Tuesday, March 19, 2024
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Tags Police shootings

Tag: police shootings

We who were lulled to sleep by Obama should be jarred...

Change is a protracted struggle. We must have clear eyed theoreticians who are able to shape public opinion, instruct us of the possibilities on the horizon and move us forward. So I implore all New Afrikan revolutionary nationalists to recognize after the inauguration of Donald Trump that just by nature of the reactionary circle he is forming for his cabinet, there will be many opportunities to agitate, educate and organize. Our struggle is one campaign composed of many battles.

Shooting of homeless man shows need for sincere change in SFPD

A shooting by police officers of a homeless man camping on Shotwell Street near 18th Street occurred in the Mission Thursday, April 7. On Friday, the Medical Examiner identified the victim as 45-year-old Luis Gongora, a San Francisco resident. This shooting happened less than 24 hours after a late-night Police Commission meeting at which members of the Police Officers Association fought against changes to the Department General Order concerning use of force.

Black Lives Matter and the Freddie Gray effect

Speaking at the funeral for Freddie Gray last April the family’s attorney said, “Many of us are here not because we knew Freddie Gray personally, but because we know hundreds of Freddie Grays.” The Freddie Gray effect and the cry that Black Lives Matter is about more than improved police-community relations. It is the fight and the need in countless Black neighborhoods for income equality, access to quality education, environmental justice and criminal justice reform.

Where is Kamala Harris on this Mario Woods killing?

In the wake of the brutal police execution of Mario Woods by San Francisco police in Bayview Hunters Point, many are asking where is California state Attorney General Kamala Harris? She was elected with the hope and expectation, naive as it may be, that she of all people would be out there weighing in and demanding justice for Mario. Sadly Harris has thus far been pretty much absent from the fight.

The value of Black life in America, Part 1

The same mindset that allows a police officer to summarily execute an innocent, unarmed Black person in the street is the same mindset that allows an officer to plant evidence and lie on the witness stand. It allows a judge to appoint a knowingly incompetent defense attorney, and it allows a prosecutor to withhold evidence, use false evidence, to overcharge and to discriminate with impunity.

Prisons, gangs, witchhunts and white supremacy

There is a trick that the California prison administration pulls on African Americans in prison. It is to charge them with gang activity if they refer to “George Jackson” or any of his writings or ideas or to the “Republic of New Afrika” or the politics of New Afrikans. Thousands of people, mostly Black and Brown, have been held in solitary confinement for years and even decades, because “gang activity” constitutes a “security threat to the prison,” according to the Administration.

Why we should listen to the youth fury from Ferguson

They call themselves a “circle of fathers,” a group made up of people who know first-hand what Michael Brown’s family is experiencing. The young man’s shooting death by a Ferguson police officer has brought them together – again. The “circle of fathers” hopes some powerful new, young leaders will be formed by these experiences. From the activity on the streets around the country and online, I believe that’s already happening.

Crime, criminalization and gun control: Oakland leads the way in crime...

Oakland may seem like a local anomaly with its big increase in homicides in 2011-12 and the anti-crime hysteria which now engulfs it. But Oakland is just a prime example of the intertwining of crime and criminalization under capitalism, in which the ruling class divides working people one from another and targets particular groups for victimization.

Manteca killer cop cleared of any wrongdoing

On Dec. 12, the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office cleared Manteca police officer John Moody of any wrongdoing for the shooting death of Ernest Duenez Jr. on June 8, 2011. Moody fired 13 times, with 11 bullets hitting Duenez as he struggled to exit a truck parked in his own yard. Moody is back on the job, free to continue terrorizing the people of Manteca.

On state violence, white male privilege and ‘Occupy’

I am not about to trust a “movement” that offers no critique of the role of state violence in upholding capitalist economic interests. I am not about to get arrested with some “white” guys whose interests are just their own, who only noticed injustice when they were the ones who got laid off, arrested, beat down or tased.