to be white to uphold systems of white supremacism. You don’t have to be white to be be anti-Black. You don’t have to be a white male to practice p*lice terrorism in the United States.”

❍ “not watching no more black death rolled out like a new album drop. not watching 1619 project. not watching no more black panther films. all serve the same function. there is no wakanda, there’s only africa. it’s hostage state is why we keep getting casted in this same role”

❍ “N*gga could work at the post office, sanitation department, water department, desk job downtown, etc. But choose to be c*ps.”

❍ In response to this (“I remember the Rodney King assault. I remember how many of us thought the footage would change everything, Finally there was “proof”. Now there’s footage everyday of p*lice brutalizing us. This footage is in HD & often comes from the p*lice. Nothing changes.“) — “Things change. They’ve changed for the worse. We watched that grainy footage of Rodney King being beaten. We’re watching c*ps beat, taser, choke, shoot, and take a knee on folks throats until they are DEAD. We are seeing police with bigger budgets, and bigger military grade guns.”

❍ “I don’t have to see “it” to feel it. That’s one of the results of being terrorized by the p*lice. The reins of terror are tattooed into our memories. We can simply say names and rewind time and re-live lynchings at the hands, feet, knees, fist, guns, and tasers of the p*lic*.”

❍ “"The city of Birmingham has been under siege from OUTSIDE AGITATORS led by Martin Luther King.”–Bull Connor (1963)

“We have never had a problem in the South except in a few very isolated instances and these have been the result of OUTSIDE AGITATORS.”–George Wallace (1964)

2023: “@NYCMayor warns against "outside agitators" coming into the city to disrupt protests, citing intel from across the country and sensitive "classified" information he declined to go into further detail on.”

❍ “all of the reforms failed at the same damn time - black c*ps, body cameras, multiple c*ps on the scene, tasers instead of guns- so how is more reform the answer? #Blacker c*ps? Even non-deadlier non deadly weapons? ten c*ps instead of five? HD body cameras? harder convictions?”

❍ “P*lic* will really brutalize and kill people. Then get mad when others are upset at what they did. So they attack the people who are upset and then politicians give them even more money and weaponry to keep doing it. What a world.”

❍ “body cameras might be the biggest scam c*ps ever pulled off”

❍ “i don't know who needs to hear this but c*ps were brutalizing and killing black people before they had qualified immunity. why do you think King said, ""We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality" in 1963?”

[reasoningdaily]

Dr. Frances Cress Welsing: A Genius Shunned by Black Academicians

To begin, I discovered Frances Cress Welsing probably as many of us old enough to remember Tony Brown’s Journal and to my absolute delight during the 1980s I had the honor of performing poetry at Philadelphia events where Cress Welsing was the major speaker. Oh, how I idolized her and learned so very much about my people and myself from listening to her lecture. She was tall, downtown brown, feminine, atop her head a cottony afro and her wit and wisdom had all of us magnetized. I had found a desperately needed role model: a genius Sister Scientist whose fierceness reminded me of the Panthers. She was so lovingly Black and courageous and her brilliance was a unique combination involving psychology, science, sociology and most importantly to me, Black Nationalism. From her I learned so much more about our people and those in authority over us, questions I had been pondering since childhood and especially during my years as a runaway. In the 1990s I attended a few of her New York City talks as I was completing my doctoral studies, and for some reason I just assumed that this incredible expert was still employed at Howard University. Taking that assumption for granted, I was overwhelmed with my own college level studies, childrearing and fighting white racism, so I simply figured she was still at Howard. After all she was a major scholar, with groundbreaking innovative theory that explained a world problem: white supremacy. Cress Welsing had published the highly theoretical and practical Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors (1991) and had all the credentials for tenure. She had brought high level media attention to Howard University, debating and teaching leading White authorities who disparaged Black intellectualism. She had done more to deserve tenure than the regular ivory tower professors married to repetitious book learning, and producing nothing new (which is supposed to be a mandate within academe: to produce new modes and forms of inquiry). In my naivety, I had decided that our dear Dr. Sister Frances Cress Welsing was economically and professional stable at a major HBCU. When I realized that Howard refused to keep Dr. Francis Cress Welsing, among its ranks, it broke my already broken heart, and I again experienced Black on Black betrayal. If White academicians had sanctioned Dr. Cress Welsing, so would the negro lackeys who refused to maintain her. If she had been applauded for espousing euphemisms that extend white supremacy, she’d be at Howard. If she had buck-danced and shuffled or displayed manufactured n/Negro American made behavior, she would have had a regular university paycheck. But that was not how our dear Dr. Frances Cress Welsing carried herself. Instead of cloning herself White, she sang the song of Black redemption: telling us we were at war, which many Black people would like to forget, despite the round –up and constant murders of Black males, (Black females and children) right before our everyday eyes. Dr. Frances Cress Welsing even told us how to win this war, but too many academicians and laity seek White validation and twinness with a people who enslaved, tortured, and raped us for centuries, legally and imm

to see the entire piece please click the header to go to the abstract

[psychotrope777]

ive said this before but as someone who's read a lot abt cults it does always bug the shit out of me whenever people brush over the fact that the manson family were white supremacists as if it was an irrelevant piece of information. white supremacy was at the core of charles manson's beliefs. the entire reason he orchestrated the tate & labianca murders was because he thought it would instigate an apocalyptic race war. i dont really remember the specifics bc its been a long time since i read helter skelter but iirc he believed there would be a race war wherein black people would kill most of the white people (save the family, because manson was preparing them for the apocalypse) and then manson would reinstate slavery. it was obvious from the crime scenes that the family were trying to pin the murders on the black panthers. manson fed into fears amid the american civil rights movement that there would be a "white genocide". the people who joined with him more likely than not already believed something like this. they didn't just join a cult because manson was nice. i wish i could say i didn't understand why people would hesitate to call a crazy murderous rapist and cult leader a racist but i can think of a few reasons. i kinda hate to admit that for a long time i wondered why the LAPD dicked around so much on the manson murders. i knew the LAPD were fucking evil but why would they deliberate for so long? why would supposed purveyors of justice not care about solving such brutal and senseless murders? these were murders that left crime scenes so violent that hardened homicide detectives had to step off of the property to throw up. but now i think back and i think that they were likely content to assume or to let people assume that it was black panthers who had committed the murders. there arent a lot of other answers that make sense to me

[general9chaos]

So as a gentile, I agree that antisemitism does exacerbate a bunch of other forms of bigotry. However, your post doesn't have enough background to have convinced me on its own. I was convinced of this point by Siderea's post Why Nazis Hate Jews, which lays out the whole train of logic for why bigots rely on antisemitic conspiracy theories to defeat their own cognitive dissonance, including a worked example of how british terfs fell into bed with outright Nazis.

The civil rights movement in the US in the 1950s and 1960s poses a conundrum for white supremacists. For one thing, it was tremendously successful – at pushing back at white supremacism, no less – and thus pretty dramatic demonstration that Black people are not, contrary to white supremacism, unable to self-organize and self-govern. It revealed on the national stage what were clearly Black geniuses of oratory and theory and political savvy. From the non-violent protests of Dr. King to the Black Panther Party to Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, it demonstrated large groups of Black people, en masse, acting with discipline and industry and self-reliance and physical courage – all things white supremacism was deeply invested in insisting were alien to Black people, being the sole property of "white" people, and constituting their supposed superiority. How then could white supremacy maintain itself in the face of such profoundly confounding and abundant evidence?

Easy. Blame the Jews.

Here's Eric K. Ward – a Black man who did undercover work among white supremacists in the US (!!!) – again:

The successes of the civil rights movement created a terrible problem for White supremacist ideology. White supremacism—inscribed de jure by the Jim Crow regime and upheld de facto outside the South—had been the law of the land, and a Black-led social movement had toppled the political regime that supported it. How could a race of inferiors have unseated this power structure through organizing alone? For that matter, how could feminists and LGBTQ people have upended traditional gender relations, leftists mounted a challenge to global capitalism, Muslims won billions of converts to Islam? How do you explain the boundary-crossing allure of hip hop? The election of a Black president? Some secret cabal, some mythological power, must be manipulating the social order behind the scenes. This diabolical evil must control television, banking, entertainment, education, and even Washington, D.C. It must be brainwashing White people, rendering them racially unconscious. What is this arch-nemesis of the White race, whose machinations have prevented the natural and inevitable imposition of white supremacy? It is, of course, the Jews.

Since the way that antisemitism is organized is around this concept of Jews being a nefarious group of shadowy conspirators pulling strings behind the scenes to attack Christendom/Western Civilization/etc, "the Jews" provide a universal plug-and-play explanation for any other minority group that is proving too successful for white supremacy's comfort at resisting oppression.

This is how we went directly from a white supremacist murdering nine Black people in a church, to antiracist activists demanding the removal of monuments of the Confederacy in response, to angry white men marching through Charlottesville, brandishing torches, chanting, "Jews! Will not! Replace us!".

Any time a minority group which white supremacy has been insisting is incompetent, stupid, lazy, irrelevant, child-like, unsympathetic, etc is successful at organizing and agitating for its collective well-being in exactly the way that white supremacism insists they couldn't, white supremacy has a convenient explanation: the Jews must have put them up to it. Rich Jews must have funded it, intellectual Jews must have plotted it, powerful Jews must have used their political power to facilitate it.

so being jewish, i know that antisemitism primary hurts jews. it's us. we live with the most threats from it.

but no one seems to notice how many terrorists, school shooters, bombers, hate groups, harassment campaigns, hate ideology: sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, fuck pretty much all of the worst brain worms you can get or be effected by: are powerfully charged, explained, accepted because of and linked through jew hatred.

the dyke march hates jews, but so do trad cath men's rights groups. black hebrew israelites hate jews, but so do flat earther, Qanon, and the KKK. so do incels. so do the anti israel leftist. both the far right and far left have vast theories about how jews are involved in world affairs. so do pretty much any color or creed of goyim that has fallen down the rabbit hole into la la land where violence becomes a political solution.

all the big hate group networks use jews as a uniting big tent to find common ground to work together. no joke. brown and black christian nationalist and islamist pro terrorist speakers are routinely used by white supremesists online and at in person conferences.

no one seems to acknowledge that the jew hate is the core principal behind conspiracy narratives globally and that conspiracy narratives are the destabilizing force that lets a person go from "i want to change the world for the better!" into "things can only get better by mass violence!"

and everyone kinda ... ignores it. not even that it's a warning sign but like... that it's pretty critical to convince someone that they need to cause mass death? i just feel so crazy sometimes.

i'm not even just worried for jews, i'm trying to warn goyim that antisemitism is why schools and concerts aren't safe FOR THEM, and it's like... crickets. no idea.

[jgparra]

Black Lives Matter

https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/

A huge initiative started in the year 2013 was the Black Lives Matter initiative. The main goal as described by its founders is to "eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by state vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvement in our lives" (BLM, 2023). This organization continues to support help the black community by offering student relief and loan forgiveness. They empower the African American community, similarly to the efforts seen during the civil right movement.

Throughout the semester we looked at various examples of how people of color are treated differently within the U.S. As mentioned in my previous blog where we talked about the film Black Panther, Peggy McIntosh's realization that society placed barriers for people of color. This has been an ongoing struggle, from the foundation of our country to this day. We've seen multiple efforts to combat white supremacy but have continuously fallen short. Another example that we learned about in class was the March of Milwaukee.

(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 1967)

In the 1960's, Milwaukee's African American population was facing a housing problem. They were being kicked out of their neighborhoods and were not being turned down when they tried to buy or rent in neighborhoods that were not "their confined" areas. As we see in the image above, a group of counter-protestors hold signs saying "God is White" This comes to show the racial prejudice that exists against the Black community. Unfortunately, the struggles that citizens were having back in the 1960's are still happening today.

https://blacklivesmatter.com/black-lives-matter-global-network-foundation-statement-on-the-murder-of-tyre-nichols/

Part of the mission of the Black Lives Matter movement, is to share the stories of those that unfortunately have lost their life due white supremacy. This is done in hopes to inspire more and more people to support the movement and make a change. One of the stories shared on the website is the one of Tyre Nichols. Tyre lost his life at the hands of the Memphis Police Department. An argument that the media was making was that the police officers who beat Tyre to death were black but BLM board member states, " ALL police represent the interest of capitalism and impel state- sanctioned violence. Anyone who works within a system the perpetuates state-sanctioned violence is complicit in upholding white supremacy" (Parker, 2023). This just comes to show how our society and our political system continues to be based on racism.

[blackwoolncrown]

”This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.

But enough is enough.

The reforms aren’t working. Incrementalism isn’t happening. Unarmed Black, indigenous, and people of color are being killed by cops in the streets and the police are savagely attacking the people protesting these murders.

American policing is a thick blue tumor strangling the life from our communities and if you don’t believe it when the poor and the marginalized say it, if you don’t believe it when you see cops across the country shooting journalists with less-lethal bullets and caustic chemicals, maybe you’ll believe it when you hear it straight from the pig’s mouth.”

>>Copied here in case anyone gets paywalled when they click the above. The full article is...a lot.<<

WHY AM I WRITING THIS

As someone who went through the training, hiring, and socialization of a career in law enforcement, I wanted to give a first-hand account of why I believe police officers are the way they are. Not to excuse their behavior, but to explain it and to indict the structures that perpetuate it.

I believe that if everyone understood how we’re trained and brought up in the profession, it would inform the demands our communities should be making of a new way of community safety. If I tell you how we were made, I hope it will empower you to unmake us.

One of the other reasons I’ve struggled to write this essay is that I don’t want to center the conversation on myself and my big salty boo-hoo feelings about my bad choices. It’s a toxic white impulse to see atrocities and think “How can I make this about me?” So, I hope you’ll take me at my word that this account isn’t meant to highlight me, but rather the hundred thousand of me in every city in the country. It’s about the structure that made me (that I chose to pollute myself with) and it’s my meager contribution to the cause of radical justice.

YES, ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS

I was a police officer in a major metropolitan area in California with a predominantly poor, non-white population (with a large proportion of first-generation immigrants). One night during briefing, our watch commander told us that the city council had requested a new zero tolerance policy. Against murderers, drug dealers, or child predators?

No, against homeless people collecting cans from recycling bins.

See, the city had some kickback deal with the waste management company where waste management got paid by the government for our expected tonnage of recycling. When homeless people “stole” that recycling from the waste management company, they were putting that cheaper contract in peril. So, we were to arrest as many recyclers as we could find.

Even for me, this was a stupid policy and I promptly blew Sarge off. But a few hours later, Sarge called me over to assist him. He was detaining a 70 year old immigrant who spoke no English, who he’d seen picking a coke can out of a trash bin. He ordered me to arrest her for stealing trash. I said, “Sarge, c’mon, she’s an old lady.” He said, “I don’t give a shit. Hook her up, that’s an order.” And… I did. She cried the entire way to the station and all through the booking process. I couldn’t even comfort her because I didn’t speak Spanish. I felt disgusting but I was ordered to make this arrest and I wasn’t willing to lose my job for her.

If you’re tempted to feel sympathy for me, don’t. I used to happily hassle the homeless under other circumstances. I researched obscure penal codes so I could arrest people in homeless encampments for lesser known crimes like “remaining too close to railroad property” (369i of the California Penal Code). I used to call it “planting warrant seeds” since I knew they wouldn’t make their court dates and we could arrest them again and again for warrant violations.

We used to have informal contests for who could cite or arrest someone for the weirdest law. DUI on a bicycle, non-regulation number of brooms on your tow truck (27700(a)(1) of the California Vehicle Code)… shit like that. For me, police work was a logic puzzle for arresting people, regardless of their actual threat to the community. As ashamed as I am to admit it, it needs to be said: stripping people of their freedom felt like a game to me for many years.

I know what you’re going to ask: did I ever plant drugs? Did I ever plant a gun on someone? Did I ever make a false arrest or file a false report? Believe it or not, the answer is no. Cheating was no fun, I liked to get my stats the “legitimate” way. But I knew officers who kept a little baggie of whatever or maybe a pocket knife that was a little too big in their war bags (yeah, we called our dufflebags “war bags”…). Did I ever tell anybody about it? No I did not. Did I ever confess my suspicions when cocaine suddenly showed up in a gang member’s jacket? No I did not.

In fact, let me tell you about an extremely formative experience: in my police academy class, we had a clique of around six trainees who routinely bullied and harassed other students: intentionally scuffing another trainee’s shoes to get them in trouble during inspection, sexually harassing female trainees, cracking racist jokes, and so on. Every quarter, we were to write anonymous evaluations of our squadmates. I wrote scathing accounts of their behavior, thinking I was helping keep bad apples out of law enforcement and believing I would be protected. Instead, the academy staff read my complaints to them out loud and outed me to them and never punished them, causing me to get harassed for the rest of my academy class. That’s how I learned that even police leadership hates rats. That’s why no one is “changing things from the inside.” They can’t, the structure won’t allow it.

And that’s the point of what I’m telling you. Whether you were my sergeant, legally harassing an old woman, me, legally harassing our residents, my fellow trainees bullying the rest of us, or “the bad apples” illegally harassing “shitbags”, we were all in it together. I knew cops that pulled women over to flirt with them. I knew cops who would pepper spray sleeping bags so that homeless people would have to throw them away. I knew cops that intentionally provoked anger in suspects so they could claim they were assaulted. I was particularly good at winding people up verbally until they lashed out so I could fight them. Nobody spoke out. Nobody stood up. Nobody betrayed the code.

None of us protected the people (you) from bad cops.

This is why “All cops are bastards.” Even your uncle, even your cousin, even your mom, even your brother, even your best friend, even your spouse, even me. Because even if they wouldn’t Do The Thing themselves, they will almost never rat out another officer who Does The Thing, much less stop it from happening.

BASTARD 101

I could write an entire book of the awful things I’ve done, seen done, and heard others bragging about doing. But, to me, the bigger question is “How did it get this way?”. While I was a police officer in a city 30 miles from where I lived, many of my fellow officers were from the community and treated their neighbors just as badly as I did. While every cop’s individual biases come into play, it’s the profession itself that is toxic, and it starts from day 1 of training.

Every police academy is different but all of them share certain features: taught by old cops, run like a paramilitary bootcamp, strong emphasis on protecting yourself more than anyone else. The majority of my time in the academy was spent doing aggressive physical training and watching video after video after video of police officers being murdered on duty.

I want to highlight this: nearly everyone coming into law enforcement is bombarded with dash cam footage of police officers being ambushed and killed. Over and over and over. Colorless VHS mortality plays, cops screaming for help over their radios, their bodies going limp as a pair of tail lights speed away into a grainy black horizon. In my case, with commentary from an old racist cop who used to brag about assaulting Black Panthers.

To understand why all cops are bastards, you need to understand one of the things almost every training officer told me when it came to using force:

“I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.”

Meaning, “I’ll take my chances in court rather than risk getting hurt”. We’re able to think that way because police unions are extremely overpowered and because of the generous concept of Qualified Immunity, a legal theory which says a cop generally can’t be held personally liable for mistakes they make doing their job in an official capacity.

When you look at the actions of the officers who killed George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, David McAtee, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, or Freddie Gray, remember that they, like me, were trained to recite “I’d rather be judged by 12” as a mantra. Even if Mistakes Were Made™, the city (meaning the taxpayers, meaning you) pays the settlement, not the officer.

Once police training has - through repetition, indoctrination, and violent spectacle - promised officers that everyone in the world is out to kill them, the next lesson is that your partners are the only people protecting you. Occasionally, this is even true: I’ve had encounters turn on me rapidly to the point I legitimately thought I was going to die, only to have other officers come and turn the tables.

One of the most important thought leaders in law enforcement is Col. Dave Grossman, a “killologist” who wrote an essay called “Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs”. Cops are the sheepdogs, bad guys are the wolves, and the citizens are the sheep (!). Col. Grossman makes sure to mention that to a stupid sheep, sheepdogs look more like wolves than sheep, and that’s why they dislike you.

This “they hate you for protecting them and only I love you, only I can protect you” tactic is familiar to students of abuse. It’s what abusers do to coerce their victims into isolation, pulling them away from friends and family and ensnaring them in the abuser’s toxic web. Law enforcement does this too, pitting the officer against civilians. “They don’t understand what you do, they don’t respect your sacrifice, they just want to get away with crimes. You’re only safe with us.”

I think the Wolves vs. Sheepdogs dynamic is one of the most important elements as to why officers behave the way they do. Every single second of my training, I was told that criminals were not a legitimate part of their community, that they were individual bad actors, and that their bad actions were solely the result of their inherent criminality. Any concept of systemic trauma, generational poverty, or white supremacist oppression was either never mentioned or simply dismissed. After all, most people don’t steal, so anyone who does isn’t “most people,” right? To us, anyone committing a crime deserved anything that happened to them because they broke the “social contract.” And yet, it was never even a question as to whether the power structure above them was honoring any sort of contract back.

Understand: Police officers are part of the state monopoly on violence and all police training reinforces this monopoly as a cornerstone of police work, a source of honor and pride. Many cops fantasize about getting to kill someone in the line of duty, egged on by others that have. One of my training officers told me about the time he shot and killed a mentally ill homeless man wielding a big stick. He bragged that he “slept like a baby” that night. Official training teaches you how to be violent effectively and when you’re legally allowed to deploy that violence, but “unofficial training” teaches you to desire violence, to expand the breadth of your violence without getting caught, and to erode your own compassion for desperate people so you can justify punitive violence against them.

HOW TO BE A BASTARD

I have participated in some of these activities personally, others are ones I either witnessed personally or heard officers brag about openly. Very, very occasionally, I knew an officer who was disciplined or fired for one of these things.

Police officers will lie about the law, about what’s illegal, or about what they can legally do to you in order to manipulate you into doing what they want.

Police officers will lie about feeling afraid for their life to justify a use of force after the fact.

Police officers will lie and tell you they’ll file a police report just to get you off their back.

Police officers will lie that your cooperation will “look good for you” in court, or that they will “put in a good word for you with the DA.” The police will never help you look good in court.

Police officers will lie about what they see and hear to access private property to conduct unlawful searches.

Police officers will lie and say your friend already ratted you out, so you might as well rat them back out. This is almost never true.

Police officers will lie and say you’re not in trouble in order to get you to exit a location or otherwise make an arrest more convenient for them.

Police officers will lie and say that they won’t arrest you if you’ll just “be honest with them” so they know what really happened.

Police officers will lie about their ability to seize the property of friends and family members to coerce a confession.

Police officers will write obviously bullshit tickets so that they get time-and-a-half overtime fighting them in court.

Police officers will search places and containers you didn’t consent to and later claim they were open or “smelled like marijuana”.

Police officers will threaten you with a more serious crime they can’t prove in order to convince you to confess to the lesser crime they really want you for.

Police officers will employ zero tolerance on races and ethnicities they dislike and show favor and lenience to members of their own group.

Police officers will use intentionally extra-painful maneuvers and holds during an arrest to provoke “resistance” so they can further assault the suspect.

Some police officers will plant drugs and weapons on you, sometimes to teach you a lesson, sometimes if they kill you somewhere away from public view.

Some police officers will assault you to intimidate you and threaten to arrest you if you tell anyone.

A non-trivial number of police officers will steal from your house or vehicle during a search.

A non-trivial number of police officers commit intimate partner violence and use their status to get away with it.

A non-trivial number of police officers use their position to entice, coerce, or force sexual favors from vulnerable people.

If you take nothing else away from this essay, I want you to tattoo this onto your brain forever: if a police officer is telling you something, it is probably a lie designed to gain your compliance.

Do not talk to cops and never, ever believe them. Do not “try to be helpful” with cops. Do not assume they are trying to catch someone else instead of you. Do not assume what they are doing is “important” or even legal. Under no circumstances assume any police officer is acting in good faith.

Also, and this is important, do not talk to cops.

I just remembered something, do not talk to cops.

Checking my notes real quick, something jumped out at me:

Do

not

fucking

talk

to

cops.

Ever.

Say, “I don’t answer questions,” and ask if you’re free to leave; if so, leave. If not, tell them you want your lawyer and that, per the Supreme Court, they must terminate questioning. If they don’t, file a complaint and collect some badges for your mantle.

DO THE BASTARDS EVER HELP?

Reading the above, you may be tempted to ask whether cops ever do anything good. And the answer is, sure, sometimes. In fact, most officers I worked with thought they were usually helping the helpless and protecting the safety of innocent people.

During my tenure in law enforcement, I protected women from domestic abusers, arrested cold-blooded murderers and child molesters, and comforted families who lost children to car accidents and other tragedies. I helped connect struggling people in my community with local resources for food, shelter, and counseling. I deescalated situations that could have turned violent and talked a lot of people down from making the biggest mistake of their lives. I worked with plenty of officers who were individually kind, bought food for homeless residents, or otherwise showed care for their community.

The question is this: did I need a gun and sweeping police powers to help the average person on the average night? The answer is no. When I was doing my best work as a cop, I was doing mediocre work as a therapist or a social worker. My good deeds were listening to people failed by the system and trying to unite them with any crumbs of resources the structure was currently denying them.

It’s also important to note that well over 90% of the calls for service I handled were reactive, showing up well after a crime had taken place. We would arrive, take a statement, collect evidence (if any), file the report, and onto the next caper. Most “active” crimes we stopped were someone harmless possessing or selling a small amount of drugs. Very, very rarely would we stop something dangerous in progress or stop something from happening entirely. The closest we could usually get was seeing someone running away from the scene of a crime, but the damage was still done.

And consider this: my job as a police officer required me to be a marriage counselor, a mental health crisis professional, a conflict negotiator, a social worker, a child advocate, a traffic safety expert, a sexual assault specialist, and, every once in awhile, a public safety officer authorized to use force, all after only a 1000 hours of training at a police academy. Does the person we send to catch a robber also need to be the person we send to interview a rape victim or document a fender bender? Should one profession be expected to do all that important community care (with very little training) all at the same time?

To put this another way: I made double the salary most social workers made to do a fraction of what they could do to mitigate the causes of crimes and desperation. I can count very few times my monopoly on state violence actually made our citizens safer, and even then, it’s hard to say better-funded social safety nets and dozens of other community care specialists wouldn’t have prevented a problem before it started.

Armed, indoctrinated (and dare I say, traumatized) cops do not make you safer; community mutual aid networks who can unite other people with the resources they need to stay fed, clothed, and housed make you safer. I really want to hammer this home: every cop in your neighborhood is damaged by their training, emboldened by their immunity, and they have a gun and the ability to take your life with near-impunity. This does not make you safer, even if you’re white.

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE A BASTARD?

So what do we do about it? Even though I’m an expert on bastardism, I am not a public policy expert nor an expert in organizing a post-police society. So, before I give some suggestions, let me tell you what probably won’t solve the problem of bastard cops:

Increased “bias” training. A quarterly or even monthly training session is not capable of covering over years of trauma-based camaraderie in police forces. I can tell you from experience, we don’t take it seriously, the proctors let us cheat on whatever “tests” there are, and we all made fun of it later over coffee.

Tougher laws. I hope you understand by now, cops do not follow the law and will not hold each other accountable to the law. Tougher laws are all the more reason to circle the wagons and protect your brothers and sisters.

More community policing programs. Yes, there is a marginal effect when a few cops get to know members of the community, but look at the protests of 2020: many of the cops pepper-spraying journalists were probably the nice school cop a month ago.

Police officers do not protect and serve people, they protect and serve the status quo, “polite society”, and private property. Using the incremental mechanisms of the status quo will never reform the police because the status quo relies on police violence to exist. Capitalism requires a permanent underclass to exploit for cheap labor and it requires the cops to bring that underclass to heel.

Instead of wasting time with minor tweaks, I recommend exploring the following ideas:

No more qualified immunity. Police officers should be personally liable for all decisions they make in the line of duty.

No more civil asset forfeiture. Did you know that every year, citizens like you lose more cash and property to unaccountable civil asset forfeiture than to all burglaries combined? The police can steal your stuff without charging you with a crime and it makes some police departments very rich.

Break the power of police unions. Police unions make it nearly impossible to fire bad cops and incentivize protecting them to protect the power of the union. A police union is not a labor union; police officers are powerful state agents, not exploited workers.

Require malpractice insurance. Doctors must pay for insurance in case they botch a surgery, police officers should do the same for botching a police raid or other use of force. If human decency won’t motivate police to respect human life, perhaps hitting their wallet might.

Defund, demilitarize, and disarm cops. Thousands of police departments own assault rifles, armored personnel carriers, and stuff you’d see in a warzone. Police officers have grants and huge budgets to spend on guns, ammo, body armor, and combat training. 99% of calls for service require no armed response, yet when all you have is a gun, every problem feels like target practice. Cities are not safer when unaccountable bullies have a monopoly on state violence and the equipment to execute that monopoly.

One final idea: consider abolishing the police.

I know what you’re thinking, “What? We need the police! They protect us!” As someone who did it for nearly a decade, I need you to understand that by and large, police protection is marginal, incidental. It’s an illusion created by decades of copaganda designed to fool you into thinking these brave men and women are holding back the barbarians at the gates.

I alluded to this above: the vast majority of calls for service I handled were theft reports, burglary reports, domestic arguments that hadn’t escalated into violence, loud parties, (houseless) people loitering, traffic collisions, very minor drug possession, and arguments between neighbors. Mostly the mundane ups and downs of life in the community, with little inherent danger. And, like I mentioned, the vast majority of crimes I responded to (even violent ones) had already happened; my unaccountable license to kill was irrelevant.

What I mainly provided was an “objective” third party with the authority to document property damage, ask people to chill out or disperse, or counsel people not to beat each other up. A trained counselor or conflict resolution specialist would be ten times more effective than someone with a gun strapped to his hip wondering if anyone would try to kill him when he showed up. There are many models for community safety that can be explored if we get away from the idea that the only way to be safe is to have a man with a M4 rifle prowling your neighborhood ready at a moment’s notice to write down your name and birthday after you’ve been robbed and beaten.

You might be asking, “What about the armed robbers, the gangsters, the drug dealers, the serial killers?” And yes, in the city I worked, I regularly broke up gang parties, found gang members carrying guns, and handled homicides. I’ve seen some tragic things, from a reformed gangster shot in the head with his brains oozing out to a fifteen year old boy taking his last breath in his screaming mother’s arms thanks to a gang member’s bullet. I know the wages of violence.

This is where we have to have the courage to ask: why do people rob? Why do they join gangs? Why do they get addicted to drugs or sell them? It’s not because they are inherently evil. I submit to you that these are the results of living in a capitalist system that grinds people down and denies them housing, medical care, human dignity, and a say in their government. These are the results of white supremacy pushing people to the margins, excluding them, disrespecting them, and treating their bodies as disposable.

Equally important to remember: disabled and mentally ill people are frequently killed by police officers not trained to recognize and react to disabilities or mental health crises. Some of the people we picture as “violent offenders” are often people struggling with untreated mental illness, often due to economic hardships. Very frequently, the officers sent to “protect the community” escalate this crisis and ultimately wound or kill the person. Your community was not made safer by police violence; a sick member of your community was killed because it was cheaper than treating them. Are you extremely confident you’ll never get sick one day too?

Wrestle with this for a minute: if all of someone’s material needs were met and all the members of their community were fed, clothed, housed, and dignified, why would they need to join a gang? Why would they need to risk their lives selling drugs or breaking into buildings? If mental healthcare was free and was not stigmatized, how many lives would that save?

Would there still be a few bad actors in the world? Sure, probably. What’s my solution for them, you’re no doubt asking. I’ll tell you what: generational poverty, food insecurity, houselessness, and for-profit medical care are all problems that can be solved in our lifetimes by rejecting the dehumanizing meat grinder of capitalism and white supremacy. Once that’s done, we can work on the edge cases together, with clearer hearts not clouded by a corrupt system.

Police abolition is closely related to the idea of prison abolition and the entire concept of banishing the carceral state, meaning, creating a society focused on reconciliation and restorative justice instead of punishment, pain, and suffering — a system that sees people in crisis as humans, not monsters. People who want to abolish the police typically also want to abolish prisons, and the same questions get asked: “What about the bad guys? Where do we put them?” I bring this up because abolitionists don’t want to simply replace cops with armed social workers or prisons with casual detention centers full of puffy leather couches and Playstations. We imagine a world not divided into good guys and bad guys, but rather a world where people’s needs are met and those in crisis receive care, not dehumanization.

Here’s legendary activist and thinker Angela Y. Davis putting it better than I ever could:

“An abolitionist approach that seeks to answer questions such as these would require us to imagine a constellation of alternative strategies and institutions, with the ultimate aim of removing the prison from the social and ideological landscapes of our society. In other words, we would not be looking for prisonlike substitutes for the prison, such as house arrest safeguarded by electronic surveillance bracelets. Rather, positing decarceration as our overarching strategy, we would try to envision a continuum of alternatives to imprisonment-demilitarization of schools, revitalization of education at all levels, a health system that provides free physical and mental care to all, and a justice system based on reparation and reconciliation rather than retribution and vengeance.”

(Are Prisons Obsolete, pg. 107)

I’m not telling you I have the blueprint for a beautiful new world. What I’m telling you is that the system we have right now is broken beyond repair and that it’s time to consider new ways of doing community together. Those new ways need to be negotiated by members of those communities, particularly Black, indigenous, disabled, houseless, and citizens of color historically shoved into the margins of society. Instead of letting Fox News fill your head with nightmares about Hispanic gangs, ask the Hispanic community what they need to thrive. Instead of letting racist politicians scaremonger about pro-Black demonstrators, ask the Black community what they need to meet the needs of the most vulnerable. If you truly desire safety, ask not what your most vulnerable can do for the community, ask what the community can do for the most vulnerable.

A WORLD WITH FEWER BASTARDS IS POSSIBLE

If you take only one thing away from this essay, I hope it’s this: do not talk to cops. But if you only take two things away, I hope the second one is that it’s possible to imagine a different world where unarmed black people, indigenous people, poor people, disabled people, and people of color are not routinely gunned down by unaccountable police officers. It doesn’t have to be this way. Yes, this requires a leap of faith into community models that might feel unfamiliar, but I ask you:

When you see a man dying in the street begging for breath, don’t you want to leap away from that world?

When you see a mother or a daughter shot to death sleeping in their beds, don’t you want to leap away from that world?

When you see a twelve year old boy executed in a public park for the crime of playing with a toy, jesus fucking christ, can you really just stand there and think “This is normal”?

And to any cops who made it this far down, is this really the world you want to live in? Aren’t you tired of the trauma? Aren’t you tired of the soul sickness inherent to the badge? Aren’t you tired of looking the other way when your partners break the law? Are you really willing to kill the next George Floyd, the next Breonna Taylor, the next Tamir Rice? How confident are you that your next use of force will be something you’re proud of? I’m writing this for you too: it’s wrong what our training did to us, it’s wrong that they hardened our hearts to our communities, and it’s wrong to pretend this is normal.

Look, I wouldn’t have been able to hear any of this for much of my life. You reading this now may not be able to hear this yet either. But do me this one favor: just think about it. Just turn it over in your mind for a couple minutes. “Yes, And” me for a minute. Look around you and think about the kind of world you want to live in. Is it one where an all-powerful stranger with a gun keeps you and your neighbors in line with the fear of death, or can you picture a world where, as a community, we embrace our most vulnerable, meet their needs, heal their wounds, honor their dignity, and make them family instead of desperate outsiders?

If you take only three things away from this essay, I hope the third is this: you and your community don’t need bastards to thrive.

RESOURCES TO YES-AND WITH

Achele Mbembe — Necropolitics

Angela Y. Davis — Are Prisons Obsolete?

CriticalResistance.org — Abolition Toolkit

Joe Macar��, Maya Schenwar, and Alana Yu-lan Price — Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?

Ruth Wilson Gilmore — COVID-19, Decarceration, Abolition [video]

[thesociologicalcinema]

If Emojis Can Be Flirty, They Can Also Be Racism: A Guide to Understanding "The Unbearable Whiteness of Emoji"

Background: 2011: Apple makes emoji keyboard an IOS default 2015:  is Oxford Dictionary's word of the year 2015: In response to criticism, the emoji lexicon expands:  [peace hand gesture emoji with different skin tones] "Emoji is humankind's weirdest and most successful ideographic language." ~ Ian Bogost. -Emojis "rely on linked understandings of race and technology" -The way we use emojis matters -Emojis translate widely but ogten face cultural confusion -No matter how many emojis are approved by the Unicode Consortium, they will ALWAYS LEAVE SOMEONE OUT

SIMPSONS YELLOW   

In 2015, 5 emoji skin-tones were relaeased. But the "non-realistic" yellow remains the default. The yellow tone is based on white skin. In the Simpsons, BIPOC characters were still marked as other. DEFAULT SKIN TONES ARE NEVER NEUTRAL. Yellow as a "neutral" for humanoid characgters reinforces color-blind racism.

"For people who are used to thinking of their skin as the default, acknowledging whiteness in their digital hand gestures can feel deeply uncomfortable." ~ Andrew McGill

White emoji users regularly choose yellow over the color closest to their skin tone. The "cream" tone is used the least even though white users exceed BIPOC users. WHENEVER WE SENT THAT YELLOW HIGH-FIVE, WE WERE REMINDED THAT BROWN AND BLACK HANDS WERE NOT AN OPTION. ~ Kumari Devarjah The yellow "racial opt-out" is not available to Black and brown people.

SHOULD YOU USE EMOJIS & STICKERS DARKER THAN YOUR NATURAL SKIN-TONE? -Appropriation often srts with good intentions. -Are you trying to represent yourself? (That is Blackface) -Or, are you relying on sterotypes to convey your message? (i.e., "KWEEN") "DO [YOU] THINK [YOUR] RAISED-FIST EMOJI LOOKS MORE REVOLUTIONARY WHEN [YOU] PAINT IT BLACK? [YOUR] CLAPPING HANDS MORE RHYTHMIC? [YOUR] PRAISE HANDS MORE DRAMATIC? [YOUR] PAINTED NAILS SEXIER?" ~Kumari Devarjan

SOCIAL MEDIA AND EMOJIS

Social media has become an important platform for social justice. Here, voices with less representation in mainstream media can be heard. Emojis commonly play a role in this activism. For example, since George Floyd's murder the power fist has seen a huge spike in use.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR A LIGHT-SKINNED PERSON TO USE A DARK-SKINNED POWER FIST? -Early use of power fist is associated with Black Panther & Chicano Power movements -It continued to convey resistance (ie, 1968 Olympics) -The  was originally a "fist pump" and was redefined by BIPOC activists. -It has been co-opted by people of all skin tones, if you are non-Black: REMEMBER it is not your symbol. WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR A LIGHT-SKINNED PERSON TO USE A WHITE POWER FIST? -In the 1980s the white fist was a symbol of "Aryan Pride" and "White Power" -Using a [white fist emoji] in support of #BLM does not erase its association to white supremacy.

TECHNOLOGY IS NOT NEUTRAL "THE POWER DYNAMICS THAT EXIST IN REAL LIFE DON'T DISAPPEAR JUST BECAUSE WE'RE HIDDEN BEHIND A SCREEN." ~ Kumari Devarjan

WORKS CITED 1. Sweeney, Miriam E., and Kelsea Whaley. 2019. "Technically White: Emoji Skin-Tone Modifiers as American Techno-culture." First Monday. Vol 5. 2. Bogost, Ian. 2019. "Emoji Don't Mean What They Used To." The Atlantic. 3. Devarjan, Kumari. 2018. "White Skin, Black Emojis?" 4. McGill, Andrew. 2016. "Is it Okay to Use White Emoji?" The Atlantic. 5. Emojigraph.org. 2020. "Black Lives Matter Emoji Usage Analysis." 6. Blakemore, Erin. 2018. "How the Black Power Protest at the 1968 Olympics Killed Careers." HISTORY. 7. Rhodes, Jane. 2017. "Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon." University of Illinois Press. 8. Garcia, Mario T. 2014. "The Chicano Movement: Perspectives from the Twenty-First Century." Routledge. 9. Sahagun, Louis. 2018. "East L.A., 1968: 'Walkout!' The Day High School Students Helped Ignite the Chicano Power Movement." Los Angeles Times. 10. Anti-Defamation League, "Aryan Fist." Nate on Display: Hate Symbols Database. 11. Emoji Timeline. 2020. EmojiTimeline.com

[bread-and-roses-too]

you're right, I was wrong about the wypipo thing, I had only ever seen yt or white. However, being a white person who brings up black crime without the context of why it happens (systemic racism) is racist. It's a dogwhistle used by racists to communicate that they feel justified mistreating black people because they're "violent" or "criminals". Also, black crime is not why overpolicing happens. The U.S. police system was originally a slave-catching system meant to return black people to slavery. Overpolicing of black communities happens because the police targeted black people from day one. If you'd like more proof that the op of this post is racist

unironically thinks "black supremacy" is an issue and accuses the black panther movie of supporting it.

reblogged a post about the names of black people murdered by police with these comments attached

thinks this in an appropriate response to an anti-racism campaign/thinks racism against white people is at all comparable to racism against black people (it is not).

I'm far from the first one to say this, but if instead of talking about "white privilege" people talked about "POC disadvantages" nobody would be so up in arms against it.

Same thing with straight, cis, neurotypical, what have you.

When you paint real, ordinary, struggling people as evil just for existing, they're not gonna be on your side.

"Well, we don't care about the feelings of wypipo!"

You should. If not for ideological, for simple practical reasons. You live in a Western country, guess what, there's gonna be more white, cis, straight and neurotypical people than otherwise. If you alienate the majority, you lose. This is activism 101.

Appeal to their humanity and compassion. Humans actually have a lot of that, believe it or not.

[96thdayofrage]

Repair: Students Design a Reparations Bill

In this activity, students take on the role of activist-experts to improve upon a Congressional bill for reparations for Black people. They talk back to Congress’ flimsy legislation and design a more robust alternative.

When I wrote this introduction in the summer of 2020, there had already been more than five weeks of nightly Black Lives Matter demonstrations in my city of Portland, Oregon, sparked by the brutal murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. This exhilaratingly extended period of nationwide protest can be attributed to many factors: the steady drumbeat of new revelations of equally awful examples (Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain) of state-sanctioned murder of Black people; widespread teargassing, pepper-spraying, use of “nonlethal” projectiles, and beating of protestors by police in dozens of cities; and the coronavirus pandemic, which has disproportionately infected and killed Black people in terrifying numbers, and has also created disruptions to daily life that, paradoxically, opened up space for rallies, marches, organizing. More than anything, this moment feels like a reckoning with the United States’ past, with its long history of white supremacist violence, from slavery to George Floyd, and equally long history of Black resistance.

To reckon means to establish by counting or calculation. What would it mean to really reckon with the historical costs of white supremacy on Black life? What would it mean to count up all the violence, theft, harm, and injustice inflicted on Black people in the last 400+ years of white settlement of this land? It would mean establishing what actually happened, not what our historical fables and corporate textbooks peddle. More critically, it would be a first step in calculating what is owed.

Reparations for Black people in the United States is not a new idea. Before the Civil War was even over, Special Field Order No. 15 was issued to confiscate land from Confederate land owners to be divided among newly freedpeople “to establish a peaceable agricultural settlement.” Activist Callie House called on Congress in the late-19th and early 20th-century to provide formerly enslaved people like her, and 4 million others, modest “pensions.” In the 1950s, Queen Mother Moore founded the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women, where she started investigating the idea of reparations. When the Black Panthers issued their 10-point program in 1966, they demanded compensation for stolen wages and genocide: “the payment in currency that will be distributed to our many communities.”

In spite of this rich genealogy, reparations are nowhere in the textbooks my school district has adopted to help me teach young people in the United States about their past. Looking up the word “reparations” in the three recently published textbooks on my shelf is to find it absent altogether, or only in reference to the end of World War I or U.S. payments to Japanese Americans (incarcerated in concentration camps during World War II) in the 1980s.

The message of the corporate textbook committees is clear: Reparations for Black people is so outlandish an idea as to not even merit mention.

But not so outlandish anymore. In 2014, Ta-Nehisi Coates published his gorgeous essay, “The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic, which persuasively and painstakingly laid out how 20th-century structural racism stole Black people’s wealth just as surely as 19th-century slavery stole their bodies, labor, and knowledge. Also in 2015, activists in Chicago won a long-fought battle to win reparations for victims of Jon Burge and the Chicago Police Department’s campaign of torture and won “the Burge torture curriculum,” a requirement that the story of the torture and the activists who fought it be taught to Chicago students.

In 2019, for the first time in more than a decade, Congress held hearings on the decades-old bill, HR 40, a modest effort to simply establish a committee to develop reparative proposals. 2019 was also the first time in U.S. history that presidential contenders — in the Democratic primaries were expected to have a “reparations position,” so common was it for them to be asked about it. Long overdue, reparations have entered the mainstream. It’s surely time then, for it to enter our classrooms and curriculum too.

The premise of this lesson is that Congress has finally taken on the task of reparations legislation. But what Congress offers is extraordinarily weak sauce. Students take on the role of activist-experts working in one of the following domains of racial justice: Education, voting, housing, labor, health care, or criminal punishment. They talk back to Congress’ flimsy legislation and design a more robust alternative. In crafting amendments and additions to the bill, students must decide what form the reparations should take, how much is due, and argue which needs are the most immediate, pressing, and fundamental. As racial justice activists, students are all on the “same side” in this role play, but they come to the discussion with different expertise and priorities. As they struggle to design reparative policies that will address the needs of all the groups present (and thereby garner support in the mock congressional hearing), their discussions reveal the deep interconnectedness of different forms of oppression and how critical it is to untangle the symptoms of a disease from their underlying causes.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“On 16 September 1971, Mexican Independence Day, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Black, American Indian, and white prisoners fashioned black armbands and declared a strike in the prison factories at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. Their action was in protest of the murder of George Jackson, the revolutionary prison intellectual and Field Marshall in the Black Panther Party who was shot in the back on 21 August at Soledad State Prison in California. It was also in active solidarity with the rebellion at Attica state penitentiary in New York that three days prior had come to a violent end when ten guards and 29 inmates were killed at the hands of state police authorized to shoot by the then governor Nelson Rockefeller. Yet the numerous protests across the United States sparked by these incidents were not simply a spontaneous response; many were led by multiracial and multiethnic cadres of inmates – both women and men – who had already been organizing against the prison machine.

The Leavenworth strike was organized by C.O.R.A (Chicanos Organizados Rebeldes de Aztlán), a political formation of ‘‘all ‘Latinos’ in the Western Hemisphere (in general) and the ‘Chicano’ inhabitants and civilizers of the Northern Land of Aztlán (specifically)’’. Latinos incarcerated at Leavenworth created C.O.R.A. to work through political ideas that were inspiring prison rebellions across the country, as well as social movements across the globe during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although the members were primarily Chicanos and Mexicanos, C.O.R.A. included Puerto Riquenos, specifically the Puerto Rican Independentistas fighters (Rafael Cancel Miranda, Oscar Collazo, Irving Flores, and Andres Figueroa Cordero). They worked closely with Black Muslims, American Indians, and working-class white inmates, some of whom had been politicized by their involvement in social movements prior to their incarceration or in state jails (Figure 1).

The rebellions at Leavenworth were directed against the violent and racist brutality of guards, inadequate health care, arbitrary punishments and administrative transfers, and the disproportionate numbers of non-whites behind bars. Prisoner organizing created the political culture of an organized social movement around a tradition of writ-writers or jailhouse lawyers and political education strategies that included cultural studies classes, art, poetry, both clandestine and ‘‘sanctioned’’ newspapers that were the medium for critiques of the history of US foreign policy and the role of the criminal justice system in US society.

Grounded in experiences from before and during incarceration, and drawing on the diverse political histories and ideas that were inspiring people across the globe, prison activists organized to change the terms of their incarceration and developed an analysis and critique of the prison system as part of a national/ international matrix of organized violence and white supremacy.‘‘As a logic of social organization’’, and in tandem with foreign military and economic policies, state technologies of racialized colonial violence included the police, courts, prosecutors, jury selection, guards, and the (in)carceral apparatuses of the state. Raulsalinas, poet, activist, and editor of the Leavenworth prison newspaper Aztlán, described the conditions of incarceration for US minorities as a ‘‘backyard form of colonialism.’’

As activist-scholar Dylan Rodriquez writes, the repression against ‘‘US-based Third World liberation movements during and beyond the 1960s and 1970s forged a peculiar intersection between official and illicit forms of state and state-sanctioned violence. Policing, carceral, and punitive technologies were invented, developed, and refined at scales from the local to the national, encompassing a wide variety of organizing and deployment strategies.’’ Legal battles waged in the state and federal court systems by radical lawyers were buttressed by strikes, riots, petition demands, and the creation and transformation of educational spaces, as well as the support of family members and active citizens. Prison activists across the country deployed the political language of civil and human rights, developed an international political consciousness grounded in ideas of multiracial solidarities and human dignity, and explicitly linked their own struggles inside the ‘‘prisons of empire’’ to progressive and national liberation movements in the United States, the hemisphere, and across the globe. On a national level, these combined movements questioned the legality and legitimacy of the prison system as part of the larger coercive apparatuses of ‘‘law and order’’ politics. Perhaps most significantly, these struggles were part of a longer history of self-defense against the violation of civil and human rights by police departments, racist jury systems, prison administrators, and guards, as well as by citizens defending white supremacy in the United States. 

The rebellions were part of the larger circulation of progressive struggles in the post-WWII period. In the context of open repression against activists in the United States, particularly the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counter Intelligence Programs (COINTELPRO), and Cold War geopolitics in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, social movements in the United States expanded their international connections during the 1960s. Inspired by anti-colonial and national liberation efforts in Algeria, Cuba, and Vietnam, as well as American Indian struggles for the sovereignty of the ‘‘First Nations,’’ many political and cultural organizations in the United States articulated a politics situated in what they defined as a shared experience of US colonialism. By the late 1960s as antiVietnam War demonstrations escalated and the passage of civil rights laws did not necessarily translate into a change in material conditions, the anti-war, women’s, gay liberation, and Black, Brown, Yellow, and Red Power movements overlapped at the local, national, and international level. What I offer in looking behind prison walls is one element of a ‘‘history of histories’’ made up of global progressive, ‘‘experimental civil rights’’ and anti-colonial struggles.”

- Alan Eladio Gómez, ‘‘‘Neustras Vidas Corren Casi Paralelas’: Chicanos, Independentistas, and the Prison Rebellions in Leavenworth, 1969–1972,”  Latino Studies 6 (2008), pp. 65-67.

[militantinremission]

Wassup w/ BLM?

Someone has to explain to me what BLM hopes to gain by threatening Mayor- elect Eric Adams' Administration w/ Protest, Fire, & Bloodshed if They go forward w/ plans to reinstate a NYPD Division that uses 'Stop & Frisk' tactics. BLM won Hearts & Minds globally by protesting w/ purpose; despite the activities of Antifa & other like minded Groups. No One contested the wrong behavior of Police Officers in multiple incidents that lead to the deaths of unarmed Black Men & Women. Banners went up Everywhere in Solidarity.

The majority of BLM Protests got The Point across more or less peacefully. Why R Leaders, @ least in NYC, coming w/ so much heat? Maybe it's just me, but I would let Mayor- elect Adams make his move. Let's see how that Division performs, in light of 2020. If they can perform as Eric Adams believes- No harm, No foul. If they can't, then We play baseball:

1st Incident comes w/ a Public Complaint & a Warning.

2nd Incident comes w/ another Public Complaint & a Guarantee of Protest.

3rd Incident comes w/ a Full Scale Protest- Possibly a March across Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall.

The point is, Peaceful Protest is their Lane. BLM used this (aggressive) Tactic during Ferguson, & the State of Missouri closed the Airspace around Them for days. During that time, 2 of BLM's Founders were 'mysteriously' found dead. Following those (still unsolved) murders, new leadership arose, & BLM's Agenda shifted more towards 'Trans Rights'; @ least judging from the Groups that received the lions share of the Millions of dollars that BLM dispensed.

Leadership has changed again, & w/ this move on Mayor- elect Adams, BLM looks more like The New Black Panther Party. They should take another look @ 2020. BLM was the 'Good Guy' side of Black Protest. If we're being honest, The NFAC came on the scene following the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, & changed The Narrative. Grand Master Jay has faded from The Scene, but he left Us w/ 'Keys to Effective Protest'. The New BPP, Huey Newton Gun Club, & many other like minded Groups can assume the 'No more Mr. Nice Guy' role of Black Protest.

If U study Black American/ ADOS History, U will see that there has ALWAYS been 2 Modes of Black Protest- from Frederick Douglass & Martin Delaney, to Al Sharpton & Khalid Muhammad. White Supremacy is motivated to speak w/ the MLKs of Black Protest, when They KNOW that The Alternative, R the Malcolm Xs that lay in wait. BLM simply needs to 'Play their Position' & trust Other Groups to do the same.

-Just My 2 Cents

#AgeOfProphecy

#B1

[my18thcenturysource]

About the protests

Here, some food for thought about the murder of Mr George Floyd, the way it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, how white supremacy has educated a whole country about “being civil”, and what WE ALL (yeah, we all, no matter who and where we are) can do something to help the Black Lives Matter movement.

First of all, I think I’ve mentioned before, but images and videos of Black bodies suffering are not and will not be shared in this blog. So no, here’s not the video of Mr Floyd dying for all to see, or a black protester being hit. Just no. There is no need of a constant victimization though images and videos of both, the individuals and the whole black community, since we all know what is happening (and have happened for hundreds of years).

Now, we can start. I’ve made it in bullet points for easier reading, answering questions I’ve seen in media, and different social media platforms:

Why is this murder suddenly more important than the ones before? It is not. Mr Floyd’s life loss is as important as Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castille, and many others who have died thanks to police brutality. All lives lost are equally important. The difference is that the black community cannot take it anymore, and change (maybe violent change) needs to be done.

Let’s talk about systemic racism. The United States of America was founded with a racist system, that even after the Civil War was still racist, and 100 years later after the Civil Rights movement was still racist, and now is still racist. The way institutions, education, and society work is deeply racist: from the way wealth is distributed (white families hold 90% of the country’s wealth), the way education is “available” (black students are 3 times more likely to be suspended for the same infraction than white students), the way criminal justice “works” (black people make 40% of incarcerated population, even though they’re 13% of general population); to the housing available to different races thanks to redlining, and even how healthcare is biased (67% of doctors have a bias against African-American patients). Add to that that the education (civic and academic) is white centered, and that black drivers are 30% more likely to be pulled over, and you have a whole society working against and entire race, while saying that everyone is treated equally, even though there’s every proof that only white people are treated as people. Here a NYT article about systemic racism and how it’s part of the DNA of the US.

“Peaceful protest are OK, but riots are wrong!” Or “I mean, I don't like racism either, but do they have to be so AGGRESSIVE about it?” This is such an oppressor answer I’ve seen repeated everywhere: from feminist to BLM protests, the oppressor (in this case white people) feel that Black people need their permission and approval for how they ask for their basic rights, and that saying “no” if they are rude is ok. NO, IT IS NOT OK. BLACK PEOPLE OWE YOU NOTHING. STOP ACTING LIKE THEY DO. Here a good article “Nonviolence as Compliance”, shining a light on asking for nonviolence in the middle of the war.

“But they are destroying property! That is wrong!”  One of the things I hear the most and it is the LEAST important of all is this. Property owners have insurance, they will not loose a single penny. Things can be replaced, human lives cannot. In a racist and materialist society, the only way to make the oppressor care is destroying what they think is more important: their property. Look at how people phrase stuff, meaning (consciously or not) that a life lost at the hands of the police is not as important as a destroyed Target.

“Yes, police brutality is wrong, but there’s also climate change! There are other more important things that we need to fix first!” Supporting a cause do not diminish other causes. I’ll say it again louder for the ones in the back: SUPPORTING A CAUSE DO NOT DIMINISH OTHER CAUSES. We can use the Black Panthers as an example to follow on how to join forces and support each other’s causes. So this is a call to all People of Colour: let’s join each other’s causes, support and rise to the light what needs to be done. So, right now we can fight against police brutality to black people, while keeping an eye open for Hong Kong protests, and next week we can support and shine a light on Native American’s fight for their lands, while being vocal against racism to Asian Americans... Together we’re so much more powerful.

Some info for protestors. Before all, please be careful. Being in a mass of people with strong feelings can be exhilarating, but please try to keep a cool head: research the path of the protest, and think of ways to get out of there fast if necessary. Write important information on your arm with sharpie and put some hairspray on it so it doesn’t fade. Here a few other things to take a look at:

What do police use for crowd control. Take a look at this and think of gear to go against it.

Use Hong Kong protestors as inspiration. Take a look at Hong Kong protestors gear, they have been fighting an authoritarian regime for a while now and have come with not only great organization, but great ideas to counterattack police. Check the evolution of their protest and their organization (that article includes terms and strategies during the protests).

Here a thread of several tips and another one

I’m not black, what can I do? Not being black is not an excuse to do nothing. For starters, DO SOMETHING. Do not only say or post stuff. Do it. Act. Be there for your black friends and neighbors. Go to the protests with them (if you’re white, the chances of being attacked by police are less, use that to protect your friends), stand beside them as support (this is not about you!), be available, listen and do not diminish their struggles, help them get the gear needed for protests. If you have a little money to spend, donate to the cause, sign petitions, call your representatives (here a link from BLM with several more options), amplify their voices. Be vocal about it, be sure that all voices (especially black ones) are listened. Take a look at the HK protestors organization, and note that not everybody is on the ground, and you can help your friends being there or following and informing from home. Just help anyways necessary, they’ll let you know.

Finally, this post might be read as quite *revolutionary shaking her fist*. And it might be. The change is happening now and we all should help for it to happen. Right now the Black community should be at the front and center of this fight, and we all other PoC should stand behind them in support. Next time it might be Hawaiians on front and the rest of us in support, or Native Americans, or Latinos, or East Asians, or whoever on front, we all must support their cause.

Please reblog and add your resources, links and info for a better and more useful post.