Six on Police Brutality Protests: Outrage at video showing child who was maced by police at Seattle protest; The severity of black fatherhood and the reality of teaching children how to stay safe when approached by law enforcement; Let It Burn: the
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"Within 45 minutes, the boy, who will be entering third grade in the fall, had been maced.
Shenelle Williams, his mother, said hearing his scream was the “most gut-wrenching feeling”.
“I kind of feel like a failure as well,” she said, “because I feel like I couldn’t protect him, but there was nothing that we could do at that time to prevent it.”
Protesters poured milk on the boy’s face, and offered water. On video, they can be heard trying to comfort the screaming child, saying, “It’s going to be OK” and “Give her some space” – many initially mistaking the boy for a girl.
The family is working with a lawyer who is examining what went wrong in this case and many others in Seattle, and what needs to be changed, before deciding on next steps.
“We just wanted to stand up for what was right,” Avery said. “Ultimately our boys will become men and our daughters will become women. And they will ultimately have to face some of the same racial injustices. And enough is enough. Black lives matter.”
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"In 2017, I wrote an essay titled “I Don’t Give a Fuck about Justine Damond,” which outlined my perspective on Ms. Damond’s death at the hands of Mohamed Noor, a Minneapolis police officer who also happened to be Somali American and Muslim. My thesis was this: How can I be concerned about a white woman shot and killed by a police officer when there are countless Black people who suffered that fate to the stunning silence and antipathy of the vast majority of white American populace?
The essay was met with the characteristic outrage from white people (but not only white people). They accused me of disrespecting Damond’s memory and being inconsiderate of her family’s feelings. I was also accused of being a hypocrite for not condemning the actions of the cop as I had in previous incidents involving Black victims. Even some of the people closest to me believed that I had crossed a line and thought that I had been too harsh in my assessment and should if not show reverence then certainly remain silent on the matter.
But I could do neither, not with the blood of Black people flowing endlessly in the streets. I insisted that there was a purpose to my position. I had predicted that the outcome of Damond’s death would be unique and that, unlike in the numerous cases in which the murder of a Black person by state agents was considered “justified” and the agents themselves regarded as valiant, the officer who killed Damond wouldn’t have access to the protections or rationalizations that his white compatriots had always been given.
And I was correct.
Without so much as a raised pitchfork, Noor was fired, abandoned by a union that defends even the most egregious actions of its officers. He was swiftly charged, swiftly convicted, and swiftly sentenced to twelve and a half years in prison. And Damond’s family was swiftly compensated, settling for a hefty $20 million from the city of Minneapolis, not at the expense of police forces but at the expense of the taxpayers.
If we are to accept that this is what justice looks like in a penal and punitive nation like the United States of America, the question, for me, is then, why isn’t it applied unilaterally? Why did it take the threat of burning the entire country to ash before the forces of “law and order” would arrest and charge the non-Black (and that’s important to note) police officers caught on camera murdering George Floyd, a Black man? Why are the officers who murdered Breonna Taylor, a Black woman, inside her own home in Louisville, Kentucky, still free to murder another day? Police kill Black people at 2.5 times the rate they kill white people. In 2015, for example, more than a hundred unarmed Black people were killed by police, and only four cops were convicted of any crime in those cases. Experts believe police kill Black people at an even higher rate, but since the nation keeps such spotty records, perhaps intentionally, it’s difficult to grasp and easy for some people to dismiss the magnitude.
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"Pride commemorates the Stonewall Riots in New York City’s Greenwich Village, which began the modern-day LGBTQ+ civil rights movement. With civil rights gains in many states such as transgender protections, the legalization of same-sex marriage, a hate crime bill, banning discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation in housing, public accommodations, employment, and the banning of conversion therapy, to name a few, we had come a long way since the first Pride march five decades ago.
Yet with these advances come disadvantages. For some in the LGBTQ+ community, Pride has become too corporate. Many see the company floats and paraphernalia as selling the soul of the movement’s grassroots message for entry into the mainstream. However, others in the community welcome corporate sponsors, viewing it as vital for the financial cost and continuation of Pride and affirming of LGBT+ issues and their employees.
But as Pride becomes more corporate, marginal groups within the LGBT+ movement have become more invisible. After decades of Pride events, where many LGBTQ+ of African descent have tried to be included and were rejected, Black Pride was born. Boston Black Pride, for example, focuses on its community needs, such as HIV/AIDS, unemployment, housing, police brutality, and now COVID-19. Sunday gospel brunches, Saturday night poetry slams, Friday evening fashion shows, bid whist tournaments, house parties, the smell of soul food and Caribbean cuisine, and the beautiful display of African art and clothing are just a few of the cultural markers that make Black Pride distinct from the dominant queer culture."
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“We have to seize this moment. It has to be done at the state and local levels because [no reforms] will get through Donald Trump and [Senate majority leader] Mitch McConnell. I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for the federal government to do something.”
The Memorial Day death of George Floyd while pinned down by Minneapolis police officers, caught on a bystander’s cellphone camera, was especially searing. But remember the video of Rodney King being violently beaten and stun-gunned by Los Angeles police officers? That was 1991.
“We’ve had three decades of such videos,” Jealous says. “What black America has never been allowed to forget for 300 years all of America has been forced to watch for the last 30.”
The images of Floyd’s death, with the knee of a police officer on his neck, set off massive protests. Police brutality is at the root of it, but there's a lot more going on.
“I think historians will look back on these as the COVID era uprisings,” says Jealous, who just raised $1 million in coronavirus relief for Baltimore hotel and restaurant workers. “There’s a lot of anxiety out there already about jobs, about health care, about evictions. But you have this blaze of anger. … The spark might be [police brutality] but the lighter of that spark is going off somewhere else in America every day."
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