Eric Garner

I'm not sure I can even be angry anymore. I'm just sad and tired. I'm not sure what we do now. The legal system is going to continue to fail the most vulnerable. So what then? What is the game plan because I'm out of ideas. Tonight my friends joked about being murdered by the police because that seems like an inevitable fate. One called himself a "thug" and put up his hood, and then said, better not wear this outside, police might shoot me.

I don't know what it is like to live in that kind of fear of the state. But it scares me. It scares me that this is what we've become. The people who believe it is ok to murder black people, because black women are being killed too, are not…I don't know how to finish this sentence. Maybe because I'm tired and can't sleep but maybe because there is no way for me to finish that sentence. The white men who are murdering black people are part of my race, and I can't distance myself from them. Not only are they part of my race, but they are probably working class, right? I mean the police have been a staple of Irish employment. I see the people running to defend Wilson on my Facebook feed, and some of them are distant cousins, but there it sits. They pull up these joke arguments about how white people have been killed by the police too, as if it is the same. It isn't, black men are disproportionately murdered by the police. But they are going to fight that it isn't just black people instead of seeing the militarization of the police as the problem, classism as the problem…I'm not holding out for miracles, my racist cousin is never going to recognize racial oppression and the connects to the before mentioned problems. But at least realize this isn't for the greater good, these sons didn't have to die, this is to preserve the status quo, to reinforce the inconsequence of blackness, to keep people in their place. This is terrorism. This is how genocide begins. As if we're not already seeing it with the systematic imprisonment of black men.

A good friend of mine told me a few months back, "You're not really white." Or something like that. I immediately corrected her. I am white. I didn't launch into it, but I am white, and I benefit from my whiteness. I have had opportunities because of luck, but without my whiteness I wouldn't be so lucky. I wrestle with class and gender performance everyday. My friend thought I meant it the way she means when someone tells her she's not really black because she is some kind of exception, which is intended to be a compliment, but totally racist.

These were Eric Garner's last words. Recorded by a man being indicted while the murderer is not.

Ferguson police are now arresting journalists; I disagree with Warren; and this is our future

This post comes to you in three parts.

Part I: Ferguson police are arresting journalists

Don’t get me wrong the murder of a black man was bad enough, but now, one has to ask. What the fuck are the Ferguson police doing where they feel compelled to arrest journalists? At least two reporters were arrested and then released without charge: Wesley Lowery from the Washington Post and Ryan J. Reilly from the Huffington Post. I’m guessing that the mass response to social media posts about journalists being arrested might have something to do with this.

Swat teams were called in to deal with the protesters, and they entered McDonalds where the two reporters were working. The reporters went offline at 5pm, which is when other journalists started tweeting that two journalists had been arrested. LA Times reporter than began investigating the arrests. After 45 minutes Lowery and Reilly came back online. You can read Lowery’s version of events here.

There is something truly horrifying that the police can arrest journalists and meet with no consequences.

Part II: I disagree with Senator Warren

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">This is America, not a war zone. The people of href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Ferguson?src=hash">#Ferguson

just want answers. We all want answers.&mdash; Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) href="https://twitter.com/elizabethforma/statuses/499904279961149440">August 14, 2014</blockquote>

Perhaps I’m a cynic, but America is a war zone. We’re just not used to seeing it on television because the war on drugs and the war on terror don’t really look like anything different than the status quo which is the brutalization of people of color and the low income. A lot of people on Twitter are drawing comparisons between Ferguson and the 1960s, specifically the Civil Rights Movement in the south. But this didn’t happen overnight. Slowly with the stripping of voters rights, the limitations on women’s rights, drug policy, racial profiling, we’ve slipped further and further back. We live in a militarized police state, when the police have access to tanks, then we live in a war zone. You can access a list of people killed by the police via Wikipedia, which is obviously a flawed source, but with news coming out that New Orleans’ police covered up a police shooting, coupled with the murders in Ohio, California, and Missouri, it is better than nothing.

Part III: This is our future or how did we get here

In case you’re confused the Ferguson Police have tanks because of the war on drugs and the war on terror. Sen. Warren, want to tell me again about how we’re not at war? See the local police forces got extra money to combat drugs and then terror. They put it to use by providing local police with better armor than the military. In Ferguson specifically, the military gave them military grade weapons.

We’re watching the police’s unreasonable response to lawful protests. This is what protesting looks like now, we got a glimpse of it during Occupy. Notably, the protesters unlawfully arrested at Occupy in New York sued, and they have been winning. While clearly, I’m opposed to the tactics being used against protesters, seeing some of these photos makes me wonder what civilians abroad must be thinking. I know survivors in Gaza have been sending tips to the Ferguson protesters on how to deal with the tear gas.

We’re here because for a long time society said it was ok to kill unarmed black people. Maybe this is the first step in issuing consequences for the senseless kill of people of color. However, the cynic in me doubts it. I think we’re revert right back to the way things were after this. I think the racists will be in full fear mode, and people of color will be even more disenfranchised. I know the Governor has decided to remove local police, but I’m not sure if that is going to be an improvement or if even better armed law enforcers will be deployed.

Police murdered an unarmed black boy in Missouri

Oh Jesus Christ, what the fuck is happening in Ferguson, Missouri? Last I heard, the police are threatening to arrest the press because after the police murder someone, and they don’t want the press to film it. My understanding is that the police shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18 year old man on Saturday in Ferguson, Mo. The police claimed Brown pushed an officer in a car and was then shot. Witnesses claim the police yelled at Brown and his friend, grabbed Brown and when Brown ran, he was shot. The FBI has taken over the investigation.

The reaction of the public has included marches, memorials, and looting. The police arrested 23 people on Sunday for theft. An additional five people were arrested at protests on Monday. The protesters want the police who murdered Brown, identified, fired, and prosecuted. The police force is disproportionately white compared to the 65% black population.

I’ve been reading Twitter for the past few hours (Monday night), and I can’t tell what the hell is happening except this appears like a military exercise. There are photos where smoke is billowing up as if a building has come down or a bomb gone off. The police are using an unjustified force against citizens. The police is using tear gas and rubber bullets. It is surreal. My thoughts are with Brown’s family, their supporters, those involved tonight, and anyone else witnessing this. I can’t stop thinking about those who are defending the actions of the police as if this could ever be justified. These people are how horrible injustices happen by looking the other way or justifying these actions.

State sponsored violence

Cecily McMillan was found guilty, remanded without bail, and is awaiting sentencing. Reminder, during Occupy Wall’s occupation in New York City, McMillan was accused of felony assault against Officer Grantley Bovell, but there is substantial evidence that Officer Boyell had assaulted McMillan. Molly Knefel wrote an excellent discussion of the implications of the verdict for The Guardian. To be clear, I believe McMillan, not Boyell, who continuously misidentified the eye she injured, while she had photos of the bruising on her right breast.

Knefel described more than just the consequences of the verdict for McMillan, which is up to seven years in prison because of disproportional punitive sentences. This is terrible, and we can discuss at length sentencing and the arbitrary nature of the criminal justice system. However, I wanted to discuss state sponsored violence, and the cultural embrace of it by the general populace. State sponsored violence is violence or terrorism conducted by the state against its own people. This is seen as an implication of corruption because states with the general support of their people don’t have to beat them into submission. Additionally, those who embrace it are usually not being threatened, while those who have a general acceptance usually fear becoming targets themselves. So, stop and frisk is a racist policy used to inflict violence against and terrorize the black community, but white people think it is ok because they aren’t being stopped. After this policy became actual policy, the black community was forced to either accommodate the policy or expect severe consequences.

So what do we know about state sponsored violence? Well, it is a problem:

1.      It is more common among vulnerable populations, and in the US that means in low-income and neighborhoods of color (both black and Hispanic).

2.      Police act as violent forces within these communities, which causes distrust among the populous.

3.      Sexual assault and the response to sexual assault are frequently seen as violence perpetrated by the state.

4.      Those who are seen to deserve a violent response by the state are dehumanized by the perpetrators of the violence.

5.      There is usually little consequence for the individual perpetrators of this violence because they are actors of the state.

There should also be a consideration of the history of state sponsored violence. For example, slavery is obviously an example, but that includes the systematic rape and sexual exploitation of black women. There are strong parallels between the violence perpetrated by the state against blacks during slavery, and contemporary mass incarceration of black men and the violence subjected upon them. Organized labor has been on the receiving end of state sponsored violence, and so have student protestors (Kent State).

Clearly, I think what happened to McMillan is a miscarriage of justice. There was a substantial response on Twitter about the black experience and police brutality, which is also very true and should be discussed. However, what I hear and see with McMillan is that the state sponsored violence is branching out, and what will the ramifications of that be in the long term? Obviously, I’m not arguing that black communities should be used to this violence, what I’m trying to get at is that if those who traditionally have some privilege (racial privilege in this case) are being targeted then how long until the police state can response with absolute violence against all citizens without repercussions? This is how repression works, they target a vulnerable group, and those with power and privilege shrug their shoulders and continue on with their business. Then the repression spreads to other groups. We are witnessing an evolution how state sponsored violence is used and accepted. And the Department of Justice just said it is ok.