Police, prison and abolition

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blindpig
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 08, 2023 3:26 pm

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Police Raid Atlanta Forest After ‘Cop City’ Opponents Overrun Security Post
By Unicorn Riot March 5, 2023

Dekalb County, GA – At least 30 people were arrested on Sunday evening in the South River Forest during a ‘week of action’ music festival taking place near the location of the proposed controversial ‘Cop City’ facility.

UPDATE: 3/6/23 – According to the Atlanta Police Department press release, there were at least 35 people detained. Unicorn Riot also learned that of those arrested, approximately 22 were charged with state-level domestic terrorism charges, moving the total number of people connected to the ‘Stop Cop City’ movement who are facing domestic terrorism charges to around 42.


Watch our live stream below:


Earlier in the evening, a march of several hundred opponents of the project (generally known as ‘forest defenders’) took over a police surveillance outpost along a power line clearing near Intrenchment Creek. The crowd set off fireworks and threw other projectiles over the barbed wire fence of the outpost, causing the police to retreat.

Barricades of tires and other debris were set up at the outpost entrance and two UTVs, a Front End Loader, office trailer, and mobile surveillance tower were destroyed and set on fire. Several port-a-potties were tipped and barbed wire fences bent, twisted and rendered insecure.

When entering the forest, officers could be heard threatening to shoot people.

The ‘week of action’ organized by opponents of the project is underway. More coverage of the Atlanta forest protests is on our website.

https://unicornriot.ninja/2023/police-r ... rity-post/

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Protesters charged with terrorism in Atlanta

At least 23 people, including a legal observer, have been charged with domestic terrorism as protests against massive police training facility continue

March 08, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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Atlanta police arrest protesters in Welaunee Forest on the night of March 5 (Photo: Humanizing Through Story)

At least 23 protesters have been charged with domestic terrorism amid a week of action against the construction of “Cop City” in Atlanta, a proposed $90 million police training complex. Atlanta police detained 35 people and arrested 23 on the night of March 5, they claim, for vandalism against the Cop City construction site and violence towards police. Activists dispute this narrative. While video footage shows a small group torching the construction site and throwing fireworks towards police, according to activists, none of the 35 people detained were detained at the construction site itself. Earlier that day, demonstrators marched, and later attended a live music performance, as part of the larger week of action. Atlanta police detained protesters at these two events, activists report, which were both entirely peaceful.

Activists in Atlanta and across the country have for years opposed the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, dubbed “Cop City”, which was deeply unpopular with residents since its first announcement in June 2021. The proposed training ground would cut down part of Atlanta’s South River Forest (also called the Welaunee Forest) to build, in part, a mock city for police across the nation to practice repression tactics. Activists have been occupying parts of the forest for over a year, which is where the live music performance on the night of March 5 took place.

Those fighting Cop City have now directed energy towards dropping charges against the 23 who were arrested and are facing hefty domestic terrorism charges. One of those arrested was a legal observer for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

This is not the first time that Cop City protesters have been charged with domestic terrorism. Police have slapped these massive charges on protesters following unrest as a response to the police killing of anti-Cop City activist Tortuguita, earlier in February. What is the legal basis for this? Georgia’s domestic terrorism law was passed in 2017 in part as a response to a mass shooting against Black churchgoers in South Carolina, carried out by white supremacist Dylann Roof. The law loosened the definition of “domestic terrorism” from an act intended to kill or injure at least ten people to any felony intended to “intimidate the civilian population” or “alter, change, or coerce the policy of the government.” Many at the time warned that this would be turned against left-wing protesters, rather than white supremacists—a prediction which proved accurate.

Georgia officials such as Governor Brian Kemp are doubling down on the domestic terrorism charges. “Domestic terrorism will NOT be tolerated in this state,” Kemp stated on March 6. “We will not rest until those who use violence and intimidation for an extremist end are brought to full justice.”

Activists and sympathetic press have turned their attention towards dispelling many prominent narratives against protesters, promoted by the right-wing and the mainstream media. One is the ever-pervasive “outside agitator” narrative, that has dogged recent and not-so-recent social movements against police violence, including the George Floyd protests in 2020. This narrative alleges that those behind such movements are not from the communities that they are protesting in, and are instead being sent in by shadowy or dangerous groups.

However, although all but two of the 23 charged with domestic terrorism are from outside of Georgia, activists accuse Atlanta police of strategically only arresting those who are from out of state to bolster the narrative. Police detained 35 but only arrested 23, and activists allege that those additional 12 people were weeded out because they were in fact from Atlanta.

“Simply because the police have chosen to systematically arrest people from out of state, doesn’t mean that what they’re saying is the truth,” said Reverend Keyanna Jones at an Atlanta interfaith clergy press conference on March 6, following the mass arrests. “I am a daughter of East Atlanta. I still live in East Atlanta. I don’t want Cop City,” Jones continued. “My granny owns a home that she’s been in for almost 50 years in the heart of East Atlanta Village. She does not want Cop City. My neighbor across the street does not want Cop City. The teachers at my daughter’s school do not want Cop City. And we are all from the community.”

The local organization Defend the Atlanta Forest emphasized, “It is not illegal to travel for a protest. It is not illegal to travel for a music festival.”

The Atlanta Police Department is also claiming that lethal violence came from protesters, not police, stating, “officers exercised restraint and used non-lethal enforcement to conduct arrests.” “The illegal actions of the agitators could have resulted in bodily harm,” APD stated. However, in one clip taken in the Welaunee Forest, an officer is heard announcing, “come forward with your hands up or you are going to get shot. I don’t know how else to put it, you’re going to get hit with a bullet.” Activists also claim to have heard police say, “I swear to God I will f-cking kill you” and claim that a state trooper pointed a gun into a children’s bouncy house.

Accusations against protesters made last week also echo the same accusations made by police against Tortuguita, who was murdered by Georgia state troopers on January 18. Police claim that Tortuguita fired first at officers, injuring one. However, recently revealed body camera footage heavily implies that this injured officer was shot, accidentally, by police themselves. “You f-cked your own officer up,” a police officer is heard mumbling following gunshots. Activists still demand that more footage be released regarding Tortuguita’s murder.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/03/08/ ... n-atlanta/

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Black Alliance for Peace supports National Day of Action Against Police Terror

Originally published: Black Alliance for Peace on March 6, 2023 by Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) Editors (more by Black Alliance for Peace) | (Posted Mar 08, 2023)

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Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) member organization Community Movement Builders (CMB) is calling all organizations, organizers and community members to a National Day of Action Against Police Terror on March 9, 2023.

In the wake of the brutal killings of Tyre Nichols and forest defender Manuel Tortuguita, the city of Atlanta is going full steam ahead to build what activists have dubbed “Cop City.” Atlanta officials have proposed a $90 million complex be built on 85 acres of a forest. This would only arm and deploy more police—whom we refer to as the domestic army—in African and colonized working-class and poor communities.

CMB has been at the forefront of efforts to defeat Cop City. CMB’s analysis suggests placing Cop City in the heart of a still-majority African city is an insidious reminder of the collaborative nature of the “Black misleadership class” that serves the white capitalist minority. It also makes clear this minority is preparing for the massive use of physical, repressive power to maintain control of its internal colonies.

Cop City has been ostensibly framed as a neutral tool for fighting crime. But there is no neutrality when confronted with the asymmetrical power of the settler-colonial state in relation to poor and working-class communities. In that relationship of power, the police are instruments of control and containment, with Cop City being a part of the growing infrastructure for increased police terror in the United States, as well as in the U.S. state of Georgia and in the city of Atlanta.

For CMB, as well as for all of BAP’s member organizations and individual members, Cop City is part of the effort by city, state and federal governments to militarize the lives of African and poor people in the United States and around the world. This local, national and international military-police structure wages war in Ukraine, sends U.S. and NATO troops to Africa, advocates military intervention in Haiti, sanctions progressive governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and threatens humankind with nuclear annihilation.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! LET OUR VOICES BE HEARD!

Join us in the fight against police terror.

#StopCopCity, end the 1033 Program and end U.S. sanctions against progressive governments. We are asking everybody to organize one or more of the following actions:

Marches

Rallies

Civil disobedience actions

Direct actions

Banner drops

Teach-ins

Petition drives

In addition, we want to flood social media with the hashtag #STOPCOPCITY.

Find an action near you.

Register for BAP’s March 9 webinar, “Countering Colonial Policing in U.S. Domestic Colonies.”

Use BAP’s resources on the 1033 program to hold a teach-in.

Defeat the War on Africans in the U.S. and Around the World!

We Are an African People and We Are at War!

https://mronline.org/2023/03/08/black-a ... ce-terror/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Tue Apr 25, 2023 2:53 pm

Grand juries issue more licenses to kill Black people: Justice for Jayland Walker and Timothy McCree Johnson!
April 21, 2023 Stephen Millies

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Akron, Ohio, April 17.

Two more atrocities prove that police in the United States almost never face any consequences for killing Black people. On April 17, grand juries refused to indict police for the deaths of Jayland Walker in Ohio and Timothy McCree Johnson in Virginia.

Twenty-five-year-old Jayland Walker was a DoorDash driver who the Akron, Ohio, cops chased shortly after midnight on June 27, 2022, for an alleged traffic violation. Walker’s real crime was Driving While Black.

After Walker got out of his car and ran, eight police officers fired 94 times at him. Forty-six of the bullets struck the Black man.

Jayland Walker’s “body was riddled from his face down to his knees,” said the Rev. Roderick Pounds, pastor at Akron’s Second Baptist Church, who saw a video of the shooting. After butchering Walker, the cops still proceeded to handcuff him.

Timothy McCree Johnson was executed in Fairfax County, Virginia―outside Washington, D.C.―on Feb. 22. The unarmed Black man got the death penalty for allegedly shoplifting a pair of sunglasses from the Nordstrom department store in a Tyson Corners shopping mall.

Even the police admit that Johnson was fatally shot after he had stopped running. He was complying with the police order to “get on the ground” when he was killed.

People in Akron took to the streets on April 17 to protest the whitewash of Jayland Walker’s killing. Cars converged on the site where Walker was shot so many times.

“I just stood there, thinking, ‘Really? Out of 46 shots, it’s OK?,” Toni Weems told the Akron Beacon-Journal. “It doesn’t make sense. How can an officer shoot somebody when they’re just running away?”

Raina Lasley thought the grand jury let the officers get away with murder. “Now everybody is going to be afraid for their lives,” said Lasley. “We can’t just let this go or it’s going to keep happening.”

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Akron, Ohio, April 17.


No justice, no peace!

More protests in Akron followed on April 19. People marched and blocked intersections demanding justice. Cars formed a convoy.

Police viciously used pepper spray and so-called chemical irritants against demonstrators. That’s gas warfare against Black people.

One onlooker, William Dancy, held his fist up. “This is to let them know that we’re ready for change, we’re not going to allow this to keep going on,” he said.

People are demanding justice for Timothy Johnson in Fairfax County, Virginia, as well. During the 83-year existence of the Fairfax County police, only one cop has ever been convicted of homicide.

Officer Adam Torres was convicted of manslaughter after fatally shooting John Geer, who was standing unarmed in the doorway of his Springfield, Virginia, home. Torres spent just 10 months in jail for killing a human being.

Compare that to Timothy Jackson, who is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for supposedly shoplifting a $159 jacket from a New Orleans department store in 1996.

Also serving a life sentence in Louisiana is Ronald Lee Washington, who was convicted of swiping a basketball jersey from a Shreveport store. Paul Lewis Hayes got a life term in Kentucky for passing a $88.30 bad check.

A total of 3,200 inmates in the United States are serving life sentences for similar non-violent offenses.

Killer cops go free while Omali Yeshitela indicted

The Ohio and Virginia grand juries didn’t operate independently. As former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals Solomon Wachtler noted, a district attorney can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.

In Virginia, it was police that influenced the grand jury not to indict police Sgt. William Shifflett on manslaughter charges for killing Timothy Johnson.

Under federal law, the police killings of Jayland Walker and Timothy McCree Johnson were certainly violations of their civil rights. What’s more of a right than the right to live?

This federal civil rights statute was passed after decades of lynchers, like those who tortured 14-year-old Emmett Till to death, being let free by racist courts.

Biden called the bogus charges of war crimes issued against Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin “justified.” Biden’s Justice Department has just indicted African People’s Socialist Party Chairman Omali Yeshitela and three other activists for opposing the proxy war against Russia.

The 81 million people who voted for Joe Biden didn’t cast their ballots to jail the 81-year-old Yeshitela for exercising his right to free speech. The feds should prosecute the killer cops in Akron and Fairfax County instead.

We need to organize the power of the people to make them do it.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2023/ ... e-johnson/

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Who Gets to Talk About How Police Need to Change?
A FAIR study of NYT coverage from George Floyd to Tyre Nichols
JULIE HOLLAR, HIMADRI SETH AND ISAIAH GUTMAN

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The New York Times (6/3/22) often framed police reform from the perspective of Democratic politicians rather than the communities most impacted by police violence.
Since the brutal police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, and the Black Lives Matter protests that spread across the country, how have news media covered issues of policing policy and police reform?

To offer perspective on this question, FAIR looked at which kinds of sources have been most prominent in the New York Times‘ coverage of these issues, and therefore are given the most power to shape the narrative. We compared three time periods: June 2020, when the BLM protests were at their height; May–June 2022, leading up to and encompassing the two-year anniversary of those protests; and mid-January to mid-February 2023, when the police killing of Tyre Nichols was prominent in news coverage and reignited conversations around police reform.

We found that, overall, the Times leaned most heavily on official (government and law enforcement) sources when reporting on the issue of policing policy—giving the biggest platform to the targets of reform, rather than the people who would most benefit from it. We also found a prominent stress on party politics and a lack of racial and gender diversity among sources.

However, we also found that the Times‘ 2023 Tyre Nichols coverage offered a wider diversity of sources, and a greater percentage of Black sources, than in the previous time periods. This appeared to result in part from many of the articles focusing on deeper reporting on the local situation in Memphis, a majority-Black city (unlike, for instance, Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed).

In contrast, the 2022 articles focused more on policing and crime as an election topic at a national level. The 2020 articles covered the broadest range of issues and geography, but with particular attention to the protests, and the federal and local legislative responses.

The most recent coverage had more voices critical of policing policy and practices than in the previous study periods—though, at the same time, those voices came less from protests on the streets and more from advocacy groups, lawyers, academics, religious leaders and general public sources, and so shifted from the raw anger and “defund the police” demands of 2020 to less radical accountability measures.

Methodology
Eliminating passing mentions and opinion pieces, we examined New York Times news articles centrally about policing policy or reform. We found 10 articles (with 58 sources) meeting our criteria between May 1 and June 30, 2022, and 16 articles (111 sources) between January 13 and February 10, 2023 (two weeks before and after the main day of the Tyre Nichols protests). Because the Times covered the issue so extensively in 2020, we took a random sample of 25 articles (142 sources) meeting our criteria from June 2020.

Sources were coded for occupation, gender, race/ethnicity and party affiliation (for government officials and politicians). Each source could receive more than one code for occupation (e.g., academic and former law enforcement) and race/ethnicity (e.g., Black and Asian American).

The racial binary
The movement to protest racist policing has been led primarily by Black activists, many of them women. It is a movement fundamentally about race, racism and white supremacy. Yet white sources handily outnumbered Black sources in coverage of police reform in two of the three periods studied, and men outnumbered women by roughly three-to-one in all three.

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Sources by Race/Ethnicity in NYT Articles on Police Reform

Of sources whose race could be identified, 52% were white and 40% Black in the 2020 data. In the 2022 data, white sources decreased slightly, but dominated Black sources by an even greater margin: 48% to 30%.

In the 2023 data, that trend reversed, and Black sources reached 66%, while white sources dropped to 31%.

One thing that didn’t change across the time periods was the New York Times‘ reliance on male sources: Men were 72% of sources with an identifiable gender in 2020, 74% in 2022 and 76% in 2023.

Policing is not a strictly Black-and-white issue, of course, and the coverage played out against the backdrop of rising xenophobia and anti-Asian hate resulting from the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, with many using rising bias crimes against people perceived as Asian as an excuse to increase policing. Yet such voices were largely excluded from the conversation at the Times.

In 2020, 6% of sources were Hispanic and 2% were Indigenous; 1% were Asian-American and none were of Middle Eastern descent. In 2022, Times sources expanded a bit from the racial binary, with 14% Hispanic sources and 10% Asian-American. (No Indigenous sources or sources of Middle Eastern descent were quoted in 2022.) In 2023, that diversity disappeared, and of the 99 sources with identifiable race/ethnicity, only 2% were of Asian descent and 1% were Hispanic; none were of Indigenous or Middle Eastern descent.

Government knows best?
The bias toward white and male sources—and the decrease in white sources in 2023—can be explained partly by the New York Times‘ bias toward government and law enforcement sources, both of which are disproportionately white, male fields.

In June 2020, a majority of all sources (55%) were current or former government officials—not including law enforcement, which formed the second-largest share of sources quoted, at 17%. Two years later, government sources had dropped to 40%, while law enforcement stayed roughly the same, at 16%; politicians running for office increased from less than 1% of 2020 sources to 5% of 2022 sources. In 2023, government sources dropped yet again, to only 22% of sources, and law enforcement remained steady at 16%.

Meanwhile, activists (protesters or organizers) accounted for 10% of 2020 sources, and representatives of professional advocacy groups accounted for 11%. In 2022, when street protests were relatively much smaller compared to 2020, activist voices were missing entirely, and professional advocate sources—such as the president of the NAACP and the director of Smart Justice California—increased to 21%. In 2023, the total across these two groups increased, with advocates accounting for 21% of sources and activists for 9%, and a greater number of non-governmental sources such as lawyers, academics and religious leaders appeared than in the previous time periods.

Combined, more than 7 in 10 of all sources quoted in 2020, more than 5 in 10 in 2022, and nearly 4 in 10 in 2023 were the government and law enforcement officials the protests sought to hold accountable. Only about 2 in 10 in 2020 and 2022, and 3 in 10 in 2023, were civil society members protesting or advocating for (or, in some cases, against) reform.

Sources by Occupation in NYT Articles on Police Reform
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The proportion of white sources in these stories was high among law-enforcement sources (54% in 2020, 67% in 2022, 56% in 2023) and, less uniformly, among government sources (54% in 2020, 39% in 2022, 33% in 2023). Black sources were represented most among activists (79% in 2020, 89% in 2023) and advocates (20% in 2020, 58% in 2022, 52% in 2023).

In 2020 and 2022, women were likewise better represented among activists and advocates than among government and law enforcement sources. In 2020, 47% of advocate sources and 36% of activist sources were female, as compared to 22% of government and 17% of law enforcement sources. In 2022, 50% of advocates were female, compared to 13% of government and 22% of law enforcement sources.

In 2023, however, female government sources rose to 38%, a higher proportion of women in that year than among advocates (17%) or activists (29%). (Law enforcement sources continued to be a low 17% women.)

The increases in racial and ethnic diversity from 2020 to 2022 came largely within government sources, with officials quoted including the Black mayor of New York City, Eric Adams; Asian-American House representatives Pramila Jayapal and Ro Khanna; and Hispanic legislators Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ted Cruz.

This diversification of government sources happened along with a shift in partisanship of sources: While Democrats dominated the conversation in 2020, with 51 sources to Republicans’ 25, Republicans were almost entirely absent in 2022, with a single source (Cruz) to Democrats’ 25. The absence of Republican sources continued in 2023, when 18 of 20 sources with party affiliations were Democrats, and one was an independent.

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This near-total absence of Republicans from the conversation reflects in part the switch in power at the national level; Republicans controlled both the White House and Senate in 2020, and both had flipped to the Democrats by 2022. It also reflects the reality that the massive nature of the protests forced Republicans to address the issue of police reform in 2020, but they were no longer talking about it much in 2022—nor were outlets like the New York Times forcing them to.

Shift in sources
The striking shift in the race of sources in the 2023 time period is not only about the decrease in government sources; it appears to be partly due to the focus on Memphis, where nearly two-thirds of residents and more than half of the police force (including its police chief, and all five of the officers charged with the murder of Nichols) are Black.
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The online headline of a New York Times story (1/27/23) pointed to the kind of sources whose viewpoint framed the story.
In one front-page article (2/5/23) that focused on the “Scorpion” unit that killed Tyre Nichols, headlined “Memphis Unit Driven by Fists and Violence,” a team of six Times reporters quoted 15 different sources, eight of whom were either victims of the unit or family members of victims; all victims and family members were Black. (These were coded as “General Public”: people without a particular professional or activist affiliation, but with experience relevant to the subject they are speaking on.) Only three of the total sources were government officials, and none were law enforcement.

Some articles not exclusively about the Nichols killing still focused on race. “Officers’ Race Turns Focus to System” (1/29/23) featured 14 sources across an array of nine different types of occupations; none were current or former government, and 11 were Black.

The focus on the Tyre Nichols killing also translated at the Times into more of a focus on police accountability, compared with coverage that did not center on police killings. In the absence of a police killing, an article (1/27/23) focused on policing policy appeared under the print-edition headline, “Heavier Police Presence Sees Success as Crime Drops in New York Subways.” It featured four New York government officials, two of whom touted increased policing. Only one advocate questioned those officials, calling for more frequent subway and bus service as an alternative form of public safety. The headline reflects whose narrative was given more credence by the Times.

That such an article so credulous of increased policing, and so light on critical sources, could appear against the backdrop of the Tyre Nichols story illustrates the blinkered nature of the Times‘ improved coverage. While high-profile incidents of police violence might narrowly prompt more critical coverage, systemic shifts in reporting face an uphill battle against corporate media’s longstanding reliance on and trust in government and law enforcement sources to establish the narrative on policing.

From ‘defund’ to party politics to reform
In 2020, when protests against police violence erupted across the country, the New York Times covered issues of policing policy and reform with a heavy tilt toward government and law-enforcement sources, and toward white sources.

Activists voicing their grievances against racist, violent policing, and making demands that such policing be rethought in more radical ways, occasionally found their way into the paper of record. Black Futures Lab’s Alicia Garza, for example, was quoted by the Times (6/21/20): “The continual push to shield the police from responsibility helps explain why a lot of people feel now that the police can’t be reformed.”
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When “tough on crime” billionaire Rick Caruso did better than expected in the LA mayoral primary, the New York Times headlined this as a sign that a “restless Democratic electorate” was “concerned about public safety.” When Caruso lost the general election to Karen Bass, the Times (11/16/22) did not frame this as a sign that the electorate was concerned about reforming police after all.
But their voices were largely drowned out by government officials, many of whom wanted nothing more than to make the protests go away, like Minneapolis city council member Steve Fletcher (6/5/20):

It’s very easy as an activist to call for the abolishment of the police. It is a heavier decision when you realize that it’s your constituents that are going to be the victims of crime you can’t respond to if you dismantle that without an alternative.

In letting government sources dominate again in 2022, Times coverage turned primarily to party politics, rather than investigations into whether reforms had been enacted, and whether or how police tactics had changed. The idea of defunding the police shifted from being presented as a concept to be debated to little more than a political punching bag, with law enforcement sources like former New York police commissioner Bill Bratton (6/9/22) calling the Defund movement “toxic.” Most Democrats distanced themselves from the movement, as when Joe Biden (5/31/22) was quoted: “We should all agree the answer is not to defund the police. It’s to fund the police. Fund them. Fund them.”

When Tyre Nichols was killed by police in 2023, it was not against a backdrop of an election season, nor did it spark protests at the scale of 2020. This time, Times coverage dug a bit deeper at the local level, turning to a wider variety of sources, and resulting in a greater emphasis on the need for police accountability.

While at least one source (1/29/23) called for defunding the police, most critical voices called more generally for accountability, and expressed frustration at the lack of any effective reforms since 2020. For instance, in an article headlined “Many Efforts at Police Reform Remain Stalled” (2/9/23), the president of the NAACP was quoted: “Far too many Black people have lost their lives due to police violence, and yet I cannot name a single law that has been passed to address this issue.”

The shift to a more diverse set of sources on the issue at the Times, during this one-month time period, is commendable. While the circumstances and location of Tyre Nichols’ killing offered strong opportunities to bring in more Black sources, the Times could easily have fallen back on its usual reliance on official sources, as it did in 2020 and 2022. Now it’s incumbent upon the Times to apply that more diverse and critical approach across all policing stories—not only when similarly high-profile police killings rock the country.

https://fair.org/home/who-gets-to-talk- ... to-change/

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Indictment of African People’s Socialist Party is a Racist Assault on the Black Liberation Movement (Statement)
APRIL 23, 2023

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Four leaders of African People's Socialist Party who have been indicted by FBI for "spreading Russian propaganda." Photo: The Burning Spear.

By Black Alliance for Peace – Apr 19, 2023

The Black Alliance for Peace unequivocally condemns and opposes the recent indictment of four members of the African People’s Socialist Party, alongside three Russian nationals.

The unsealed indictment states that on Tuesday, April 18, 2023, a federal grand jury in Tampa, Florida, levied charges of “conspiring to covertly sow discord in US society, spread Russian propaganda and interfere illegally in U.S. elections.” While no evidence of conspiracy, propagandizing, or interference has been presented, the APSP and its members have the right, as all US citizens do, to freely criticize US domestic and foreign policy.

Not since the Palmer Raids of the early 20th century, nor since the indictment of WEB DuBois in 1951, or the confiscation of Paul Robeson’s US passport during the anti-communist “McCarthyist” era, has there been such a hysterical response to African people asserting their rights and freedom of speech in the United States. This renewed attack against anti-imperialist Africans, framed within the absurd notion of “Russian influence,” comes as capitalism decays and US global hegemony loses its hold on the world. The attacks on the APSP and the Uhuru Movement are part of a historical tendency to align African political activists with US “adversary” states to marginalize African internationalism (including solidarity with Cuba and Palestine, for example) and to suppress Black radicalism.

It is also an assault on the efforts of Africans organizing against the violence and murders suffered at the hands of the US state. Indeed, Africans do not need Russia to tell them they are suffering the brunt of violence in the heart of the US empire!

BAP demands the indictment be dismissed, and Uhuru must be free!

For further reading on this case, please read BAP’s July 30 statement that commented on the initial FBI raid of the APSP’s properties.
https://blackallianceforpeace.com/bapst ... tywithapsp

https://orinocotribune.com/indictment-o ... statement/

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Is This Man a Russian Agent Operating in the Black Community of St. Louis?
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - April 24, 2023 1

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Omali Yeshitela [Source: sfbayview.com]

The Justice Department has just indicted him and three other members of the African People’s Socialist Party for advancing Russian propaganda—though it looks more like the Biden administration was looking for a scapegoat to justify its anti-Russia offensive and found one in a familiar place.
On April 18, the Department of Justice announced the indictment of four leaders of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) along with three Russian nationals for allegedly working on behalf of the Russian government and Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in a “malign influence campaign” designed to “sow discord” and “advance Russian propaganda.”


The Department of Justice claims that the Russian defendants recruited, funded and directed APSP Chair Omali Yeshitela and three other APSP members (Penny Joanne Hess, Jesse Nevel and Augustus C. Romain, Jr.—aka Gazi Kodzo)—to act as unregistered (and therefore illegal) agents of the Russian government and that they covertly funded and directed candidates for local office in the U.S.

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Kurt Ronnow [Source: linkedin.com]

The charges carry a maximum of ten years in prison.

Kurt Ronnow, the Acting Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, said that the announcement “paints a harrowing picture of Russian government actions and the lengths to which the FSB will go to interfere with our elections, sow discord in our nation and ultimately recruit U.S. citizens to their efforts.”

According to prosecutors, one of the Russians charged, Aleksandr Ionov, operated an entity called the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, which recruited U.S.-based organizations to help sway elections, make it appear there was strong support in the U.S. for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and backed efforts such as a 2015 United Nations petition to decry the “genocide of African people” in the U.S, and a reparations tour by the APSP.

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Aleksandr Ionov [Source: bbc.com]

Yeshitela allegedly traveled from Tampa to Moscow in May 2015 on an all-expenses paid trip to a conference on separatism and to meet with Ionov and other Russians in order to “communicate on future cooperation,” according to an Ionov email.

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Omali Yeshitela [Source: typworld.com]

Ionov is allegedly close with accused Russian agent Maria Butina and Yevgeny Prigozhin, “Putin’s chef,” who is under U.S. sanctions for the Kremlin’s alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election, and promoted California’s secession by paying for posters advertising a pro-secession rally that took place in Sacramento on Valentine’s Day in 2018.

What followed from Yeshitela’s 2015 meeting with Ionov in Moscow, according to the indictment, was covert Russian funding and support for various activities in the U.S. until the summer of 2022, including demonstrations at the California and Georgia state capitals and at an unnamed social media company in San Francisco, which had placed restrictions on posts that supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Jesse Nevel [Source: uhurusolidarity.org]

In August 2016, Ionov is said to have directed the APSP to publish a statement of support of Russia’s Olympic team as it faced a doping scandal. The article published in The Burning Spear, the APSP’s newspaper, was titled: “Imperialists Ban Russia from 2016 Olympic Games!” APSP says ‘let Russia play!’”

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Source: uhurusolidarity.org]

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Augustus C. Romain, Jr.—aka Gazi Kodzo [Source: theothermccain.com]

The APSP is said to have taken around $7,000 from Russian government sources overall, although it is not clear from the indictment how Yeshitela or anyone in the APSP would have known that Ionov’s group was a front for the FSB—if that is indeed the case.

After Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, Yeshitela appeared at two web conferences with Ionov (“Live with Russia” and “Negating Colonial Lies”).

Ionov’s group additionally allegedly provided clandestine funding to an APSP candidate who ran for St. Petersburg City Council in 2019, Eritha Akilé Cainion, who held a news conference in 2022 in which she said—accurately—that “world colonial powers have been collaborating against Russia” for more than a century.

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Eritha Akilé Cainion [Source: floridapolitics.com]

Flowing From the Russia Gate Hysteria—or Was it a Trap?

Mr. Ionov denounced his indictment on Facebook, saying that “I have never met such nonsense and deception. There are no specific names of officials, there is no evidence of funding and there are no intelligible arguments.”

He went on: “The Ukrainian crisis has driven American officials crazy! Comrades, now you see what kind of ‘democracy’ exists in the USA!”

Grayzone Project founder Max Blumenthal tweeted after the announcement of the indictment: “this fake and racist case [against the APSP] flows from the Russiagate hysteria that convinced millions of Americans that Russia was paying dissident groups to destabilize the U.S. political system. The FBI was unable to find anything real, so it went after the African People’s Socialist Party.”

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Max Blumenthal [Source: dailynorthwestern.com]

Blumenthal appears to be correct but there is another possibility that Ionov is a double agent or asset of U.S. intelligence services, or was subjected to blackmail by them, and that Yeshitela and the APSP were lured into a trap.

Why otherwise would the Russians court, or prey on, an obscure African-American socialist organization in a decidedly capitalist country with little influence over anything? And support causes with no chance like California secession, or political candidates with no hope in a city council race?

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Caitlin Johnstone [Source: everipedia.org]

Blogger Caitlin Johnstone pointed to the hypocrisy of the U.S. government in that it is constantly engaging in foreign influence operations through outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which was set up to help foment coups and color revolutions and advance U.S. information interests overtly in ways the CIA used to do covertly. According to Johnstone, when foreign governments try to stop this activity, the U.S. State Department invokes “free speech,” which it evidently cares little about in the case of the APSP.[1]

FBI Pre-Dawn Raid and Its Antecedents

As a prelude to the April 18 indictments, the FBI mounted a violent pre-dawn raid on Yeshitela’s home in the eastern part of St. Louis on July 29. Combat-clad agents equipped with automatic weapons smashed windows, broke down the door, and set off deadly military-grade flash-bang explosives (aka “concussion grenades”).

The FBI made a big show of the raid before the entire community, occupying a neighbor’s yard and smashing down his door as well.

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Combat clad FBI agents raiding Yehitela’s home. [Source: news.stlouispublicradio.org]

Then they humiliated Yeshitela and his wife by forcing them outside at gunpoint, handcuffing them in front of their neighbors, and forcing them to wait as the FBI agents ransacked their home and removed computer equipment, APSP files, and other electronic devices.

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Omali Yeshitela stands before his home and speaks to supporters after FBI raid on July 29. [Source: stltoday.com]

The July 29 spectacle was not Yeshitela’s first experience being targeted by police for his political activism. Working as an organizer with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s when he went by Joe Waller, Yeshitela was arrested for tearing down a racist mural on the St. Petersburg, Florida, city hall building during a demonstration.

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Omali Yeshitela speaking before crowd in late 1960s. [Source: apspuhuru.org]

When Yeshitela got out of prison, he organized a Black Power organization that became a victim of the FBI’s notorious counter-intelligence operation (COINTELPRO).

Economic Self-Empowerment
Inspired by the teachings of Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party, the APSP was officially founded in 1972 with the goal of liberating Black people from the scourge of white supremacy, colonialism and neo-colonialism in the U.S. and around the world.

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[Source: wrongkindofgreen.org]

In the 1980s, the group set up successful African-American-controlled economic institutions such as the Uhuru Bakery Café in Oakland, and established the first tribunal demanding reparations for people of African descent.

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APSP furniture stores, which have been successful in Oakland and Philadelphia. [Source: apspuhuru.org]

The group has also built basketball courts, and established a program to train African-American women as midwives to try to help offset high infant mortality rates in the northern part of St. Louis along with other job training programs to help former Black prisoners reintegrate into society.

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Community basketball court[Source: handsoffuhuru.org]

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Uhuru Wa Kulea African Women's Health CenterUhuru Wa Kulea African Women’s Health Center under construction in North St. Louis. It is being built as part of the Black Power Blueprint by the APSP to address the issues of infant and maternal mortality. [Source: handsoffuhuru.org]

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Gary Brooks Community GardenCommunity garden. [Source: handsoffuhuru.org]

Building Relationships with Whomever We Want

Akilé Anai is the APSP leader in St. Petersburg named in the indictment as having received Russian money when she ran unsuccessfully for the city council in 2019 on a reparations platform (she received 18% of the vote). Having her car seized during the FBI’s July 29 raid, she said that the APFP “can have relationships with whomever we want to,” and that the FBI’s actions were part of a “propaganda war being waged against Russia every single day throughout the news.”

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Akilé Anai [Source: uhurusolidarity.org]

COINTELPRO Redux

Ajamu Baraka, leader of the Black Alliance for Peace, tweeted after the July raid that Black radicals were being targeted again for “not falling in line with the U.S. imperial agenda on Ukraine.”

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Ajamu Baraka [Source: hamptonthink.org]

Attorney and organizer Kamau Franklin stated: “This is a COINTELPRO operation, one meant to destroy Black organizations.”

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[Source: loveancestry.com]

The COINTELPRO operation has included the issuance of sanctions on the APSP, which has had loans withheld by Regions Bank, been blocked by Facebook from doing crowd-funding, had more than $9,000 in donations frozen by GoFundMe, been blocked from processing payments by Stripe, and had $36,801 in funding revoked by the Pinellas County Commission that had previously been approved for a Black community radio station.

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[Source: handsoffuhuru.org]

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Marcus Garvey—a victim of economic aggression in his day. [Source: nationalhumanitiescenter.org]

Omali Yeshitela likens the economic aggression to that which the U.S. government and society directed against Marcus Garvey and his United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the 1920s, and to the bombing of Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street” and the destruction of the Black Panther Party’s Black community survival programs.

Yeshitela told CovertAction Magazine in an interview last August that the government’s charge that the African People’s Socialist Party was being used as a pawn for Russian interference in U.S. elections was “ridiculous” and “bogus,” and that the FBI raid on his home was “an attack on the Black liberation movement” and the work that the APSP was doing to uplift the impoverished people of the northern part of St. Louis [and St. Petersburg], former slaves who live in extraordinarily bad conditions.

Noting that, during the raid, the police targeted him with a laser beam and that his wife was nearly knocked over by a drone, Yeshitela pointed to a plan in the 1970s, promoted by St. Louis city leaders such as future House Majority leader Richard Gephardt (1989-1995), that aimed to build up the southern part of St. Louis, where Whites lived, and demolish thousands of homes in the northern part of St. Louis, where the Blacks lived. The rehabilitation of decaying buildings there was considered “uneconomical.’”

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What was left of Black Wall Street after the Tulsa Race Massacre. [Source: edition.cnn.com]

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Richard Gephardt [Source: montgomeryrarebooks.com]

Besides shooting down Black youth like Michael Brown, the city has since taken over more and more of the Blacks’ land, Yeshitela said. They destroyed whole communities by driving up taxes to levels Blacks could not afford, building such monstrosities as the National Geospatial-Intelligence agency, a military installation involved in U.S. wars in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere.

The government today very clearly, Yeshitela noted, is trying to create fear in the White population by linking Blacks to the Russians so as to discredit their efforts to fight back. “By defining us as enemies of the state,” they could justify “seizing our communications and computers [of the APSP] and stealing forty years of our archives, which wipes out part of our history.”

As If Black People Have No Agency
Yeshitela posted a video on Facebook after the FBI’s raid in which he acknowledged meeting Ionov in 2015 in Moscow at a conference involving questions of self-determination and colonialism.

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Armored car in front of Yeshitela’s home during FBI raid. [Source: Photo courtesy of Burning Spear Media]

Yeshitela said that he supports Russia against Ukraine, as it was the U.S. which provoked the conflict by overthrowing the elected government of Ukraine which, since the coup in 2014, has “killed 13,000 to 14,000 Russians or Ukrainians who supported Russia in eastern Ukraine.”

According to Yeshitela, it was hypocritical to condemn him for going to Russia when Whites were never condemned for going to Israel, which occupies Arab lands in historic Palestine. The APSP “supports Russia in Ukraine just like it supports the self-determination of the Palestinians; and the people of Nicaragua when they made a revolution against U.S. puppets there, and people fighting against oppression everywhere.”

Yeshitela reminded his audience that “it was the U.S. government—and not the Russian government—which overthrew democratic governments in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s, which mounted a coup against Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, and which killed Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as 30 members of the Black Panther Party—including Fred Hampton—in one year alone.”

The FBI’s July 29 raid, in Yeshitela’s view, was part of a renewed “ideological war by the U.S. government directed against Black people and Russia,” whose purpose was to discredit Black political activism and further U.S. support for its war by proxy against Russia in Ukraine.

Yeshitela said that many Whites across the U.S. had now “come to support the demand for Black reparations,” which has “made people in power nervous,” so they “have to attack us and try to link the leaders of our movement to Russia.”

Fred Hampton Death: Was it an Assassination in Real Life? | Heavy.com

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Fred Hampton and crime scene photo. Yeshitela reminded his audience that it was the U.S. government—and not the Russian government—that murdered Fred Hampton and so many others. [Source: heavy.com]

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Broken window in Yeshitela’s house from Police/FBI raid. [Source: Photo courtesy of Burning Spear Media]

When “home-grown American Whites—having nothing to do with Russia—tried actively to overthrow the U.S. government on January 6 and threatened to kill the Vice President, the government did not respond by raiding the culprits’ homes with flash-bang grenades and drones like they did mine.”

Most insulting, Yeshitela said, was the insinuation that Blacks could not lead their own struggle—that somehow, they had to turn to Russia and to “wait for Russia to tell us we’re oppressed,” especially when conditions in their community were so bad. As if Black people “have no agency or will of their own.”

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/0 ... -st-louis/
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Fri May 19, 2023 2:39 pm

Durham Report Reveals the Real Threat to “Democracy” – The FBI Weaponized by Democrat Party Affiliated Elites
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist 17 May 2023

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Image: WLTX.com

Donald Trump calls Russiagate a "hoax" but it is in fact much worse. The manufactured scandal was part of successful efforts to intimidate, to censor, and to discredit opposition to state narratives. Russiagate is used to make the case for the proxy war in Ukraine. Here in the US it plays a role in subjugating the Black liberation movement. It is the 21st century version of COINTELPRO.


“trenches of ideas are more powerful than weapons.” (Jose Marti)

“...the American public was scammed.” (Donald Trump)


Six years and millions of dollars later, the “Durham report” released on May 15th confirmed once again what a few of us had the nerve to argue before all of the reports and stories that subsequently emerged – that “Russiagate” was the most massive fraud ever perpetrated on the U.S. public by a section of the capitalist rulers and represented a maturing of a form of U.S. neofascism unique to this historical moment.

The public may have forgotten that during the Trump Administration U.S. Attorney General Bob Barr assigned John H. Durham as special counsel to review the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign. The Durham report, as it is being referred to in the media, corroborated many of the conclusions reached by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report in 2019. Among the findings in the Horowitz report, was evidence suggesting that the FBI made what was referred to as “basic, fundamental, and serious errors” in applying for a warrant to surveil the Trump campaign.

However, the Durham report went further suggesting that the US Justice Department and FBI “failed to uphold their mission” when they launched their initial investigation of former president Donald Trump. What the report alluded to and what is important to remind the public of, is that the “investigation” by the FBI of the Trump campaign constituted a full-blown counterintelligence campaign. Dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane,” the investigation of a presidential contender from one of the two major parties allowed to conduct national presidential campaigns without overbearing legal constraints, was truly unprecedented.

The Durham report was quite explicit:

“Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law,”

In other words, the FBI operated beyond the boundaries of the law. Let’s examine what this means for the character of what is called U.S. “democracy.”

Taken together - the Mueller report that failed to uncover collusion between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign, and the Horowitz report that revealed violations of FBI protocols and which generated legal proceedings against some agents related to information used to justify launching Crossfire Hurricane, and now the Durham report - it is clear that the political and cultural phenomenon known as “Russiagate” could be legitimately characterized as a state-sponsored domestic psy-op.

Where are the criminal prosecutions?

Democrats have already cried bias since Durham was appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr under Trump. One of the reasons that right-wing neoliberal corporate press disappeared the investigation was that rumors were circulating that the investigation was not going to provide additional propaganda for democrats and might even prove embarrassing for democrats who continued to insist that there was a legitimate basis for the concerns of collusion between the Russian Federation and the Trump Administration. Remember, the infamous “Steele Dossier” was paid for by the Clinton campaign and played a significant role in the mythology of Russigate.

The findings of the Durham report should be the final nail in the coffin of Russiagate, but it won’t be. The New York Times is typical of much of the coverage of the Durham report. Look at the framing from the headline of their story: “In Final Report, Trump-Era Special Counsel Denounces Russia Investigation.”

They then proceed to dismiss the report .

“Mr. Durham’s 306-page report revealed little substantial new information about the inquiry, known as Crossfire Hurricane, and it failed to produce the kinds of blockbuster revelations impugning the bureau of politically motivated misconduct that former President Donald J. Trump and his allies suggested Mr. Durham would uncover.”

The Times that pretends to be a champion of democracy is not troubled by the FBI’s “confirmation bias" and a “lack of analytical rigor” that led it to penetrate the campaign of someone running for president. Here we have a state agency injecting itself into a campaign driven by what can only be seen as a partisan bias.

For the New York Times, the damning information from the Mueller to the Durham reports, that at minimum should be seen a dangerous partisan weaponization of the FBI, is no more egregious than the state-private sector collaboration that matured during the Russiagate period that has resulted in the normalization of censorship. For the Times and most of the liberal press in the U.S., an uncritical acceptance of official political/ideological lines that are handed down from the government and capitalist elites on issues ranging from the Ukrainian war to covid strategies is not a threat but a protection against “misinformation and disinformation”!

The complete abandonment of any commitment to liberal democratic rights represented by this position once again is being translated into an open assault on the democratic and human rights of political dissenters in the U.S. The erosion of liberal democratic rights and the enhancement of the repressive capacity of the state largely constructed by neoliberalism over the last six years has made it easier once again to target the group that is always viciously targeted in moments of social and political crisis – African American radicals.

Despite the fact that the Mueller report concluded that there was no evidence of Trump campaign collusion with the Russian Federation and that Russian election interference was largely an urban myth – the FBI’s absurd charges against the African People's Socialist Party (APSP) and its Chairman and supporters is based on the acceptance that the Russians are still involved in “malign influence” campaigns across the U.S. The FBI claims that the APSP has committed the ideological crime of “sowing dissent” among the public by their opposition to the Biden initiated war in Ukraine.

On what became “Russiagate,” the Durham report stated that FBI agents should have engaged in an “objective and honest assessment” of the information that it was basing its decision-making processes on that justified it infiltrating the Trump campaign. “Unfortunately, it did not,” writes John Durham. But that comment suggests an objectivity that is mythological.

The FBI are political police. Their mission is to protect the capitalist state and status quo. Counterintelligence is a dirty game. If activists had not stolen documents that revealed the counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) against the Black liberation movement and other left forces, we would have never known about it and charges of FBI illegality directed at our movement would have been met with charges that the allegations were indicative of discredited “conspiracy theories.”

The targeting of Omali Yeshitela and the organization and movement that he leads was a deliberate political act meant to accomplish two objectives: discredit and silence one of the sharpest and most consistent critic of U.S. imperial policies on the U.S. left and internationally, and to send a message to all of the forces on the left and right that opposition to the neoliberal state will not be without consequences.

One point that we are in agreement with the New York Times is that Russiagate will not die as long as it is a useful tool for intimidating the public. The lawlessness of the FBI is not really lawlessness, it is standard operating procedures when law is instrumental, a weapon of the class struggle. Sanctions, coups, assassinations are all illegal, but essentially that is of little importance to colonial/capitalist power. What matters to neoliberal capitalist power is “sowing discord” that might result in opposition to its program. When that happens, it does not matter if you are the leader of a wing of the bourgeoisie and former president with neofascist proclivities, or the leader of a Black socialist party, you will find yourself facing the full force of the capitalist ruling class and its state power.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/durha ... ted-elites
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 02, 2023 2:47 pm

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‘Don’t Forget Us’: Forest Defenders Confront Horrors of Life in DeKalb County Jail
By Ryan Fatica, Contributor May 30, 2023.

Monica had been locked up in Dekalb County Jail for five days when guards entered her pod and called out her name. She was being released.

Like always, the other women in the pod started clapping and cheering, happy to see anyone freed. Monica got up and went to her cell to start gathering her things, interrupted as she did by hugs and goodbyes from friends she’d made during her time there.

As she walked toward the cellblock door, one of her podmates stopped her for a hug. As she let Monica go, she looked her in the eyes and delivered a clear request: “Don’t forget us here.”

“I won’t,” she promised.

“That was a moment I will never forget,” said Monica, weeks later.


Monica, a forest defender who asked to be identified by an alias, was arrested on January 18, 2023, during a multi-jurisdictional raid on the Weelaunee Forest in DeKalb County, Georgia. Protesters had been camping and gathering in the forest for months in hopes of preventing the construction of a multi-million dollar police training facility, dubbed ‘Cop City’ by its opponents.

On the day Monica was arrested, Georgia State Troopers shot and killed Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a 26-year-old forest defender who went by the name Tortuguita. Subsequent autopsy reports revealed that Terán’s body suffered 57 bullet wounds. During the same raid, Monica and seven others were arrested, charged with “criminal trespass” and “domestic terrorism,” and booked into the DeKalb County Jail.

Monica was granted bond and released after five days, but most of the women she lived with in the jail had been there much longer, some for over a year, awaiting trial. Other forest defenders served a month or more in the jail, including two, Victor Puertas and Luke Harper, who were arrested at a music festival in the Weelaunee Forest on March 5 and remain in custody nearly 12 weeks later. Another forest defender is still currently incarcerated in the Bartow County Jail.

Unicorn Riot spoke with and received testimony from more than a dozen people who were formerly incarcerated at the DeKalb County Jail, as well as family members of those held there and others familiar with conditions in the jail. Most of those interviewed requested that their names be withheld out of concern that sharing their stories could affect their ongoing legal cases. Most of those interviewed were ‘Stop Cop City’ activists, while others were held on unrelated charges.

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A commissary invoice shows items purchased by Priscilla Grim during her time in the DeKalb County Jail. (Source: Priscilla Grim).

Unicorn Riot also reviewed dozens of pages of lawsuits filed by jail detainees raising civil rights complaints against the jail, the DeKalb County Sheriff, and its staff and contractors. Many of those lawsuits were filed pro se, without the help of an attorney, and handwritten on postcards purchased at the jail commissary. Many such lawsuits are dismissed on procedural grounds before lawyers for the Sheriff’s Office are even compelled to respond.


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A postcard, written by a DeKalb County Jail Detainee and mailed to the Federal Courthouse in Atlanta. The postcard was filed with the court as a lawsuit against the jail. (Source: PACER)

The stories they told each capture an existence, a moment of suffering, a tale of misfortune that would otherwise remain unseen. Taken together, they form a chronicle of inhumane, and often grotesque, conditions of confinement caused by a culture of neglect and apathy on the part of guards, contractors, and jail staff, often exacerbated by crumbling jail infrastructure.

In 2022, those conditions led to the deaths of nine people in the jail, a number that far exceeds the national average. Two of those deaths appear to be attributable to hypothermia after detainees were left in unheated cells in the winter. Others died by suicide or heart conditions after not receiving proper medical attention. Several of those who died in the jail had a history of struggles with mental illness.

“Nothing’s ever anybody’s job and it’s never nobody’s fault,” said Dulce, a woman who spent more than a year in the DeKalb County Jail who asked to be identified only by her nickname. “So it’s hard to get things done like they’re supposed to. Even with our food, they’d give it to us when they felt like it. We sat and watched our trays sitting in the hallway for hours. But because it wasn’t anybody’s job to do it, it wouldn’t get done. So we’re hungry just sitting there waiting for our food.”

Many of those we spoke with said they spent their time in the jail waking up at 3 or 4 a.m. to eat breakfast and then often going without food for 12 hours or longer. They talked about surviving on very few nutrients because they were often served undercooked or moldy food, much of it inedible. Some said they mopped their floors several times a day because the toilets or sewage pipes continuously seeped water and were never repaired, causing large puddles to form in their cells and pods.

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A handwritten letter by a detainee at the DeKalb County Jail, filed as a lawsuit after it was sent to the Federal Courthouse in Atlanta. (Source: PACER).

“The area that I lived in, 24 gallons of water was leaking out of the toilet area per day: 24 gallons,” said one former detainee who was held in the jail for more than four months. “I know for a fact it was 24 gallons because I, and another inmate, we mopped up three buckets a day. Eight gallon buckets…24 gallons of water leaks out daily.”

Many lived in pods with few functioning toilets and lived with the smell of bodily waste they couldn’t flush. Others said they flushed their toilets and they’d keep flushing for six hours or more, sometimes flushing all night. “And jail toilets are very loud, in case you didn’t know.”

Some said they slept with the lights on in their cells because the guards simply refused to turn them off. They all said they rarely, if ever, got recreation time.

One person, who spent over two weeks in the jail, said the recreation area was available for about 5 or 6 hours during his entire stay. Still, he chose to stay inside because the recreation area was so “depressing.”

“It smelled like stale piss,” he said. “And you can see outside but…it’s just a bare room. People are just running back and forth or something. I’d rather just stay inside than get teased with outside but not even getting the fresh air because there’s a backed up toilet.”

Whitney Knox Lee, an attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights, said that recreation time at the jail is so rare that “to date, most people in the jail haven’t been outside other than to go to court or doctors appointments in years.” The Southern Center for Human Rights is a nonprofit law office that is closely monitoring conditions at the jail.

A July 2022 email from the jail’s medical contractor, Wellpath, obtained by Unicorn Riot, recommends that recreation at the jail “not occur at this time due to increased number of [COVID-19] positive inmates.” The email, sent by Wellpath Director of Nursing Iesha Brown to the DeKalb County Jail, does not explain why giving jail detainees access to outdoor areas of the jail, presumably better ventilated than indoor spaces, would increase the spread of COVID-19.

Neither Wellpath nor Director Brown responded to requests for comment.

Most of those interviewed about jail conditions said detainees were consistently denied much-needed medications, such as insulin, blood pressure medication, antidepressants and antipsychotics. One said a woman who had been denied blood pressure medication passed out in her arms as the guards looked on, unconcerned.

Many said they witnessed severely mentally ill patients locked in their cells 24 hours a day without access to psychiatric treatment or mental health medications—and at times without access to food and water. Many said they lived with the screams of mentally ill detainees ringing in their ears.

Priscilla Grim, a 49-year-old mother, activist, and writer, traveled from her home in Brooklyn to the March Week of Action against the ‘Cop City’ project. Grim was imprisoned in the DeKalb County Jail for 31 days and charged with domestic terrorism after she was arrested on March 5. Grim’s family is from DeKalb County, and she was born in Atlanta.

Grim and other forest defenders told Unicorn Riot that a mentally ill woman in their pod was locked in her cell without access to drinking water for days. Grim watched as her friends filled plastic baggies from their lunch with water and pushed them under the door so the woman didn’t have to drink out of the toilet. Grim filed grievances demanding the woman receive care.

Another forest defender described a mentally ill person who was locked in his cell 24 hours a day, frequently sitting in his own feces. He smeared feces on the walls of his cell and on his body. Guards, the forest defender said, would often forget to open the man’s cell door to give him food. Other detainees on the pod would keep an eye out to make sure he got fed or pass food under his cell door if he was hungry. “The whole pod looked out for him.”

“I think the thing that bothers me most is that nothing was taken seriously. Nothing,” said Dulce. Over the course of more than a year, Dulce said, she observed a near-total disregard for human suffering on the part of jail staff. Whether detainees were hungry, having a mental health crisis, or not getting life-saving medications, the guards never seemed to care. Even suicide attempts, Dulce said, were treated with indifference.

“I remember thinking I’d rather be homeless and free than to be in jail,” said Dulce.

Over the course of that year, Dulce said she saw three women try to hang themselves with bedsheets. One narrowly survived the attempt when Dulce and another woman pulled her limp body back over the railing on the upper tier of the pod. When they loosened the sheets around the woman’s neck, she started breathing again.

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A personal property receipt for Priscilla Grim shows books mailed by supporters during her time in the DeKalb County jail. (Source: Priscilla Grim).

The most recent of those attempts occurred in March 2023, when ‘Stop Cop City’ activists were held in the same pod as Dulce. They described pressing the call button to get the guards to open the woman’s cell so they could untie her from the top bunk where she was hanging. When guards refused to respond, the women in the pod began banging on the glass together and screaming. Eventually guards opened her cell door and detainees rushed in and untied her. She survived, and the women in the pod stood against the wall and watched as guards led her away.

Three of the nine people who died in the DeKalb County Jail in 2022 died by suicide. All three hanged themselves.

The DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on jail conditions.

In the DeKalb County Jail, those working to defeat the ‘Stop Cop City’ movement have found one of their most potent weapons. After months of heavy repression, beginning with the first domestic terrorism charges in mid-December 2022, a pattern has begun to emerge: arrest protesters, often indiscriminately, charge them with scary sounding things like “domestic terrorism” based on very little evidence, and then use those charges as an excuse to hold them in jail without bond.

Since December 2022, 42 people have been charged under a rarely used Georgia domestic terrorism statute for their participation in the movement. At the time of this writing, 3 movement participants remain in jail.

“I think they know it’s so shitty [in the jail] and that they’re using it as a threat,” said one forest defender who was held in DeKalb County Jail for 2 ½ weeks in March. “It’s so obvious. It’s all just a thing to deter people from coming out and showing up because they know how bogus the [domestic terrorism] charge is, that it could happen to anyone for any reason, just for being in proximity to the movement.”



But the conditions at the DeKalb County Jail long predate both the Atlanta Police Foundation’s plan to construct ‘Cop City’ and the birth of the movement to stop it. Most of those incarcerated in the jail, including those held there the longest and in the most egregious conditions of confinement, are not forest defenders: they are the people of DeKalb County, especially those who are Black, who are poor, and who struggle with mental illness.


A graph showing the racial demographics of DeKalb County Jail detainees as of March 23, 2023, according to jail booking data obtained by Unicorn Riot. Graphic by Bradi Heaberlin.
According to an analysis of booking records obtained by Unicorn Riot, as of March 23, 2023, the DeKalb County Jail held 1,647 people, nearly 80% of whom were classified by the jail as Black. Black residents make up just 54.6% of the population of DeKalb County, according to U.S. Census Bureau data from July 2022.

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A graph showing the length of time pre-trial detainees are held in the DeKalb County Jail as of March 23, 2023, according to jail booking data obtained by Unicorn Riot. Graphic by Bradi Heaberlin.

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The majority of those booked into the jail remain there long enough to lose their job, fall behind on rent and car payments, or otherwise cause chaos in their lives. About 76% of those booked in the jail will remain there for more than a month, and about 29% will be held for more than a year, with some detainees living in the jail for three or four years, or more. One person has been held in the jail since 2016, according to jail records.

“…A whole bunch of nothing.”
Most days, what happens in DeKalb County Jail stays in DeKalb County Jail. Besides the information that trickles out through the prison phones and visitation rooms, it takes a story of spectacular violence or particularly egregious negligence to catch the attention of the news media. Average people, at best inured to the suffering of those in state custody and at worst desirous of it, seem only to react to the exceptional, the bizarre, and the grotesque.

What gets lost in this attention economy is the quotidian suffering of the millions of people in this country living behind bars: the weeks spent without access to recreation time, sunlight, or fresh air, the guards who, as one DeKalb County Jail detainee put it, seem to think being cruel to detainees is “the best part of the job.” The leaking sewage, the black mold, the hunger.

Those complaints, however, are chronicled by the detainees themselves and captured in the historical record whether anyone is listening or not. Day after day, detainees document their suffering via the jail-provided grievance system. On the wall-mounted kiosk or on tablets provided to detainees by the jail, they type out their sorrows, tell their stories of abuse and neglect, and beg for help. Those grievances, sometimes numbering as many as 2,000 per month, record human suffering in the form of drop-down menus, multiple choice grievance topics, and exportable fields for capturing date, time and inmate number.

Unicorn Riot analyzed metadata on more than 17,000 grievances filed by DeKalb County Jail detainees between January 1, 2022 and May 4, 2023. The data was obtained by a public records request. The DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department did not release the narrative content of those grievances, claiming that they could not export the content of the grievances en masse.

The data received by Unicorn Riot included information on the detainee who filed the grievance and other metadata including date, time, and pod, as well as the subject of the grievance. The data also contained information on the jail staff member assigned to manage the grievance and whether the grievance had been resolved.

The grievance software allows detainees to choose from one of at least 15 subjects, such as “safety and sanitation,” “medical,” and “use of force.” In 2022 and the beginning of 2023, detainees filed the most grievances about medical care, court access, and safety and sanitation.

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A graph showing the number of grievances filed in each of 15 subject areas by detainees at the DeKalb County Jail from January 1, 2022 to May 5, 2023. Graphic by Bradi Heaberlin.

Despite the large number of grievances filed, many detainees interviewed by Unicorn Riot said most people living in the jail don’t use the grievance system.

“Most people who came in just wanted to cry and be left alone,” said one female detainee. “All they were focused on was getting out.”

One forest defender said when he got to the jail, other detainees told him not to bother with the grievance system. “I just heard it was a whole bunch of nothing,” he said.

“They just said don’t bother. It isn’t worth it, nothing comes of it.”

All grievances filed by detainees are automatically assigned to a jail staff member. The staff member then determines whether the grievance was valid or not, eventually marking them “unfounded,” “founded,” or “sustained.” However, only 10 percent of the grievances filed in 2022 and early 2023, including the oldest ones, had been marked as “resolved” or “complete with objection.” The DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department did not respond to a request for information on the grievance resolution process.

Indeed, most of those interviewed by Unicorn Riot said the majority of their grievances were ignored by jail staff or given responses that seemed like a brush off.

Detainees filed grievances about medical attention more than any other subject area. Those interviewed by Unicorn Riot said medical treatment in the jail is highly unreliable and jail medical workers didn’t really seem to care about helping those held in jail custody.

Medical services at the jail are provided by Wellpath, one of the largest for-profit medical corporations in the U.S. Wellpath holds contracts with more than 350 local jails as well as more than 135 adult and juvenile prisons. DeKalb County has paid Wellpath more than $53 million since it began its contract with the company in February 2018 — an average of about $10.6 million per year.

Prisoners, detainees, and their families have repeatedly sued Wellpath for allegations of wrongful death and failure to provide adequate medical care. A lawsuit filed this month by the family of a man who died of hypothermia in the DeKalb County Jail in 2022 claims Wellpath did not provide adequate mental health and medical treatment to the detainee, Anthony Walker.

Mental health services at the jail are contracted with Centurion Health, which currently has an active job posting for a full-time psychiatrist for the DeKalb County Jail.

In December 2022, a detainee named Joshua Moubarak filed a civil rights claim against DeKalb County Jail Sheriff Melody Maddox and a jail doctor identified in the lawsuit as “Dr. Mendoza.” In the lawsuit, Moubarak alleged that Mendoza refused to provide him with Depakote to treat his bipolar disorder for 18 months, leading to suicidal thoughts, self-harm, and fights with other detainees.

A lawsuit filed by a Cobb County Jail detainee named Cannon Davidson against the Cobb County Sheriff and Wellpath makes similar allegations against Dr. Mendoza’s denial of needed psychiatric medications.

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A handwritten lawsuit against Wellpath, the for-profit medical corporation that is contracted to provide medical treatment at the DeKalb County Jail, and the Cobb County Sheriff alleges Dr. Mendoza did not prescribe needed mental health medications (Source: PACER).

“We’re all comrades.”
Although some of those formerly incarcerated at the jail told stories of violence and predation on the part of detainees, most spoke of solidarity and acts of care that transcended the daily horrors of jail life. Most forest defenders said that they were humbled by acts of generosity and kindness and were able to use their time there to build relationships with people they may not have otherwise encountered.

Since getting out, several of those detained for their participation in the ‘Stop Cop City’ movement said they have remained in touch with those still locked inside and have sent books and raised money for their former podmates.

“The people I was in there with were the most stellar human beings on the planet,” said one forest defender. “95% of the women I was in the pod with were totally stellar individuals, literally caught up in a rotten fucking system.”

Grim and other detainees said a forest defender in their pod organized seminars, with detainees taking turns as the teacher. Topics included Spanish, cryptocurrency, basic emergency first responder skills, financial literacy, and pressure points for massage therapy.

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Notes taken on a Styrofoam dinner tray during a seminar on basic financial literacy taught by detainees at the DeKalb County Jail (Source: Courtesy of an anonymous formerly incarcerated forest defender).

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Notes taken on a Styrofoam dinner tray during a Spanish class taught by detainees at the DeKalb County Jail (Source: Courtesy of an anonymous formerly incarcerated forest defender).

Detainees also spoke of coming together to resolve conflicts between people held in the jail. Grim said she and other detainees at some point realized that someone was stealing commissary items from others in her pod. When they figured out who was doing it, they spoke to her and told her to ask people for help instead of stealing.

“We tried to talk to the people who were doing that,” said Grim. “We’re like, if you need something, just ask others, they will help you out. You don’t need to violate your comrades, which is what we are in here. We’re all comrades.”

https://unicornriot.ninja/2023/dont-for ... unty-jail/

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Three Atlanta Activists Arrested, Home Raided Over Bail Fund
By Ryan Fatica, Contributor May 31, 2023

Atlanta, GA — Around 9 a.m. on Wednesday, three members of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund were arrested during a raid by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) and the Atlanta Police Department and charged with money laundering and charity fraud.

Marlon Kautz, Savannah Patterson, and Adele Maclean were arrested at The Teardown Community, a hub for mutual aid and activism as well as a residence where the three lived. All three have been booked into the notorious DeKalb County Jail, according to the GBI.

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Marlon Kautz was arrested Wednesday during a multi-jurisdictional raid on his home. (Source: Atlanta Solidarity Fund).

“The Atlanta Solidarity Fund has existed for seven years with the sole purpose of providing resources to protestors experiencing repression,” said Atlanta Solidarity Fund members in a press release. “We ensure their rights are respected through the criminal justice system and we provide access to representation to assist them with navigating the legal system.”

The raid comes about three months after members of the organization, including Kautz, announced publicly that they had received information that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and state prosecutors were planning on charging them under Georgia’s state-level RICO statute.

The raid also comes just days before the Atlanta City Council is set to vote on the fate of the massive police training facility which community journalists recently revealed will be far more costly than initially announced, as well as a major upcoming mobilization for Stop Cop City activists, scheduled for June 24 through July 1.

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Adele MacLean, an outspoken community activist and advocate for Atlanta’s houseless population, was arrested today during a raid in Atlanta.

“Agents and officers executed a search warrant and found evidence linking the three suspects to the financial crimes,” said the GBI in a statement released on Twitter. “All three charged will be booked into a local jail and will have a bond hearing scheduled soon. This case is being jointly prosecuted by the Georgia Attorney General’s Office and the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office.”

According to arrest warrants first obtained by The Atlanta Objective, the activists involved with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund were allegedly “misleading contributors by using funds collected through a state of Georgia registered 501c(3) Network For Strong Communities (NFSC) to fund the actions in part of Defend the Atlanta Forest (DTAF), a group classified by the United States Department of Homeland Security as Domestic Violent Extremists.”

However, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman told journalist Spencer Ackerman earlier this year that the agency “does not classify or designate any groups as domestic violent extremists.”

Reimbursed expenses cited as proof of “money laundering” in the warrants include payments from April 2021 to March 2023 totaling less than $7,000 for expenses such as “forest clean-up,” “covid rapid-tests,” “media” and “yard signs.”

The warrants to raid and arrest bail fund organizers were signed by DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Shondeana C. Morris. Judge Morris was appointed by Governor Brian Kemp in 2019.

The raid is only the most recent attack on Stop Cop City activists and those adjacent to the movement by Atlanta area law enforcement agencies. Since December 2022, 42 people have been charged under a rarely used Georgia domestic terrorism statute for their alleged participation in the movement, often with little to no individualized evidence presented against them in court. At the time of this writing, three other movement participants are also in jail awaiting trial.

On January 18, Georgia State Troopers shot and killed Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a 26-year-old forest defender who went by the name Tortuguita. Subsequent autopsy reports revealed that Terán’s body suffered 57 bullet wounds and that they may have been sitting in a cross-legged position with their hands in the air when they were shot.

“This is the targeting of organizers and movements by the police and the State,” said Kamau Franklin, an organizer with Community Movement Builders in a press release.

“Bail funds have been a part of organizing the Civil Rights movement and labor movement. We will continue to fight back against Cop City and the political arrest of our friends and comrades.”

Kamau Franklin, an organizer with Community Movement Builders in a press release


Atlanta Solidarity Fund offers jail support for those in Atlanta who are arrested during protests, bails activists out of jail, and helps provide legal representation for activists charged with crimes. It is one of many such organizations currently doing this work around the country.

The Atlanta Solidarity Fund is a project of the Network For Strong Communities, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. In 2020, the most recent year about which information is available, the Network for Strong Communities reported $3,614,028 in income from all its activities and fiscally sponsored organizations.

“The three are the first known people associated with a bail fund to be criminally charged,” said Stop Cop City activists in a separate press release.

“Attacking the Solidarity Fund for charity fraud should concern all bail funds, all abortion funds, all travel funds for migrants, watchdog groups, all organized material support for people criminalized by the government,” said Defend the Atlanta Forest activists on Twitter.

The Network for Strong Communities engages in a variety of work in the Atlanta area, including food distribution, mutual aid disaster relief, and leadership development, according to the group’s website.

With the Atlanta Solidarity Fund potentially offline, activists with the National Bail Fund Network have stepped up to fill the gap by raising funds for those arrested for protesting in Atlanta. “The National Bail Fund Network is made up of over 90 local community-based bail and bond funds that free people from local jails and immigration detention centers,” according to the fundraising post.

“This is an extreme provocation by Atlanta Police Department and the State of Georgia,” said Lauren Regan, executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, a legal nonprofit that is supporting the activists. “Providing mutual aid to protestors who exercise their constitutionally protected rights is simply not a crime. In fact, it is a historically grounded tradition in the very same social and political movements that the city of Atlanta prides itself on. Someone had to bail out civil rights activists in the 60’s — I think we can all agree that community support isn’t a crime.”

Activists with Community Movement Builders and other local groups will be hosting a press conference today at 6:30 p.m. at the DeKalb County Jail. A rally and vigil are expected to follow with a free food distribution.

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Well, it's good practice.

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 07, 2023 3:03 pm

APSP Chairman Omali Yeshitela Condemns US Repression and Exposes False ‘Russian Connection’ in Exclusive Interview
JUNE 5, 2023

Caracas, June 5, 2023 (OrinocoTribune.com)—Last Thursday, Orinoco Tribune conducted an interview with the Chairman of the African People Socialist Party (APSP), Omali Yeshitela, and APSP Director Akilé Anai about the status of the current intimidation judicial attack against the party and the Uhuru Movement. From Venezuela, we see this attack as another example of the US’s characteristic repression that smothers the rights of not only the US black community but also all oppressed people throughout the Global South in a clear attempt to break solidarity bonds between anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and ultimately anti-capitalist forces around the world.

The interview was performed by Orinoco Tribune staff journalists Lee Arts and Kelley Zhou as a follow-up of a previous interview conducted in February when charges were not yet filed against the “Uhuru 3,” Chairman Omali Yeshitela, African People’s Solidarity Committee Chairwoman Penny Hess, and Jesse Neville, Chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement. US courts have since dropped the charges against Akilé Anai, who had initially been targeted, changing the indictments from against the “Uhuru 4” to currently only the three aforementioned members.



“I was greeted by an armored vehicle and military forces dressed in camouflage and flight jackets who were carrying military assault weapons. Mounted on the armored truck were laser sighting devices with lights hitting my chest, indicating a capacity to kill me,” Chairman Yeshitela explained, detailing the abusive exercise of force displayed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) when his house was raided almost a year ago.

Chronicling the beginning of his fight against anti-black segregation and racism, which eventually led to the creation of the APSP and the Uhuru movement back in the ’60s, Yeshitela explained that he and his comrades initially thought that demonstrations would show “what was happening, politicians and authorities would get it straight. But when we demonstrated to show them what was happening, they put us in jail. It was through this process that we were forced to understand that it was not ignorance, but it was systemic,” in reference to the racism they were dealing with.

“As a consequence of becoming subjects of colonialism and slaves in the US, we were forcibly dispossessed of our freedom, power, and dignity. In this country and throughout the world, that’s a totally different position than those that are working to reform, trying to make the system comfortable, and trying to find a way where a system reborn through genocide, slavery, and colonialism can be redeemed. We are clear that the existing racist system cannot be redeemed. It is inherently exploitative, wreaking havoc, death, and destruction throughout the world,” Yeshitela summarized.

Yeshitela then was asked why Venezuela is also under attack, referencing APSP’s struggle on an international scale. He clearly connected it to the US internal oppression, responding with the following:

The US and other colonial powers want to negate the independence of Venezuela—a Venezuela that feeds, clothes, and houses itself in opposition to corporations and US sanctions. I know the Venezuelan government hasn’t said this but I’m convinced that the US killed Hugo Chavez just as they killed Lumumba, Kwame Toure, and Nkruma. None were characterized as murder. The whole struggle against colonialism, against the colonial mode of production, unleashed a desperate, frenzied attack on us by the US government trying to keep history from happening, trying to go back to the past: pre-Hugo Chavez, pre-Malcolm, pre-Black Panther Party, pre-revolutionary struggle… This is not a contest between the US government and the APSP. It’s a battle between the US and African people in this country and globally. They want to frame it like it has something to do with us and the Russians, but what they really want is black people back on the backseats of the buses. They want black people back in the fields not being paid, and being wiped out without any kind of complaint.

On the allegations about a “Russian connection” as the excuse for the attacks against them, Yeshitela said that the “Russian agent” accusation is “crazy, and anybody can see that. History knows better than that. It’s a charge used against others before us: Paul Robeson and W.E.B DuBois, who co-founded the NAACP, were attacked on those same charges. One charge is a conspiracy, claiming we’re working with the Russians. We were Russian agents, according to them, and we conspired with Russians to embarrass the US,” suggesting that the real embarrassment are the atrocities the US commits against its own people.

In addition to the video that you can watch above, we provide below an edited transcript of the interview with Chairman Omali Yeshitela and Director Akilé Anai. The HandsOffUhuru campaign is currently active, requiring both monetary support and also support in the form of actions of anti-imperialist forces not only in the US but all over the world.

OT: We know that the FBI raided the offices of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) in both Missouri and Florida last July, charging the APSP with “sowing discord among citizens, spreading pro-Russian propaganda, and interfering with US elections.” Could you describe the raids for our readers?

Omali Yeshitela: First, I want to express our appreciation of the solidarity with the struggle that’s being expressed through our ability to speak with Orinoco Tribune today. This helps us break out of the encirclement that has been imposed on us by the chief hegemon of the colonial powers of the world.

On the predawn morning of July 29th, I and my wife, who is Deputy Chair of our party, were at home in the most impoverished sector of North St Louis, where the majority of the African people reside. Out of the dark came this sound that at first we couldn’t make out because it was it was so unexpected. Over a loudspeaker, a voice demanded that the inhabitants of the house come out with hands up and with our hands empty. It was the FBI, and with this demand out of the night there were explosions going off around the house and in the back stairwell were flashbang grenades.

I asked my wife to wait and let me go down first while she called people to let them know we were under attack. Outside, I was greeted by an armored vehicle and military forces dressed in camouflage and flight jackets who were carrying military assault weapons. Mounted on the armored truck were laser sighting devices with lights hitting my chest, indicating a capacity to kill me. My wife follows me out, and when she opens the door, she’s greeted by a drone that almost hits her in the head going up the stairwell. Our neighborhood block is cordoned off by military forces, the St Louis Police Department, as well as the FBI.

I am quickly zip-tied behind my back and my wife’s [hands are] handcuffed behind her. Explosions are still going off around the house and in my house. I’m asking, “What is this?” The FBI said that some indictments would be happening later that day on a Russian national and that my name was involved, and because of that, they were exercising a military search warrant, a violent search warrant. They entered my house, they broke doors and windows. Although I didn’t know it at the moment, they were also attacking an office we have on the south side of St Louis where the majority of white people live. Comrades their work in support of the struggle of our people for reparations and to provide the white community with information and call for solidarity with the struggle of black people to be free and for reparations. That office was attacked using battering rams to knock down doors and arrest two whites who were put in handcuffs and held at gunpoint. On the same side of town, the FBI also went to the home of two other white comrades, [who were] handcuffed by armed guards. In each place they stole laptops, they stole phones, they stole anything that had to do with electronic communications.

At the same time, in another time zone, they attacked our Uhuru house in St. Petersburg, Florida. They used battering rams, knocked down doors, and invaded our radio station and temporarily took it off the air. The agents also stole archives from 50 years of archive material of the black struggle. Then they went to the home of Akilé Anai, part of our party’s leadership. The local police knocked on her door and told her to come outside because someone was breaking into her car. When she went to her car, FBI agents came from behind vans, accosted her, and took her cell phone. They also broke into another APSP house in St. Petersburg and shut down African community neighborhoods, while they were attacking in the name of serving a search warrant. Even if there was legitimate charges, they could have simply knocked on our doors. Instead, they launched a military-style attack. They broke into our homes, stole laptops, other devices, and stole other materials. In total, something like $40,000 worth of damage has been done to our homes and offices in two states and seven locations.

OT: The African People’s Socialist Party has been around for 50 years, but has not often directly faced this kind of extreme attack by police and federal agents. Perhaps you could provide a brief history of APSP and its relationship with the Uhuru Movement?

Omali Yeshitela: It’s really important to understand that the African People’s Socialist Party came out of the experience of black people in this country fighting for things like voting rights, the right not to be killed by random white people or the police, and other campaigns for freedom, rights, and dignity. This is our history. I was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee that was engaged in primarily what they characterized as a civil rights war. That gave rise to us and our party. It was not something by Lenin or Marx but came from the conditions that we were living in, trying to deal with, and based on what American democracy was supposed to be. I organized throughout Florida just for the right for black people to vote. I faced lynch mobs in Madison, Florida and in Alachua County. Forget trying to get black people the right to vote… We’ve taken on other issues like black people framed up by the police.

In the process of fighting and resisting, doing this we learned a lot. Initially, we thought that the problem was that the people who lived in St. Petersburg were just ignorant of the conditions that black people were confronting. We thought if we demonstrated to show what was happening, politicians and authorities would get it straight. But, when we demonstrated to show them what was happening, they put us in jail. It was through this process that we were forced to understand that it was not ignorance, but it was systemic. Conditions were imposed on us. We learned that it was not enough just to keep protesting. We realized we actually had to fight to get some control over our lives. We determined we needed an organization and that ultimately became the African People’s Socialist Party.

As a party, we did a lot of work as civil rights people. We organized throughout the country to get other people like us, other groups like us, to form the APSP to move beyond just protests but [also to] look at how we could win control over our lives and conditions, how we can actually capture and exercise power. The African People’s Socialist Party said the party is the best instrument for being able to do this.

The Uhuru Movement actually preceded the APSP. “Uhuru” is Swahili for freedom. The term Uhuru was born out of black people’s fight in Kenya against the British Empire. Uhuru was adopted by us and black people here, and in other places around the world by those inspired by the struggle for freedom. In 1968, we launched the Burning Spear newspaper as a tool to bring like-minded people together, and also used it for ideological communication.

In 1972, we created the African People’s Socialist Party. In 1976, we organized Uhuru—the African People’s Solidarity Committee—a group of white supporters among the colonizers. These are supporters who unite with the struggle of African people colonized in this country, fighting for freedom and liberation. Uhuru has been active in the white community “behind enemy lines.” They organize support for the struggle of black people to be free. Not to be integrated, but to be free. Uhuru also initiated other formations such as the African National Women’s Organization and the International People’s Democratic Movement.

OT: Would you describe some of the community work and actions you have organized and participated in around the US?

Akilé Anai: Lee and Kelley, I also want to express my appreciation for the opportunity to talk with Orinoco Tribune about the APSP and Uhuru, organizations that have profound histories. In the context of the attacks that have been made on us, our activities provide the foundation for understanding why we were attacked. The APSP and Uhuru have a variety of different programs, campaigns, and institutions that have fought to put power in the hands of African people in this country and throughout the world. This is different from the politics of integration, assimilation, or any kind of welfare or charity program.

Chairman Yeshitela set out to complete the work of Marcus Garvey whose movement raged in the 1920s. The fight then was for self-determination, for our people to be able to chart our own course, to be able to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, and to have real economic and political power. As a consequence of becoming subjects of colonialism and slaves in the US, we were forcibly dispossessed of our freedom, power, and dignity. In this country and throughout the world, that’s a totally different position than those that are working to reform, trying to make the system comfortable, and trying to find a way where a system born through genocide, slavery, and colonialism can be redeemed. We are clear that the existing racist system cannot be redeemed. It is inherently exploitative, wreaking havoc, death, and destruction throughout the world. What we have to do is build institutions that can contend with the colonial powers that dominate. We want to negate the influence and relevance of the colonizer all together.

This is why we initiated in 1968 the Burning Spear newspaper, which was part of the process to unite the struggle and has subsequently served as the vehicle that challenges the narrative of the colonial ruling class and its bourgeois commercial media. The Burning Spear is our platform to articulate our own stories, our own ideology, and our theory. In this country, we have institutions and organizations that also exist throughout the world. We’re building capacity in Africa, in Europe, and in the Caribbean. These institutions range from furniture stores to Uhuru Foods & Pies to produce food security in our community. The Uhuru Solidarity Committees also fight for reparations from the white community to turn over resources that support the African liberation struggle. These institutions are also born from a world process of demanding reparations to African people.

As Chairman Yeshitela mentioned, we help lead mass organizations such as the International People’s Democratic Movement (IPDM), which in the 1990s was a part of the struggle to defend the democratic rights of black people. It is a mass organization to help prevent people from being pushed out of political life (such as what happened with the defeat of the black revolution in the 1960s). It aims to be a vehicle that pulls people towards all-African development and empowerment projects, using the skills of doctors, engineers, agriculturalists, and other skills we possess that are [usually] used to benefit the colonizers. IPDM was founded to retrieve these skills for the uplifting of our community and the overall anti-colonial struggle. We have many other projects and campaigns, especially in St. Louis in the last several years since the murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson. APSP joined the African resistance as certain demands that we hadn’t seen since the 1960s Black Power movement. We now have multiple political organizations, as well as the Uhuru-organized Gary Brooks Community Garden and an African nation market.

Omali Yeshitela: I want to piggyback on that because part of what we have to do here is prick the memory of people. There are many people born within the last 15, 20, 30 years, born into situations which appear to have always been like this. But the reality is that we’re living in a situation where we see colonialism everywhere. But we should remember the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia, followed by other anti-colonial conferences in 1962-66, and the Tri-continental Conference in Havana, Cuba where peoples from all around the world weren’t talking about civil rights. They were talking about ending colonialism; everybody around the world was fighting against colonialism. The colonialists conducted a massive war against us, assassinating and killing people who were fighting for freedom whether it was in the Congo, in Ghana, or in the US. Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton, and many others were killed. That’s what we saw, and despite that, in the process of building the APSP, our objective was to complete that revolution for self-determination, to defeat colonialism so that people have control of our own future and the future of our children.

The process that we are dealing with now has a history of some 600 years. This is a process that even gave birth to what we call Venezuela now. Part of the whole colonial expansion that came out of Europe that built the modern capitalist economy and united the whole world into a single economy that we characterize as a colonial mode of production that Marx called primitive accumulation of capital. He talked about how it turned Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black skins. He talked about what it meant in this land that we live in now, what happened to East India, how China was turned into a country of drug addicts by England in 1841-42 Opium War. All these captured resources gave rise to the world system. We also have the emergence of assassination, mass imprisonment, and global sanctions.

Why is Venezuela under attack? The US and other colonial powers want to negate the independence of Venezuela—a Venezuela that feeds, clothes, and houses [itself] in opposition to corporations and US sanctions. I know the Venezuelan government hasn’t said this but I’m convinced that the US killed Hugo Chavez just as they killed Lumumba, Kwame Toure, and Nkruma—none were characterized as murder. The whole struggle against colonialism, against the colonial mode of production, unleashed a desperate, frenzied attack on us by the US government trying to keep history from happening, trying to go back to the past: pre-Hugo Chavez, pre-Malcolm, pre-Black Panther Party, pre-revolutionary struggle. They want to go back so black people are back on the back of the bus again. But we’re not going back. They can have flashbang grenades, they can attack with armored vehicles, but we are not going backwards any more than the people in Venezuela are going to go back, the people in Cuba are not going to go back. The people in Palestine are going to continue to move forward because the future belongs to the oppressed peoples of the world. That is where progress is being made in human history. Those struggles against oppression sounds like Grenada’s revolutionary leader Maurice Bishop’s “Forward ever, backward never!” By the way, the APSP worked with Bishop and the New Jewel Movement.

This is not a contest between the US government and the APSP. It’s a battle between the US and African people in this country and globally. They want to frame it like its something to do with us and the Russians, but what they really want is black people back on backseats of the buses, they want black people back in the fields not being paid, and being wiped out without any kind of complaint.

OT: Akilé talked about the Civil Rights Movement as resistance, almost revolutionary. So repression came down as capitalism and its government was knocked back. Legally and illegally, the capitalist regime lashed out. It appears now that US power is dissipating rapidly. They were defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan. It doesn’t look good for them in the Ukraine. Meanwhile, China is now the leading economic and political power in the world so the US globally seems to be on a decline. Could this be part of why the authorities have targeted the Uhuru Movement? If we understand that the US will not willingly tolerate any challenge to its global economic and political, the same explanation may apply domestically. So when APSP and Uhuru reject assimilation, accommodation, and negotiation, you threaten the dominant ideology, practices, and colonial system. Could this be part of the explanation of why the FBI and other agencies have attacked Uhuru now?

Omali Yeshitela: Yes, it is one of the explanations. It’s one of the reasons, there’s no doubt about that. History shows the emergence of a social system based on colonialism which didn’t just start recently. We can refer to the 1960s, where we see some similarities. Revolution was the main trend in the world. So the US and the other colonial powers pushed back and were able to stall organized resistance for a long period using assassinations, mass murder, terror. The police murdered Fred Hampton in 1969 and arrested the Black Panther 21 on conspiracy charges in New York City. Of course, at the time, the Soviet Union was challenging the validity of capitalism ideologically and politically throughout the world. In fact, the US society was fracturing. People talk about January 6, but remember in 1960s, two Kennedys were murdered, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were murdered. US capitalism couldn’t win the ideological or political battles, so it initiated military assaults, killing people throughout the US and around the world.

Some politicians and corporate leaders thought China would be dormant and passive so it was ready to be exploited. But China has grown and risen economically and politically. So now China is a contending force. Russia is a contending force. At this point, the whole capitalist system faces instability, in large part because colonized people around the world are fighting like hell. And now politicians have to deal with people in this country too. We’ve got a country that’s fracturing, and it’s not just us! White people are climbing the walls, defecating on desks in the US Capitol, chasing the vice president down the hall talking about hanging him. It’s a major crisis: the entire system could implode. So we, as the APSP and Uhuru, are factors because we continue to fight for the rights of black people.

This is not a contest between the US government and the APSP. It’s a battle between the US and African people in this country and globally. They want to frame it like it’s something to do with us and the Russians, but what they really want is black people back on backseats of the buses, they want black people back in the fields not being paid and being wiped out without any kind of complaint. What do we do? What’s their complaints against us? They said we participated in an election in 2017—that’s supposed to be legal. They said we had a different opinion on what they’re doing in Ukraine—that’s supposed to be legal. They said that we circulated petitions to take the US before the United Nations to address genocide—petitioning is legal. What the FBI claims is illegal is we weren’t doing it for black Americans, but doing it on behalf of the Russians. They are trying to use that as a cover to further the war against black people and other colonized peoples around the world. They want to go back in history, but nobody’s going backwards. We’re not going anywhere!

OT: It seems like legality is largely defined by white supremacy, loosely connected to actual laws. Would you explain the current status of the charges against the Uhuru 3 and who has been arrested? What are the actual indictments?

Omari Yeshitela: The whole case is phony. Akilé Anai was the fourth person originally indicted, but they quickly decided to remove her name from the charges. So there’s three others of us who are part of the APSP and Uhuru Movement. The fissures are fissures appearing in their case. Their case is bogus, the whole thing is bogus. They had Akilé picked up in the same net, but they said well, let’s drop that one. Now they’re targeting me, and actually, I’m the key target of the entire attack because of my history and what I’ve created, and the fact that I’ve led this movement for a long period of time. But it’s bogus, and that’s why we see Penny Hess, who was the chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee and a young man, Jesse Neville, who is chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement. Both of these are white people who work in the white community and are responsible under our leadership for presiding over an organization that leads white supporters in some 140-odd cities. In this country, working for reparations and working for black power are white people.

One of the things that makes what they’re doing problematic too is because we’ve broken that contradiction of using white people against the rest of us. Politicians, corporations, the media don’t have an absolute monopoly now on the opinions and worldview of the white population. So we are the ones who have been charged; you mentioned earlier, with being Russian agents—which is crazy, and anybody can see that. History knows better than that. It’s a charge used against others before us: Paul Robeson and W.E.B DuBois, who co-founded the NAACP, were attacked on those same charges. One charge is conspiracy, claiming we’re working with the Russians. We were Russian agents, according to them, and we conspired with Russians to embarrass the US. The whites who defecated on the desk of Nancy Pelosi weren’t working for the Russians to embarrass the US; killing Mike Brown didn’t embarrass the United States; all the murders that we regularly see of black people in this country—none of that embarrasses the US. We, the APSP and Uhuru are the ones who threaten the US. It’s an extraordinary narrative that they’ve created, seated on a platform of unreasonable issues. It cannot prevail. It won’t prevail in court, even with the most rabid backwards system that we might be contending [with]. And, it certainly it won’t prevail with the people in this country and around the world.

OT: I’ve been looking for a Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting assessment of how the media is framing this indictment. It is predictable that commercial media will trumpet the FBI’s claims. I wondered if either of you would like to comment on how the commercial media is framing the indictment? Are they making a big deal out of the Russian connection or Uhuru activities? Are there other things that the media are using to try to convince the American public? Maybe then you could offer with some actions or ideas for supporters and defenders of the APSP and Uhuru?

Akilé Anai: We know the six corporations control most of the media in this country and have major influence around the world. They all are pushing the state’s narrative. They are part of this whole state in the attacks being made on our movement. They are not just bystanders trying to tell the story. As they are telling their story, they’re cooperating, they are complicit with these attacks, and of course they’re hoping to influence people enough to accept this misinformation garbage. The APSP has this whole profound history that we’ve only touched on very briefly here. Most people don’t have knowledge of our work and activities. That’s also partly why they’re trying—especially in Florida—to do everything to prevent people from having access to information: banning books, interfering with teaching, and generally interfering with access to truth. Meanwhile, across the country, yes, the media are running the same narrative. Media have also tried to isolate the story by not discussing it or avoiding the implications by marginalizing us as unpopular.

What we’re seeing is the violation of the basic democratic principles of freedom of speech. If they were to be successful in jailing the APSP chairman and neutralizing this movement, they would be taking away everyone’s right to freedom of speech. Once they take it away, they don’t give it back. This is what’s under assault. The media are not spending hours talking about this, but we’re forcing our way into the media and forcing this into the mainstream. Relationships and platforms such as Orinoco Tribune and organizing a mass campaign pulls together forces all around the world and can win support and demand the government to drop the charges.

On May 27, we held an international day of action in over 20 locations throughout the world: in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and throughout the US. Whether they were by themselves in front of a theater holding a sign or [at] a large demonstration at a US embassy, they were demanding, “Drop the charges against the Uhuru 3.” These are creative and dynamic ways this people’s movement has gone to the streets, because we understand that our whole legal strategy is connected to our political strategy. This is a war that’s going to be won on the ground, bringing masses of people into this and winning the court of public opinion, which is going to be the influential factor in whatever happens in the courtroom.

Every time an African is killed in this country, they are the first ones on the scene with the police trying to get straight how and why we deserve to die. That’s what we’re looking at. It’s the same media that’s perpetuating the lies about the war in Ukraine and in Russia. It’s the same media that is even trying to pretend as if the as if the US government proxy war is on the winning side. It’s the same media that people are relying on for truth and information. That’s how our experience has been, but this is why what we’re doing right here with Orinoco and forces like yourself and just all of the other supportive media entities out there that have covered this campaign and continue to do that; express[ing] their support has been extremely important. We call on people to support this campaign, join this campaign, and donate to the legal defense fund. You can go to our website HandsOffUhuru for more information and ways in which you can support our defense.

I recall that it took popular action by masses of Venezuelans to prevent the US-orchestrated coup against Hugo Chávez. The people determined the outcome and freed Chávez. What’s really important for us, all of us, is to clarify this fundamental question. This is not a struggle between the United States government and African People’s Socialist Party. It’s a struggle between the US government and African people generally. What we represent is an attack on all those ills, all those problems, and all those contradictions. I tell everyone that freedom has always been illegal for black people. We did not come to America looking for a better way of life, and ever since being in this country, we’ve been fighting for some iteration of what we call “free.” That’s been historically the case. So many people talk about how they came to America for a better way of life, and many of them who came got a better way of life in part because of the enslavement of African people who lost a better way of life.

OT: I’ve often thought that the masthead for Orinoco Tribune should include the Chávez quote, “The truth is subversive.” It’s something that seems to be lacking in commercial media accounts as well as the fabricated FBI indictments against APSP and Uhuru. This seems to be primarily a question of free speech… So how can the average citizen make sense of this?

Omali Yeshitela: This is a critical point because the FBI claimed in their press conference that our party has weaponized free speech. But free speech was the first thing that they put in the Constitution. The founders were proud to use free speech as a weapon against despotism. Since then, in every instance, free speech has always been one of the first things to come under attack.

OT: This has been informative and inspiring to hear how APSP and Uhuru has been fighting for black people’s rights not only in the US, but in Africa, the Caribbean, and all over the world. Thank you both for taking the time to speak with us. We’ve asked you many questions but are there any other comments you would like to share?
Akilé Anai: Chairman Yeshitela presented a speech in Spain in 2007, which demonstrates APSP’s long-standing critique of US domestic and foreign policy and provides evidence of our independence. In court, we intend to put the US state on trial, exposing the whole system, the whole history, and all of the contradictions in this case. We didn’t do anything wrong. We don’t have anything requiring an apology. I really encourage people to look at Omali Yeshitela’s presentation at Oxford in England in 2019, where he spoke in favor of a closer African Union. He begins by expressing solidarity with the people of Venezuela, which was under attack by the US. He emphasized that the African people’s struggle is not isolated from everything else happening throughout the world. The speech—which will be used as evidence in trial—sums up who we are and what we believe.

https://orinocotribune.com/apsp-chairma ... interview/
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 09, 2023 2:18 pm

State Repression Targets the Stop Cop City Movement
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 07 Jun 2023

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Kamau Franklin of Community Movement Builders and other organizers announce a ballot referendum effort at a June 7 press conference in Atlanta. (Photo: Twitter @Micahinatl)

Cop City is an effort to ensure that state violence will bring the most draconian methods to bear against Black people. State violence is also being used proactively, in an effort to end opposition to this creation of Atlanta's white ruling class and their errand boys and girls who ostensibly control a fake mecca for Black people.

“The politicians don’t care about the people. They don’t work for the people. They work for corporations, the developers, and the police. The Atlanta City Council ignored the largest mass mobilization ever because the corporate-funded Atlanta Police Foundation controls them.”
Kamau Franklin, Community Movement Builders

Atlanta, Georgia is no mecca. The idea that it is a “good for Black people” city is a lie. Atlanta is little more than a glorified plantation where powerful white people give directions to the Black people they choose to be overseers. The power of the latter group is severely limited of course. They can always be counted on to act on behalf of the white power structure they serve.

No one should be shocked that members of the Atlanta City Council listened to hours of impassioned testimony from their constituents opposing what they call a Public Safety Training Center yet still voted to approve an initial $31 million expenditure by a vote of 11 to 4. The center is commonly and more accurately known as Cop City and thousands of people have mobilized to keep it from being built.

In the days before the vote the degree of official perfidy was revealed when the public were informed that the estimated cost for the center was more than double what they had been told. The cost to the city is $67 million , and not the $30 million figure that has been stated ever since the project was announced.

The state of Georgia and their Atlanta lackeys swung into action after the budgetary fraud was exposed and arrested three organizers of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund , a bail fund used to support protesters who have been arrested. The city and state had already mobilized brute force, killing one protester, Manuel Paez Teran, with 57 bullet wounds and charging others with terrorism. Before the bail fund arrests, three other organizers were charged with felony intimidation of an officer when they shared already public information which identified the killer police.

Atlanta Solidarity Fund organizers were arrested by a SWAT team and charged with charity fraud and money laundering because they reimbursed themselves for expenses. Judge James Altman released the three on $15,000 bond each. “Paying for camping supplies and the like? I don’t find it very impressive. There’s not a lot of meat on the bones of the allegations that thousands of dollars are going to fund illegal activities.”

But the city of Atlanta and the state of Georgia are not alone in their acts of repression. The federal Department of Homeland Security has also weighed in calling protesters “militants” who they say comprise a “violent far-left occupation.” When the DHS report was made public, online access was suddenly removed.

Cop City would be more than a police training center. The 85-acre site would be a mock city, used to train police in “crowd control,” methods. It would be a militarized policing center training law enforcement from around the country. Cop City is a response to the 2020 protests which sprang up across the country after the police killing of George Floyd and the protests in Atlanta which took place after the killing of Rayshard Brooks. The reaction against the new movement was swift and Atlanta’s local oligarchs demanded that their Black figureheads do something to ensure that any further protests be met with the harshest measures possible.

Yet the people of Atlanta weren’t fooled, and they lined up for hours to give testimony before their so-called representatives who don’t really want to hear from them. Atlanta resident Robell Awake spoke for many when he said, “I cannot believe I am standing here, pleading with you not to spend the tax dollars of a Black city, to tear down a forest in a Black neighborhood, to increase the policing and caging of more Black people. All this in a city with Black leadership. It breaks my heart.”

As we have said many times at Black Agenda Report, we don’t have Black political leadership in this country. We have misleadership, a corrupt buffer class who do the bidding of Black people’s enemies while pretending to be our representatives.

The next step in stopping the Cop City scam is to put a referendum on the ballot. Organizers must secure 75,000 signatures from registered voters within the next two months in order to give voters a voice in the process. Direct democracy is the tool, but the same people who use SWAT teams to arrest organizers won’t stop either.

Cities, states, and the federal government will all work together at the behest of the ruling class whenever the people choose to act in favor of their own interests. They will bring terrorism charges, kill protesters, and buy off politicians in order to get what they want. As always, the question is how the masses will respond. Atlantans are ready and they are showing the way.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/state ... y-movement
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Thu Aug 24, 2023 2:54 pm

Policing the Police in the East Bay Area
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 23 Aug 2023

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Acts of police brutality and other forms of misconduct are common throughout the country. The East Bay area of California is exceptional only in that some officers have been indicted and charged with a variety of offenses.

If you think the San Francisco Bay Area is “woke,” you probably don’t know about East Contra Costa County, in the East Bay, where nearly half the City of Antioch’s police department are now on leave for police misconduct that includes exchanging racist, homophobic, and misogynist text messages, some of which include the n-word and references to Black people as gorillas and monkeys. In one instance it was revealed that one cop had sent another a text image depicting the Black police chief, who had been on the job for about a year, as a gorilla . The chief resigned shortly thereafter without saying why.

According to the FBI and the US Attorney’s office in San Francisco, a federal grand jury has indicted officers from Antioch and neighboring Pittsburg, for charges including conspiracy to violate civil rights; civil rights violations; wire fraud; distribution of steroids; destruction, alteration, and falsification of records; and obstruction of justice.

Antioch is a suburb of only 114,00, Pittsburg a suburb of 77,000, but police departments throughout the San Francisco Bay Area have been the subject of many investigations for police brutality and other forms of misconduct over the years. Twenty years after the resolution of the Oakland Police scandal detailed in the book “The Riders Come Out at Night ,” that department remains under a federal consent decree, and Antioch likely will be soon.

The situation in Antioch has received ongoing press coverage from the East Bay Times , ABC , Fox News , the San Jose Mercury News , the San Francisco Chronicle, CNN , and other outlets.

I spoke to KPFA Radio journalist and anti-police brutality activist Frank Sterling, who was himself attacked by Antioch police in 2009 when he answered the door in response to a noise complaint about a party he was having. Police beat him with aluminum flashlights, broke his nose, and left a gash in his skull that had to be stapled in a hospital emergency room. Frank received a financial settlement after winning two lengthy legal actions, one being a case against him for assaulting a police officer, the other being his own police brutality case.

This hardly makes him a favorite with the Antioch Police Department, but that hasn’t inhibited his ongoing anti-police misconduct activism with “Reimagine Antioch .”

ANN GARRISON: Frank, I’ve been following the Antioch Police Department’s transgressions for years and reported on it here in Black Agenda Report back in February 2022, when you were on trial for the second time for allegedly assaulting a police officer after they tackled you, tased you, and held you down on the ground at a protest. That charge was dismissed, wasn’t it?

FRANK STERLING: Yes.

AG: Can you give us your best summary of the latest Antioch police misconduct saga?

FRANK STERLING: Well, this has a long history, as you know, but we could start by going back to the time of the George Floyd murder and ensuing protests in 2020. At about the same time, a young man named Angelo Quinto was killed here in very similar circumstances, in compression and control holds, with his arms and his legs behind his back.

AG: So you started protesting that?

FS: Yes, Angelo’s death was a catalyst that drew more people into our movement, but a lot of us have been out here for over a decade talking about how these terrible police officers brutalize people. At that time we didn’t have body cameras or cameras in the cars, so a lot of crimes were being committed off camera. Often it was just my word or others’ against the word of officers who were assumed to have the moral high ground and were most often believed.

So we really stepped up our protests after the George Floyd and Angelo Quinto killings. Between then and now the Contra Costa County District Attorney announced that the Antioch Police Department was under investigation by the FBI and the Department of Justice, which led to the multiple indictments that you mentioned in your introduction.

At the same time, in April 2023, a slew of violent, racist, homophobic and sexist text messages by Antioch police officers surfaced, as a result of inquiries made by a Contra Costa County public defender relying on the California Racial Justice Act for All that was signed into law at the end of September 2022. The public defender also used the act to have gang enhancements lifted against her clients, arguing that their application had been racially discriminatory. “Gang enhancement” means the charge that crimes committed were part of gang activity, which makes them more serious crimes with more severe punishments.

In the bigger investigation that the Department of Justice and the FBI had underway, they probably would not even have seen these text messages if it wasn't for this public defender digging deeper into her client's allegations.

The text messages reveal that police officers bragged about violence they committed against the community, using “less-than-lethal force” when it was unnecessary, especially on the unhoused population. They talked about violating civil rights and of course there were the racist texts including gorilla and monkey memes.

They revealed one case in which off-duty police officers got together after work and hunted down an unhoused man whom one officer believed was stealing his mail. They beat him up one night, kicked his ass all over the place, then came after him another night, off duty again, agreeing that the first one who found him would get a drink and a donut. When they got him, one held the barrel of a gun in his mouth while accusing him of stealing his mail and trying to open accounts under his name. Then he bragged that this was not against the law because he was doing a public service. The texts also exposed police involved in the illegal sale of steroids.

It also came out that a group of police officers had created phony records of degrees or other professional qualifications that they hadn’t earned in order to get promotions and pay raises that came with them.

These are indictments, not convictions, so the meaning of the texts is still alleged, but it’s going to be harder and harder to describe them as allegations since they’re there in black and white.

About half of the Antioch Police Department is now on leave as a result, not because they all sent these text messages but because many received but failed to report them. This scandal is also extending to neighboring police departments including Pittsburg and Brentwood.

Some upper officers were implicated in the racist texting, so it’s possible that those of lower rank didn’t know who to report them to.

So fast-forward through all that to last week, when the FBI and the DOJ raided a bunch of officers' homes here in Antioch, and also in Pittsburg , and actually in Hawaii and some other state where they have dispersed because about 45 of them are on some sort of paid or unpaid leave. And a bunch of them are also retiring. So that's where we're at now.

AG: What’s your next move with Reimagine Antioch?

FS: We are going out to the courthouse on Friday, August 25th. We're going to be out there for the second hearing on applying the California Racial Justice Act for All to the Antioch police.

We also have an action planned for September to demand that the Antioch Police Officers Association (APOA) be disbanded and that our interim Chief of Police denounce the APOA and resign if he’s a member. We’re not sure whether he’s a member of the union since he’s the chief.

We feel that the APOA is totally corrupted. Their statement about the racist texts, the DOJ indictments, or the arrests of nine of their officers is simply defensive. It does not acknowledge any wrongdoing.

AG: Won’t they just have to create a new union?

FS: Yeah they will, but the existing union is so totally corrupt that it has to be disbanded and reconstituted, hopefully with new officers. And they need to get rid of their attorney who does nothing but defend these bad cops.

AG: What is Reimagine Antioch doing to reimagine policing and public safety?

FS: What we're doing out here is taking advantage of this once in a lifetime moment—where the police are exposed for their true selves in these text messages—to rethink public safety. Our District One City Councilor Misha Torres-Walker is on the case. She’s my representative and I worked for her campaign by hitting the streets and knocking on doors.

She has opened a new department called the Department of Public Safety and Community Resources . What we want is money to be diverted from the Police Department to this other Department of Public Safety and Community Resources, where we're doing things that will lessen the need for police.

One example is the Angelo Quinto Community Response Team . And that is something that was won after Angelo Quinto was killed by police who more or less crushed him in a mental health crisis. Now you can call 911 and request the Community Response Team instead of the police in mental health and domestic violence cases. We have caring mental health professionals, culturally competent people to engage with people in distress rather than just putting them face down and handcuffing them. Sometimes they may wrap them in a restraining suit.

So that's kind of our other hope, that we're going to fund this other office and reexamine public safety in the bigger picture, beyond policing.

Police usually respond to crime, but they don't prevent crime. So we're looking to prevent crime before it happens.

Another example is the mayor's apprenticeship program, which works in some of our most challenged areas—what we call the Sycamore Corridor—where you can see people hanging out on the corners, you know, random groups of people rolling dice, double-parked cars, people hanging out. The mayor's apprenticeship program went into these communities, and got people who were struggling with formerly being incarcerated, struggling to find meaningful employment and put them into an apprenticeship program working for the City of Antioch Public Works.

So they got to go out and apprentice with mentors from the Public Works Department, which bolstered our Public Works and offered tracks into employment. They have a chance to apply for jobs and get more training.

AG: This sounds great.

FS: The first cohort of that group, just graduated. In fact, I played the graduation ceremony on the second half of “Full Circle” on KPFA the other day. So that's another way that we're trying to reimagine public safety.

Before, the cops would just pick these guys up and take them to jail, and then they’d get back on the streets going nowhere. Well, now the apprenticeship program is picking them up instead.

Basically, this means arms embracing you, instead of arresting you, trying to give you a head start to get you going in a new direction.

And they’re now working on other ways to reduce crime through intervention before it happens.

AG: Great stuff, Frank. Sounds like it could become a model for other cities.

FS: We hope so, but there’s still a lot more work to be done.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/polic ... t-bay-area
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Wed Sep 06, 2023 2:08 pm

Georgia RICO Filing Against 61 Stop Cop City Activists Criminalizes Protest
Posted on September 6, 2023 by Yves Smith
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The Georgia Attorney General’s office just unsealed charges against 61 people claimed to be involved in a criminal conspiracy as part of the Atlanta “Stop Cop City” movement. This case shows that prosecutors are all too eager to use the sweeping powers conferred on them under Georgia’s recently-established RICO statute. The charges against the defendants include racketeering, domestic terrorism, money laundering, and charity fraud.

Stop Cop City is a series of protests intended to stop construction of a police and fire department training facility on 85 acres which had served as a recreational area near a poor black area. Stop Cop City included a Stop Cop City Vote coalition seeing a referendum to overturn the lease for the planned facilities.


From Rolling Stone:

The Georgia Attorney General’s Office has filed RICO Act violation charges against protesters fighting to stop the construction of the police training facility known as “Cop City” in Atlanta’s South River Forest.

The charges of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations were filed Tuesday, Sept. 5, in Fulton County Superior Court, with 61 people named. In a statement announcing the indictment, the AG’s office alleged that the defendants “have conspired together to prevent the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center by conducting, coordinating, and organizing acts of violence, intimidation, and property destruction” in Georgia and other states.

The RICO charges mark another significant increase in pressure from state officials looking to crack down on those advocating against the the $90 million, 85-acre police training facility. As the Atlanta Community Press Collective — a local group covering the Stop Cop City movement and other autonomous groups — noted on Twitter, many of the people charged with RICO Act violations were previously hit with domestic terrorism charges earlier this year over their opposition to Cop City.

dditionally, money laundering charges have been brought against organizers of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which helps arrested protesters with jail support and legal representation. And capping it all off, the ACPC noted that three people indicted on RICO charges were previously arrested for merely passing out flyers earlier this year.

In a statement shared with Rolling Stone, the Cop City Vote coalition slammed Georgia AG Chris Carr and the RICO charges, calling them “blatantly authoritarian.” They further accused the State of Georgia of trying to “intimidate protestors, legal observers, and bail funds alike, and send the chilling message that any dissent to Cop City will be punished with the full power and violence of the government.”

“The Cop City Vote coalition strongly condemns these anti-democratic charges,” the statement adds. “We will not be intimidated by power-hungry strongmen, whether in City Hall or the Attorney General’s office. Chris Carr may try to use his prosecutors and power to build his gubernatorial campaign and silence free speech, but his threats will not silence our commitment to standing up for our future, our community, and our city.”

A predictably blander overview from Associated Press:

In the sweeping indictment released Tuesday, Republican Attorney General Chris Carr alleged the defendants are “militant anarchists” who supported a violent movement that prosecutors trace to the widespread 2020 racial justice protests.

The Aug. 29 indictment is the latest application of the state’s anti-racketeering law, also known as a RICO law, and comes just weeks after the Fulton County prosecutor used the statute to charge former President Donald Trump and 18 other defendants.

The “Stop Cop City” effort has gone on for more than two years and at times veered into vandalism and violence. Opponents fear the training center will lead to greater militarization of the police, and that its construction in an urban forest will exacerbate environmental damage in a poor, majority-Black area.

Axois adds:

Why it matters: The charges in Fulton County Superior Court are the most serious and wide-ranging legal challenges against the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement.

This coincides with activists’ attempts to mount a campaign that aims to force a referendum on the future of the police and fire academies, which they derisively call “Cop City.”
Driving the news: The 109-page indictment follows charges filed in May against three Atlanta residents who operate the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, a charity fund that pays bail and provides legal defense to protesters.

Many press outlets have pointed out that the grand jury for this indictment was the same one that indicted Trump.

You can read the filing here.1 In this blogger’s humble opinion, the language is troubling overheated. There is also a lot of text depicting the activists as anarchists and describing how deplorable anarchists are. The filing also claims the effort was part of the George Floyd protests and asserts that the members threw Molotov cocktails, but other accounts said no evidence of any violent action was presented to the grand jury. However, Daily Mail has some photos of small fires at the site and a video of fireworks being set off at one of the gates that got police to back off out of fear of injury.

The best one-stop shopping on the case comes from the Atlanta Community Press Collective, which is seeking pro-bono representation for the defendants. It notes that the indictment includes a Southern Poverty Law Center employee who was at the protests in the capacity of a legal observer and wearing a jacket that marked him as such.

The Atlanta Community Press Collective also pointed out that the relevant county DA withdrew from the case, signaling that she regarded the state attorney general as engaging in overreach:

In June, DeKalb County DA Sherry Boston announced that her office was withdrawing from the prosecution of 42 cases related to the Stop Cop City Movement. “It is clear to both myself and the Attorney General that we have fundamentally different prosecution philosophies,” Boston told WABE’s Rose Scott.

Boston stated she did not believe charges would hold up against all the protesters and said her office would “only proceed on cases that I believe I can make beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Boston’s departure from the action substantiates the idea that this filing is a prosecutorial abuse. It takes time and money to get out of criminal charges, spurious or not. And defendants’ names are likely to come up in Internet searches, tainting their future employment prospects.

The Atlanta Community Press Collective added:

Three organizers with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund who were arrested and charged with charity fraud in May are also included in the indictments. The 109-page indictment filing broadly paints the Solidarity Fund organizers as the center of the RICO conspiracy, blaming the three for every post to website scenes.noblogs.org, reimbursing indicted and unindicted alleged co-conspirators for various supplies. In addition to RICO charges, each of the three Solidarity Fund organizers have also been charged with 15 counts of money laundering from transactions dating back to Jan. 12, 2022, for as little as $11.91 for the purchase of glue.

All 43 individuals previously charged with domestic terrorism are listed in the indictment. Other indicted individuals include three who were arrested in April while allegedly passing out flyers with the names of the Georgia State Patrol officers who killed environmental activist Manuel “Tortuguita” Paez Teran in January; five arrested for criminal trespass in the Weelaunee Forest in May 2022; and at least three arrested in Cobb County protesting construction company Brasfield & Gorrie, the general contractors for the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center construction project.

Image

Needless to say, Twitterati are correct to sounding the red alert about this lawsuit:
Stop Cop City
@JoshuaPHilll
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When the state hands down RICO charges for passing out Stop Cop City fliers and bailing people out, and the date of George Floyds murder is on the indictments, they're telling you that this about a limitless police state where cops can act with impunity and resistance is illegal.
2:00 PM · Sep 5, 2023
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Josh
@Josh_Lingsch
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from the #StopCopCity RICO indictment - without a hint of irony
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1:02 PM · Sep 5, 2023
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People's City Council - Los Angeles
@PplsCityCouncil
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The state is using the day of George Floyd’s murder as the date on all indictments. This predates any #StopCopCity activities.

This should tell exactly what the reason is behind these charges. Especially since they want to build cop city to prepare for the next mass uprisings.
Atlanta Community Press Collective
@atlanta_press
Replying to @atlanta_press
The date listed on all the indictments is May 25, 2020.

It is unclear why this date is listed, given that it predates any Stop Cop City activity by at least a year.
11:15 AM · Sep 5, 2023
1.1K Reply Share
Not a happy day for what passes for democracy in America.

–––––

1 Note I was unable to embed the PDF from the filing, which in my file system showed as only a bit bigger than the maximum upload size permitted by WordPress. I repeatedly tried all sorts of methods to shrink it and the AG’s office looks to have installed some nasty code. When I used compression tools. tried generating a pdf from a print version and went to compress that, or even just tried extracting only the meat of the filing, the file size got much larger. I have never encountered anything remotely like this before. If any reader can succeed in compressing the file to below 1.8 MB (to allow for WordPress eccentricity and a margin of error) and mail it to me at yves-at-nakedcapitalism.com with “Stop Cop” in the headline, I would very much appreciate it and will embed the document.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/09 ... otest.html
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Fri Nov 10, 2023 3:52 pm

“The Death Row You Don’t Want to Know:” An Inmate at San Quentin Reveals What Death Row is Really Like
By James P. Anderson - November 9, 2023 1

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San Quentin death row. [Source: deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com]

From the date of being arrested (March 4, 1979) in one of the most racist counties in California (Riverside), and enduring one of what would be called by many, “a circus trial” on December 12, 1979, I was brought to the sixth floor of North Block, better known as the original Death Row.

I’ll never forget the first day, laying on a slab of steel, in an empty cell, looking out a distant window, watching the day turn to night, and thinking about “how I had allowed myself to be played/tricked into circumstances and conditions like this!” I had experienced a few minor encounters of racism in my then twenty-six years of life, but the reality of actually being on DEATH ROW was bewildering. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was hearing “you’ll wake up from this nightmare in a minute or two.” For anyone that’s experienced sleep paralysis, you’ll understand existing in this condition.

Another unfortunate reality is that there were very few Death Row prisoners who had any interest in the study and/or the application of law, and of the “few,” several were bonafide informants, liars, and/or white supremacists who couldn’t be trusted with any kind of information. In the interest of full disclosure, within my first few months of experiencing Death Row, as just as in the ‘free world,’ informants come in all colors and sizes.

What was perhaps most astounding then, and continues to be true in 2023, was the inordinate amount of “control” that some of the corrections officers here need in order to satisfy their feeble egos, or to feel like a “REAL MAN.” It’s as though they bring their all of their life’s disappointments, frustrations, self-hatred and misery to the prison to release on vulnerable prisoners. It’s similar to a prize-winning body builder challenging a “one-legged man to an ass-kicking contest” (something that only a real coward would do).

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Aerial view of San Quentin. The prison currently houses 3,785 prisoners, 654 of whom sit on death row (as of October 4, 2023). [Source: wikipedia.org]

It seems that the majority of the public has forgotten about the case of Celeste Guap, an under-aged juvenile female with whom multiple Oakland, CA police officers were continuously molesting for years with impunity. This case was only brought to the public because of an officer with a conscience who revealed the sexual abuse in his suicide note.

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Celeste Guap [Source: abc7news.com]

Currently, numerous correctional officers are being prosecuted at the Dublin’s women prison in California for raping women there. And let’s not forget San Quentin State Prison’s own Captain Orlando Ponce’s arrest for the forcible penetration of an unconscious person.

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Dublin women’s prison where correctional officers have been indicted for routinely raping women. [Source: assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com]

The same mentality of guards at San Quentin prison who need to dominate over inmates often accompanies periodic cell searches. Many look as though a hurricane or tornado had landed in the cells, all in the name of in the name of the “safety and security of the prison.”

This excuse can’t account for the amounts of the prisoners’ personal property being stolen (which the administration claim was “lost or misplaced or destroyed”), including 44 years of my case legal files and irreplaceable personal photographs. Several excellent resources are readily available for confirmation of these facts: www.ca9.uscourts.gov (Anderson v. Runge, et al); www.prisonlegalnews.com; www.sfbayview.com/jamesanderson: (two articles); www.space4peace.blogspot.com/organizingnotes” (three articles); and www.criticalresistance.org.

Another piece of propaganda that the public is constantly fed is that Grade-A Death Row prisoners have access to what’s referred to as “exercise yards” (as though there is really green grass, etc.). But the reality is that the “yards” are no more than large outside, fenced and barbed-wired cages (39½’ x 61’) and concrete. (Local TV of the “yards” stations, KTVU, CBS5, ABC7 and NBC-11 save stock footage in their websites). There are four octagon shaped steel tables bolted into the concrete with attached stools. Two (2) steel benches, a pull-up chin bar and a half-sized basketball court on each of the seven “yards.” There are always four sharpshooter gunmen each armed with a Bop gun, a mini-14 assault rifle and a 38 caliber/9 mm pistol who are in constant phone/walkie-talkie contact with supervisors and administration personnel.

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Rubin Galvan, who is on death row for murder, exercises on San Quentin death row. [Source: america.aljazeera.com]

Additionally, there are two video/audio cameras visibly mounted and trained on each of the “yards,” and of course there’s at least one corrections officer somewhere in the prison monitoring video screens. With all that’s taking place all over the planet earth not to mention the cosmos, I can only imagine how exciting it must be to sit and watch adult males for five hours every day!

What the general public needs to know is that San Quentin State Prison’s Death Row is very much like a little city within a big city, a “Peyton Place” of sorts like the 1960s TV series, in that everything that happens in a city takes place here as well, but with much more intensity.

Over the past year, there have been innumerable TV, radio, and newspaper reports reflecting the degree of racism in the Antioch, California police department, internal e-mails by those who took an oath to “Protect and Serve,” (contact Ms Tameana Torrez-Walker-District Council Woman, Antioch, Ca. for details). However, Antioch is just one of many police departments which have been exposed for their blatant racism and corruption.

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The Antioch police department has a bad reputation. [Source: antiochonthemove.com]

Braxton, Miss. (blacklawyersforjustice.org-MalikShabazz, Esq), Detroit, MI.(Porcha Woodruff), Minneapolis, MN. (George Floyd); Ohio (Ta’kiya Young); Memphis, TN (Tyre Nichols); Los Angeles, CA (Danny Jenkins, Jr.); and the list goes on and on and on. The www.kpfa.org/upfront radio program of March 22, 2023 with Phoenix, AZ reporter Meagan O’Connor contains a list of “1,096 names of victims of police killing innocent citizens. The 2023 La Raza database research project, compiled by Yvette Boyzo of California State University, San Bernardino, details that police in the U.S. have killed an astounding 32,542 people in police custody since 2000.

The unfortunate reality is that some of the guards assigned to East Block’s Death Row have been the exact same “mentalities” as some ‘free-world police’ i.e, “I can do anything I want without any consequences,” and the ‘Green Wall of Silence’ remains intact.

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[Source: sfchronicle.com]

On August 24, 2023, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals of California issued an opinion in the case of “Todd Ashker v. Gavin Newsom” which basically allows the California Department of Corrections (CDCR) to place prisoners into the solitary confinement-administrative Segregation-Security-Housing-Unit (aka “The Hole”) indefinitely.

This ruling opens a door that will allow any prisoner to be issued a fabricated disciplinary report. Predictably, such report will state, “I observed this inmate (#1) in the company of another inmate (#2) who is a suspected gang member talking with each other (or passing an unknown item). Either or both prisoners will receive an indeterminate “Hole” term without any questions being asked or investigations being conducted.

There’s an article published in the San Francisco Daily Journal reflecting a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision which clearly states “Innocence Doesn’t Matter,” as long as there’s the appearance of a fair trial. There’s also the “National Register of Exonerations” which is more revealing than many will be comfortable with, as it exposes the blatant and intentional wrongful convictions that have effected so many innocent lives (whose lives will never be the same).

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Typical San Quentin cell. [Source: mirror.co.uk]

An additional unfortunate reality is that most attorneys who are assigned to Death Row prisoners’ appeals won’t assist their clients by making inquiring phone calls or writing letters to the prison, CDCR Sacramento, even though its “Rules of Conduct” state that it’s a part of their responsibility. They also don’t help them when their civil rights have been violated, as when their property is stolen or fraudulent disciplinary reports are written about them. There’s the undeniable reality of at least a few of the death row prisoners being factually innocent, or wrongfully convicted (the author of this article is one of those few).

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Gas chamber at San Quentin which has not been used since 2008. On March 13, 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order instituting a moratorium on the death penalty in California in the form of a reprieve for all people sentenced to death. The executive order also calls for repealing California’s lethal injection protocol and the immediate closing of the execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison. The order does not provide for the release of any individual from prison or otherwise alter any current conviction or sentence. [Source: dailymail.co.uk]

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Alister McAlister served as a California assemblyman in the Democratic Party from 1970-1986. How could the man who wrote the legislation to reintroduce the death penalty in California be expected to be fair and impartial in representing clients in death penalty cases? [Source: legacy.com]

From the very beginning of this nightmare and to date, I’ve been appointed fourteen different attorneys, most of which were grossly incompetent and/or completely inexperienced in representing a death penalty case. Some of the attorneys had even been suspended by the California Bar Association for various violations; one was an alcoholic, and another, Alister McAlister (1929-2010) had actually authored legislation in the California state assembly to reinstate the death penalty, and included bits and pieces of misinformation in petitions that he drafted to the California Supreme Court. When told of the mistakes, he said he would correct them later but never did.

An unfortunate flaw in the judicial system is that once a death row prisoner has been appointed an appellate attorney by the Supreme Court, it prevents any death row prisoner from filing motions in the court; no matter how incompetent, lazy, or racist the appointee attorney may be.

In a rare public admission by a high-ranking part of the “system,” Alex Kozinski, the former Ninth Circuit Appeals Court Justice told 60 Minutes about innumerable illegalities.

Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative also deserves plaudits for freeing over one hundred innocent persons from prisons, most of which were on death row.

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Alex Kozinski [Source: wikipedia.org]
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Bryan Stevenson [Source: news.whitworth.edu]

An amazing aspect of subsisting on Death Row here is that most prisoners don’t have their priorities in any kind of order. Freedom is a word that is seldom heard here. The reason is that hopelessness has a firm grip on the minds of many—for a variety of reasons. However, food and sports (football, basketball, boxing, etc.) are heard being discussed every day. The Protocols state that one of the means in which the real powers that be will control the masses is the distractions of sports. It’s a calling card and an invitation for conversation, as someone will always have “something” to say about “their/my team,” it lightens the load of the lonely and/or allows for an opportunity to project “I’m hard as a rock” image, and for many image is everything.

It may surprise some to know just how much of a commodity simple food items are on death row; food items that can be purchased through the prisons’ canteen. It’s amazing how an adult male can be controlled or manipulated by something as simple as Top Ramen or a burrito, or a bag of potato chips. It’s actually comparable to those with substance abuse addictions.

It’s a well known fact that the seals prepared in prison kitchens is usually tasteless garbage, so much so that several paperback books have been written and published by prisoners which contain recipes on how to put a decent meal together with the very basic of ingredients.

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[Source: dailymail.co.uk]

I’m actually quite proud to reveal that I’ve never watched or listened to an entire sports game of any kind in my 68 years of life, as I know for a fact that there are too many ways to cheat. However, the “game” that I have watched and listened to daily is the game of politics as it’s the only “game” that matters. Politicians have only been and always will be the real gangsters of the world. I often hear the term, “keep it gangster” spoken as though by just speaking it, this manifests from a dream, or someone they idolize or ‘want-to-be’, it becomes a reality.

Anyone with common sense knows that there’s a huge difference between a gangster and a gang-banger. In any event, you’ll never hear a real gangster refer to himself as such, because real gangsters don’t advertise, i.e.: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Dianne Feinstein, Leon Panetta, Ron DeSantis, Marjorie Taylor-Green, Clarence ‘Boot-Licker’ Thomas, and of course Donald ‘The Big Dump’ J. Trump, just to name a few of the many in America. Watch the Dave Zirin documentary “Behind the Curtain.”

There’s an old adage which states ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.’ This bit of wisdom can be applied to the difference between business and bullshit. Even though both words begin with “B” and have eight (8) letters, they’re not the same things. Regrettably, many don’t understand or know there’s a big difference.

Anyone familiar with the 1975 movie, “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” starring Jack Nicholson will have a more accurate picture of the mentality of many on California’s Death Row, which has literally become a mental hospital.

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Jack Nicholson in mental hospital in “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.” [Source: lololovesfilm.com]

The child-like thought processes of many prisoners here, from listening to the little white-lies to the impossible-to-believe whoppers are part of the everyday routine, and which is expected behavior. Most newer model cars and trucks have what’s called an ‘ABS System’ (Automatic Braking System) which allows me to avoid most of the sordid history of Death Row here. If these conditions weren’t so serious, it would be humorous and entertaining.

Along similar lines, even though prisoners actually pay for the two (2) weekly movies shown on San Quentin’s TV channels (through the 10% additional fees added to Special Purchase Orders), the administration selects the movies, most of which are designed and created for children and adolescents. So the dumbing down effects that have been employed by ‘the powers that be’ for the past ten to fifteen years is alive and well in California’s prison system.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/1 ... ally-like/
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Sat Dec 02, 2023 3:59 pm

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Derek Chauvin & the State of US Prisons
December 1, 2023

The most incarcerated country on Earth needs to change its entire criminal justice system. It’s irreparably broken at every level.

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Mural at the abandoned Atlanta Prison Farm in Georgia, August 2013. (RJ, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

By John Kiriakou
Special to Consortium News

I’ve written a lot about the corrupt, inefficient and failing Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP.) Most recently, the mainstream media have lauded the BOP’s new director, Colette Peters, who was brought in to “clean the place up.”

Peters is a former successful director of the Oregon Department of Corrections. The idea was that, rather than promote somebody from within the BOP to lead it, which has been done time and time again and which has failed time and time again, maybe a fresh face from outside could bring a new perspective and could turn the BOP around.

That hasn’t happened. If anything, Peters has been ignored by her subordinates and, in many cases, circumvented. While by all accounts, she’s a very nice person who means well and who really does want to improve federal prisons, she is powerless to do so.

In the absence of real accountability and any meaningful oversight from Capitol Hill, she is doomed to fail. If 2023 has been any indication, that failure is going to be clear.

The BOP’s most recent appearance in the media has been related to the near-fatal stabbing of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who is serving a sentence of 22-and-a-half years in prison for his role in the murder of George Floyd.

Chauvin is doing his time in the federal system because it is supposed to be safer than most state prison systems. Chauvin otherwise would have been in a state penitentiary in Minnesota.

Instead, he is in a medium-security federal prison in Tucson, Arizona. He was stabbed there by another prisoner on Nov. 24 and guards had to “perform life-saving measures” on him.

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Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

The BOP’s headquarters blamed staffing problems for the stabbing, saying that there simply aren’t enough prison guards to keep the facilities safe. I’m no apologist for the BOP, but in a country with 4 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of its prison population, according to World Prison Brief — and an employee suicide rate that’s off the charts (all while earning so little money that qualifies many guards for food stamps), who would want to work for the BOP?

In the meantime, the BOP’s 2023 problems have not been limited to the Chauvin stabbing or to the earlier stabbing of Dr. Larry Nassar, the physician and former team doctor for the U.S. National Women’s Gymnastics Team who molested hundreds of girls and young women under his care. Other incidents include:

A BOP guard in Florida was recently charged with 14 felony counts of wire fraud, disability fraud, and aggravated identity theft in a scheme that allegedly netted her $40,000. Katrina Denise McCoy faces 20 years in prison.

Another BOP guard, Fiona Eyana Palmer, was found guilty of sexually abusing a prisoner and asking the prisoner to lie to federal investigators. She faced up to 20 years in prison, but was sentenced to only 15 months.

A BOP guard in Texas, Jasmine Arellano, was sentenced to a year and a day in prison after being found guilty of taking bribes to smuggle cocaine, marijuana and vodka into the prison in which she worked. She had faced up to 15 years in prison.

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Main office of the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington, D.C. (AgnosticPreachersKid, Wikimedia Commons,
CC BY-SA 4.0)

These problems are not limited to the BOP. There are similar problems in state prison systems and local and county jails. Here’s a sample:

Larry Eugene Price was taken into custody in Fort Smith, Arkansas, in the midst of a severe mental health crisis and charged with threatening a police officer. He was held on $100 bail. Unable to pay it, he remained in jail. For reasons that are still unclear, but possibly as punishment for his verbal abuse of the sheriff’s deputies, Price was denied food. Three months later, after being found eating his own feces, he died. The local coroner ruled that his death was caused by “starvation.”

The Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee found that two female prisoners had been forced to perform “sex shows” for a guard. The guard, Travis Hank Davis, forced the women to perform sex acts on each other while he watched and masturbated. The court granted the women a settlement of $110,000. Davis was fired, but no charges were brought against him.

The state of Pennsylvania agreed to pay prisoner Warren Easley $30,000 after 15 guards were found to have beaten and tortured him because they were angry that he repeatedly attempted suicide. His attempts resulted in more than 60 stitches and three outside hospital visits.

Perry Belden, a prisoner in San Bernardino County, California, kept saying he was sick. Guards ignored him until they finally found him unconscious on the floor of his cell. It turned out that Belden was in renal failure. He had to have both of his legs and his left hand amputated. A judge found that he had been suffering from potentially lethal dehydration for days before passing out. The court granted Belden $1.25 million in damages.

The family of Cindy Lou Hill was granted $27 million after guards in the Spokane County Jail denied Hill medical care for a ruptured intestine. She died in agony after three days, found in a pool of her own blood and vomit.

Chad Stanbro was awarded $2.06 million after a beating from guards left him paralyzed from the neck down. What did he do to deserve such treatment? While getting a tooth pulled in the prison infirmary, Stanbro knocked over a medical device.

Vincent Keith Bell, a prisoner in the San Francisco Jail, was awarded $1.1 million after he was denied use of his prosthetic leg and his wheelchair and was forced to hop everywhere he needed to go, including to court. Bell received an additional award after proving that a guard had whispered to him that she “thought he was beautiful and wanted to see his penis.” After he refused, the guard targeted him for especially rough treatment.

The family of Virginia prisoner Robert Lee Boley was granted $2.215 million after he died in the Deerfield Men’s Work Center from a treatable aneurysm. “Treatable” is the operative word here. Boley complained repeatedly that he was in excruciating pain, only to be given Mylanta and forced back to work.

It’s clear that the U.S. criminal justice system is irreparably broken at every level. The only solution — and this has proven effective in Scandinavia — is to change the entire system into one of training, education and mental health.

Hiring better people by paying them a decent wage might be a good start. Rather than hiring morons who can barely read and write, who washed out of the local police academy, or who couldn’t make it in the military, perhaps guard candidates should have teaching certificates or should be able to offer vocational training.

That should come after decriminalizing so many of the stupid laws on the books. It’s not an accident that the U.S. is the most incarcerated country on Earth. The system has to change immediately. Anything would be better than what exists now.

John Kiriakou is a former C.I.A. counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/12/01/j ... s-prisons/

All too true, but no pity for any cop of any sort on the receiving end of street justice while in 'the place' where they have sent so many.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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