Police, prison and abolition

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Tue Oct 19, 2021 2:44 pm

The Supreme Court Deals a Harsh, Unanimous Blow to Police Reform
Two decisions reflect the justices’ continued desire to shield violent officers from accountability.
BY MARK JOSEPH STERN
OCT 18, 20215:16 PM

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Police officers in Portland monitor a Black Lives Matter protest. KATHRYN ELSESSER/Getty Images

The Supreme Court dealt a blow to police reform in two unanimous decisions on Monday shielding officers from lawsuits accusing them of illegal brutality. Both rulings endorse a nearly insurmountable version of qualified immunity, the doctrine that protects police and other state officials from suit, raising the bar even higher for victims of unconstitutional conduct. The rulings are a major setback for the campaign to rein in qualified immunity and a clear signal that a majority of the court remains eager to protect violent officers from accountability.

Each of Monday’s decisions involve claims of unconstitutional force. In the first, Rivas-Villegas v. Cortesluna, officers shot a man with a “bean bag round” (actually a lead shot in cloth) twice at close range because he had a knife pointing face-up in his pants pocket. The officers then kneeled on the man’s back for eight seconds. In the second case, Tahlequah v. Bond, officers fatally shot a man because he refused to drop a hammer that he was allegedly wielding as a weapon. The plaintiffs in both cases accused the officers of violating the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against excessive force. The officers sought to dismiss the suits by asserting qualified immunity.

Surprisingly, the courts of appeals denied the officers’ requests, allowing both cases to go to a jury. These decisions were unusual because the Supreme Court has imposed a stringent requirement on civil rights plaintiffs suing state officials, including police: They must not only prove that an officer infringed on a constitutional right, but also that this right was “clearly established” at the time. Unless there is precedent explicitly stating that the officer’s conduct was illegal, the victim cannot even take their case to a jury. Instead, a judge must throw the case out by granting the officers qualified immunity.

This rule, which the Supreme Court made up out of whole cloth, has wreaked havoc on Fourth Amendment rights, preventing countless victims of police brutality from getting their day in court. Most lower courts apply the doctrine vigorously, granting qualified immunity unless there is a precedent with virtually identical facts. If a victim cannot point to a past decision in which a court found that the exact same conduct was unconstitutional, they lose immediately.

This approach leads to grotesque results. Consider, for instance, the officer shielded from suit after shooting an innocent man in his own home for no reason, or the officer protected by qualified immunity after allowing his police dog to maul a random homeless man. In both cases, the cops received qualified immunity because the courts could not identify a precedent with indistinguishable facts in which a court found a constitutional violation. As a result, the rights at issue were not “clearly established.” On the rare occasions when lower courts denied qualified immunity, the Supreme Court routinely reversed them in an unsigned summary opinion (called a per curiam) without oral argument or full briefing. In 2020, a Pulitzer Prize–winning Reuters investigation found that courts are granting qualified immunity to cops in a huge and ever-growing number of cases.

Over the last year, however, it appeared that the justices were retreating from their near-absolute position. In November 2020, the Supreme Court issued a per curiam decision in Taylor v. Riojas. The facts of the case were appalling: Correctional officers in Texas forced a man to sleep naked in a cell covered in feces and sewage for six days. Incredibly, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted qualified immunity to the officers who inflicted this torture, finding that they violated no “clearly established” right. By a 7–1 vote, the Supreme Court summarily reversed the 5th Circuit. The majority held that the victim’s treatment was so “egregious” that “any reasonable officer should have realized” that it violated his constitutional rights. Instead of focusing on whether these rights were “clearly established,” the majority focused on their “obviousness.”
The court dashed any hopes that it would seriously reconsider qualified immunity.
Three months later, the Supreme Court summarily reversed another 5th Circuit decision granting qualified immunity to vicious prison guards, McCoy v. Alamu. The case involved an officer who blasted an incarcerated person in the face with pepper spray for no apparent reason. Initially, the 5th Circuit found that this act violated no “clearly established” right. But the Supreme Court ordered it to reassess that conclusion in light of Taylor.

These decisions led observers to speculate that the court was stepping back from its unwavering commitment to qualified immunity. Specifically, the justices seemed to relax the standard for “clearly established” rights, suggesting that officers could lose immunity if they engaged in obviously plainly unreasonable barbarity. The speculation intensified in June when SCOTUS issued a 6–3 decision vacating a grant of quality immunity to correctional officers who held an incarcerated person inmate in a prone position while putting pressure on his chest.

On Monday, though, the court dashed any hopes that it would seriously reconsider the doctrine. Rivas-Villegas and Tahlequah are blunt decisions filled with harsh language toward the lower courts for daring to deny qualified immunity. In both cases, the lower courts cited precedents with roughly similar facts in which they found a violation of a “clearly established” right. Yet SCOTUS retorted that they had defined these rights “at too high a level of generality.” It insisted that these precedents were “materially distinguishable” on the basis of minor differences in fact patterns. For example, in Tahlequah, the officers walked at a normal pace toward the victim; in a past case, the officers sprinted toward him. In Rivas-Villegas, the officer merely placed his knee on the victim; in a past case, the officer “dug his knee into” him. These distinctions, the court concluded, are enough to merit qualified immunity.

The court’s hair-splitting exercise illustrates what one judge called an “Escherian Stairwell.” No two cases are exactly alike; there is always a way to distinguish precedents. If a court wants to grant qualified immunity, it can almost always find some way to differentiate a previous case from the one before it. In Monday’s decisions, SCOTUS sent a message that it will flyspeck lower court decisions granting qualified immunity, scolding them for ruling against cops in all but the most egregious cases. Rivas-Villegas and Tahlequah tell judges that they are on much firmer ground when they shield police from civil suits. The rulings incentivize decisions in favor of the police, even in cases with brutal facts. And so, by extension, they normalize reckless and violent behavior by law enforcement officers, who can remain confident that SCOTUS won’t force them to answer for their misconduct.

No justice dissented from Monday’s rulings—not even Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is often a lonely voice against police brutality. The odds that the Supreme Court will reform its own qualified immunity jurisprudence are extremely low. Congress could abolish it, but Republicans refuse to weaken the doctrine even slightly, calling reform a “poison pill.” States can end qualified immunity under their own laws, and several already have, granting relief to victims who are locked out of state court. This progress is certainly welcome, but it shouldn’t be necessary in the first place. The Supreme Court invented qualified immunity all by itself. And the court should bear the burden of destroying it.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... eform.html

Qualified immunity, better characterized as guaranteed impunity, is a lynch pin of the legal framework of capitalist hegemony in our society. To expect the Supremes to rule against the thugs who are the final defenders of the status quo fails to recognize the function of the Supreme Court, which like the Executive and Senate is to keep the bosses in the driver's seat, forever. A fine illustration of where liberals really stand.

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San Francisco Court’s Racist Denial of the Constitutional Right to a Speedy Trial
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 13 Oct 2021

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San Francisco Public Defender Manohar Raju speaking at a rally for the right to a speedy trial outside San Francisco Superior Court.

San Francisco Public Defender Manohar Raju spoke to Ann Garrison about why his office is suing San Francisco Superior Court for denying hundreds of Black and Brown people the speedy trial rights guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution.

Ann Garrison: In a press release, your office wrote, “The population of San Francisco is 5.6% Black. As of September 7, 2021, of the people in jail awaiting trial past their last day for trial, approximately 53.5% are Black." That’s even worse than the racially disproportionate incarceration rate. Is that because 53.5% of people charged with crimes in San Francisco are Black, or because more of them are still awaiting trial because of the pandemic?

San Francisco Public Defender Manohar Raju: We believe that this massive racial disparity in the number of people past their last day for trial can be traced to the disparity that already exists in the jail’s population because of biased arrest, charging and pretrial release decisions. The people incarcerated in San Francisco County Jail are approximately 50% Black. The vast majority of them are detained before trial. As a result, Black people make up more than half of the people unfairly deprived of their speedy trial.

AG: Most everything else has fully opened up in San Francisco, albeit with vaccine mandates for indoor spaces. Why haven’t the criminal courts?

MR: That is exactly the point we are raising. The courts have ostensibly re-opened as of this summer, but the criminal courts have remained locked and empty. The court has been citing the pandemic as the reason for this massive backlog, but it doesn’t explain the current situation, which we believe is due to a number of other chronic problems, as is alleged in the lawsuit.

AG: You said in a recent press release that other California counties are managing to meet the deadlines for granting defendants a right to a speedy trial. But this seems to be a problem in other major cities including Washington, DC and Los Angeles . Do you have any idea how widespread this problem is?

MR: It is true that other California counties in and around San Francisco are rising to the challenge. For example, San Mateo County holds jury selection for three trials at once at their spacious County Events Center. The Sonoma County court holds jury selection at their County Fairgrounds. And Sacramento has held court in a college ballroom. Why isn’t there a single written record showing the San Francisco Court made an effort to find alternative locations to hold trials? Neighboring Contra Costa, a county of 1,153,526 people, handled 103 felony and misdemeanor criminal jury trials between May 2020 and April 2021, with no resulting COVID-19 cases. San Francisco held a mere 23 criminal trials from March 2020 to reopening.

Los Angeles is a county of 10 million and the situation there is not great. This humanitarian crisis needs to be addressed everywhere it exists, and with urgency. It is the role and responsibility of each county court’s presiding judge and CEO to manage the court’s proper functioning, allocate resources in compliance with the law and its duties, and alert and raise issues with the Judicial Council, its governing body, especially when it is violating the rights of over 400 people within its jurisdiction, as it is in San Francisco. We have seen no action by the court despite our attorneys filing legal motions and fighting every day for this fundamental, constitutional right to be upheld.

AG: The Sixth Amendment doesn’t specify a timeline for its guarantee of a “speedy trial.” Is there a single deadline or does this vary from state to state or county to county?

MR: California state law requires a trial court to set felony trial dates within 60 days of arraignment, unless the right is waived. It’s shorter, 30 and 45 days for in-custody and out-of-custody misdemeanor cases. It does not vary from county to county because it’s California state law. Other states have codified the speedy trial right in different ways.

AG: If it varies, what is the deadline in San Francisco? And what’s the range of days that defendants awaiting trial have been waiting past the legal deadline?

MR: The range is from a couple of days to close to a year.

AG: In April, US District Judge Cormac J. Carney dismissed at least four criminal cases in Los Angeles because the pandemic had, he ruled, denied them the right to a speedy trial guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. He said, “Now here in the Constitution is there an exception for times of emergency or crisis.” However, a three-judge panel of the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision within a manner of weeks. Do you have reason to think that your lawsuit against the San Francisco Superior Court will be more successful?

MR: The San Francisco lawsuit is civil. It alleges, among other causes of action, that the court is violating a specific statute—CA Penal Code section 1050(a), which says that the court must prioritize criminal over civil trials. The lawsuit demands that the SF Superior Court prioritize criminal trials over civil ones, and devote all the resources at their disposal—including Civic Center courtrooms—to restoring the right of the criminally accused to a speedy trial in San Francisco.

AG: What sort of conditions are these defendants jailed in?

MR: Deplorable and inhumane conditions. Our community members have often been caged for 23 hours per day or more because of the COVID pandemic. This solitary-like confinement is even more oppressive than pre-COVID conditions of confinement. The few minutes per day that many of our clients get out of their cells, they need to choose between calling a loved one, taking a shower, and using supplies to clean their cell.

AG: What about those who are out on bail but still awaiting trial? How is this impacting their lives and their families?

MR: Even people who are not in jail, but whose speedy trial rights are being violated, are suffering. This is because they too are suffering oppressive pretrial conditions of release—such as orders that they stay away from their homes, neighborhoods and loved ones, and having the weight of a criminal charge weighing over them for a year or more while they wait to be vindicated in court.

AG: Are there any particular cases you’d like us to know about?

MR: There are countless cases we could highlight. Here are several examples included in the complaint: RAJU v. SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO .

Paragraph 63: Robert Brewer was detained in jail from August 19, 2020 to May 4, 2021, charged with murder. He never waived his right to a speedy trial. He was finally brought to trial in March 2021, three months after his trial deadline had passed. At trial, the jury acquitted him of all homicide offenses. He lost three additional months of his life and was released on the day of the verdict.

Paragraph 64: Emonie Bailey is a San Franciscan detained in jail who never waived his right to a speedy trial. He has been in custody since May 14, 2020, and his original trial deadline was January 19, 2021. His case was not sent to a trial department for trial until August 13, 2021, well over a year since his arrest and incarceration. Once sent out to a trial department, his case resolved. Under the jail’s COVID-19 policy, Mr. Bailey was confined to his cell for a minimum of 23 hours a day. Frequent lockdowns meant that he had only been allowed to leave his cell two or three times a week. In the fourteen months that he had been detained, he had been deprived of in person-visits with his family. Such isolation can cause permanent mental, emotional, and physical harm.

Paragraph 65: Elias Zuniga is another San Franciscan detained in jail who has asserted his right to a speedy trial. He has been in jail since January 19, 2021. He is only allowed to leave his cell one hour per day. He has only had one Zoom visit from his sister, which required the assistance of his public defender to set up. The deadline for his speedy trial was May 4, 2021. Defendant Court has set his trial for November 4, 2021.

AG: Is there anything else you’d like to say?

MR: The criminal legal system in San Francisco is a continuation of the legacy of racial enslavement and colonialism. The court is denying hundreds of Black and Brown people their speedy trial rights and acting like it’s business as usual. We need all of us in their fight, and we should understand that this is not just a legal issue. It goes to the core of the struggle against race and class oppression in this country.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/san-f ... eedy-trial
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Mon Oct 25, 2021 1:50 pm

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No Charges for Unnamed Federalized Deputies that Killed Winston Smith

Every Officer Involved in the North Star Task Force Refused to Speak with Investigators

By Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot October 18, 2021

Minneapolis, MN – The federalized undercover officers working on the task force that killed Winston Boogie Smith Jr., were exercising “lawful authority,” and will not face charges said Crow Wing prosecutor Donald Ryan in a letter made public on October 11, 2021. A press conference was held four days later in which attorneys for Smith’s family revealed that all officers involved in the task force refused to speak with investigators after killing Smith.


An upcoming comedian, artist, and father of three, 32-year-old Winston Smith was fatally shot on June 3 by two unnamed deputies while in a car atop an Uptown Minneapolis parking ramp with his date after eating lunch. Smith’s killing led to weeks of continued community protest, the trending of #WinstonSmithWasAssassinated on social media, and public fallout from agencies in the U.S. Marshals-run task force over the yet-to-be implemented body cam policy.

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Winston Smith in a photo posted to Instagram in April 2021

The announcement of no charges came 130 days after the North Star Fugitive Task Force killed Smith during an operation to apprehend him on a warrant for a disputed firearms charge.
“Smith was looking at the Task Force Members at his driver’s door with a look of annoyance/disgust on his face”

“Though I am unable to determine who fired first, it is irrelevant … no criminal prosecution is warranted.”

Prosecutor Don Ryan’s letter of ruling in Winston Smith case
The task force was led by the U.S. Marshals and present the day Smith was killed were deputies from Anoka, Hennepin and Ramsey County sheriff’s departments and officers from the Minnesota Department of Corrections and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The investigation was handled by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), whom announced on June 9 that they would not be disclosing the names of the two deputies who killed Smith, one from Hennepin and the other Ramsey County, because they were working undercover. Prosecutorial powers were given to Crow Wing County Attorney Don Ryan, of Brainerd, Minnesota by Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman due to a conflict-of-interest with Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department involvement in the task force.

Aside from two short news releases made by the BCA on this incident (June 4, June 9), there has been no public statements from authorities, no press conference, and no evidence released.

Ryan released his findings by sending Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman a one-page cover letter and a five-page report summarizing the basis for his decision. Ryan said he reviewed the material and evidence given to him following the BCA’s investigation and after making site visits to the BCA to review the case.

As stated during the Friday presser by Smith’s legal team, missing in the material presented to Crow Wing County Attorney Ryan was interviews from the task force members involved. Each agent refused to give any information and were able to provide written statements after having time to consult with their attorneys and colleagues. The findings were dated October 6 and made public on October 11, 2021.


In his findings, Ryan specified charges that Smith was facing and how a bench warrant was issued on May 20, 2021, after Smith didn’t appear for sentencing the day before. He described how the task force tracked Smith on social media and surveilled him and his date while they ate lunch at Stella’s Fish House on West Lake Street in Uptown Minneapolis and surrounded them in a vehicle atop the parking ramp across the street.

Ryan detailed the stages of operation in the field, summaries of witnesses, the fact that body cam videos exist from immediately after the shooting, and police perceptions of Smith as they say he went from holding his phone to initiating “a deadly confrontation … by drawing his handgun and firing” before they fatally shot him and then detained his date.

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Unmarked police cars surrounded the vehicle Smith and his date were in as they killed him – photo via Chris Juhn, Minnesota Spokesman Recorder

Authorities gathering intelligence on Smith were following his social media postings and according to Ryan, on June 3, the North Star Fugitive Task Force was notified that Smith was eating at Stella’s, responded to the area and split up to locate Smith and his vehicle and formulated a plan of surveillance and detainment.

Members of the task force took surveillance positions to watch Smith after spotting him and his vehicle and confirming the information based on Smith’s internet posts. They used the postings to gauge their plan. Ryan wrote that one of the posts featured content that showed Smith brandishing a gun so they decided approaching him after he ate lunch and back at his vehicle was the safest. A search of Smith’s known social media posts by Unicorn Riot could not corroborate the video of Smith holding a gun exists.

The task force watched Smith and his date until they left Stella’s and allowed them to return to the car where agents were ordered to box-in Smith’s vehicle and form stack approaches to arrest him while others covered potential exit points.

“Once they were inside the vehicle the command to move in and arrest Smith was given,” wrote Ryan, who continued that emergency lights and sirens were activated while they boxed Smith’s car in with unmarked vehicles and then “after about 10 seconds, the sirens were turned off, but the lights remained on.” Task force members then reportedly identified themselves over the P.A. of their vehicles and verbally while yelling at Smith to put his hands up and that he was under arrest.

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Page 2 of Crow County Attorney Letter Detailing Findings in Winston Smith case

“Smith did not comply,” wrote Ryan. He said task force members then formed two stacks behind ballistic shields, one on each side of the vehicle Smith was in. After “approximately three minutes,” officers moved in and unsuccessfully tried to open Smith’s locked door, leading them to strike numerous blows to Smith’s window with a break tool.

Ryan notes that while the stacks of heavily armed plainclothes officers were pointing their weapons and yelling demands, Smith’s date was “crying hysterically and shaking” and appeared to be “yelling at Smith.” Meanwhile, Smith was responding to his date, “doing something on his phone,” and looking at the agents “with a look of annoyance/disgust on his face,” wrote Ryan.

He said Smith then reached in the back seat and an agent in the stack yelled “don’t do it, then gun, gun, gun, he’s reaching for/he’s got a gun” before he shot twice through the car from behind Smith’s date on the passenger side. The officer who was attempting to break the window on Smith’s side then dropped the break tool and fired 12 shots into the driver’s side front window.

A task force member smashed out the rear window of the vehicle as Smith slumped and lay dying, said Ryan. Smith’s date was immediately detained and the officers fell back, regrouped, and later pulled Smith out of the passenger side of the vehicle and placed him on the ground, where Ryan said agents then attempted “life saving measures until paramedics arrive approximately 15 minutes later.”

Ryan wrote that 14 bullets were shot at Smith (12 from drivers side and 2 from passenger) and that Smith shot six bullets from inside the car towards the task force member outside the drivers door with a .380. According to Ryan, none of the bullets Smith shot penetrated past the door. According to the BCA, a Smith & Wesson M&P 380 handgun was recovered in between the drivers seat and the door with a bullet in the chamber and six fired cartridge casings found (2 driver’s seat, 1 driver’s side floor, 3 center console).

There was no video and no other direct witness to the killing besides Smith’s date and the officers involved, says the BCA. Ryan’s report includes three witness statements: a bystander across the street when the incident occurred reportedly told the BCA they heard a siren, “saw a police car in the parking ramp,” and heard agents yelling commands and being “really patient“; a Stella’s employee who heard the shots and saw officers smash the back window and detain Smith’s date; and Smith’s date herself, who they say was interviewed by Minneapolis Police in previously unmentioned body camera video. Read Ryan’s report below:

Smith’s date’s name is Norhan Askar – she was next to him when he was killed and is written in the Ryan report as “N.A.” Askar filed a lawsuit against Hennepin and Ramsey County Sheriffs’ Departments this summer claiming assault, battery, negligence, emotional distress, and the denial of her civil rights (due process: state created danger and reasonableness of seizure: excessive force, failure to announce).

Askar was injured from the police shooting into the vehicle and “suffered severe emotional trauma” from the incident.

Askar’s account of events differs from the version told by the authorities on two main points: Askar says she never saw Smith with a gun, and she claims the unmarked vehicles and plainclothes agents never announced themselves as law enforcement. Read Askar’s lawsuit below:

Kidale Smith, Winston’s brother, said the family is struggling to deal with the emotional trauma while speaking during the press conference on October 15 inside the Hennepin County Government Center.

The common theme amongst the speakers at the conference was the demand for transparency from the authorities. Toshira Garraway of Families Supporting Families Against Police Violence, Zaynab Mohamed of Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN), Dave Bicking of Communities United Against Police Brutality (CUAPB), Johnathan McClellan of Minnesota Justice Coalition, as well as Eric Newmark along with Chris Scott from the Newmark Storms Dworak law firm, all spoke during the 30-minute long presser.

Newmark called the BCA’s investigation “severely flawed” and said the words of Bob Dylan, “the executioner’s face is always well hidden,” had never been more true.

He then spoke about the meeting he had with Crow County Attorney Don Ryan about Ryan’s findings. Newmark said they didn’t get many questions answered but they learned that every task force member declined to be interviewed by the investigators and that Ryan refused to convene a grand jury.
“Every single member of that task force that was present when Winston Smith was murdered, when he was killed, refused to submit to an interview to the BCA.

Every single law enforcement officer refused to submit to an interview. Think about that. They all provided written statements with time to consult with their attorneys with time to consult with their colleagues.“

Eric Newmark, Winston Smith family attorney from Newmark Storms Dworak
In regards to the bullet fragments and firearm which the BCA report states were recovered from the vehicle Smith was killed in, Newmark said they’ve seen “no evidence” and hadn’t been provided with the vehicle nor the ballistics report. He said the next steps were to get the materials released while they continue to push for an independent investigation and a grand jury to be convened.

Kidale said he’s heartbroken for Winston’s toddler children that survive him: “I don’t think they realize that he’s not coming back … that’s heartbreaking … As they get older they’re gonna have to deal with that and eventually come to the reality of it, you know?” Kidale has put together a GoFundMe fundraising campaign to help provide support for Winston’s children.

https://unicornriot.ninja/2021/no-charg ... ton-smith/

Could it not be clearer that the cops will never, never, give up their impunity? They say they cannot function without it and that is correct, that is why they must be abolished.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Fri Oct 29, 2021 1:35 pm

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Private Mercenary Group Targets, Assaults, & Detains Anti-Police Protesters in Uptown Minneapolis
The first in a series on little known security firm Conflict Resolution Group and their founder Nathan Seabrook who is working hand-in-hand with local police

By Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot and Sam Richards, Contributor October 27, 2021

Minneapolis, MN – Conflict Resolution Group (CRG) has not generated many headlines in the local press, yet the private security firm run by ex-mercenaries and hired by property owners, has assaulted, detained, threatened, and surveilled community members while providing armed patrols in Uptown Minneapolis. “It’s an evolution in repressive tactics,” says Michelle Gross, President of Communities United Against Police Brutality.

Private security firms previously made the news toward the end of the 2020 Presidential Election when backlash kept Tennessee-based Atlas Aegis away from ‘guarding’ polling locations. But now that mercenary boots are actually on the ground with CRG confronting and dismantling a protest encampment following the killing of Winston Smith, and with their abusive interactions with activists and passersby alike, there has been a dearth of coverage.

Before CRG
After federally deputized agents in a task force killed Winston Smith on June 3, protests erupted in Uptown. Weeks of continued demonstrations occurred, along with an aggressive police response. The night of his death, fires were lit in the street and roves of hooded youths ransacked West Lake T-Mobile after police pulled up with their laser sight shining at the crowd and violently arrested several protesters.

Protests continued daily with community members gathering near the parking ramp and the one-block-long pedestrian walkway on Girard Avenue, on the eastside of Seven Points, formerly-named Calhoun Square shopping center. Activists renamed the walkway as Wince Way in homage to Winston Smith, and over the next weeks painted it and the concrete on the parking ramp with anti-police slogans.

Ten days after Smith was killed, 35-year-old Nicholas Kraus attacked the protest site with his vehicle by driving at a high speed through several barricades and into a car on Girard Ave. and Lake St., killing Deona Marie and injuring others. Kraus was charged with murder and has his next court date on November 3.

Two days after the car attack, Minneapolis Police, along with sheriffs and officers from a litany of departments, cleared barricades around the protest site. Dozens of people were arrested and several were injured through the night from police violence.


A community-run memorial garden named the Wince-Marie Peace Garden was then erected on Lake St. and Girard Ave. and self-managed by those seeking justice for Smith and Deona Marie (there was also an ongoing vigil site at the place of Marie’s death).

The Peace Garden had repurposed the vacant lot that barely sustained patches of grass into an ongoing vigil site showcasing vegetable gardens, protest slogans, free meals and was a functional home for a number of community members.


Portions of the location that were included in the memorial were not privately owned and extended onto surrounding sidewalks and similarly public land. Northpond Partners, headquartered in Chicago, is the owner of the lot that extends from Girard to Fremont Avenue and the adjoining shopping center called Seven Points, which sits from Girard to Hennepin Avenue.

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Wince Marie Peace Garden on July 2, 2021 via Make TC Safe Again/Instagram

CRG Arrives During Eviction Led by We Push for Peace, in Conjunction with MPD
CRG’s initial arrival to Wince Way was shocking to many in the community. On July 14, activists holding the space at the garden were given little notice in the pre-dawn hours that they were about to be violently shoved off of the property.

“At around 4:00 a.m. we noticed five vehicles back behind the space with 8-10 white guys amidst them. They claimed to be making a music video,” explained Mattie, a protester and eyewitness to the CRG eviction. When Mattie and others approached the vehicles, they quickly drove off.

Soon thereafter, crane vehicles loaded up with jersey barriers and fencing arrived. This was followed by the arrival of several We Push for Peace members backed by CRG, who were in turn backed by Minneapolis Police.

Mattie explained, “We Push for Peace told us we had five minutes to gather our belongings before we’d be arrested. They threatened to throw my phone in the fire for taking pictures.” Concurrently, several MPD chaplains removed the memorial for Deona and everything the protesters could not carry with them was “bulldozed and trashed,” said Mattie.

Although complying with the requests, Mattie and others said they were harassed and assaulted by We Push for Peace members, who allegedly made multiple threats including telling one protester “to die” and explicitly threatened to murder another. When Mattie confronted them, one of the members slapped Mattie across the face, resulting in their phone being knocked to the ground.

We Push for Peace is one of seven groups hired by the City of Minneapolis’ Office of Violence Prevention. Activists have called them counter-insurgents hired by the city to do anti-protest work in a similar fashion to contracting Agape during the city’s removal of barricades at George Floyd Square or Minnesota Freedom Fighters during protests for Daunte Wright. We Push for Peace founder Trahern Pollard says their job is to “bridge the gap between law enforcement and our community” and provide employment. Since they’ve started street patrols and a contract at Cub Foods in St. Paul, there have been numerous reports of violence against the community perpetrated by their members, including two separate members being charged with different assaults on customers in Cub in the last few months.

Following the assault on Mattie by a We Push for Peace member and other squabbles in the early morning hours of the Peace Garden eviction, many of the activists decided to film and observe from a distance.

As the eviction was happening, the men who had said they were there making a music video showed up dressed in fatigues with vests and helmets on, many donning pepper spray, firearms, zip ties, and glow sticks. Members of We Push for Peace can be heard on a video posted to social media completely unaware of the identity of the armed guards from CRG who had just arrived.

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Armed CRG members, including founder Nathan Seabrook (right), wearing fatigues, bullet proof vests, and glow sticks on July 14, 2021 in Uptown Minneapolis providing security for property during eviction of Wince Marie Peace Garden – pictures via social media

Nathan Seabrook, pictured above, is the head of CRG and is listed as an ex-police officer and an army veteran. He created CRG in the wake of the George Floyd uprising and he’s expressed contempt for Minneapolis in a now-deleted podcast calling the city a “shit hole.” Logos seen on some of the CRG member’s shirts lend credence to claims that the group is composed of former Special Operators which the company advertises. More on Seabrook in the next part of this series.

CRG Targets, Assaults, and Detains Activists

Within the first couple days of patrolling the five-level parking ramp, members of CRG had already detained and assaulted protesters, leaving one with a traumatic brain injury after punching them in the head. This assault caught the attention of the ACLU and the National Lawyer’s Guild, who joined activists at a press conference to denounce the actions of the security firm.
“We’ve got three people with grievous injuries. I’m working with an individual who has gotten a traumatic brain injury as a result of being punched in the head by these people just for merely walking on their little driveway, and asking them a question. This conduct is unacceptable, and more unacceptable is the fact that they appear to be in league with the Minneapolis Police Department.”

Michelle Gross, President of Communities United Against Police Brutality
The main assault occurred around 10:15 p.m. on July 14, the first night of CRG’s patrol. A community member named Hayley attempted to ask what the security personnel were doing in her neighborhood and within minutes she was accosted, pushed to the ground, punched, and then detained before CRG let her go amidst backlash from witnesses who were recording the incident. Multiple angles of video showing the CRG assault made the rounds on social media.

The next day many community members came to the site with some attempting to gain answers from CRG as to what happened the night before. CRG, in turn, detained several people for trespassing and arrested Link, a human rights advocate.

Link and another person detained by CRG spoke publicly about their experiences during the July 20 press conference. Community member Tony Nordby said he went near the parking ramp around 1 p.m. on July 15 and was “physically grabbed” and detained by Nathan Seabrook and two other CRG members. They went through his pockets, took his phone, I.D., and other belongings. He was eventually let go after being given a trespassing ticket.

A little over an hour later, CRG detained Link and handed him over to the police to arrest him. Link explained during the press conference and in an interview with Unicorn Riot afterwards, that he went to the parking ramp with the intent to speak to a supervisor about the assault that had occurred the night before, and within seconds, he was grabbed and detained by Nathan Seabrook while other security personnel surrounded Link with weapons. A Minneapolis Police officer was present during the incident and eventually brought Link to Hennepin County Jail for trespassing.
“[Seabrook’s] telling me I’m under arrest. An MPD officer who’s there from the jump walks up nonchalantly casually, ‘Link, you’re under arrest, Link stop resisting’ – His buddies come out of the parking structure hands on their weapon and one of them comes out with like a marker round shooter … I dropped to the ground, they get to like, roughing me up or whatever, trying to put me in zip ties and stuff. The police is like ‘Yeah, Link, you’re under arrest; so then they picked me up put me in the parking structure.”

Link, human rights advocate detained by CRG and arrested by Minneapolis Police
Before Link was brought to jail, he was detained in the parking ramp by CRG, who took all of the items out of his pocket and mentioned personal information about him, signalling that they’ve been surveilling him.
“The supervisor of the security company stated details about me … He’s taking my personal property out of my pocket pointing out and talking about it and basically saying identifying things about me and correlating it to my property … like, ‘Yo, How do you know that about me bro, you’re a private security company’ you know what I’m saying?”
Link said that interaction with them made sense after the “community did that investigative work” to find out who CRG was. (More on that in our second part of the series).
“We have mercenaries affecting arrests of community members who are not engaging in any kind of messed up activity, they’re going up and asking who they are. Link was attacked by these people, because he asked for the name of the supervisor. And it was in fact, the supervisor who attacked him. This is unacceptable. And we need to get these people out of here. And we need people to know what’s going on.”

John Barham, attorney for Link
Watch the full press conference along with three interviews of activists impacted by CRG’s actions below.



CRG Intelligence Gathering
“Their folks are operating a shadow fusion center” which signals this is a “new level” of repression and intimidation to have private mercenaries “addressing people by their names,” Gross said. Within the first day, CRG had already begun naming individuals present, making it clear that they have knowledge of their social media activity. Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT) gathering was how the North Star Fugitive Task Force located Winston Smith at Stella’s Fish Cafe prior to gunning him down in the parking garage across the street. Smith had posted an image of drinks from Stella’s on Instagram and the restaurant’s menu on SnapChat, which revealed his location to anyone monitoring.

CRG admits to employing SOCMINT, namely through leveraging a platform provided by EchoSec Systems. EchoSec is a Canadian based firm that “was built to provide mission-critical information about digital and physical threats for security and intelligence teams. Our corporate security clients are primarily in-house security teams in retail, oil and gas, healthcare, e-commerce, and manufacturing. Our public sector clients are intelligence agencies, fusion centers, and government security teams.” CRG also claims to deploy drones as part of their operations, however none have reportedly been used in Uptown.

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CRG members surveilling the press conference across the street from the fourth floor of the parking ramp on July 20, 2021

Concrete Barriers, Fencing, Surveillance, and Razor Wire

Since the eviction on July 14, the area has been fortified with concrete barricades, fencing, large spotlights, surveillance equipment, and armed security.

A couple weeks after the separate CRG assault and detainments occurred, a protest calling for justice for Winston was held at the site on the two-month anniversary since his death. During the August 3 gathering, Unicorn Riot interviewed a security personnel from United Protection Agency, a separate firm hired to work at Seven Points. They said they had no knowledge of CRG’s transgressions against the community and that they were there to “protect the shoppers.”

Protecting shoppers, property, and profits have become a large racket in Minneapolis since the police killed George Floyd over a fake twenty dollar bill, with many security firms like CRG, who formed after the uprising, benefiting.

Along with the uptick in private security, the use of concrete barriers and fencing has been seen extensively through the Twin Cities since the uprising. A small portion of the uses have been for protection from vehicles at memorial spaces like George Floyd Square, while a larger use has been to close off public spaces and vacant lots like the one that held the Wince Marie Peace Garden or the Lake Street Growth Space on 17th Ave and Lake St.

On October 3, during a vigil for Winston Smith on the fourth month since his death, armed CRG security members were filmed flashing strobe lights at protesters, mockingly playing an MLK speech, yelling at people by name, and attempting to incite the community. CRG also reportedly had a military-type truck parked on 31st St. and Girard and poured bleach into candles that were on site preventing community members from re-lighting them.

As the community gathered on Girard Ave and Lake Street to pay respects to Smith and Deona Marie, at least two people were called out by name by CRG: Link and Marcia Howard, who’s a mainstay at George Floyd Square. Screaming from the parking ramp to Link, a CRG member specified personal information about Link and said “we’ve been watching you.” Released video also shows an armed CRG member yelling at protesters from behind a fence while wearing a mask.


After initially using concrete barriers and fences, CRG fortified the perimeter fence surrounding the vacant lot with razor wire, which is prohibited by Minneapolis ordinance and labeled as hazardous. Casper Hill, a City of Minneapolis official, explained that typically the Zoning Enforcement Division will only act after receiving complaints from the public and will impose fines on violators.
“If a property is found to be in violation we use the standard City citation schedule, starting with $200, then doubling to $400, $800, $1,600, then on to $2,000 for each additional citation after that.”

Casper Hill, official for City of Minneapolis
The razor wire was installed on top of the fencing on October 10, a day before the announcement that no charges would be filed against the unnamed killers of Winston Smith.

Northpond and Seven Points have not responded to multiple requests for comment over the phone and via email about the use of razor wire and numerous other issues.

CRG did not respond to our requests for comment or interviews. We will update this article if they choose to comment.

Since July 14, CRG has provided armed patrols in the multi-block radius of Seven Points and from the now-fortified parking ramp where Winston Smith was killed. They’ve assaulted, detained, surveilled, and threatened community members as well as helped to eradicate a community garden and grieving space, all while in concert with the Minneapolis Police. Since the first day of CRG’s violent interactions with the community, activists have called for answers and accountability for their actions and for CRG to cease operating in that space.

As of October 27, 2021, CRG continues to occupy the parking ramp and vacant lot. In the second part of this series, we‘ll delve a bit more into CRG and Nathan Seabrook.

https://unicornriot.ninja/2021/private- ... nneapolis/

Other videos can be found at link.

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Russell “Maroon” Shoatz is Free, But Other Political Prisoners Languish
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 27 Oct 2021

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Russell “Maroon” Shoatz is Free, But Other Political Prisoners Languish

The demand for freedom of political prisoners must be consistently made for their sakes and for all at risk of joining them in the future.

Russell “Maroon” Shoatz has been granted compassionate release after 50 years in prison. The length of his sentence is outrageous but it is hardly unique. The United States not only has the dubious distinction of being the country with the largest population of incarcerated people, but it also has political prisoners held longer than anywhere else in the world. Shoatz is now 78-years old and suffering from cancer. To be blunt, he is being released so that he can die outside of prison walls.

Of course there is deeply felt happiness that Shoatz will be freed for whatever time remains in his life, but no one should forget the tortures he suffered, including 22 years in solitary confinement. No one should forget the other prisoners such as Mumia Abu Jamal, Ruchell Magee, Sundiata Acoli, and Dr. Mutulu Shakur. They are the best known, but there are hundreds of people imprisoned since the days of the liberation movement. That movement was crushed in part because its most committed fighters were locked away.

As the late Glen Ford pointed out, we must say their names while they are still alive. We must say their names because they still live, instead of only remembering those who are dead at the hands of the police. Our remembrance should not be restricted to those who have passed but should be expanded to include the men and women whose lives were taken from them by imprisonment under brutal conditions.

There is also an element of self defense in advocating for these elders. The members of the Black Liberation Army and Black Panther Party were obvious targets so many years ago, but so were people who took to the streets of Ferguson, Missouri in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown in 2014. Six of them died mysteriously in the years that followed. Others are serving long sentences for minor offenses. Anyone who makes themselves known as an activist is a potential political prisoner. The noble act of fighting for their freedom is also necessary self protection.

The defeat of the movement created amnesia for some and a genuine lack of knowledge for the generations that followed. Demanding community control of the police or defunding or abolition are logical steps in a process begun by the freedom fighters who have been locked away for so long. Today’s struggle against the state is a continuation of what Shoatz and others carried out decades ago.

Lest anyone forget, the state is no less dangerous now than it was 50 years ago when he and others were first imprisoned. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks the FBI changed tactics and began initiating crimes that were then prosecuted. Once again, draconian sentences were dispensed to Black people such as the Newburgh Four and the Liberty City Seven . They and others were entrapped by agent provocateurs who ensnared them in crimes they had created themselves and then testified against them in court.

Police departments all over the country surveil activists by old fashioned means and with the use of modern day technology. The Patriot Act was created in the days after September 11 and is regularly renewed by congress with as little scrutiny as when it was passed. The National Security Agency has records of every American’s electronic communications, from phone calls to emails. The FBI created a new designation, the Black Identity Extremist, which can mean anything they want it to mean, and gives them the ability to ensnare anyone they like for any reason at all.

The word fascism is bandied about frequently and often incorrectly. But it certainly applies in any description of Black people’s interactions with law enforcement. The mass incarceration state has quadrupled since 1970 and it can be said that most of those imprisoned are in fact political prisoners. The prison system grew so large in direct response to political activity. The end of legal segregation demanded a new means of control. It can be said that the more than one million incarcerated Black people are all political prisoners, locked away not because most of them are dangerous, but because the resistance of the 1960s and 1970s demanded harsh reaction.

We are grateful that Shoatz will be free but there are many more left behind bars. We can’t celebrate the release of the surviving members of the MOVE 9 or Shoatz or anyone else unless all of the names are lifted up. “What’s the call? Free 'em all!”
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 15, 2021 2:43 pm

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Invisible Scars

Originally published: Texas Observer by Jennifer Toon (November 10, 2021 ) | - Posted Nov 15, 2021

Iwas watching TV one night about four years ago when my friend Latrice bounced into the prison common area. She’d just gotten mail and found out her mom had finally saved enough money to bring her five kids to visit from Houston. She could barely contain her excitement. “I haven’t seen them all together in so long!” she exclaimed. Even though I didn’t have children, I understood the joy of visitation. My parents were also coming the same day, I told her. I hadn’t seen them in several months, as the almost four-hour drive from Kilgore to Gatesville was hard on them.

The next week, I walked into the strip room, where officers strip-searched us before visitation, elated to see my parents. Latrice was already there, in the process of removing her uniform for the officer on duty.

“It’s really sickening how you have all those kids and you choose to stay in here. Living wild with five children at home. How does that make you feel?” said the officer, an older woman, as she shook out Latrice’s shoes and threw them on the floor. (Latrice’s name has been changed to protect her privacy.)

My appearance turned the officer’s disgust toward me. “Offender, you stand over there! Stop crowding me while I’m doing this search. Do you want me to refuse your visit?” I felt my chest tighten with rage. I hadn’t done anything wrong. “No, ma’am,” I said and put my hands behind my back and retreated to the farthest wall as Latrice stood naked, holding out her uniform and undergarments to be searched. The officer snatched them from her hand and shook out each item. The berating quickly resumed. “I checked in all those kids and thought, ‘Jesus, what a selfish girl you must be to keep having babies and dumping them on your momma,’” she said. Latrice remained impassive, her eyes glazing over with an emptiness I knew well. I could feel our collective joy about visiting our families seeping out of us.

I watched Latrice’s unemotional face as she got dressed. I knew what she was thinking:

God, please don’t let this officer talk to me like this in front of my family.

After I was searched, the door opened and I saw my elderly parents sitting near the window. A beam of sunlight bathed the table in a warm glow. I smiled, and they rose to greet me for our one allowed hug. We were still settling into our seats when I heard the door open again. Latrice walked out and nervously scanned the room for her family. “Mommy!” a little girl cried, darting from the corner where an older woman sat huddled with four other children. “Baby!” Latrice dropped to her knees to embrace her youngest daughter, who had started sobbing. The tenderness of the moment transported me beyond prison, to times of unguarded happiness. Latrice suddenly looked vibrant and alive.

But then a familiar, booming voice cut in. “Offenders will sit at their designated table. Visitors will keep children under control!” the officer shouted. She flew around the tables, bumping into other visitors, as she made her way to the frightened child. “I’m sorry, she was excited. It won’t happen again,” Latrice said. The officer pointed her finger in the 5-year-old girl’s face.

Little girl, you need to put your bottom in that seat. If you don’t, your mommy is going back to her dorm and you won’t see her today.

The room was silent. Many family members were in shock. But I knew the other women were experiencing, as I was, a seething rage. We knew the officer had the ability to terminate our visits on a whim, so we didn’t dare provoke her. The insidious abuse of power and authority was as it was on any other day, but with our families subjected to it and us unable to intervene, a boiling anger consumed us. But fear overrode anger. Our eyes remained downcast, our mouths shut.

I remember little from the rest of the visit. My parents did their best to distract me from the tension in the room. I couldn’t shake it, though. I went back to the dorm and sat on the floor, trying to make sense of what I was feeling, reflecting on my past seven years in this place. The constant barrage of insults, the belittling, the daily microaggressions from prison staff were suffocating. I thought about how incarcerated men often explain their suffering by revealing the physical scars that incarceration leaves on their bodies. Scar tissue zigzagged across rugged faces and tattooed chests tell stories of survival from gang fights, use of force, and officer retaliation.

But who can see our scars? Life in prison is different for women. The fight for survival tends to be less physical. It’s the psychological abuse we endure, that we don’t know how to articulate, that wounds us. It’s the shaming of Latrice while she stood naked waiting to see her children. It’s the threat of not being able to see family for little or no reason at all. It’s the laughter from officers when a menstruating woman bleeds through her clothes and is still forced to wear them. Every day, all day, invisible wounds to the spirit.

In order to survive, we must endure it. Silently and unemotionally, apologetic and self-depreciating. We must participate in our own degradation by smiling along at jokes made at our expense or apologizing for things we were not responsible for. We betray our true selves to make officers and other prison staff feel comfortable about their cruelty.

I made up my mind that day to attempt to rectify the wrong done to Latrice, myself, and all the women around me. I just didn’t know how.

Almost a year after I was released from prison in 2018, a friend wrote to me from the inside. She told me about a woman who had reached down and plucked a small flower while they were on their way to work one morning. “We marveled at the simple beauty of that flower, when out of nowhere the warden, who just so happened to be walking down the other side of the sidewalk, began screaming at us. He said, ‘You right there, stop! Put your hands behind your back. Do you think this is a park? Do you think you’re at home? I ought to write you up,’” she wrote. “Over a flower. A flower!” She closed her letter,

There is something inside of me that is tired, something that is about to break apart, unhinged and unafraid.

I held her letter in my hands for a long time, staring at the last sentence. I thought about that day in visitation, about Latrice and her daughter and the years of psychological abuse.

At the time, I was on parole and still subject to the whims of authority. Years of incarceration had taught me that breaking the unwritten rule of silence meant punishment. On parole, retaliation wouldn’t be a canceled visit; it could possibly mean my freedom.

But that day, something inside of me finally broke apart. As I clutched that letter, the old rage in my chest turned into a furnace of resolve. It was then I knew how I would try to right those wrongs. I would refuse to remain silent and complacent any longer. I would write the stories of incarcerated women. I would stand in front of legislators and packed hearing rooms. I would bare this scarred soul for all the women who have suffered from the invisible violence of incarceration. The world will know the mark it left on us. We’re not laughing, smiling, or apologizing anymore.

https://mronline.org/2021/11/15/invisible-scars/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Sat Nov 20, 2021 4:15 pm

The whiny little shit skates

I was surprised that the punk walked. I never expected a deserved murder conviction, something like a low order manslaughter conviction, 5-10 years max.What was obvious on video was irrelevant, there were principles involved here, the 'ruling ideas 'of our time. The prejudiced judge made sure the issue was understood by the jury in terms of his liking, leaving little chance of any other outcome. Because Kyle was there to protect property, which gives licence to any outrage. Because murdering white allies of black protesters is damn near as good as murdering blacks. Because white privilege includes the right to overwhelming reaction to any perceived threat, however minuscule or fanciful.

I now await the reports and analysis of writers better than I(almost anybody...).
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Sun Nov 21, 2021 1:41 pm

Rittenhouse is guilty! No justice, no peace! Smash white supremacy!
November 20, 2021 John Parker

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Socialist Unity Party statement

Nov. 19 — Another empowerment of white supremacy occurred today, and it was endorsed by President Joe Biden, who blessed the jury decision exonerating a racist killer.

*We demand federal charges be brought against Kyle Rittenhouse in a real trial with a jury representing the community of Kenosha, Wis.
*We demand the prosecution of white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys, with which Rittenhouse made a public appearance, and others that have proven to be violent racist, terrorist organizations. Fascist, racist, terrorist organizations have no right to exist.
*We demand justice for Ahmaud Arbery, whose killers are now on trial in a Georgia court like the white supremacist-friendly court in Wisconsin.
Biden’s first public comment about the exoneration of Rittenhouse was: “The jury system works and we have to abide by it.”

That’s right: In Biden’s eyes, the jury system that usually exonerates cops and white supremacists terrorizing Black or Brown lives — even when the juries are 99% white — is working and above question.

The movement for social justice should take note of how comfortable Biden’s administration feels in dismissing the rage that is being felt by Black people and all progressive people at this moment.

What this verdict and the Biden administration are doing is actively empowering white supremacist, fascist forces: those who feel comfortable as Rep. Paul Gosar threatens to murder Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and gets away with no criminal charges. Or with the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man in Georgia who was simply jogging.

Or the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, especially targeting Black and Brown Congress members for death with a hangman’s noose erected nearby, getting at most a slap on the wrist. Or basically deputizing fascists in Texas, who could get a $10,000 bounty for their part in abusing women and denying their right to an abortion.

Empowering white supremacists

When then-President Donald Trump implied that Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense, that empowered his beloved Proud Boys. When the police, during last year’s protests in Kenosha, offered water to this 17-year-old, who was actively inciting violence and illegally in possession of an AR-15 assault rifle, then allowed him to walk away after killing two protesters and wounding another, that empowered and encouraged white supremacist violence.

The inciting event in Kenosha that started this nightmare of racism and terror was the racist police shooting of Jacob Blake by Rusten Sheskey, a white cop. Sheskey shot Blake in the back four times, then an additional three times in the side, simply because Blake was trying to get into his own car.

This cop also received no punishment. In October, the U.S. Department of Justice said it would not bring charges against this racist cop, who can clearly be seen on video unnecessarily shooting and attempting to kill Blake in front of his children.

The justified outrage and protest by the community after Blake’s shooting was met with heavily-armed police using tear gas and lethal force, while these same cops did nothing to stop the openly racist militias organizing with assault weapons to attack the protesters. This undoubtedly made Rittenhouse feel above the law and righteous in his white supremacy.

Rittenhouse felt invincible when he aimed his weapon at protesters while walking around to taunt them. When the cops offered him water that night, he knew he was being encouraged in his “sacred mission” — one he shared with the Proud Boys he later posed with.

After making bail, Rittenhouse was photographed in a bar flashing a white supremacist hand sign while standing next to high-ranking members of that group. That photo was not allowed as evidence to show his intent. Neither was a video where he proclaimed his desire to shoot “shoplifters.”

Right to self-defense against racist killers

During the trial it was made clear that Rittenhouse went into a community that was not his own to provoke a confrontation. Rittenhouse was driven for more than half an hour, across state lines, from his home in Illinois to Kenosha, where he stood in illegal possession of a military-style assault rifle with murderous intent.

The first person he shot and killed was Joseph Rosenbaum, whom Rittenhouse admitted was unarmed. In fact, the prosecution presented evidence from an FBI surveillance plane showing Rittenhouse following and confronting Rosenbaum. After the initial shot that brought Rosenbaum down, Rittenhouse continued shooting until he was dead.

This is what led to Rittenhouse being chased by those who put their lives on the line to protect the protesters against an active shooter. Another anti-racist protester, Anthony Huber, who like Rosenbaum was white and concerned for the welfare of the mostly-Black participants at the rally, was also killed by Rittenhouse. Gaige Grosskreutz was shot and wounded.

Rosenbaum’s, Huber’s and Grosskreutz’s solidarity and courage demand justice, along with the community under siege by racist thugs and the police. But justice won’t come from Biden — who admitted he didn’t even care enough to watch the trial.

Justin Blake, uncle of Jacob Blake, said at a protest after the verdict: “This President Biden and Harris sold out our family, sold out the Floyds … and the Taylor family. They said they were going to do things to square up what was going on in the African American community and have not, so juries like this will continue to happen … this was a god-awful sight for the world to see, the racism and the underbelly of racism that runs throughout this country in every jurisdiction.”

Both Democratic and Republican administrations have sold out the victims of racism and police terror by design — the design of a system in decline, where more vital services are being cut while poverty, homelessness and sickness grow, sacrificed at the altar of profit for the ultra-rich ruling class. The people’s demands for healthcare and economic justice are met with repression to discourage activism.

Repression includes the use of shock troops or extrajudicial entities, which are given cover by court chambers like that of Judge Bruce Schroeder. After the exoneration of all charges, the judge said he “couldn’t have asked for a better jury.”

Cops, courts and Klan work hand in hand

This judge — who screamed at the prosecution during the trial and had Trump rally music as his cellphone ringtone that interrupted the prosecution during the trial — was confident in the outcome, since he suppressed vital evidence and dismissed the charges that had the best chance of conviction, like being in possession of an assault weapon while underage.

Yes, it’s by design.

We need a better design of coordinated and unified activism, solidarity and unity, especially with the most oppressed Black, Brown and Indigenous communities. We need a design to build the type of actions outside of the courtrooms and legislative halls that shut down business as usual, unify our working class and people’s organizations like unions, support anti-racist and national liberation struggles, women’s struggles, LGBTQ2S movements, and provide defense from these emerging fascists empowered by racist judges and the white supremacist capitalist system.

The truth is that victories, like the conviction of George Floyd’s killer Derek Chauvin, are vital and important to move forward. But it must be remembered that this victory came from the militant protests demanding it. As we have just seen, that progress can be stolen as soon as the local, state and federal government feel the heat of militant street activism is off.

Not only is it necessary to keep up the heat, but also to better understand the necessity of bringing down this system that denies working people a voice in government; allows the use of all-white or nearly all-white juries; denies our demand that the profits we create be used for responsible, effective and universal healthcare that could have prevented most of the deaths from COVID-19 here in the U.S., instead of being used for imperialist war or racist police institutions that enable white supremacists.

That’s what socialism is all about — giving workers and poor and oppressed peoples the right to govern the profits they create for society, determine their own security forces, and eliminate those entities that protect and serve only the needs of the rich.

In the broad fight-back movement, we won’t all have the same opinion on the type of government we need or even if a revolution is necessary. But we can all agree today that action is needed to increase the heat on the Biden administration, to make it a lot less comfortable with its daily empowerment of the growing white supremacist, fascist danger.

Federal charges against Rittenhouse now! End white supremacy!

John Parker is the West Coast coordinator of the Socialist Unity Party.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2021/ ... supremacy/

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A SWAT police officer watches as demonstrators protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake outside the Kenosha County Courthouse on Tuesday, August 25, 2020 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. (Photo: Joshua Lott for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Kyle Rittenhouse Didn't Act Alone: Law Enforcement Must Be Held Accountable

The massive show of force from 40 law enforcement agencies in Kenosha didn’t make anyone safer.

LEAH WATSON
November 21, 2021 by Speak Freely / ACLU

For two weeks, we’ve heard trial testimony and seen evidence of the events that occurred on August 25, 2020 — the night that Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed two people and injured another during a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. While Rittenhouse was not held accountable, he was not the only one whose conduct on that deadly night should be scrutinized. The actions — and inaction — of the Kenosha Police Department and the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department in the preceding 72 hours played a critical part in the tragic events that took place.

As we reflect on that night, we must remember what ignited these protests. Two months after the murder of George Floyd, on August 23, 2020, Kenosha Police shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, in the back multiple times, paralyzing him. Faced with this latest manifestation of law enforcement’s systemic mistreatment and disregard for the lives of Black and Brown people, people took to the streets of Kenosha. Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth oversaw law enforcement’s response to these protests, including the coordination of over 40 local, state, and federal agencies.

The day after Kenosha Police shot Mr. Blake, former city alderman and self-proclaimed commander of the Kenosha Guard Kevin Mathewson wrote a racially charged “call to action” inviting armed civilians to protect Kenosha from “evil thugs” the following day. The comments on his Facebook invitation, corresponding Reddit threads, and Infowars degenerated into racist threats to kill and maim protestors.

On the night of August 25, law enforcement not only failed to protect protestors calling for police accountability and more humane treatment of Black people, but actively put them in harm’s way. Officers enabled and encouraged predominantly white, right-wing armed civilians and militia groups that night, creating a situation in which tensions escalated and people were killed.

Following the violence in Kenosha, an investigative team at the ACLU filed approximately 40 public records requests to local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies; reviewed more than 800 records and 50 hours of video footage; and conducted over 40 in-depth interviews with community members to better understand what happened in Kenosha and how we can avoid these tragedies in the future. Here is what we found:

Kenosha law enforcement was aware of the threats that these armed civilians and militia groups posed to protestors exercising their First Amendment rights. Mathewson asked Sheriff Beth and Kenosha Police Chief David Miskinis to deputize these armed civilians and militia groups, noting that more than 3,000 people accepted the online invitation to “protect” the city. In addition to this correspondence, community members in Kenosha contacted law enforcement with concerns for their safety after reading this online vitriol. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security told local law enforcement that the Boogaloo Bois, a right-wing group with a history of violence, were planning an event in Kenosha on August 24. The Federal Bureau of Investigation also warned that the conflicting ideologies of protestors and these armed civilians and militia groups could “potentially be a flashpoint for violence” the next day.

Despite the obvious safety threats, law enforcement embraced the incendiary presence of armed civilians and militia groups. In a widely seen video, law enforcement thanked and even offered water to the armed civilians and militia groups attending the protests, as they instructed those protesting police brutality to leave. In text messages retrieved through our public records requests, after someone circulated a video of the Rittenhouse shootings, a Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department officer commented “nice video” in a message to colleagues and added that he was “[l]istening to gunfire. Such a nice night.”

In fact, it appears Kenosha law enforcement coordinated an effort to push protestors south on Sheridan Road, towards armed civilians and militia groups. Ryan Thomas Balch, an armed civilian affiliated with the Boogaloo Bois, was recorded saying on the night of the shootings, “Do you know what the cops told us today? They were like, ‘We’re gonna push them down by you, because you can deal with them, and then we’re gonna leave.’” In an August 26, 2020 written statement, Balch added, “K[enosha] P[olice] D[epartment] made a conscious decision to abandon the people of Kenosha to people they felt justified in using machines and weapons of war against. And were going to piss them off and drive them at us and let the chips fall where they may.”

The Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department, led by Sheriff Beth, commanded law enforcement agencies to clear Civic Center Park and push protestors south towards the danger that lay multiple blocks from the park at the intersection of 60th and Sheridan. Multiple law enforcement officers documented their knowledge that armed civilians and militia members were concentrated in that direction, near 60th and Sheridan. Officers from various law enforcement agencies described the use of armored vehicles, foam bullets, tear gas, and flash bangs to herd protestors from the park toward the intersection, and to prevent the return of protestors to the park. After pushing the protestors south for over an hour, Kenosha law enforcement took a strategically timed break, consistent with Balch’s description. These efforts were well documented in the records our investigative team obtained:

9:43 pm: The Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department documented “gas being deployed in front of the courthouse, goal to push crowd south.”
10:32 pm: Kenosha Police Department dispatched patrol to 58th and 8th to “keep crowd moving south on Sheridan.”
10:40 pm: Three bearcats moved south from 56th on Sheridan.
10:44 pm: Law enforcement continued to push protestors down the road.
10:57 pm: Law enforcement took a break.
11:12 pm: The Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department reported that protestors “have been pushed south and we are holding our position at the park.”
11:40 pm: Bearcats from Racine, Walworth, Waukesha, and Sauk Counties held protestors at 60th and Sheridan, and noted a loud crowd at the gas station.
11:44 pm: An Oneida County bearcat moved to 60th and Sheridan.
11:50 pm: Rittenhouse shootings begin at 63rd and Sheridan.
The West Allis Police Department also described its actions:

At the request of tactical command, the armored vehicles and crowd control [o]fficers would direct the protestors south and hold or move the protestors south and back away north. Tactical command requested several times for this process to occur which led to the protestors being directed as far south as 60th St. & Sheridan.

Three important lessons emerge from this tragedy.

First, entrenched racism contributed to the events that unfolded. Make no mistake, the shooting of Jacob Blake and the related protests and fatalities stem from the deep-seated white supremacy that pervades our criminal legal system. Police officers brutalizing people of color who are protesting that very brutality and leaving people of color and their supporters at the mercy of armed white vigilantes is a pattern that recalls the origin of American police in slave patrols. These patrols sought to capture and return formerly enslaved people to the violence of enslavement, and their later connections to white supremacist agitation during the Civil Rights movement are echoed in the violence seen in Kenosha. In today’s world, Black and Brown people are not only targeted by police and frequently treated as presumptively guilty, but white people brandishing weapons of war are given the benefit of the doubt and even encouraged by officers of those same police agencies.

Second, law enforcement must not be permitted to weaponize the presence of armed civilians and militia. Jacob Blake’s shooting and the subsequent tragic, fatal shootings by Rittenhouse should usher in a significant wave of change, not only in Wisconsin but across the nation. Kenosha is not even the latest example of this pattern of police ignoring (at best) or facilitating (at worst) white mob violence: Following the January 6 insurrection, it was revealed that over 30 off-duty police officers attended the rally, and several joined the mob that stormed the Capitol. We must reexamine the roles and powers of police in American society, and listen to the communities of color in Kenosha and elsewhere that are calling for new approaches to public safety that protect all people, regardless of the color of their skin.

Finally, more officers and weapons do not increase safety. Law enforcement should play no role in protests, unless it is to protect our First Amendment rights, and they should not use violence to control the crowd or silence those they disagree with. Beyond the context of protests, there is little evidence that police effectively prevent or reduce violence, while there are many alternatives to policing that do make communities safer.

As our investigation illustrates, approximately 40 local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies responded to the protests in Kenosha, utilizing various forms of force against protestors. This massive show of force failed to keep people safe — and in fact facilitated grave harm by pushing protesters into close proximity with Kyle Rittenhouse and other armed white civilians. The violence that night is a further reminder that well-resourced law enforcement agencies are failing to protect and even harming the communities they are sworn to serve. It’s time to acknowledge this failure and invest in measures that actually keep communities safe.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021 ... ccountable
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 22, 2021 4:30 pm

Rittenhouse Verdict Highlights Statistical White Supremacy in Our Judicial System

BY SONALI KOLHATKAR
NOV 19, 2021

Eighteen-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse has been found not guilty on all charges for the August 2020 shooting deaths of two men, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and for injuring a third man, Gaige Grosskreutz, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Rittenhouse had joined counterprotesters at a Black Lives Matter action protesting the police shooting of a Black man named Jacob Blake.

While not utterly shocking, this sort of blanket acquittal is hard to imagine had Rittenhouse been a Black teenager. Judge Bruce Schroeder, who presided over the case, showed obvious bias toward the defendant by allowing the dead and injured to be referred to as “rioters” but not “victims,” and for letting the defendant draw the names of jurors.

Rittenhouse, then a minor acting as an armed civilian rather than a police officer, nonetheless appeared to enjoy the type of “qualified immunity” that law enforcement officers routinely benefit from in fatal shooting cases. Indeed, in a recent interview, criminal justice expert Jody Armour highlights that the defense attorney explicitly argued that, since the officer who shot Blake and left him paralyzed was not charged with any crimes, surely his client similarly acted in self-defense, and therefore ought to be found innocent. The defense argued that Rittenhouse “stood in the place of a police officer,” says Armour.

Armour, who is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law at the University of Southern California, also explains that for White defendants in such cases, “the numbers are in your favor.” Citing statistics from the Urban Institute, Armour notes, “If you are somebody White who shoots somebody Black and claims self-defense in a case like this, you are 10 times as likely to be acquitted … by a jury as if you are Black and you shoot somebody White and claim justification.”

Although Rittenhouse’s victims are all White, Armour notes that because these men were participating in a Black Lives Matter protest against the police shooting of Blake, they were seen as sufficiently “Black-adjacent.” As a result, the men Rittenhouse killed and injured were subjected to the same kind of posthumous judicial character assassination that unarmed Black men killed by police or vigilantes frequently encounter.

In this interview with YES! Racial Justice Editor Sonali Kolhatkar (filmed before the Rittenhouse verdict was delivered), Armour connects the dots between the Rittenhouse trial and the ongoing trial for the alleged killers of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was fatally shot in Georgia in February 2020. Video of the incident, which emerged in May of that year, appears to show three White men in vehicles chasing, confronting, and shooting Arbery, who was on a jog in his own neighborhood.

https://www.yesmagazine.org/video/kyle- ... ice-system

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Kenosha protesters, rallying after Rittenhouse verdict, call for focus on case of sex trafficking victim Chrystul Kizer
Sophie Carson
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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A group of demonstrators gathered Sunday afternoon in Kenosha to decry Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal and to demand change for the future.

Just two days after the verdict, many have turned their focus to a case to another Kenosha teen who claims to have killed in self-defense. The protesters called for justice for Chrystul Kizer, a sex trafficking victim who is accused of killing her abuser when she was 17 years old.

During a rally in Civic Center Park and a march through the downtown area, demonstrators chanted Kizer's name in the same breath as the names of the three men Rittenhouse shot, two fatally.

"We've seen that Rittenhouse can get away with premeditated murder. Chrystul Kizer should be able to actually defend herself," said Jess Singh, a Kenosha resident and member of the Party of Socialism and Liberation, a Milwaukee and Chicago-based group.

State Rep. David Bowen called on the protesters to take up Kizer's case with the same energy they put into Rittenhouse and Jacob Blake, who was shot seven times by Kenosha police last summer.

Bowen, D-Milwaukee, is running for lieutenant governor.

"Now you've got a chance to prove yourself. Now you've got a chance to change the narrative," he said. "That if you truly believe in justice, just like the Lord believes in justice, then you too can fight for justice for that Black woman, who deserves it."

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Justin Blake, second right, the uncle of Jacob Blake, Bishop Tavis Grant, far right, with Rainbow Push Coalition, out of Chicago, Rabbi Michael Ben Yosef, second left, and Devynn Johnson, far left, of Kenosha, march along Sheridan Avenue in Kenosha during a rally that started at Civic Center Park in Kenosha on Sunday. The rally and march were organized by Reimagine Kenosha to demand criminal justice reform following the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and the acquittal of the 18-year-old on all charges.

Lorna Revere of Racine, who held a sign that read, "No justice, no peace," said she would never stop fighting for social justice issues. She and a contingent of other Racine residents have been avid participants in rallies and marches since the murder of George Floyd, she said.

Kizer's case was front-of-mind for Revere on Sunday.

"My heart and my concern is with Chrystul Kizer," Revere said. "She is not forgotten."


For Revere, who follows hot-button cases religiously, Kizer's case and Rittenhouse's acquittal come in a long line of injustices in the court system.

"The anger that hits all people, Black people, white people, that are concerned about the racism that this country faces, is like — it just stabs you in the chest time and time and time again," Revere said.

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Bishop Tavis Grant, with Rainbow Push Coalition, out of Chicago, speaks during a rally at Civic Center Park in Kenosha on Sunday, Nov. 21, 2021. The rally and march were organized by Reimagine Kenosha to demand criminal justice reform following the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and the acquittal of the 18-year-old on all charges.

That anger was evident in those who spoke at the rally. It was infused with a determination to continue fighting for change.

"We easily could give up. We easily could stop at this moment, but we are not," Bowen said.

Bishop Tavis Grant of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and Justin Blake, the uncle of Jacob Blake, called for economic consequences for those who supported militia activity.

Rittenhouse's lawyers have contended that their client was not a militia member but simply responded to a call to protect a used car lot. He was seen after the shooting making an "OK" sign, a hand signal common among white supremacist groups, while posing for pictures with the Proud Boys, a far-right group.

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Erick Jordan and his 16- year old daughter Jordan carry long guns during a rally at Civic Center Park in Kenosha on Sunday, Nov. 21, 2021. Erick Jordan said they were there to provide security for those marching and attending the rally.

Grant also said the Rev. Jesse Jackson — who founded the Rainbow PUSH Coalition — was meeting Sunday with congressional leaders in Washington, D.C., to make an appeal to the Department of Justice to open a review on Rittenhouse's case.

The protest leaders also called for the creation of a voting bloc and said future political candidates should meet with the group. They also criticized Gov. Tony Evers for not meeting with them to discuss the implications of the Rittenhouse verdict.

And they said President Joe Biden disappointed when he said he stood by the jury's decision.

"President Biden sold us out. He betrayed our families, he betrayed the people behind us," Justin Blake said.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/202 ... 713460002/

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Officer Prodigy
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence 17 Nov 2021

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Officer Prodigy
Officer Prodigy

“The police are not here to create disorder,

they're here to preserve disorder.”

—Richard J. Daley



Mother loaded Officer Prodigy into her vehicle;

and drove him from “The Land of Lincoln” to the

“Badger State” to play policeman

on protestors with his wonderful assault weapon…



By nightfall he’d shot 3. Killed 2. Skip the academy!

Go straight to the streets: ’hood, barrio, reservation!

Skip the academy! He knew to shoot first and answer

questions in court. He knew sci-fi, Pig Latin and the 5

White magic words:

“…I feared for my life…” “I feared for my safety—“

(Feared it wouldn’t release fast enough for kill shots)



Officer Prodigy did everything right. Cleaned up for

court. Raised his right hoof, testi-lyin—Oscar-winning

performance complete with crocodile tears…He did

everything right making his bones. Earning his bent badge;

his grim reaper-death head tats. Earning notches on his rifle

butt. Earning access to blu klux klan bar rituals—earning his

Handcuffs, taser, mace and gun belt.



Officer Prodigy did everything right. Earned Fraternal Order

of Police-Benevolent Patrolmen Association props from top

cops! Earned cop college education—one night school class

in the University of the Streets…



On to master classes with Clubber Williams; Choker Vasquez;

Gloves Davis; Jude “The Foot Doctor” Sipano and other All Star

instructors! On to finishing school—learning how to keep “War

bags’ full of throwaway guns, knives and dope in the trunk of his

cruiser—Learning how to plant ‘evidence’/“put’ cases on” people!



Oh, what a wonderful start when he walks—or is wrist-slapped!

There’ll be victory laps, bar-hops, celebrating his kills, his walk.

Bet there’ll even be a brand new patrol car parked beneath his

Christmas tree, emblazoned in bone white letters, “To protect

and serve…”


© 2021. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved

https://www.blackagendareport.com/officer-prodigy

OK then, if we accept that the punk was within his supremacist privilege to 'defend himself' the question remains, "Wtf was he doing there in the first place?" Well as a white inhabitant of this scab of a nation for over six decades I can assure that despite all other excuses young Kyle was there to hunt blacks and 'hippies', effectively legally. His cakewalk will no doubt inspire other pearl-clutching partisans of white supremacy to similar boldness.

If it's good for the goose then it's good for the gander. Mr Jordan(above) has got the right idea, these scum must be dissuaded from the idea that they are wolves among sheep.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Thu Nov 25, 2021 3:28 pm

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The Acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse: A Judicial Travesty
November 24, 2021 Editor2 2020 US Protests, Biden, far right, Jacob Blake, Kyle Rittenhouse, Proud Boys, Trump, us justice system
By Tom Carter – Nov 23, 2021

“If anyone had a right to self-defense, it was the protesters who collectively confronted a right-wing vigilante who appeared at their protest pointing a loaded military-style rifle at them.”

KENOSHA, WISCONSON (World Socialist Website) — On Friday, after four days of deliberations, a Kenosha jury returned a verdict of “not guilty on all counts” against Kyle Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse had been charged with wrongfully killing two people, wounding a third, and nearly striking a fourth with an AR-15 rifle during protests against police brutality in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 25 last year.

Rittenhouse, 17 at the time of the shootings, had traveled to Kenosha from Illinois to join a far-right “patriot” vigilante militia calling itself the “Kenosha Guard,” which had been mobilized to “defend property” and assist the police with crushing the protests that had erupted two days earlier following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Blake was shot seven times in the back at point-blank range in front of his children, leaving him paralyzed.

The Kenosha shootings occurred in the midst of the reverberations of the largest demonstrations in American history, during which an estimated 15 to 26 million people took to the streets following the murder of George Floyd to protest the epidemic of police killings and official cover-ups.

During these protests, armed far-right vigilante militias, which had been mobilized months earlier in opposition to measures to stop the spread of COVID-19, were brought forward to assist the police in the brutal nationwide crackdown orchestrated by the Trump administration. The Kenosha shootings, which occurred on the eve of the Republican National Convention, were embraced by Trump and the Republicans in the period leading up to the violent coup attempt on January 6, during which the Proud Boys and other paramilitary groups constituted the shock troops for the assault on the Capitol.

The Rittenhouse verdict will embolden these violent paramilitary forces that have been cultivated in the orbit of Trump and the Republican Party.

The acquittal of Rittenhouse follows a travesty of a trial in which a right-wing judge systematically undermined the prosecution by excluding all of the evidence that would have rebutted Rittenhouse’s claim that he was acting in “self-defense.”

Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder did not permit the jury to hear that after Rittenhouse posted bail, he celebrated the killings at a pub with top Proud Boys members, where he flashed “white power” signs, belted out the Proud Boys anthem and grinned for selfies with other Proud Boys members.

Nor did the judge permit the jury to hear that before the shooting, Rittenhouse was recorded saying that he wanted to shoot people he thought were shoplifting. “Bro, I wish I had my f—ing AR,” he said. “I’d start shooting rounds at them.”

The judge ordered that prosecutors would not be allowed to refer to the men shot by Rittenhouse as “victims” or even “alleged victims.” At the same time, Rittenhouse’s defense attorneys were given free rein to refer to the victims as “arsonists,” “looters” and “rioters.”

This double-standard was on full display during closing arguments earlier this week. While the prosecutors were admonished not to make the case “political,” Rittenhouse’s attorney was permitted to deliver a full-throated fascistic diatribe.

Midway through his closing arguments, Rittenhouse’s attorney Mark Richards effectively dispensed with the fiction of “self-defense” and suggested that Rittenhouse’s victims had it coming because “they were rioters.”

While prosecutors could not mention that Rittenhouse was affiliated with the Proud Boys, Richards specifically emphasized that Gaige Grosskreutz, a volunteer medic Rittenhouse shot in the arm, was affiliated with “People’s Revolution.”

Richards made every effort to dehumanize the people whom Rittenhouse killed. “I’m glad he shot him,” Richards declared, referring to Joseph Rosenbaum, who was mentally ill, as “a crazy person.”

The trial was a right-wing spectacle from beginning to end. At one point the judge, wearing an American flag tie, led the jury in a round of applause for one of Rittenhouse’s experts on the grounds that he was a “veteran” who “served our country.” At another point the judge’s cellphone rang with a Trump rally ring tone. At the end of the trial, he let Rittenhouse pick the jurors’ names out of a tumbler like it was a circus raffle.

The argument that Rittenhouse was acting in “self-defense” turns reality upside-down. If anyone had a right to self-defense, it was the protesters who collectively confronted a right-wing vigilante who appeared at their protest pointing a loaded military-style rifle at them.

When Rittenhouse opened fire, Gaige Grosskreutz and other protesters believed that he was an “active shooter.” Like a soldier who jumps on a grenade to save his comrades, Anthony Huber pushed his girlfriend out of the way and charged Rittenhouse, armed only with a skateboard in an effort to protect the other protesters. Rittenhouse shot him dead.

“We are heartbroken and angry,” Huber’s parents wrote in a statement after the verdict. “Today’s verdict means there is no accountability for the person who murdered our son. It sends the unacceptable message that armed civilians can show up in any town, incite violence, and then use the danger they have created to justify shooting people in the street.”

The “self-defense” framework within which Rittenhouse’s actions were presented was a mechanism for airbrushing all of the political content and context out of the picture. It was a way of dissolving all of the broader political and historical questions involved into the sole question of the propriety of Rittenhouse’s conduct as an individual in the split-second during which he allegedly decided to pull the trigger.

Even on its own terms, the “self-defense” argument was illegitimate, since it was Rittenhouse who recklessly provoked the confrontation by carrying his rifle into a hostile protest as a member of a far-right vigilante militia.

Where the law was clearly against Rittenhouse, the judge simply moved the goal posts. While countless left-wing protesters were subjected to violent attacks and the threat of arrests by police for violating the curfew in Kenosha, the judge threw out the curfew charge against Rittenhouse on a flimsy evidentiary technicality. While Wisconsin law prohibits juveniles from carrying firearms, the judge threw out the underage firearms charge on the basis of laws that permit juveniles to go hunting.

After the verdict was announced, Trump immediately issued a statement congratulating Rittenhouse. The violent and fascistic elements around him joined the chorus. “Today is a great day for the Second Amendment and the right to self-defense,” tweeted Republican representative and January 6 conspirator Lauren Boebert. “Glory to God!”

Biden, meanwhile, set the tone for the Democrats’ response by solemnly declaring that “the jury system works”—a remarkable statement given the legal travesty that had just unfolded in broad daylight on live television.

Joining the open fascists in their celebrations of the verdict are a collection of pseudo-left and libertarian figures like Glenn Greenwald and Jimmy Dore, who worked throughout the trial to present Rittenhouse as a sympathetic figure.

In contrast to those seeking to blind the population to the political issues involved, the World Socialist Web Site warned that the campaign around Rittenhouse is an effort to normalize and legitimize far-right vigilante terror.

The aim of this campaign is to create conditions where Proud Boys and other far-right vigilante groups can march into future left-wing demonstrations and brandish loaded guns. Unchecked and undeterred, they will come to strikes, to lectures at universities and to socialist political meetings. They will wave guns in the faces of journalists and school board officials. And if anyone tries to disarm or evict them, they will open fire and yell “self-defense,” knowing that there are cops and judges who will bend and twist the law to shield them.

The Proud Boys and other violent far-right militias are being brought forward not because American capitalism is in a position of strength but because it is in a position of weakness.

These forces are being elevated under specific conditions: In the midst of a pandemic in which millions of people have died as a result of policies that have prioritized profits over human life and amid a social, economic and political crisis to which capitalism has no solution except war and repression.

While the US political establishment is moving ever further to the right, embracing mass death in the COVID-19 pandemic and legitimizing fascist violence, the great mass of the population is moving to the left, amid a major upsurge of working-class struggle.

In that context, the acquittal of Rittenhouse will only serve to further discredit the whole American political system in the eyes of millions of people.

https://orinocotribune.com/the-acquitta ... -travesty/

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Rittenhouse and Verdict Mania
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 23 Nov 2021

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Photo: Nathan Howard, Getty Images

Black people give great attention to certain court cases in hopes of receiving justice when the system is designed to be unjust. That recognition and the commitment to fighting back will be of greater use than divining conclusions about a racist nation when juries reach verdicts.

Every high-profile trial which demonstrates the connections between systemic racism and law enforcement rivets 40 million Black men, women, and children to television, newspapers, and social media. One would think that jury verdicts change the living conditions of Black people in this country. The recent trial and not guilty verdict in the case of Wisconsin shooter Kyle Rittenhouse is but one example of this phenomenon.

Rittenhouse killed two white people in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year. Demonstrations after the police shooting of Jacob Blake brought hundreds of protesters and self-appointed vigilantes like Rittenhouse to that city. The race of the victims was less important than the identity of the killer and the circumstances which brought them all together.

Yet the names Rittenhouse or Derek Chauvin or Amber Guyger or George Zimmerman resonate more than perhaps they should. These people became stand-ins for the system which is unrepentantly racist and where the demonization of Black people’s existence is a feature of law, commerce, education, and even health care. There is no escape from the oppression, and desperation can transform court cases into symbolic referendums on Black existence.

Of course an armed Black man would not have been warmly greeted by law enforcement as Rittenhouse was in Kenosha. Nor would a Black person be able to fatally shoot two people and then leave the scene without being arrested. A claim of self-defense in a situation brought about by the perpetrator placing himself in a situation where his presence created a danger would not be permitted. Black people rarely find friendly judges as Rittenhouse did. All of these observations are valid, but they are no more true for Rittenhouse than in hundreds of other cases across the country.

The wish for some justice and the hope that there will be public vindication of what Black people live with is easy to understand .Yet these feelings are not very useful in navigating an understanding of how to bring about change.

The fact that millions of people simultaneously predicted an acquittal in this case, yet still experienced anger and dismay upon hearing the verdict is an indication of the precarious condition of Black life. The defeat of Black politics weighs heavily. It has been a very long time since Black people acted in concert to secure their human rights.

The liberation movement was crushed by COINTELPRO, the deaths and imprisonment of leadership, and cooptation of a Black political class. The reactionary response to the movement included the development of a prison industrial complex and the mass incarceration of one million Black people. These dynamics play a part in creating defeatism, confusion, and wishful thinking.

The solution is a return to Black politics. Black politics are not synonymous with the presence of Black politicians, who more often than not are captives of the same interests which create so much suffering. Politics must be independent of the democrats who continue to be seen as protection against white racism when they are nothing of the sort.

Kyle Rittenhouse is obviously a white supremacist, but so is Joe Biden, who received 90% of the Black vote. White supremacy is a job requirement for the presidency and Barack Obama signed on to that agreement just as much as his predecessors did. Biden was seen as a savior who would rescue the nation from Donald Trump, who is portrayed as the only racist who ever served as president when he was one of just 46 who fit the description. Biden wasn’t particularly concerned about the verdict and his initial bland comment is proof. “Well look, I stand by what the jury has concluded. The jury system works and we have to abide by it.”

Biden’s nonchalant response is in keeping with his political history. After all he is the man who shepherded the 1994 Crime Bill through congress and bragged, “We do everything but hang people for jaywalking in this bill.” Biden is consistent, angrily blurting out in a meeting last year, “If it doesn’t count for y’all to hell with y’all!,” when he was asked for the bare minimum of using executive orders to thwart republicans, the people we are otherwise told to view as mortal enemies.

The gun toter flashing the white supremacy hand signal is but one part of the problem. Protesters are correct when they say, “The whole damn system is guilty as hell!” There is no way to carve out little bits of justice here and there. We either have it everywhere or we don’t have it at all.

An affirmation of our right to self-determination and the will to affirm that right is the only proper response. Allegiance to political parties is a dead end for Black people, and so is hoping that judges and juries will behave differently than they always do if millions of people are suddenly paying attention to one courtroom.

There can’t be justice without a recognition of the seriousness of our condition and a commitment to fight. Celebrating when Jim Crow Joe enters the white house is not the answer. We must act as past generations did, who did not concern themselves with the machinations of their enemies. They named them as such and proceeded to move on their own accord. That strategy makes more sense than hoping for different verdicts when the entire system declares us as guilty for daring to exist.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/ritte ... dict-mania

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Stop Confusing the Fight Against Racism with Neoliberalism
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor 23 Nov 2021

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Stop Confusing the Fight Against Racism with Neoliberalism

The electoral appeal of anti-Black racism is a constant in the U.S. It is the perennial contradiction, producing political dynamics which ensure that the people's needs are never met and the ruling class have little opposition due to the lack of class consciousness.

The crisis of legitimacy afflicting the U.S. political system has produced a number of contradictions. One of the most glaring from this period is the contradiction between the struggle against racism in the United States and the growth in popular support for Medicare for All and a host of social welfare policies that have the potential of forming a truly class-conscious political program of the working class. Yes, you read that correctly. Such a contradiction exists despite assurances from the Bernie Sanders-wing of the Democratic Party that policies such as Medicare for All are anti-racist by definition. The contradiction was readily apparent when the millions who marched in the streets against racist policing in the summer of 2020 were not simultaneously armed with an economic and political program resembling that of the Sanders movement. That said, it was also quite clear that many of the millions who marched against racist policing were young workers and students of all races who overwhelmingly support the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party.

This contradiction is non-antagonistic, meaning that it can be resolved among the people themselves through debate and peaceful struggle. The responsibility for the problem falls squarely at the feet of the U.S. ruling class of all political tendencies. More specifically, neoliberal Democrats for the past four decades have capitalized on the historic state repression of the Black liberation movement to sanitize the struggle against racism as part of its counterinsurgency agenda of neutralizing the most progressive force in U.S. history: Black America. The development of a Black political class loyal to capital in every way has been complimented by general lack of political leadership among the entirety of the U.S.-based working class.

Buried alongside the Black Liberation movement in the Democratic Party’s political graveyard is organized labor and a host of other social movements. As a result of the Democratic Party-led counterinsurgency war against the left, the word “populism” has been thrown around to describe a kind of apolitical class-only orientation that many believe has the potential to unite the working class in the United States. An organizational framework for how the politics of “populism” can achieve this goal has yet to surface. What has surfaced is a deep opposition to the neoliberal political establishment. While this is a welcome development, a renewed tendency on the U.S.-based Left to view the struggle against racism as purely a neoliberal project is not.

Any organization or force that claims leadership in the class struggle must take up the responsibility of addressing all of the contradictions standing in the way of a socialist future. Distinctions must be made between the neoliberal race-only politics of the Democratic Party and the revolutionary politics of race required to wage actual class struggle in the United States. These distinctions become even more critical given that the so-called far right has used the Democratic Party’s race-only, anti-worker orientation as an opportunity to merge pro-worker rhetoric with racism. As the late executive editor of Black Agenda Report, Glen Ford, prophetically pointed out about the 2016 presidential election, “The Democrats wanted to run on race as much as Trump did, because only a race-based campaign allows them to avoid any commitment to bread and butter issues – universal free healthcare, job and income security, free public higher education – that threaten the bi-partisan austerity regime (the Race to the Bottom).”

The Democratic Party’s race-only politics place a premium on the elevation of Black people and other “people of color” to a select few positions of status. This phenomenon is popularly known in consultant circles as “diversity.” Racism is relegated to a problem of the White Man’s Republican Party and its “basket of deplorables;” in other words, white people with racist ideas. Even when Democrats speak of institutional racism, rarely is the question of power factored into the equation. Race is separated entirely from class, allowing the Democratic Party to find ample political space to position itself as an anti-racist, pro-capitalist party—a real world impossibility.

A revolutionary approach to racism is rooted in political economy. Racism is quite clearly a class question. Take the condition of Black people in the United States. Black workers earn about 80 cents for every dollar that is paid to a white worker regardless of educational status . The situation is even worse for Black men, who make around 56 cents for every dollar paid to a white male worker . Black workers experience unemployment at twice the rate of white workers and this disparity remains static during both economic crises and periods of “recovery.”

Race-based discrimination is rampant in every aspect of Black life, especially in the realm of finance. How quicky it has been forgotten that financiers at Wells Fargo called Black Americans “mud people” and their predatory subprime mortgages “ghetto loans” while they were looting what little wealth existed in the Black community in the lead up to the 2007-08 economic crisis. Mass incarceration and the police occupation of Black communities has only added fuel to the fire of a rapid descent to the economic bottom for Black families. Black wealth is trending toward zero in the coming decades and economic precarity has further exacerbated longstanding disparities in healthcare , education , and life expectancy in comparison to white America.

The condition of Black workers in the United States is a reminder that any form of class struggle that refuses to recognize the National Question is destined to fail. This was the experience of the First and Second International prior to the victory of the Russian Revolution in 1917. The National Question was a leading force in Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ program for socialist construction. It asserted that the struggle of the workers to overthrow capitalism was completely congruent with the struggle of oppressed nations fighting to throw off the shackles of colonialism and imperialism. The National Question’s applicability to the struggle of Black people as a nation within a nation led Lenin himself to declare that “all Communist parties should render direct aid to the revolutionary movements among the dependent and underprivileged nations (for example, Ireland, the American Negroes, etc.) and in the colonies” (emphasis my own).

Lenin’s theses on the National and Colonial Questions have been incredibly important to the development of the class struggle both past and present. Understanding of the National Question influenced the Communist Party in the United States to take up the fight against Jim Crow as a crucial component of its political program. Numerous anti-colonial movements took up the cause of socialism as a result of Lenin’s framework on the National Question. This includes the heroic struggles against imperialism from Korea and Vietnam to Ghana and Grenada. Furthermore, U.S. capitalism and its settler colonial roots have entered an acute stage of imperialist decline which only enhances the relevance of the National Question. The condition of Black America and that of countless other oppressed nations demonstrate that the National Question must be applied to the current conditions of class struggle within the U.S.’s colonial borders.

It is thus imperative that those who claim leadership in the struggle against global capitalism do not cede the National Question to neoliberal ruling elites who understand fully the importance of racism in thwarting the fight for socialism. The marriage between neocon servants of the ruling class such as Bill Kristol and Joe Biden is an outgrowth of the Cold War and the War on Terror’s policy of full spectrum imperialist domination. Neoliberals in the non-profit/NGO industrial complex treat the question of race as little more than an operation in their overall design to neutralize the left domestically and globally. The task ahead of us is to develop the organizational and ideological coherence capable of ensuring renewed interest in the word “socialism” finds expression in a political program that has as one of its foundational principles the material struggle against white supremacy and empire.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/stop- ... liberalism

And now we have the decision in the Aubery case...does that even things out? In a way, a victory for the status quo, but it ain't kabuki theater. In both cases overwhelming white and male juries came down on different sides of the great artificial divide. Did the sequence of the decisions affect the Aubery case? Had the Rittenhouse trial gone differently would the Aubery decision have been different? I wonder...despite the pretenses these things do not occur in a vacuum.

Biden was both right and wrong for saying that this proves that the system works; on one hand the punk walked, and that a massive injustice. On the other, by giving each supposed 'side' a win equilibrium of appearances is maintained. And appearances are everything when ya got no substance.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Wed Dec 01, 2021 3:54 pm

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Tyler Newby Trial for Killing Unarmed Teen Ends in Hung Jury
New Trial for the Murder of Dorian Murrell Slated to Start January 4, 2022

By Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot November 30, 2021


Indianapolis, IN – A jury couldn’t agree on convicting Tyler Newby of killing Dorian Murrell, ending Newby’s murder trial in a hung jury with a 6-6 split decision on October 7, 2021. A new jury trial date is set for January 4, 2022.

In a case not unlike that of Kyle Rittenhouse, 31-year-old Tyler Newby faces charges of murder and voluntary manslaughter for fatally shooting 18-year-old Murrell in the heart during George Floyd protests on May 31, 2020 in downtown Indianapolis. Newby has been free on a controversial bond since August 2020 and has claimed self-defense—more background below.

The voluntary manslaughter charge was dropped by Marion Superior Judge Angela Davis moments before the trial ended. Judge Davis said she sided with the defense to drop the charge because the prosecution failed to present a case for the charge.
“They didn’t even fight for Dorian. They didn’t even bring up the subject of voluntary manslaughter, so that’s why it was thrown out.“

Dorian Murrell’s grandmother Artonia Armstrong
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Dorian Murrell (L) was 18 when Tyler Newby (R) killed him – photos via Murrell family and Fox59

After the two-day trial ended in a hung jury, a press conference organized by Murrell family attorney Dr. Malik Shabazz was held via Zoom and broadcasted live on Facebook on October 11. Murrell’s grandmother Artonia Armstrong and his cousin Corey both spoke on behalf of the family. Advocates Mmoja Ajabu and Dave Rozzell from the Veterans Association of African Descendants shared their interpretations of the what happened inside the courtroom.

Armstrong said the “defense team was running the whole game,” adding she saw “a lot of unfairness” and was dissatisfied with the prosecution. She said she felt the state’s attorneys “didn’t even fight” for her grandson.
“[The defense] was talking to the prosecutors who were on our side, letting them know when to start the video, when to end it, the whole nine yards. It kind of looked to me like they were working together, that’s what it’s been looking like the whole time instead of fighting for my grandson.”

Artonia Armstrong
Murrell’s grandmother saw a stark contrast in how white defendants in the courts are treated compared to Black defendants. She alleges that Newby, who is white, received preferential treatment, pointing to multiple factors such as Newby being bonded out (a rarity in Indiana murder cases) and how the jury was selected (at least one juror knew Tyler Newby).

Armstrong noted that in the next court room over from where the Newby trial was held, a young Black man was denied bail on murder charges and held for over 21 months before being acquitted and set free. She also believes Newby’s killing was racially motivated. She said during the trial a video from the riots downtown featured Newby in the background audibly screaming “mf this and mf that … you could just hear in the way he was talking that there was hatred.”

Artonia Armstrong said Newby was never given a “drug screen [or] a breathalyzer.” Murrell’s grandmother felt like the courts are “protecting” Newby. She said there’s been five different judges appointed to the trial and “every time a judge comes in and makes a note of something the next judge comes in and takes it away … and it seemed to me that they’re all friends with the defense team.”
“There is no justice in this case for us … I’m depending on God to come through for this, because nobody’s fighting for us. Nobody’s fighting for my grandson.“

Artonia Armstrong
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Dorian Murrell’s grandmother Artonia Armstrong reaches her arm out to show where her grandson was killed

Elder Ajabu, who was the first Black Panther Party member in Indiana decades ago, described the trial as a “charade” and a “kangaroo court.” He said he felt the prosecutors were fighting for the defense, “they’re trying to let Tyler Newby get away with murder.”

Anthony Eades, Tyler Newby’s friend who was with him when he killed Murrell, testified in the trial. Ajabu said the prosecutor never put Eades’ original statement to the police into evidence to be able to question the inconsistencies between his statement and his testimony. Murrell’s cousin Corey said they allowed Newby and Eades to change their statements to suit the story they wanted to get across.
“It was a kangaroo court, I am appalled that something like that is going on.. it was all designed to get Tyler Newby free from murder.”

Mmoja Ajabu, Murrell family advocate
Dorian Murrell: Killed During George Floyd Protests, Family Seeks Answers
Dave Rozell said race was clearly at play and that an unconfident prosecution who were doubtful they could “prove Newby intended to shoot Murrell” made the hung jury all the more likely.

Rozell questioned Newby’s self-defense argument and asked why the prosecution never tried to probe why an armed Newby came into downtown Indianapolis from his suburban residence at midnight while unrest was escalating.
“Why would a 31-year-old white man that lives in Brownsburg, which is mostly a white community, come down to Indianapolis when there are racial justice protests going on? And he had already seen in the news that for two days, there were riots and there was unrest? Why would he come into Indianapolis with a gun and go right into the midst of all of that? Why would he have a gun if he did not intend to use it? Whether it was self defense or whatever? I think that the prosecution did not even press to prove intent.“

Dave Rozell, Murrell family advocate
Rozell said the ballistics report was never released despite the Murrell family’s requests, nor was it brought into evidence at trial. He questioned the circumstances of Newby’s claim that he’s indigent, and why the court waived his fees despite his ability to bond out and to hire a high-profile lawyer.
“How is it that a white man can be charged with murder, allowed to be bonded out, put on electronic monitoring for 45 days, and not pay any fees, and then be allowed to come off of electronic monitoring … Plus the fact that he didn’t pay his fees, and the court ended up paying this fee … how do you pay $25,000 cash bond? How do you hire a high profile lawyer if you are indigent? So that doesn’t make sense. And it probably would not have been afforded to a Black man.“

Dave Rozell
Pastor Denell Howard of Hovey Street Church of Christ in East Indianapolis said that he was “concerned” the community was witnessing “a fumbling of justice.” He questioned the will of the prosecution, saying “we know that they’ve prosecuted harder when Black men are charged with murder.“

The Murrell family said that they are hoping for better treatment for their relatives in the courtroom during the next trial and wanted to see stronger effort from prosecutors. They want to see evidence properly utilized. They say if facts are properly presented, Newby will be convicted.

Relatives want to see Facebook posts made by Newby used in court as character evidence. They also hope to see the ballistics report entered into evidence along with Anthony Eades’ initial police statement. They also don’t want prosecutors arguing for manslaughter, rather for the murder count Newby was originally charged with.

The family thanked the “jurors that stood up” and they hoped the jury selection process will be better in the next trial. Ajabu said that there was one Black woman and one mixed race man on this last jury, while the rest were white. He said that if those two Black people voted for conviction that means there were four white people that voted for conviction as well, and that gives him hope he said.

An armed demonstration by Black Power groups is planned for December 18 at noon in the suburb of Brownsburg, Indiana, where Newby is from. Watch the press conference from October 11 below.
(view at link)

Background

Armed with a gun in the late night of May 30 and early morning of May 31, 2020, Tyler Newby and his friend Anthony Eades drove into Indianapolis from an outlying suburb as George Floyd protests began to intensify. Newby and the unarmed Murrell crossed paths near Monument Circle as Murrell was with family and friends around 2 a.m.

Newby claims he was shoved to the ground and he shot the first person he saw, who happened to be Dorian Murrell, killing him. According to Newby, he and Eades then split up as they left the scene and met back up before Newby turned himself in, claiming self-defense.

After being charged with murder and sitting in jail until early August 2020, Newby was given a secretive bond agreement despite Indiana law generally prohibiting murder suspects from bonding out. During the hearing, Murrell’s family said they were ushered out of the court before the agreement was made and were left with unanswered questions about the secret bond deal.

Newby bonded out with $25,000 cash a short time later, and paid for legal representation throughout his case, yet State records indicate Newby had $1,390 in court fees waived on October 4, 2021. Criminal defense attorney John Kneiffer is representing Newby; Kneiffer was previously a prosecuting attorney for Marion and Hancock Counties for over twenty years.

Unimpressed with the bond situation, the secrecy, and what they deemed as inconsistencies in the prosecution, Dr. Malik Shabazz of Black Lawyers for Justice was called in for legal support by the Murrell family before the trial. Dr. Shabazz was denied in his efforts to join in on the prosecution.

During the Murrell family press conference, the inconclusiveness of any Newby ties to white supremacist or armed militia groups and also the question of who paid the $25,000 bond were discussed. Murrell’s cousin Corey said it was friends of Chris Beatty, a former Indiana University football player who was murdered just hours before Murrell during a robbery, that actually paid Newby’s bond. They reportedly assumed Newby was a robbery victim assaulted by the same people that killed Beaty.

Dorian was a young church-going man with a bright future, his grandmother said, he was athletic, smart, caring, loving, and with a smile that would light up the room.

Previous Unicorn Riot Coverage

In June 2021, Unicorn Riot was live in Indianapolis as dozens of armed Black nationalists held an open carry march demanding justice for Dorian Murrell. The march, led by Murrell’s family, started near the building in which the trial took place in downtown Indianapolis, went to the convention center where the Black Expo was happening, and then to the Circle Monument and the location that Dorian was killed.

“I never stopped mourning, I miss him,” Artonia told Unicorn Riot near the site of his death. It was her third time visiting that area since he was killed. She said Dorian was the “life of the party” and was a good kid who frequented church. Dorian’s cousin Corey said they didn’t ask for this to happen and they’re left trying to get through the pain.

A day before the march, a press conference organized by Murrell’s family was held outside the courthouse. Legal counsel Dr. Shabazz spoke about the embedded racism within the city, county, and state structures and said he feared the case would be “botched” by the prosecution.


For more context into the case of Dorian’s killing and to hear from Corey and family advocate Kwame Shakur, take a look at our video below.
https://vimeo.com/566273736?embedded=tr ... r=38647420

https://unicornriot.ninja/2021/tyler-ne ... hung-jury/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Fri Dec 03, 2021 2:50 pm

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The American prison system’s war on reading

Originally published: Protean Magazine by Alex Skopic (November 29, 2021 ) | - Posted Dec 03, 2021

This April, the Iowa Department of Corrections issued a ban on charities, family members, and other outside parties donating books to prisoners. Under the state’s new guidelines, incarcerated people can get books only from a handful of “approved vendors.” Used books are prohibited altogether, and any new reading material is subject to a laundry list of restrictions.

The policy is harsh, but far from unique. In fact, it’s only the latest in a wave of similar bans. In 2018, the Michigan prison system introduced an almost identical set of rules, and Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington have all made attempts to block book donations, which were only rolled back after public outcry. Across the United States, the agencies responsible for mass imprisonment are trying to severely limit incarcerated people’s access to the written word—an alarming trend, and one that bears closer examination.

The official narrative is that donated books could contain “contraband which poses a threat to the security, good order, or discipline of the facility”—the language used in Michigan—and should be banned for everyone’s safety. This is a flimsy justification that begins to fall apart under even the lightest scrutiny. While it’s true that contraband is often smuggled into prisons (cell phones, tobacco, and marijuana being some of the most popular items), it’s not originating from nonprofit groups like the Appalachian Prison Book Project or Philadelphia’s Books Through Bars. In fact, twelve of the seventeen incidents used to justify a book ban in Washington didn’t involve books at all.

Instead, the bulk of the contraband in today’s prisons is smuggled in by guards themselves, who profit handsomely from their illicit sidelines, sometimes making as much as $300 for a single pack of cigarettes. If prison officials’ concerns were genuine, the appropriate move would be to limit the power and impunity of their officers—not snatch books away from those who are already powerless. The old cartoon scenario of a hollow book with a saw or a gun inside just isn’t realistic, and its invocation is a sign that something else is going on.

That “something else,” predictably enough, is profit. With free books banned, prisoners are forced to rely on the small list of “approved vendors” chosen for them by the prison administration. These retailers directly benefit when states introduce restrictions. In Iowa, the approved sources include Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million, some of America’s largest retail chains—and, notably, ones which charge the full MSRP value for each book, quickly draining prisoners’ accounts. An incarcerated person with, say, $20 to spend can now only get one book, as opposed to three or four used ones; in states where prisoners make as little as 25 cents an hour for their labor, many can’t afford even that.

With e-books, the situation is even worse, as companies like Global Tel Link supply supposedly “free” tablets which actually charge their users by the minute to read. Even public-domain classics, available on Project Gutenberg, are only available at a price under these systems—and prisons, in turn, receive a 5% commission on every charge. All of this amounts to rampant price-gouging and profiteering on an industrial scale.

The rise of these private vendors has also been mirrored by the systematic dismantling of the prison library system. In the last ten years, budgets for literacy and educational resources have seen dramatic cuts, reducing funding to almost nothing, and incarcerated people have been deprived as a result. In Illinois, for instance, the Department of Corrections spent just $276 on books across the entire state in 2017, down from an already meager $605 the previous year. (This means, incidentally, that each of the state’s roughly 39,000 prisoners was allotted seven-tenths of a cent.) Oklahoma, meanwhile, has no dedicated budget for books at all, requiring prison librarians to purchase them out-of-pocket. Many books in its small stock are “falling apart, dilapidated and may be missing some pages.” These cuts are part of capitalism’s more general push to privatize or eliminate public goods and services—libraries among them—so massive corporations can receive windfalls. In prisons, the method is especially devastating.

These practices become all the more abhorrent when you consider the impact books can have behind bars. By now, the social science on their benefits is well-established: in one study, the University of Massachusetts found that incarcerated people who took part in reading programs were much better equipped to deal with the outside world on their release, showing only an 18.75% rate of recidivism compared to a control group’s 45%. Other studies have revealed a wide range of mental health benefits, with books providing improved self-esteem, communication skills, and a sense of purpose in life. For some, the results are even more pronounced. Malcolm X famously got his political education from a prison library, working his way through Gandhi, Nietzsche, and W.E.B. Du Bois in his time at Norfolk Prison, and wrote powerfully about the experience in his autobiography:

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students… Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, ‘What’s your alma mater?’ I told him, ‘Books.’

Now, imagine if the State of Massachusetts had defunded its libraries and banned anyone from sending books behind prison walls—that remarkable evolution might never have occurred, and the world would have lost one of its most important radical voices. Today, other inmates have reportedthat reading meant “the difference between just giving up mentally and emotionally and making it through another day, week, or year,” countering the dehumanizing effects of their imprisonment. A book can offer a brief, irreplaceable moment of calm in hellish circumstances. It may be the only thing keeping someone from suicide or self-harm. This is what profiteering companies like Global Tel Link are trying to take away, all for the sake of lining their own pockets. Not content with locking up the body, they want to slam shut the doors of the mind as well.

Even in states with no outright ban on book donations, there are still “content-specific” bans on particular titles and subjects. These exist in virtually every American prison, and have become more pervasive with each passing year. Like so many things in the carceral system, the pattern of restrictions is flagrantly racist. For instance, many prisons have blanket bans on “urban” novels, a genre revolving around crime and intrigue in African-American communities. These are treated as contraband, and can’t be obtained through approved sources. Meanwhile, equally violent novels about white criminals, such as The Godfather or the Hannibal Lecter series, are allowed with no restrictions. Works by African-American activists also come under fire, on the grounds that they might be “dangerously inflammatory,” with disturbing frequency. In Florida, the Department of Corrections bans Police Brutality by Elijah Muhammad, Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation by Angela Davis, and many similar texts; it has no such bans for Mein Kampf or The Turner Diaries. (Protean, interestingly, is not banned anywhere—yet.)

Restricting the right to read, in this way, is a tactic intimately bound up with the history of American racism and white supremacy. In his Narrative of the Life, Frederick Douglass recalls the way his one-time captor, the slaveholder Mr. Auld, raged against the possibility of his becoming literate, warning of the “harm” (to him) that would result. In many Southern states, it was actually illegal to teach a slave so much as the alphabet, lest they use the knowledge to free themselves. With time, the carceral state took the place of the slaveholding one, but the impulse to control the written word remained the same. In his landmark prison memoir Soul on Ice, Eldridge Cleaver, the former Minister of Information for the Black Panther Party, details the racism he experienced from the censor:

They also have this sick thing going when it comes to books by and about Negroes. Robert F. Williams’s book, Negroes with Guns, is not allowed anymore. I ordered it from the state library before it was too popular around here. I devoured it and let a few friends read it before the librarian dug it and put it on the blacklist. Once I ordered two books from the inmate canteen with my own money. When they arrived here from the company, the librarian impounded them, placing them on my ‘property’ the same as they did my notebooks.

Although it took place in the mid-1950s, this scene is easily recognizable to anyone in prison today. Officials identify a “radical” book or periodical, perceive it as a threat to the status quo, and move swiftly to get rid of it, trampling prisoners’ human rights in the process. Even the language used is sickly ironic—then, as now, the “black list” is quite literally a list of Black thinkers and their works.

Tellingly, the usual circle of “free speech” pundits—the Shapiros and Crowders of the world, who swell with indignation whenever a bigoted uncle gets banned from Facebook—have little to say about censorship in prisons. (This may, in some ways, be a mercy; at least they’re not actively making the situation worse.) What’s more surprising, though, is that groups with a history of sympathy toward civil liberties are also quiet. In the American Library Association’s popular “Banned Books Week,” plenty of attention is given to the removal of books from school and municipal libraries—an important issue, to be sure—but significantly less to the same practices in prisons, where censorship is far more widespread, and those affected have little ability to seek other options. This omission is part of a shameful pattern in American society, where many people simply don’t think about the incarcerated on a day-to-day basis, let alone sympathize with their worsening conditions. For wardens and administrators, it’s all too easy to keep the whole matter out of sight, and out of mind.

One of the most common arguments for the American carceral system, and its continued existence, is that of rehabilitation. According to its defenders, a prison is not simply a place of suffering, where unwanted populations are sent to disappear. Nor is it a callous money-making machine, intended to squeeze free labor from them in a regime of functional slavery. Instead, prison rehabilitates—so the story goes. The very word “penitentiary” invokes ideas of penitence, re-evaluation, and personal growth, the ostensible goals of such an institution. In these terms, the basic legitimacy of mass imprisonment, and its allegedly positive social role, is taken for granted—to the point that it forms a central theme in our Vice President’s entire career. But the practice of book banning exposes the lie. Not only do American prisons have little interest in education, healing, and growth, but they will actively prevent them the moment there is a dollar to be made or an ounce of power to be secured. This is what actually happens on the ground, and it demolishes America’s claim to moral authority.

In another light, though, there may be hope to be found here. Historically, systems of censorship and control are at their strictest when the regime in power knows it has something to hide, and fears exposure—if its position were unassailable, there would be no need. (Consider, for example, Saudi Arabia’s stranglehold on Internet access, or the Putin government’s penchant for censoring political exposés.) In recent years, America has been grappling with issues of race, class, and state authority like never before—both in the national discourse, and in the streets, where police have been driven back and their precincts burned to the ground. Prisons in cities like St. Louis have seen mass uprisings—not “riots” of random violence, as the press would have it, but concerted political actions with specific demands, including fair wages and protection from COVID-19.

In this climate it’s no longer inconceivable, as it was for so many years, that the prison-industrial complex as we know it could simply cease to be. As a result, the people who benefit most from its existence—the comfortable bourgeois, and their political organs—have responded by cracking down on dissent. This trend can be seen both in prisons, where writers like Davis and Muhammad are suddenly too “inflammatory” to allow, and outside them, where conservative politicians have made the academic study of racism their newest bogeyman. Legitimate power does not fear discussion and study. Rather, the prohibition of those things is a tacit acknowledgment of its illegitimacy, and of just how nervous the leaders of the whole rickety structure are getting.

This also means that, as a rule of thumb, anything the carceral state wants to prevent is more than likely a good to be pursued. In the wake of recent elections, many concerns of the left have been cast adrift, and, in the Biden era, we can lack for obvious means of pursuing change. Sending free books to people in prison is one such means, and if the recent backlash against donations is anything to judge by, it’s a potent one. For those who live in a major city, there may well be an organization doing this already. (The ALA keeps a good list, and a quick Internet search will reveal more.) If not, one can always be formed. In either case, providing books and other reading material is an important and under-practiced form of mutual aid for those who have been locked away—and equally, a way of landing a blow against profiteers and exploiters, who so richly deserve one. Until the day when the last prison falls, these small acts of resistance and solidarity will remain vital.

https://mronline.org/2021/12/03/the-ame ... n-reading/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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