Tag Archives: BLM

“America is on Trial”: Historian Ibram X. Kendi on the Failure to Convict Cops Who Kill Black People

Links to today’s show transcripts:

“America is on Trial”: Historian Ibram X. Kendi on the Failure to Convict Cops Who Kill Black People
As three Chicago police officers face charges for covering up the police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, today’s show examines the cases of Philando Castile, Sam DuBose and Sylville Smith—three black men killed by police officers. In recent weeks, two of the officers were acquitted; one had a mistrial. Our first guest writes, “[I]t is not just police officers who are on trial. America is on trial. Either these deaths are justified, and therefore America is just, or these deaths are unjustified, and America is unjust.” We speak with historian Ibram X. Kendi. His recent book, “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America,” is the recipient of the 2016 National Book Award.

Stamped from the Beginning: Ibram X. Kendi on the History of Racist Ideas in U.S.
With police killings dominating the headlines, historian Ibram X. Kendi discusses his recent book, “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America,” which traces the origins of racist ideas in the U.S. The author examines the impact of historically racist policies on existing racial disparities. His book is the recipient of the 2016 National Book Award.

D.C. Police Accused of Using “Rape as Punishment” Targeting Some Arrested During Trump Inauguration
A shocking lawsuit accuses the Washington, D.C., police of using sexual abuse as a form of punishment targeting people arrested during protests against Donald Trump’s inauguration. A complaint by four plaintiffs charges officers stripped them, grabbed their genitalia and inserted fingers into their anuses while other officers laughed.

Brazilian President Michel Temer Charged with Corruption, a Year After He Backed Ouster of Rousseff
In Brazil, President Michel Temer has been formally charged with corruption, a year after he backed the ouster of President Dilma Rousseff from office. Federal prosecutors accuse Temer of taking millions of dollars in bribes. Prosecutor Rodrigo Janot said Temer has “fooled Brazilian citizens.” Temer, who rejected the allegations, is the country’s first sitting head of state to be formally charged with a crime.

Democracy Now! — Monday, Aug. 22, 2016

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After a year and a half of bombing by Saudi-led forces, residents of Yemen face the threat of starvation. Photo from Democracy Now! website.

Secretary of State John Kerry is heading to Saudi Arabia as the Obama administration is facing increasing pressure for its support of the Saudi-led war in Yemen. This comes as up to 100,000 people gathered in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a Saturday to protest the ongoing Saudi strikes and in support of Houthi rebels. Over the past two weeks, the U.S.-backed Saudi coalition has bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital, killing 19 people, and bombed two schools in northern Yemen, killing at least 14 children. Doctors Without Borders has since announced it will withdraw staff from six hospitals in the north of the country. For more, Amy Goodman spoke to Kristine Beckerle, a fellow at Human Rights Watch. She has just returned from Yemen.

Even before the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen began more than a year ago, Yemen was ranked as one of the poorest countries in the world. But now, a year and a half into the war, Yemen’s health system has broken down, and the population is facing the threat of starvation. Amy Goodman was joined by Andrew Cockburn, the Washington editor for Harper’s magazine. His latest piece for Harper’s is headlined “Acceptable Losses: Aiding and Abetting the Saudi Slaughter in Yemen.” He is author of “Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins.”

Also today: In 2012, 19-year-old Tevin Louis and his best friend Marquise Sampson allegedly robbed a restaurant. After reportedly making off with about $1,200, the two ran in different directions. Sampson crossed paths with an officer, who gave chase and ultimately opened fire, killing the teenager. Louis arrived at the scene where his friend was shot, and attempted to cross the police line. He was arrested for disorderly conduct. But in a shocking turn, Louis was eventually charged with first-degree murder in the death of his best friend, even though it was the officer who killed Sampson.

Louis was found guilty. He is now serving a 32-year sentence for armed robbery and a 20-year sentence for murder. Louis is one of 10 people with similar cases exposed in the Chicago Reader’s new article headlined “Charged with Murder, But They Didn’t Kill Anyone—Police Did.” The article’s authors joined today’s show: Alison Flowers, a journalist with the Chicago-based Invisible Institute, and Sarah Macaraeg, an independent journalist and fellow with the International Center for Journalists.

We are honored to offer this broadcast as part of our affiliation with the Pacifica Network. Democracy Now! is a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez.

Eric has completed the 2016 Midyear Reading, BALANCE. We strongly recommend you get all 12 signs. If you prefer, choose your individual signs here. Photo by European Southern Observatory.

Democracy Now! — Monday, Aug. 15, 2016

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Sedan Smith, brother of Sylville Smith, speaks to a local reporter. “We’re losing loved ones every day to the people that’s sworn in to protect us. It’s other stuff that’s going on out here, and you wonder why. It’s ISIS in America.” Indeed. Image: video still

Protests are continuing in Milwaukee two days after police shot dead a 23-year-old African-American man named Sylville Smith. On Sunday, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker activated the National Guard after local residents set fire to police cars and several local businesses, including a gas station, on Saturday night. Seventeen people were arrested. Four police officers were reportedly injured. Milwaukee police say Smith was shot while trying to flee from an officer who had stopped his car. Police Chief Edward Flynn said he had viewed video from the officer’s body camera, and it showed Smith had turned toward him with a gun in his hand after the traffic stop. Many local residents said the tension between their community and the police has been rising for years. Milwaukee is considered to be one of the most segregated cities in the country.

Here is a link to the I Will Not Die Young campaign mentioned in the show.

The Olympics continue in Rio de Janeiro, where Stanford swimmer Simone Manuel has made history, becoming the first African-American female swimmer to win an Olympic medal in an individual event. After winning, Manuel said, “It means a lot, especially with what is going on in the world today, some of the issues of police brutality. This win hopefully brings hope and change to some of the issues that are going on.” Manuel’s win was only one of a number of historic Olympic victories for African-American female athletes over the last week. African-American gymnast Simone Biles scored her third gold medal when she became the first American woman to win the Olympic vault individual. And Michelle Carter became the first American woman to win a gold medal in shot put.

Eric is busy creating the new 2016 Midyear Reading, BALANCE. Covering Jupiter in Libra and other forthcoming astrology, this exciting reading will carry you well into 2017. Get all 12 signs today for just $57. Image from the 2012 Blue Marble by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Democracy Now! — Thursday, Aug. 11, 2016

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Vanita Gupta summarizes the damning report on Baltimore Police Department. Image video still

A Justice Department investigation has concluded Baltimore police have carried out a practice of racially discriminatory policing by systematically stopping, searching and arresting black residents at a disproportionate rate. “BPD engages in a pattern or practice of making unconstitutional stops, searches and arrests; using enforcement strategies that produce severe and unjustified disparities in the rates of stops searches and arrests of African-Americans; using excessive force and retaliating against people engaging in constitutionally protected expression,” said Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General Vanita Gupta. The 163-page report revealed “supervisors have issued explicitly discriminatory orders, such as directing a shift to arrest ‘all the black hoodies’ in a neighborhood.”

The damning report issued by the Justice Department this week about policing in Baltimore highlighted one African-American man in his fifties who was stopped more than 30 times by police. For more, Amy Goodman spoke with Maryland Congressmember Elijah Cummings and local activist Ralikh Hayes about their own experiences with police in Baltimore. Cummings says he has been stopped “many times”; Hayes says at least 20 times; meanwhile, reporter Baynard Woods, who is white, says he has never been stopped.

Further revelations about former Fox News chief Roger Ailes are surfacing, raising questions about how much the company was aware of his transgressions. Ailes has now been accused of sexual harassment by more than 20 women, including Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and former anchor Gretchen Carlson. Earlier this week, another former Fox News host also accused Ailes of sexual harassment. Andrea Tantaros says she repeatedly reported Ailes’s harassment to senior Fox executives last year. She says she was demoted and then taken off air as a result.

Sarah Ellison, Vanity Fair contributing editor, joined the show. Her most recent piece is an exclusive headlined “Inside the Fox News Bunker.” It exposes the existence of explosive audiotapes recorded by multiple women in conversation with Ailes. Sarah Ellison is also the author of “War at The Wall Street Journal: Inside the Struggle to Control an American Business Empire.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/exclusive-inside-the-fox-news-bunker-roger-ailes

Before Roger Ailes headed Fox News, he was a top Republican operative. In 1988, he helped Vice President George Bush defeat Michael Dukakis in the presidential race. Managing Dukakis’s campaign was the feminist legal scholar Susan Estrich, who wrote groundbreaking works on sexual harassment and rape. To the surprise of some, she is now Ailes’s attorney, defending him in the sexual harassment lawsuit that led to his ouster from Fox News.

Democracy Now! — Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2016

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Latif Khosa, a Pakistani attorney, speaks out about the bombing. Image: video still

Lawyers in Pakistan have begun a nationwide strike after dozens of attorneys were slain in a suicide bombing outside a hospital in the city of Quetta in Balochistan, the country’s poorest province. Authorities said at least 70 people died in the attack, including as many as 60 attorneys; 120 were injured.

The suicide bombing targeted lawyers who had assembled outside the hospital to mourn the assassination of Bilal Kasi, the president of the Balochistan Bar Association, who was killed earlier on Monday as he headed to court. Kasi had strongly condemned recent attacks in the province and had announced a two-day boycott of court sessions in protest of the killing of a colleague last week. A faction of the Pakistan Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack and for the murder of Bilal Kasi. ISIS also claimed responsibility.

On Monday, protesters interrupted Donald Trump more than a dozen times during a speech at the Detroit Economic Club, in which Trump laid out his economic policies. During the speech, Trump vowed to slash corporate taxes and end the estate tax. He also said he would reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership and renegotiate trade deals including NAFTA. Jacqui Maxwell, a crane operator and a member of the United Auto Workers, interrupted Donald Trump’s speech at the Detroit Economic Club on Monday.

This comes after Donald Trump announced his economic team, which includes 13 men, no women, several billionaires, an Oklahoma oil baron and one part-time professional poker player. For more on Donald Trump’s speech economic plan and his team, Matt Taibbi, an award-winning journalist with Rolling Stone magazine, joins the show. He’s been closely following the Trump campaign. One of his recent pieces is headlined “A Republican Workers’ Party?”

Taibbi also discusses the news that British banking giant Barclays Bank has agreed to pay $100 million in a settlement with 44 U.S. states for rigging Libor, the interest rate which underpins trillions in global transactions. British and U.S. authorities have taken action against a number of banks over alleged rate manipulation since 2012. This was the first settlement between a bank and U.S. states.

Chicago is once again rocked by protests over police brutality, following the release of video showing the fatal police shooting of an unarmed African-American teenager. The newly released video from police body cameras shows the moments before and after police killed 18-year-old Paul O’Neal on July 28. In the video, police are seen shooting repeatedly at the car O’Neal was driving, which police say was stolen.

The video then shows a police officer running over to O’Neal, who is lying face down in a growing pool of blood surrounded by other officers. The officers then handcuff O’Neal with his arms behind his back and search his backpack, as he continues bleeding. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office says he was shot in the back.

In New York City on Monday, over 100 people marched to protest the recent police killing of African-American mother Korryn Gaines in Maryland. On August 1, Baltimore County police killed the 23-year-old mother after what they say was an armed standoff. Police were at Gaines’s apartment to execute an arrest warrant related to a traffic violation. They initially said they entered Korryn Gaines’s apartment with a key obtained from her landlord. But court documents say police kicked down the door.

Once the police entered the apartment, Korryn Gaines was live-streaming the standoff via Facebook before her account was shut down. Police say they killed Gaines after she pointed a shotgun at them. Police also say they shot her 5-year-old son, Kodi Gaines, who suffered an injury to his cheek but survived.

Democracy Now! — Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2016

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New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton (left) has announced his resignation. Image: video still

New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton has announced he is resigning next month. Bratton was a lead advocate of the so-called broken windows theory that called for officers to crack down on minor infractions in an attempt to decrease more violent crime. Over the past four decades, Bratton has served as New York police commissioner twice as well as the head of the Boston and Los Angeles police departments. Supporters of Bratton credit him with lowering crime rates, but critics say broken windows policing unfairly targets communities of color.

In a statement, Black Lives Matter co-founder Opal Tometi told Democracy Now!, “William Bratton is the key architect of programs that have terrorized our communities for decades. His implementation of broken windows theory has wreaked havoc on communities from Los Angeles to New York City and beyond.” Bratton resigned just one day after hundreds of activists gathered outside New York City Hall demanding the defunding of the New York Police Department and his firing. Protests against William Bratton have been escalating ever since the police killing of Eric Garner two years ago.

Bratton has also served as head of the Boston and Los Angeles police departments. But Bratton’s resignation doesn’t mean he’s retiring. His next job will be at Teneo Holdings, a global private consulting firm with controversial ties to Hillary Clinton. Bratton will be the chairperson of a new branch of the company called Teneo Risk.

When you woke up this morning, chances are your morning routine was touched in some way by a private equity firm. From the water you drink to the roads you drive to work, to the morning newspaper you read, Wall Street firms are playing an increasingly influential role in daily life. So says a compelling new article in The New York Times, “This Is Your Life, Brought to You by Private Equity.”

Imprisoned Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning faces new charges after she tried to commit suicide last month. The Army reportedly told Manning she is being investigated on administrative charges that include having prohibited property in her cell and resisting being moved out of the cell. If convicted, Manning could face indefinite solitary confinement and additional time in prison. It could also hurt her chance of parole.

Chelsea Manning is serving a 35-year sentence in the disciplinary barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. She has been subjected to long stretches of solitary confinement and denied medical treatment related to her gender identity.

In a newly published interview with Amnesty International, Manning said, “I am always afraid. I am still afraid of the power of government. A government can arrest you. It can imprison you. It can put out information about you that won’t get questioned by the public—everyone will just assume that what they are saying is true. Sometimes, a government can even kill you—with or without the benefit of a trial.”

Democracy Now! — Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2016

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The widely broadcast video filmed just before Kinsey was shot, presumably for Caring For Autistic Guy While Black. Image: video still

In North Miami, the city’s police department is facing growing criticism after one of its officers shot an African-American behavioral therapist who was attempting to help an autistic man. At the time of the shooting, behavioral therapist Charles Kinsey was helping to calm Arnaldo Rios Soto, a 26-year-old autistic man, who had wandered away from a group home. Police responded after receiving a 911 call about a man who was possibly holding a gun.

Police soon surrounded Rios Soto and the therapist, Charles Kinsey. The video shows Kinsey lying on the ground with his hands in the air. He told police no one was armed. In a cellphone video of the shooting, Kinsey can be heard telling police, “All he has is a toy truck. A toy truck. I am a behavioral therapist at a group home.” Rios Soto’s family says he has been traumatized by the incident and still wears the blood-soaked jacket he had on the day his friend, caregiver and therapist was shot by police. Meanwhile, Kinsey now walks with a cane and cannot stand on his leg for long.

While all eyes have been on the Republican and Democratic platforms decided at the national conventions earlier this month, a broad coalition associated with the Black Lives Matter movement has released a platform of its own, demanding reparations and an “end to the wars against Black people.”

The list of demands from the Movement for Black Lives platform also includes the abolition of the death penalty, legislation to recognize the impacts of slavery, as well as investments in education initiatives, mental health services and employment programs. The publication comes just a week before the second anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, which sparked months of protests and catalyzed a national conversation about police killings of unarmed African-American men.

On Monday, hundreds of activists gathered at New York City Hall demanding the defunding of the New York Police Department, the firing of New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and reparations for victims of police brutality. Democracy Now!’s Charina Nadura and Andre Lewis were at the park speaking to protesters.

As Donald Trump continues to attack Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of a Muslim U.S. soldier who died in Iraq, we turn to a side of the Khans few have seen. In 2008, the couple were filmed visiting the grave of their son in the HBO documentary “Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery.” An excerpt fro the film is aired.

The U.S. military carried out two airstrikes in Libya against ISIS fighters on Monday in the latest escalation of the U.S. war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State. The strikes took place in the city of Sirte. Pentagon officials said the campaign would continue until ISIS has been driven from the city, which it took over last year.

Libya has been engulfed in fighting after a U.S.-backed military intervention ousted longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. The Pentagon said Libya’s Western-backed unity government requested the airstrikes. The so-called unity government is one of three competing governments that claim legitimacy in the country.

Not like that — like THIS

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By Matt Bors

The Planet Waves Boutique has plenty of balm for your soul. Come pay us a visit, enjoy discovering all the wonderful readings we have to offer, and re-center yourself in the midst of the chaos.