Quote of the Day -- from Richard Pryor

 

 

My next t-shirt...

I seriously love this -- but where's the black female version? Black women are killed by the police, too.  Doesn't everyone know who Eleanor Bumpurs is? Don't get it twisted. The police shoot black people. Period.  Yes, they shoot black children. And they get away with it.

Get your t-shirt here.  You're welcome.

Quote of the Day -- from Ta-Nehisi Coates, on Mike Brown

“And if Michael Brown was not angelic, I was practically demonic. I had my first drink when I was 11. I once brawled in the cafeteria after getting hit in the head with a steel trash can. In my junior year I failed five out of seven classes. By the time I graduated from high school, I had been arrested for assaulting a teacher and been kicked out of school (twice.) And yet no one who knew me thought I had the least bit of thug in me. That is because I also read a lot of books, loved my Commodore 64, and ghostwrote love notes for my friends. In other words, I was a human being. A large number of American teenagers live exactly like Michael Brown. Very few of them are shot in the head and left to bake on the pavement.” 

                         —  Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic

That brother in last night's Ferguson City Council meeting, though...

Say what you will about what may or may not have happened a month and a day ago in Ferguson, Missouri -- one thing is frightfully clear, to anyone that's actually paying attention to any of this: there is NO going back to the way things used to be.

Just look at this brother right here at last night's city council meeting.  He is on fire. 

Mike Brown -- One Month Later

One month ago in a place that hardly anyone had ever heard of,  police officer Darren Wilson shot Mike Brown multiple times at close range in broad daylight -- and then proceeded to blow his brains out.  According to several eyewitnesses, Mike Brown -- a college-bound high school graduate -- had both of his hands up when he was murdered. Officer Wilson never called in to report the shooting and he never called for an ambulance. Mike Brown's body laid in the street where he fell for more than 4 hours. Eventually, an unmarked black SUV came and took his body away.

At this juncture, I should probably tell you that the population of Ferguson (a suburb of St. Louis) is about 21,000 and 70% black. Out of 53 cops, only 3 are black. The mayor and five of the six city council members are white.  Ticketing, arresting and otherwise harassing black folk is big business for Ferguson. More on that some other time.

Let's be clear: Officer Wilson never called in to report the shooting because they turned it over to St. Louis county police almost immediately.  Oh, but that didn't stop them from turning over an incident report and video in which Mike Brown is allegedly guilty of stealing cigars.  (Nevermind Fox News and their idiocy. Cue Kevin Sorbo and his racist rant about Ferguson.) Interestingly, the store didn't call the cops -- a customer did.

Watch your back, black folk: customers can get you killed. Just ask John Crawford -- a few days before Mike Brown's murder, he was shot 10 times while holding a toy gun in Wal-Mart as he chatted on the phone with his girlfriend, who was in another section of the store.  Ronald Ritchie, an ex-Marine (that's not true), called 911 while his wife April (who had a broken ankle and was on the phone with her mother) trailed behind Mr. Crawford in a Wal-Mart scooter at what she described as a "safe distance", waving people away from him.  No one else in the store was alarmed by Mr. Crawford. A month later, Ronald Ritchie completely changed his story.

The kicker is that Ohio is a right to carry state.  That means you can openly carry a firearm in public.

Right about now, the attorney general of Ohio is hoping that this case goes away so no one's career gets tanked and those cops and yes, you too,  Mr. Ritchie -- because this is all your fault -- don't get sued into oblivion and see some serious jail time for murder.  As far as I'm concerned, the rest of his natural life wouldn't be long enough.

But I digress.

Cops arrived on the scene that afternoon with assault rifles because angry residents refused to disperse, and wanted answers.  That's when everything went beserk and suddenly, Ferguson was on full blast. Twitter was on fire with moment to moment updates as everything unraveled, from photos of German shepherds attacking black folk to a militarized police presence to the barricade that ultimately shut the police out of the neighborhood after the cops deliberately destroyed Mike Brown's memorial. And that was the first day.

Officer Wilson was secreted away immediately and his identity was withheld by the Ferguson police department for almost a week. Apparently, this was long enough for him to erase any unsavory tidbits on his social media and hide with his family in "a safe place" -- with pay and benefits, of course. 

What's the upshot?

1. The Ferguson Police Department is facing a federal civil rights investigation, headed by Attorney General Eric Holder.  And what they've found so far is pretty disturbing.
2. The Ferguson City Council (which met for the first time today since Mike Brown's murder) is assembling their first ever police department review board.
3. Black folk in Ferguson have been holding a slew of voter registration rallies.

Know justice, know peace.

Oh -- and about that Ferguson City Council meeting...

#FergusonCCM is trying to keep residents from commenting by "requiring" they state their full name and address while being broadcast online.
— Rap Game Rahab, doe (@_peech) September 10, 2014

Mayor asks people to state name and address before speaking. Crowd incensed. Speaker says her address is "ground zero." #FergusonCCM
— mervyn marcano (@britrican) September 10, 2014

A ferguson resident said no signs posted about council meetings.She went to city hall to find out & was told to check the news. #fergusonccm
— BrownBlaze (@brownblaze) September 10, 2014

"I spent more time in jail than Darren Wilson." -#Ferguson protester Legal system ≠ justice system. #FergusonCCM
— Namira Islam (@namirari) September 10, 2014

Citizens are doing at the #FergusonCCM exactly what they have been doing since #MikeBrown’s death, challenging structural racism.
— zellie (@zellieimani) September 10, 2014

Man: "I heard the mayor say #Ferguson doesn't have a race problem. There must be two Fergusons." #FergusonCCM pic.twitter.com/hz9n6o2uuK
— Tyson (@tysonmanker) September 10, 2014

...about that seattle cop...

everybody's seen the video by now -- a seattle cop named ian walsh gets into a shoving match with a 17 year old black girl and punches her in the face. hard. it's pretty compelling stuff, him pulling his fist back as swiftly as he did, with or without the backstory. partly because every news organization all over the world is showing it over and over and over again, sometimes in slow motion, like peckinpah. and like peckinpah, the violence becomes more disturbing the slower it gets. was it racist? who knows. clearly, this cop was losing control of the situation and (according to the seattle authorities) he did what he was supposedly trained to do to regain it. but when even bill o'reilly comes down on the side of the black teenaged victim, it should give anyone reason to pause.

what happened?

the cop stopped the 17 year old black girl and an 18 year old woman for jaywalking. jaywalking! who gets arrested for jaywalking? everybody does it -- which is probably why he wasn't taken seriously when he spoke to them in the first place.

not only did they verbally berate him when he told them to come over to the police car (surprised?) but one of them even walked off dismissively. (i mean, wow. some would get a bullet in the back for that one.) once he put his hands on the 18 year old, she began to struggle in an effort to get away. the 17 year old got in between them to defend her, a shoving match ensued, and then they were off to the races. so the upshot of it all is, he didn't hit this girl because she was jaywalking. that's why he stopped her. he hit her for putting her hands on him, for resisting arrest, for being a public nuisance, for obstructing an arrest. and so on.

there's a lot that's wrong with this picture.

i found this situation sickening to a dizzying degree, mostly because neither of the victims seemed to have any real respect for authority. both of them were blissfully unaware of protocol -- how to talk to police officers, how to behave when one approaches you, what is illegal and what is not. jaywalking is one thing but once he told them to come over to that police car and put their hands on the hood, it was a whole other ball game. they should have known that.

it's also especially unnerving because they never seemed to understand how much danger they were in. anything could have happened. his gun could have gone off "accidentally," if you know what i mean. happens all the time.

don't get me wrong. i don't like cops. i'm sure there are good ones, but too many of them move forward full tilt on the slightest assumption, violently and with menace, trafficking in stereotypes to harass decent hardworking law abiding black folk everywhere. whether you're driving while black, opening your front door, out with friends on the eve of your wedding day or simply a black ivy league professor in your own home, minding your own business -- racial profiling by the police will come for you sooner or later, if you're black. that's why i assume i'm dealing with a bad cop when i deal with any of them. if i'm right, no harm done. and if i'm wrong, it's a pleasant surprise.

thank God someone's camera phone was fully charged and at the ready, or we would never have known about any of this. well. i would, because it would have been our news item -- the kind of thing we discuss amongst ourselves ad nauseum (like girl x) and white people refuse to believe because there's no proof. but even when there is proof, there's no proof. didn't we learn that lesson with rodney king.

whatever happened to officer friendly?

double yikes

what a hot stinking mess. a 22 year old rookie cop named patrick pogan (only 2 or 3 weeks on the job) slams into a peacefully protesting biker named christopher long out of nowhere, then lies about it in his written report, saying that the biker tried to run into him. his daddy is a retired cop that didn't hesitate to stick up for his foul behavior, so evidently this is the family business.

of course, they took his gun and his badge and now he's riding a desk. i'll bet you a dollar and a twinkie that he gets transferred to another precinct when all of this quiets down. he needs to get fired, with a quickness -- before he kills somebody.

read all about it here.