RSN: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | Don't Understand the Protests? What You're Seeing Is People Pushed to the Edge

01 June 20

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

---

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | Don't Understand the Protests? What You're Seeing Is People Pushed to the Edge

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Los Angeles Times
Abdul-Jabbar writes: "What was your first reaction when you saw the video of the white cop kneeling on George Floyd's neck while Floyd croaked, 'I can't breathe?'"

If you’re white, you probably muttered a horrified, “Oh, my God” while shaking your head at the cruel injustice. If you’re black, you probably leapt to your feet, cursed, maybe threw something (certainly wanted to throw something), while shouting, “Not @#$%! again!” Then you remember the two white vigilantes accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged through their neighborhood in February, and how if it wasn’t for that video emerging a few weeks ago, they would have gotten away with it. And how those Minneapolis cops claimed Floyd was resisting arrest but a store’s video showed he wasn’t. And how the cop on Floyd’s neck wasn’t an enraged redneck stereotype, but a sworn officer who looked calm and entitled and devoid of pity: the banality of evil incarnate.

Maybe you also are thinking about the Karen in Central Park who called 911 claiming the black man who asked her to put a leash on her dog was threatening her. Or the black Yale University grad student napping in the common room of her dorm who was reported by a white student. Because you realize it’s not just a supposed “black criminal” who is targeted, it’s the whole spectrum of black faces from Yonkers to Yale.

You start to wonder if it should be all black people who wear body cams, not the cops.

What do you see when you see angry black protesters amassing outside police stations with raised fists? If you’re white, you may be thinking, “They certainly aren’t social distancing.” Then you notice the black faces looting Target and you think, “Well, that just hurts their cause.” Then you see the police station on fire and you wag a finger saying, “That’s putting the cause backward.”

You’re not wrong — but you’re not right, either. The black community is used to the institutional racism inherent in education, the justice system and jobs. And even though we do all the conventional things to raise public and political awareness — write articulate and insightful pieces in the Atlantic, explain the continued devastation on CNN, support candidates who promise change — the needle hardly budges.

But COVID-19 has been slamming the consequences of all that home as we die at a significantly higher rate than whites, are the first to lose our jobs, and watch helplessly as Republicans try to keep us from voting. Just as the slimy underbelly of institutional racism is being exposed, it feels like hunting season is open on blacks. If there was any doubt, President Trump’s recent tweets confirm the national zeitgeist as he calls protesters “thugs” and looters fair game to be shot.

Yes, protests often are used as an excuse for some to take advantage, just as when fans celebrating a hometown sports team championship burn cars and destroy storefronts. I don’t want to see stores looted or even buildings burn. But African Americans have been living in a burning building for many years, choking on the smoke as the flames burn closer and closer. Racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible — even if you’re choking on it — until you let the sun in. Then you see it’s everywhere. As long as we keep shining that light, we have a chance of cleaning it wherever it lands. But we have to stay vigilant, because it’s always still in the air.

So, maybe the black community’s main concern right now isn’t whether protesters are standing three or six feet apart or whether a few desperate souls steal some T-shirts or even set a police station on fire, but whether their sons, husbands, brothers and fathers will be murdered by cops or wannabe cops just for going on a walk, a jog, a drive. Or whether being black means sheltering at home for the rest of their lives because the racism virus infecting the country is more deadly than COVID-19.

What you should see when you see black protesters in the age of Trump and coronavirus is people pushed to the edge, not because they want bars and nail salons open, but because they want to live. To breathe.

Worst of all, is that we are expected to justify our outraged behavior every time the cauldron bubbles over. Almost 70 years ago, Langston Hughes asked in his poem “Harlem”: “What happens to a dream deferred? /… Maybe it sags / like a heavy load. / Or does it explode?” 

Fifty years ago, Marvin Gaye sang in “Inner City Blues”: “Make me wanna holler / The way they do my life.” And today, despite the impassioned speeches of well-meaning leaders, white and black, they want to silence our voice, steal our breath.

So what you see when you see black protesters depends on whether you’re living in that burning building or watching it on TV with a bowl of corn chips in your lap waiting for “NCIS” to start.

What I want to see is not a rush to judgment, but a rush to justice.

READ MORE

Reality Leigh Winner. (photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

With Medical Conditions, NSA Whistleblower Reality Winner Risks Coronavirus "Death Sentence" Behind Bars, Attorneys Say
Taylor Barnes, The Intercept
Barnes writes: "Winner spends 11 hours a day in a room within 3 feet of four other fellow incarcerated people."

EXCERPT:

Winner’s petition was filed in early April and was initially denied by Randal Hall, chief judge of the Southern District of Georgia in Augusta, where the National Security Agency station Winner was a contract linguist at is located. When Hall denied Winner’s bid for compassionate release on April 24, he cited his belief that Winner’s facility, as a medical prison, is “presumably better equipped than most to deal with any onset of COVID-19 in its inmates.”

Just four days after his denial, the prison recorded its first inmate death. Andrea Circle Bear, a pregnant woman who was charged with maintaining a “drug-involved” premises in South Dakota, was taken from the prison and put on a ventilator at a local hospital after staff saw she had a fever and dry cough on March 31. At the hospital, she delivered her newborn by cesarean section before succumbing to the coronavirus on April 28.

Winner’s defense team cited Circle Bear’s death in their continued efforts to get Winner released. “This and other serious injury are precisely the imminent harms we cannot allow Reality to suffer, and why we continue to exhaust all possible avenues for relief,” said Winner’s Atlanta-based attorney, Joe Whitley, in an interview. On May 12, Whitley filed a motion to expedite Winner’s appeal of Hall’s decision, though he told The Intercept by email that there is “no set deadline for a ruling.”

“Separate from and in addition to her underlying medical issues,” the motion says, “Reality has coped, all her life, with symptoms and triggers for her conditions (e.g., stress, depression, etc.) by exercising and strictly managing her diet; however, FMC Carswell’s response to the global pandemic allows neither. In other words, BOP’s response effectively took away all of Reality’s healthy coping mechanisms, which further exacerbates her susceptibilities, leaving her even more immunocompromised and vulnerable.” The motion added, “Indeed, the BOP ‘response’ makes matters worse for Reality and threatens to turn her 63-month sentence into a death sentence.”

READ MORE

Law enforcement officers, in a sign of respect and understanding, kneel to the cheers of protesters gathered at Spokane County Courthouse in Spokane, Wash., on May 31. (photo: Colin Mulvany/Spokesman-Review/AP)

Some Officers March and Kneel With Protesters, Creating Dissonant Images on Fraught Weekend of Uprisings
Hannah Knowles and Isaac Stanley-Becker, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Images of tense encounters between protesters and police officers piled up over the weekend, as authorities intensified their efforts to quell nationwide uprisings, using rubber bullets, pepper pellets and tear gas in violent standoffs that seared cities nationwide. But some officers took different actions."
READ MORE

Bluebonnet Detention Center, ICE's newest detention facility in West Texas. (photo: Charles Reed/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

ICE Keeps Transferring Detainees Around the Country, Leading to COVID-19 Outbreaks
Lisa Riordan Seville and Hannah Rappleye, NBC News
Excerpt: "The immigrants began to show symptoms in late April, about a week after arriving at the Rolling Plains Detention Center in Haskell, Texas."
READ MORE

Chuck Canterbury, center, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, speaks with other law enforcement officials standing with him outside of the West Wing of the White House, after a meeting with President Donald Trump on Friday, June 2, 2017. (photo: Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

How Police Unions Pushed Trump to Greenlight More Military Gear for Cops
Seth Kershner, In These Times
Kershner writes: "This week, in an address to the biennial conference of the Fraternal Order of Police, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that President Donald Trump had issued an executive order allowing local law enforcement to, once again, receive bayonets, tracked armored vehicles and grenade launchers from the Pentagon. For free."

Federal transfers of certain types of military hardware, but certainly not all, had previously been banned as part of former President Barack Obama’s efforts to reform a controversial Department of Defense (DOD) program known as 1033.

Since the 1990s, the DOD has distributed surplus equipment to law enforcement agencies through its Law Enforcement Support Office. While the majority of the equipment includes gear like computers and office supplies, the 1033 program also supplies weapons and tactical vehicles to local police for just the cost of shipping.

The system of distributing surplus gear to local police largely flew under the radar until the summer of 2014. That was when assault rifles and armored vehicles were used to confront protesters in Ferguson, Mo. following the killing of Black teenager Michael Brown. Although none of the armored vehicles used in Ferguson had been obtained through the 1033 program, the spectacle sparked a national debate over police militarization and led to new scrutiny of the Pentagon’s partnership with local police. The Black Lives Matter movement pushed the demand to demilitarize police departments into public discourse.

In May 2015, Obama issued an executive order that led to an outright ban on federal transfers of certain military-grade weaponry, including bayonets, .50 caliber guns, and tracked armored vehicles. The order established a new list of “controlled items” that police could obtain only after following an additional protocol. The restrictions also applied to programs administered by federal agencies, such as the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, which also provide support to local law enforcement through grants or surplus equipment transfers.

Some argue that Obama’s restrictions were largely cosmetic. In 2015, Peter Kraska, an academic who has done extensive research on police militarization, criticized the “deceptive” packaging of these reforms. After all, several of the banned items—like weaponized aircraft—had never been distributed to local law enforcement to begin with.

Regardless, the powerful FOP has vigorously opposed Obama’s executive order from the outset. In a press statement released this week, the FOP’s senior legislative liaison, Tim Richardson, noted that the union had been “working to roll back these restrictions since the day they were announced.”

The world’s largest law enforcement officers’ union, the FOP represents more than 330,000 members in the United States and has staff who work full-time lobbying Congress on issues of concern.

The FOP has not been shy about its opposition to restrictions on police weaponry. In a 2016 issue of the quarterly FOP Journal, Jim Pasco, a senior union official who spearheaded the lobbying effort, slammed as “offensive and absurd” the notion that something like an MRAP would ever be “strictly controlled” by the federal government. Yet, the Obama-era reforms are limited, requiring, for example, that personnel receive training before handling military-grade equipment, like MRAPs.

In reality, the flow of “controlled equipment” like MRAPs has hardly slowed down in the wake of the reforms. In contrast to statements from police officials and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who sometimes imply that 1033 had been “eviscerated” by Obama’s executive order, the reforms made hardly a dent in the program. The most recent figures, provided to In These Times by Defense Logistics Agency spokesperson Susan Lowe, show that $460 million worth of excess DOD equipment has been transferred to police departments so far this year.

In January, the FOP began pushing for new legislation in Congress that would undo the Obama-era restrictions on the 1033 program.  While the union was working behind the scenes, it kept pushing its message to union membership and the wider public. In May, the cover story of the FOP Journal made the organization’s priorities perfectly clear: “Modernized, Not Militarized: Why Law Enforcement Needs Advanced Equipment.”

The FOP was not alone in its push to greenlight police militarization. David Griffith, the editor of one of the leading trade publications in policing, claimed last year that restricting the 1033 program may “cost lives.” Meanwhile, a PoliceOne editorial published in May 2015 speculated that crowds would now be allowed to “run amok because police don’t have the necessary protective equipment” to quell a riot.

Yet, research indicates that a militarized police force—with its accompanying garb and hardware—may lead to more aggressive encounters with the public. Support for this theory came last fall, when a heavily militarized police force hosed, teargassed and tackled water protectors at Standing Rock.

In case the legislative path should fail, the FOP’s Pasco held out hope for an executive action on the matter. But it was far from a sure thing. In May, when the FOP executive board met with President Donald Trump, a range of topics was discussed, but the 1033 program did not come up due to time constraints.

Commenting on the Attorney General’s speech this week, FOP President Chuck Canterbury expressed thanks for “such good news” coming out of the White House.

Kanya Bennett, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote on August 28 that, as a result of Trump’s action, “Weapons of war will again be used to police our communities, no questions asked.” She underscored that concerned individuals can ask their elected representatives to support the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act, which would eliminate federal transfers of MRAPs and other gear to police. According to Bennett, “Communities must call out the federal government for instigating police militarization.”

READ MORE

Eyad Hallaq. (photo: Haaretz)

Juan Cole | Jerusalem Demonstrations Against Police Brutality After Autistic Palestinian Shot to Death
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Cole writes: "Israeli police on Sunday evening forcibly dispersed dozens of Palestinian demonstrators who had gathered at Damascus Gate to protest the killing on Saturday of Iyad Hallak, an autistic Palestinian man by two Israeli border police."

READ MORE

As restoration managers repair damaged corals, sound recordings can help jumpstart the process of restoring vibrant - and noisy - coral reef ecosystems. (photo: EcoWatch)

Scientists Play Recordings to Attract Fish to Damaged Parts of Great Barrier Reef
Yale Climate Connections
Excerpt: "A healthy coral reef is a noisy place."
READ MORE

---

Contribute to RSN 

Update My Monthly Donation