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Racism Watch: Waistband-Reaching Syndrome Could Get You Killed
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The Bizarre Compulsion of Black Men to “Reach for their Waistbands”
By John Eskow
November 30, 2014 - counterpunch.org
If police accounts are to be believed, there is a bizarre urge among young, unarmed black men to provoke their own murder by “reaching for their waistbands” when cops are aiming service revolvers at them.
Just this week we heard Officer Darren Wilson claim that one of the reasons he killed Michael Brown was that the young man “reached for his waistband,” and–in what I guess was just an incredibly weird coincidence–we heard Cleveland police claim they killed a 12-year-old kid with a toy gun because he also “reached for his waistband.”
But this odd compulsion is not a new one. In 2011, fully half of all the young black men shot by LA cops were cut down because–again, if police accounts are to be believed–they too were “reaching for their waistbands.” The epidemic also spread to Houston, where multiple police accounts cite the same excuse. Oscar Grant, the young man killed by Oakland cops on a subway platform–and the subject of the movie “Fruitvale Station”–was shot for the exact same reason.
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By Paul Craig Roberts
November 30, 2014 - paulcraigroberts.org
Few, if any, of the correct questions were asked in the grand jury hearing to decide whether policeman Darren Wilson would be indicted for killing Michael Brown.
The most important unexamined question is whether police are trained to use force immediately as a first resort before they assess a situation or determine if they are at the correct address. Are the police trained that the lives of police officers are so much more valuable than the lives of possible suspects, or a houseful of people into whose residence a heavily armed SWAT team enters, that police officers must not accept the risk of judicious behavior when encountering citizens? If this is the case as all evidence indicates that it is, then the police when they gratuitously murder members of the public are merely doing what they have been trained to do. As police are trained to use violence as a first resort, the police cannot be held accountable when they do.
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U.S.A.: Freedom Rider: Jackson, Sharpton, Holder and Ferguson
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By Margaret Kimberley
November 24, 2014 - blackagendareport.com
“Jackson was supplanted by Al Sharpton, who surpassed him in crookedness and politically prostitution.”
If a picture is worth 1,000 words the photo above proves the old adage to be true. This image encapsulates so much that is wrong with the so-called leaders of the black political class. Each of the three men depicted make a mockery of any claim to be allies of black people.
For decades Jesse Jackson’s seal of approval was enough to quiet or excite the masses to action. As a young lieutenant of Martin Luther King and then as leader of Operation PUSH he became in effect the leader of what was left of the civil rights movement old guard. His presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988 mobilized millions of people to vote and brought election victories to progressives across the country. His history is part righteous and part mercenary, as he sought and received tribute from corporations around the country eager to curry favor with him and by extension the masses he sometimes did represent.
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U.S.A.: Ferguson Versus the Counter-Insurgency State
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By Glen Ford
August 23, 2014 - blackagendareport.com
“The domestic counterinsurgency army has been methodically expanded by each successive administration.”
The corporate media, reflecting their owners’ anxiety at the failure of Black people to revert to a state of passivity in Ferguson, Missouri, have arrived at a general consensus on two counts: the need to “demilitarize” the police (fewer bullets, smaller armored vehicles?) and, more immediately, to re-establish some semblance of “calm” (as in comatose) in the neighborhood and beyond. Corporate-attuned Black powerbrokers and politicians deliver essentially the same message, counseling (quiet) introspection and a search for “solutions” (diversions) to the historical oppression in which they are deeply complicit.
But first, tensions must be reduced, to diffuse the confrontation – which, we are told, serves no one’s interests but the “agitators and instigators” (who, apparently, have millions of dollars in derivatives wagers riding on urban chaos). Fortunately, the “street” ignores the misleaders. If Ferguson had remained “calm” in the face of Michael Brown’s murder, nobody outside greater St. Louis would know the place existed.
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