Slavery to Mass Incarceration. Mess Within Texas - Sandra Bland's Arrest. Traffic Stop. Are We Really 99% Chimp? The First Openly Asshole President.
Alex Landau, an African American, was raised by adoptive white parents to believe that skin color didn’t matter. But when Alex was pulled over by Denver police officers one night, he lost his belief in a color-blind world. Alex tells what happened that night.
Reader Comments: #BlackLivesMatter and Bernie Sanders; The Value of Protest; US Cited for Police Violence, Racism; Private Prisons; Euro Agreement and Greece; Urban Renewal and Public Space;
Announcement: Rosa Luxemburg Conference - New Takes on a Longtime Classic - New York - August 21 - 22
(Moderator's Note - There will be no Tidbits for the next three weeks)
For years I’ve battled a driving anxiety. I want to get over it, but the mysterious death of Sandra Bland after a routine traffic stop in Texas reminds me that in black women’s lives, safety is an illusion.
Sandra Bland died in police custody in a Texas jail after a traffic stop. In a video shot by a passer-by, Bland protests that her head is being slammed to the ground during her arrest. Local authorities are calling her death a suicide, but friends and family do not believe that explanation. Twitter users have launched the hashtag #IfIDieInPoliceCustody to counter the narratives that often follow the deaths of unarmed black men and women in police custody.
According to the Washington Post, which, in the absence of reliable government statistics, is one of the news organizations tallying the number of police killings in the U.S., cops killed some 461 people in the first six months of 2015. And, more than a fourth of those slain, the reporters say, were "in the throes of mental or emotional crisis." The Washington Post estimates that in 2015, on average, police killed one mentally disturbed person every 36 hours.
Sixto Rodriguez - Establishment Blues. Pros and Cons: Donald Trump Running for President. Documentary: The Look of Silence. When We Stand Up for 15. Judge: Probable Cause for Murder Charges in Tamir Rice Case.
Highlighting the failure of the U.S. government to keep adequate records on the number of civilians killed by police, news outlets are now tallying the lives lost to police violence. According to a new database launched by the Guardian on Monday, local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies are killing people at twice the rate calculated by the U.S. government. The data further illustrates “how disproportionately” black Americans are killed by police.
North Charleston, South Carolina, has received strong praise for its handling of the fatal police shooting of 50-year-old African American Walter Scott. According to the media, the city's quick response saved it from becoming another Ferguson, MO. But, North Charleston's response should be understood not in contrast to Ferguson but in the context of Ferguson and a national upsurge of protest against racist policing.
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