Defacing Intelligent Discourse

The Asheville Fraternal Order of Police building

Monday's report by local North Carolina ABC affiliate station WLOS that an as-yet unnamed individual spray-painted 'Black Lives Matter' on the front exterior of the Asheville Fraternal Order of Police building is troubling.

It reflects the deep divisions resulting from the videotape of ex-APD officer Chris Hickman beating, tasing and choking Johnnie Rush last August after stopping him for jaywalking.

As WLOS reported, the defacing of the Asheville FOP building (pictured above) happened early Monday morning, and though the suspect also vandalized the windows of an AFOP van and attempted to disable security cameras, he was still caught on tape.

Local news affiliates who covered the story report that he appears to be a white guy wearing a hoodie.

According to local NC television affiliate WSPA, the AFOP president Rondell Lance told reporters that he'd personally already condemned the actions of Chris Hickman.

Lance also said he doesn't believe the building was defaced by anyone associated with the Asheville chapter of Black Lives Matter.

He believes it was someone with their own agenda trying to further fuel divisiveness.

Now as I write this on Thursday night, not a whole lot is known about this guy is; or why he did this.

A BLM protest in Minnesota in spring, 2015

But he clearly wasn't dispatched by Black Lives Matter to spray paint a police organization's building with the name of their organization.

According to their Webpage, the Black Lives Matter mission statement reads (in part): "The Black Lives Matter Global Network is a chapter-based, member-led organization whose mission is to build local power and to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes."

The phony, one-dimensional descriptions of BLM peddled by opportunistic conservative ex-politician blowhards like Chris Christie and Fear Meister Rudy Giuliani, or the usual media suspects of quack, right-wing media like Laura Ingraham, Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh, demonize BLM as some kind of violent terrorist splinter cell.

But in reality BLM is actually about peaceful, non-violent dissent, organized community action and education -  not spray-painting police property in the dead of night.

As a lover of the freedoms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, I'm all for Freedom of Expression in all it's many forms.

But to me, defacing property with spray paint, or anything else for that matter, is just plain wrong.

And it's vandalism, like the kind we saw on the walls of schools, people's vehicles and homes in the days following Trump's election in November, 2016 - including the swastikas some right-wing derelict spray painted on the walls of my elementary school in Bethesda, Maryland.

Some of the thousands of students who walked out
of school to protest gun violence on Wednesday 

If someone wants to use writing to express their opposition about something, by all means put it on a sign, in an op-ed, book, magazine, social media platform or blog.

Hell, you can write on yourself (or your own property) if you want to, but to me it's just low-rent to deface public or private property with your own personal agenda.

If you want to protest something, engage in peaceful organized resistance like students across the U.S. did on Wednesday to advocate for stricter gun control laws.

There's little question that those students were, in part, inspired by the BLM-organized marches and protests that have taken place in cities and towns across America over the past four years - sparked by the outrage over the judicial system holding no one legally accountable for the unjustified killings of unarmed African-American teenagers Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice and so many others.

BLM's membership (and supporters) is made up of people of all races, so my guess would be that the individual in the hoodie who defaced the AFOP building early Monday is more than likely someone trying to steer anger over the Chris Hickman videotape onto the BLM movement.

BLM had nothing to do with Chris Hickman harassing, beating, tasing and choking Johnnie Rush as he was walking home from his job washing dishes last August.

As writer and Huffington Post contributor Gennette Cordova observed on her Twitter feed yesterday, "Video surveillance has shown that a white person did this, which all black people knew when they initially saw this story."

Whoever spray painted that building tried to use a lie to stir up the divisiveness and hatred regularly cultivated by Trump - in doing so he defaced intelligent discourse on issues that are critical to the American people as a whole.

This morning's Washington Post article about Cadet Bonespurs having bragged to a crowd of Republican donors in Missouri Wednesday night that he intentionally lied to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about the U.S. having a trade deficit with our neighbors to the north shows that the hoodie-guy in Asheville isn't the only one using a lie to sew division.

No doubt they both want to Make America Great Again.

Rokhaya Diallo Speaks Truth to Power in France

Outraged parent Ana Marie Cox protesting the killing
of school cafeteria manager Philando Castile in 2016

For many Americans, the terms "Stop and Frisk" and "Driving While Black" have become synonymous with the systematic abuse of police power.

Terms that have become symbolic of the overreach of some law enforcement organizations who intentionally and disproportionately target, and stop, people of color - too often for no discernible reason other than the color of one's skin.

African-American Minnesota cafeteria manager Philando Castile is a sad, but prime example.

As I blogged about back on June 10th, the former St. Anthony, Minnesota PD officer Jeronimo Yanez pulled Castile over for a broken taillight back on July 6, 2016.

Before that fateful stop, remarkably, Castile had been pulled over by various local Minnesota police officers between 49 and 52 times over a 13-year period for mostly minor infractions like failure to use a turn signal.

Within 74 seconds of pulling Castile over, an unhinged Yanez fired seven shots into the car at point blank range, (with Castile's girlfriend sitting in the passenger seat and her four-year-old daughter in the backseat) killing an innocent man who'd committed no crime, and had done nothing to threaten Yanez aside from comply with a verbal order to produce his identification from his wallet.

While unjustified traffic stops based on racial bias continue to be an issue in many parts of America, the positive news is that stop-and-risks in the city most notorious for their use, New York, have plummeted since being phased out in 2104 under current 2nd-term Democratic NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio.

And as James Cullen reported in an article for the Brennan Center For Justice in 2016, the elimination of stop-and-frisk did NOT lead to an increase in crime as some conservative politicians (including former Mayor Mike Bloomberg), right-wing media pundits like Rudy Giuliani, and some members of the NYPD insisted that it would.

In fact, in total contrast to the dystopian crime-ravaged wasteland Trump described in his demented inauguration address back in January, as Ashely Southall reported for the New York Times last Wednesday, crime levels in New York City are as low as they've been since the 1950's.

But as recent international headlines indicate, stop-and-frisks and the use of the law to unfairly target, and disproportionately stop racial and ethnic minorities have been generating controversy, and police-related deaths, in France.

French journalist Rokhaya Diallo 

Last Thursday, the editorial board of the New York Times published an op-ed taking the French government to task for removing French journalist Rokhaya Diallo (pictured left) from the advisory board of the French Digital Council - which the Times described as "an independent board dealing with digital technologies and their impact on society".

She wasn't removed from the FDC advisory board because of some embarrassing personal scandal, or because she wasn't qualified to serve.

Ms. Diallo was apparently removed by the government of French President Emmanuel Macron because of a conservative backlash that might be seen in America as a kind of knee-jerk, reverse political-correctness run amok.

Over the past couple years, she has emerged as a leading vocal critic of some of the stunning displays of authoritarian overreach by French police that have resulted in the injuries and deaths of a number of young men of color - most of them Muslims of African or Arab descent.

According to the Times, her public accusations that such conduct is reflective of institutional racism within France have rankled conservatives, including French education minster Jean Michel Blanquer, who threatened to sue a French teachers union last month "for using the words 'institutional racism' during educational workshops in ethnically diverse Seine-St. Denis northeast of Paris. Mr. Blanquer has also threatened to sue Ms. Diallo." 

Back in May, President Macron famously beat his far-right extremist candidate opponent Marine Le Pen in a widely-watched national election (in part) with a promise to "fight the divisions which undermine France".

But the excitement of those elections seven months ago has faded.

French President Emmanuel Macron

And the 39-year-old Macron had no prior experience governing as an elected leader and ran as an independent without the support of a traditional French political party.

Now facing the political reality that he needs the support of conservatives to enact the kinds of policies that got him elected, he yielded to pressure from French conservatives and Ms. Diallo was removed from the FDC advisory board. 


The president of the board, venture capitalist Marie Ekeland, resigned in protest over the widely-condemned decision along with most of the other board members she'd tapped.

It's a pretty sad reflection of a European nation with such a proud tradition of "liberty, equality, fraternity" and free speech to remove a young progressive voice from a (supposedly) independent advisory board because some people are uncomfortable with what she thinks and says.

Particularly a young journalist of color who speaks up for the rights of a group that is increasingly marginalized from mainstream French society in the economic, political and social sense - alienation which is a huge factor in some French Muslims self-radicalizing and identifying with (or being recruited by) ISIS in the first place.

As the Times op-ed notes, in 2016 Diallo produced and directed a documentary titled From Ferguson to Paris: Guilty of Being Black - an analysis of the growing problem of French police using excessive physical, and deadly force in the wake of confrontations arising from the huge spike in stop-and-frisk identity checks that overwhelmingly target Muslims and people of color.

These kinds of identity checks grew exponentially in France in the wake of the horrifying wave of  terrorist attacks that took place in multiple venues across Paris on Friday November 13, 2015.

Far-right French supporters of the National Front
rallying in honor of Joan of Arc in 2015 [Photo - Alamy]

Attacks coordinated and committed by Islamic extremists which left 130 innocent people from multiple countries dead, and hundreds more wounded and traumatized.

Those attacks unfolded at a time when many Europeans, including some French citizens, were already expressing a simmering resentment over the thousands of illegal immigrants fleeing war-ravaged nations in the Mid-East and Africa who were desperately seeking refuge in towns and cities across Western Europe.


That anti-immigrant resentment also found an outlet of expression in a resurgent nationalist / populist political movement that has seen once-marginalized right-wing extremist political parties capture seats in parliaments across Europe - including the National Front in France.

For many French citizens, that resentment was further fueled by a string of terrorist attacks starting in 2012 that rocked the country - including the mass shooting at the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January, 2015 that left 17 people dead and 22 wounded.

And the beheading of Herve Cornara in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier in southeastern France by a radicalized Islamic French Muslim of North African descent named Yassin Salhi who also attempted to blow up a factory by ramming a vehicle into a bunch of gas cylinders on June 26, 2015.

From a domestic security standpoint, given the sharp increase in the number of home-grown "self-radicalized" French Muslims who've been engaged or connected to the slew of terrorist attacks that have struck France since 2012, it's understandable that French authorities would try and target areas with high concentrations of Muslims in an effort to try and prevent such attacks from happening. 

The uncomfortable truth about stop-and-frisk
in NYC; stats from NY Civil Liberties Union 

But it's also fair to say that some overzealous French police officers were engaged in taking out their frustrations on innocent people of color in an effort to "hit back" at an elusive target.

Unfortunately, just like stop-and-frisk in New York City, the overwhelming majority of people being stopped repeatedly were innocent French people of color who had nothing to do with terrorism or any other kind of illegal activity.

As The Guardian reported back in 2015 these kinds of random stop-and-frisks have also been successfully challenged in a French appeals court, as in the case of 13 men, all of whom were either of African or Arab descent, none of whom had a criminal record, who'd all been stopped multiple times by French police for humiliating ID checks.

The French court awarded all of the men modest financial compensation.

Now I'm no security expert, but are spot ID checks and stop-and-frisks of mostly people of color really the best way to stop some person who's sitting in a room alone watching ISIS propaganda online getting motivated to commit some kind of heinous terrorist attack on an innocent person or people?

Or are such actions only further stirring up the kind of anti-government resentment that already exists in already-marginalized communities? Thus serving the recruitment efforts of terrorists trying to target those alienated populations as they do in other countries like the U.S.?

There's no easy answer to those questions, but if you want to get a better sense of the repercussions of French police using undocumented stop-and-frisk against young French men of color, take a few minutes to read an op-ed Rokhaya Diallo wrote for Essence Magazine last August titled, "Police and Racism Kill In France Too". 

Just under a month after a slim majority of the 30 million-plus British citizens voted for the UK to "Brexit" the European Union on June 23, 2016, driven in part by the same kind of anti-immigrant hysteria being peddled by Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential race, a 24-year-old black Muslim Frenchman named Adama Traorie´ got into a confrontation with French police who were trying to arrest his older brother Bagui.

Adama Traorie´'s sister Assa (2nd from right) joins
thousands of protesters July, 2016 [Photo - AFP/ Getty]

As Ms. Diallo noted in her Essence op-ed, on or about July 20, 2016, Traorie´ died of asphyxiation while in police custody on the day of his 24th birthday.

For perspective, this incident took place just about fifteen days after former Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez fired seven shots into Philando Castile's car, killing him.

The death of Traorie´, subsequent protests, and disturbing allegations of an attempted police coverup, forced the issue of French police brutality into the mainstream spotlight in France.

Frankly, Americans who wish to see the implementation of meaningful reforms in policing to prevent this kind of abuse of police authority can't just get angry when it happens here in the United States.

Those who care have a responsibility to use peaceful dissent and political activism to channel outrage and concern over the same kinds of incidents that happen in other countries into substantive change that can take root globally.

Because this ongoing issue is reflective of a deeper systematic racism that's not bound by borders.

Rokhaya Diallo's passion and commitment to end unjustified police brutality in France and beyond isn't just going to get swept under the rug as a result of conservative French authorities pressuring the Macron government to boot her off of an independent advisory board.

Aided by social media, the ability of more people to see her documentary and a growing global presence thanks to attention from mainstream French, British and American media, Ms. Diallo's voice and influence is growing.

French police conducting a stop-and-frisk on a
young French citizen in 2011 

Many Americans (including myself) really weren't aware of Adama Traorie´'s death at the hands of French police in July, 2016 in part because our national news media was so consumed with the unjustified fatal shooting of Alton Sterling at the hands of two Baton Rouge, Louisiana police officers in the early morning hours of July 5, 2016 - then Philando Castile's death just a day later in Minnesota.

But Rokhaya Diallo's (and other activist's) efforts are important.

They've helped people around the world learn the name, and story, of Adama Traorie´.

As well as young men of color like Hakim Ajimi, who died after French police used an illegal choke hold on him that crushed his thorax in 2004, or Lamine Dieng who was in police custody when he died of asphyxiation inside a French police van in 2007.

French authorities have every right to take proactive steps to protect their citizens from the kinds of violent terrorist attacks that have seized the world's attention.

But killing innocent people is an unacceptable way to achieve that goal - and as the editorial board of the New York Times observed, French President Emmanuel Macron is going to have to decide if the time-honored French concepts of "liberty, equality, fraternity" are just words, or an important part of his long-term vision for the country who elected him into office, in part, to reject the divisive politics of the far right and bring the country back together.

That's an important question as we head into 2018, not just in France or the United States but everywhere where injustice has become a part of government policy.

Well that's it for now, I'm off to join some friends in Princeton to ring in the new year.

2017 has certainly been one heckuva ride.

Here's to better things in 2018, thanks again for checking out the blog and I hope to see you back here next year.  -CG

Sit or Stand? The NFL's Quiet Splash

Ka-ching! - NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell

Well there's little doubt that it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell following the news that he's signed a hefty five-year contract extension that could potentially be worth an estimated $200 million if incentives are met and bonuses kick in.

As ESPN's Adam Shefter reported earlier this evening, his yearly base salary will probably be somewhere in the $5 to $8 million range - nice work if you can get it, right?

But Goodell's new package, negotiated by the six-member NFL compensation committee, means the bulk of the "$40 million per year" figure being bandied about the press will actually come in the form of bonuses triggered by meeting specific financial and revenue goals.

Sure, fans and sportswriters alike may debate the merits of some of the decisions he's made on a range of rocky issues including the League's handling of player-involved domestic abuse situations, and policy and compensation related to concussion-related injuries of current and former players.

But given Goodell's overall performance as NFL commissioner, particularly the League's steadily growing revenues (Forbes estimated NFL revenues topped $13 billion in 2016) based in part on his efforts to develop new revenue streams, he's demonstrated pretty steady leadership.

The NFL is by far the most valuable sports league on the planet, and frankly speaking he's a pretty cool character and very shrewd - I used to work as a low-level copywriter in the NFL's old Ad Design Department in New York and I sat across a desk from him and talked with him in private in his office back when he was the NFL's VP of business development.

(My good friend Jimmy, who I mentioned in the opening of my blog back on September 10th as Hurricane Irma bore down on Florida, went to high school with Goodell and knows him well.)

It's a pretty good bet that Goodell is going to be clocking a lot of that bonus money over the course of the next few seasons, and the overwhelming majority of NFL owners are clearly pleased with the job he's doing.

Jacksonville Jaguars' members kneel in protest

To say nothing of the money they're making, and WILL make if the Republican members of the House and Senate and reconcile their versions of the GOP tax scam bill and send it to Trump to sign.

Speaking of which, did you see the video of Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren trying to read one of the last-minute handwritten "edits" to the nearly 500-page tax bill that Republican Senators had the gall to drop late Friday night an hour before the senate was scheduled to vote on it? 

Disgraceful. A low-point for America.

But to get back to the NFL, while the sideline protests during the national anthem before NFL games continue, in many ways its faded from the mainstream media focus to a degree.

That's due in part to network game broadcasts not devoting live camera coverage to the peaceful protests - remember, outside of special occasions like the Super Bowl, normal network game day NFL broadcasts don't really cover the national anthem.

On average, it takes about one minute and forty seconds for someone to sing the national anthem, players are only kneeling silently with arms locked during the song, so if you're watching a game it's more likely that you're seeing a commercial on your television screen when the national anthem is being sung on the field.

In addition, over the course of the fall a number of events have simply pushed the sideline protests out of the American media spotlight to a degree.

The devastating hurricanes that struck Houston, Puerto Rico and parts of Florida, the mass shooting in Las Vegas back in October, the ever-growing and escalating chaos of the Trump administration and the ongoing fallout from the special counsel investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, and Congress' efforts to pass some kind of meaningful legislation before the end of the year, have all had more of a cultural impact in terms of the "spotlight" of mainstream media coverage.

Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcom Jenkins and other
members of the Players Coalition last week

But the issue at the root of the NFL sideline protests certainly hasn't disappeared.

Interestingly, the news of Goodell's new contract extension seemed to make much more of a media splash than the news last Thursday that a group of approximately 40 current players (led by Malcom Jenkins and Anquan Bolden) and the NFL had reached an agreement for the League to contribute $89 million over seven years to support national and local organizations focused on issues such as police-community relations, criminal justice reform and educational reforms.

As Jim Trotter and Jason Reid reported for ESPN last Thursday, the funds, which NFL owners agreed to, are slated to be geared towards charitable and non-profit organizations that can directly impact some of the root causes related to the epic of unjustified use of deadly force and excessive physical violence against people of color by some members of law enforcement in this country.

According to ESPN, a quarter of the funds will go to the United Negro College Fund, and a quarter will go to Dream Corps, the non-profit founded by Van Jones in 2014 that seeks to promote bipartisan support to reduce America's prison population by 50% over ten years, boost opportunities for people of color in America's tech sector, and build an inclusive green economy.

Fifty percent of the NFL's slated funds will go to the Players Coalition, who collectively decided to hire The Hopewell Fund, a non-profit that assists individuals and organizations with directing charitable funds to causes they support, to oversee how the money is distributed to various organizations and charities.

Beyonce Knowles presents Colin Kaepernick with
the 2017 SI Muhammad Ali Legacy Award

Six days after the announcement of the agreement between the NFL and Players Coalition, the sideline protests against police brutality were in the news again.

At Tuesday night's Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year Awards Show, Beyonce Knowles brought some added media attention to the issue by coming onstage to present ex-San Francisco 49er's quarterback Colin Kaepernick with the Muhammad Ali Legacy Award.

An issue she's spoken out on before.

She was criticized by some police unions for her Super Bowl halftime performance in February of 2016 as well as her video "Formation" - which some members of law enforcement and conservative talking heads viewed as "anti-police" and linked with the imagery of the Black Lives Matter movement

As NBC reported earlier this morning, the award she presented to Kaepernick last night honors Ali's dedication to social change by recognizing the "athlete who uses their platform to further change."

Fans and observers can debate the merits of Kaepernick's decision to start the national anthem protest back in 2016.

But there's no question that it has changed American society by bringing the issue of unjustified systematic police brutality against people of color back into the media spotlight.

Co-founder Alicia Garza with other members
of Black Lives Matter

Especially after conservative media and Republican politicians (like Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani) spent months using the divisive rhetoric of the 2016 presidential campaign slandering the BLM movement as some kind of black terrorist anti-police plot.

When in reality, BLM was started by organizers Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opel Tometi in response to the 2013 acquittal of the violent racist psychopath George Zimmerman.


That was after a Florida jury let him walk after he'd followed, stalked and then attacked and killed 17-year-old unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin who was walking home from a store to his father's house with a bag of Skittles and a drink.

But while the NFL's decision to dedicate $89 million over seven years to issues that impact the African-American community is significant and meaningful, it's not magic fairy dust that's going to address the entrenched systematic racism that lies at the heart of unjustified use of force against people of color in America by some members of law enforcement in conjunction with a dysfunctional court system in which racial bias remains deeply embedded.

As The Nation and other media outlets have reported, the NFL's financial agreement has also divided some NFL players who see the money as a "payment" by the owners to get players to stop kneeling and sitting during the playing of the national anthem before games.

The agreement doesn't say anything about the money being tied to an agreement that the sideline protests end; Roger Goodell has made clear players have a right to express themselves.

But it remains to be seen whether the $89 million will lead to other players deciding to stand for the national anthem once again - after all, NFL owners are made up of multi-millionaires and billionaires who didn't get where they are by giving away their money for nothing.

And if they pledge to give away $89 million over seven years, they expect something for it - whether that means NFL players to decide to play ball is another question.

Scapegoating Freedom Of Expression

Mourners seek comfort in downtown Dallas 

The decision of 25-year-old Micah Jones, a deeply disturbed former member of the U.S. Army Reserves who'd served abroad in Afghanistan, to use a peaceful demonstration in downtown Dallas to senselessly murder five law enforcement officers last Thursday night was a heinous act of murder with repercussions that will continue to echo across the nation for years to come.

Was this latest mass shooting in America truly motivated by racial hatred as the suspect's words to police negotiators would seem to suggest?

Or did the events of the past week that surrounded the senseless deaths of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota serve as some kind of deep psychological trigger that (in his mind) served as what he saw as some kind of moral justification to set in motion the killing spree he unleashed on innocent men?

It's obviously way too early to understand exactly what set him off, we may never really know.

But Jones' statements and the apparent support he expressed for black nationalist groups on his Facebook page sound eerily like those of the Orlando nightclub mass shooter Omar Mateen; who told negotiators that he embraced two different radical Islamic groups that totally oppose one another, and that he hated homosexuals even though there is evidence to suggest that he himself was homosexual.

As depraved as Jones' actions in Dallas, and the thinking that prompted them were, the reality is that they had nothing to do with the wider protest movement against the rampant killing of people of color in America by some police officers.

Ex-San Jose PD detective Ron Martinelli

It's been astonishing to see how quickly some people have moved to vilify the Black Lives Matter protest movement as some kind of insidious plot.

For example, yesterday Michel Martin hosted a segment on NPR's All Things Considered that listened to various views on the events of the past week exclusively from the perspective of current or former law enforcement professionals.

She spoke with Ron Martinelli, a former officer and detective who served 25-years with the San Jose, California Police Department.


Martinelli, who makes a handsome living working as a paid court witness giving expert testimony on police tactics and procedure, claimed that Black Lives Matter is engaged in a "war" on police.

When pressed to explain, Martinelli told Michel Martin that Black Lives Matter, "...want to defund law enforcement. They want to diminish their involvement in the community and their stature, and they basically want to dissolve law enforcement. 

And the reason is because police officers are protectors of the rule of law, and the Black Lives Matter movement is a black nationalists revolutionary Marxist movement that is tied into a much larger international movement referred to as One World One Struggle." 

Of course, none of those things are true, but click the link above if you want to read a full transcript of his comments.

He's one of many conservatives in this country who've seized on the heinous actions of a lone, mentally disturbed gunman to mischaracterize a grassroots protest movement that was formed by three women in the wake of the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and killer George Zimmerman's being acquitted of any legal responsibility for his death.

Activist DeRay McKesson

The tone of some of these comments (and others opposed to the BLM movement) are dismissive of nationally-recognized BLM activist DeRay McKesson's 1st Amendment rights to free speech.

As was widely reported, he was arrested (on live video stream) Saturday night by Baton Rouge police for allegedly stepping over a white line onto a roadway during a protest against the killing of Alton Sterling.


News of his arrest exploded on social media.

Funds for his legal defense and that of other protesters arrested in Baton Rouge poured in from around the world and the phone number of the Baton Rouge Police Department was posted online for people to call to demand his release.

As video of his arrest under false pretense spread around the globe and backfired for the Baton Rouge PD, McKesson was released earlier today.

But despite that, as I was reading through the reader comments on a New York Times story about his arrest this morning, many people have reduced his commitment to speaking out against the rampant and unwarranted use of deadly force by some members of U.S. law enforcement to a simplistic exercise in vanity - I'm not sure where that's coming from.

The killing of five Dallas police officers by a madman was wrong, and maybe Texas legislators need to rethink the absurd open carry laws that let people stroll around the streets armed with loaded assault rifles like it's Mogadishu instead of a major American city.

But it's also wrong to channel outrage over the murder of those poor officers onto DeRay McKesson, and use him as a scapegoat for the racial tensions that have simmered beneath and above the surface of this nation for decades.

He didn't start the fire. So instead of blaming him for pointing to the flames, maybe some of the critics calling for his head should spend a few minutes and actually listen to the man speak, as he did in a revealing interview on the Brian Lehrer Show earlier this year during an unsuccessful bid for mayor of Baltimore.

He's a rational, highly intelligent advocate for justice who speaks eloquently on issues related to the impact of race on the American landscape - to reduce him to the kind of one-dimensional "narcissistic anarchist" stereotype being peddled by conservative talking heads is to completely miss the man and what he's actually about.

In the meantime protests over the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile continue in cities across the United States.

What does it say about this nation that some Americans seem angrier about protesters exercising their 1st Amendment right to express outrage over unjustified police killings, than they are about the police killing people of color for no reason?

The high profile deaths of seven people last week were the result of unspeakable acts; but is the expression of the 1st Amendment right to free speech and to assemble a worse act than intentional police misconduct that results in the unjustified loss off life?

Mistrial for William Porter & Jayvis Benjamin's Wait For Justice

Mistrial for Baltimore PD officer William Porter

It was a rather sobering day for those interested in seeing at least some measure of justice meted out by the Baltimore court system for 25-year-old Freddie Gray's gruesome death while handcuffed in the back of a Baltimore PD prisoner transport van.

Earlier today judge Barry G. Williams declared a mistrial after the jury remained hung on whether or not Baltimore police officer William Porter could be found guilty for charges including misconduct, manslaughter and assault for failing to respond to Gray's request for medical assistance and neglecting to properly fasten Gray into a seat belt to secure him in the back of the police van.

As Robert Lang and Tyler Waldman reported for the WBAL radio News 1090 Website:

"Porter testified that he did not put Gray in a seat belt, for fear he might grab his gun, even though Porter said that when he discovered Gray on the floor of the police van, he was having "an adrenaline dump," and was unable to move. Porter and other officers who testified described Gray as having suffered from "jailitis" where suspects try to fake an injury, hoping to be taken to the hospital instead of jail."

While I'm not a police officer, I doubt I'm the only person skeptical of a cop claiming he was worried about his weapon being ripped from his holster by an unconscious injured man laying on the floor of a police van.

Christie trashes Black Lives Matter on Face the Nation

Don't hold your breath waiting for conservatives like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to offer thoughts on what a mistrial in the Gray case might mean for the larger issue of the lack of trust between large segments of the public and police departments caused by the lack of accountability for officers who take the lives of innocent and unarmed people in custody.

Opportunistic reactionaries like the Christies and Trumps of this nation delight in embellishing their conservative street cred by unfairly and wrongly characterizing all protesters aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement (or anyone who protests the rampant abuse and killing of American citizens by police officers) as "anti-police" agitators who advocate the murder of police officers.

As Christie did on CBS during an October 25th interview on Face the Nation when he also clumsily tried to link President Obama to ongoing nationwide protests against illegal police killings in one of his many awkward efforts to pander to the right and prove his conservative credentials by trashing the President over - well pretty much anything.

The six Baltimore PD officers charged in Gray's death

Given the extent of the protests that gripped the city of Baltimore in the wake of Gray's death it's understandable that police are erring on the side of caution to prepare for any possible public reaction to the news of the mistrial.

As I write these words, NPR reports that protesters are gathering in front of the courthouse in Baltimore and chanting "No justice, no peace."

Which of course is their right to do under the Constitution.

But it's my hope that protesters in Baltimore remain peaceful and remember that beginning in January five other officers (pictured above) will face charges in court in Gray's death.

So at least there's still a chance that at least someone will actually be held legally responsible for a man's death while in police custody - a man who hadn't actually committed a crime.

Viewed in a larger context, the fact that State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby actually brought charges against the six Baltimore police officers within months of the incident has to be seen as a positive step.

It took well over a year for Illinois State's Attorney Anita Alvarez to file charges against Chicago PD officer Jason Van Dyke; which she finally did hours before the release of the video footage of Van Dyke emptying his pistol into 16-year-old Laquan McDonald as the teen was walking away from police officers.

Here in "the worlds leading Democracy", the wait for justice for African-American and Hispanic victims of excessive police violence can take even longer - if it happens at all.

Consider the case of Jayvis Benjamin, a 20-year-old college student who was shot and killed by Avondale Estates Police Department Sgt. Lynn Thomas back on January 18, 2013.

Jayvis Benjamin, killed by police in 2013

As an article in the New York Daily News by Shaun King reports, Benjamin (pictured left) was accused by police of having stolen a car when he allegedly ran through a red light and crashed into the yard of a home.

In what has become an all too familiar refrain in America, police officers claim Benjamin tried to attack an officer and Sgt. Thomas was forced to shoot Thomas in the chest, killing him.

But Benjamin was unarmed at the time.

His mother Montye Benjamin says the car he was accused of having stolen actually belonged to his grandfather and he had permission to drive it.

Benjamin also had no police record - so given these circumstances why no charges in the case?

Benjamin's mother says police have videotape of the incident, but they still refuse to release it.

DeKalb County DA Robert James

As King's article details, the prosecutor, DeKalb County District Attorney Robert James (pictured left), and police are coming under fire for dragging their feet in an investigation that's now stretching into almost three years.

For over a year James has been assuring Jayvis Benjamin's family and the media that a grand jury will review the case so what's up?

Is he hoping the case just goes away?

There's a hope that increased public interest in the case driven in part by the national media attention on the prosecutions in Chicago and Baltimore can function as leverage to motivate the DeKalb County DA to make a decision on bringing charges against Sgt. Thomas in the death of Jayvis Benjamin.

Time will tell but there's a sense that the longer they wait in DeKalb County, the more suspicious the absurd length of the investigation seems - two years and counting?

In the past, the refusal of police and the prosecutors they work with to release the video tape of Benjamin's death and the lack of charges of any kind being filed for his death may have once worked as a way to shield police from facing responsibility for the death of an unarmed civilian under murky circumstances.

But given the changes that have taken place in the wake of other high-profile police killings - the lack of action on the part of the DeKalb County DA comes off as the kind of bureaucratic foot-dragging that  blew up in the face of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuele and the heads of police departments in Chicago, Baltimore, Ferguson and elsewhere.

It's been an unreasonably long wait for the mother and family of Jayvis Benjamin to get some kind of closure, but in this age of the rapid evolution of social media the old adage that parents, grandparents and teachers have told generations of children rings more true than ever - the truth eventually comes to the surface.

In the interests of ethics, the public trust and the concept of justice, the DA Robert James and officials within the Avondale Estates Police Department don't want to be on the wrong side when the truth about Jayvis Benjamin's death finally surfaces in DeKalb County Georgia.  

Potentially Tainted? Investigators Conceal Video of Jamar Clark's Death

Jamar Clark taken off life support Monday

The news that 24-year old Jamar Clark (pictured left) has died as a result of the gunshot wound to the head he received from one of two as-yet unnamed Minneapolis police officers early Sunday morning is a real kick in the gut to the idea of America as a place of "liberty and justice for all" that's governed by the rule of law.

A couple hours ago the LA Times reported that the county medical examiner announced that they are ruling Clark's death a homicide.

Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges has already called for a federal investigation of the circumstances surrounding his death.

If the reports turn out to be true that he was interfering with the ability of EMT workers who were trying to assist a woman that he was suspected of assaulting, then of course he deserved to be subdued, arrested and taken to court to face the appropriate charges.

But did the guy deserve to die?

Like so many other young men of color who've lost their lives to members of law enforcement in highly-publicized incidents, Clark was unarmed at the time he got into a confrontation with the two Minneapolis police officers who arrived at the scene outside an apartment building.

But widespread reports from witnesses at the scene are suggesting that he was also handcuffed when one of the officers allegedly leaned over Clark's body, put a knee on him and shot him in the head at point blank range.

BCA Superintendent Drew Evans

According to Drew Evans (pictured left), Superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a pair of handcuffs were found at the scene, but no determination has yet been made as to whether Clark was actually cuffed when he was shot.

The BCA confirms they have multiple sources of video taken of the incident, including from an ambulance at the scene, exterior security cameras from the apartment building where the incident took place and from several people who captured video on cell phones; but no single source shows everything that led up to the actual shooting - or what happened in it's entirety.

Prosecutors, members of the Clark family and protesters have called for the video to be released, but Evans says the BCA won't release any of the video out of concerns that doing so "may potentially taint portions of the investigation."

From my experience (and it's just an opinion) when investigators express reluctance to release video surveillance of fatal cop shootings, more often than not there's something on the video that's not going to be good for the two cops in question.

Protesters block traffic across I-94 in Minneapolis

The incident has sparked a series of protests across Minneapolis and dozens were arrested after a multi-ethnic, multiracial group of people (pictured left) intentionally blocked traffic across I-94 by linking hands in front of oncoming vehicles.

My guess is the two officers, who've been placed on paid leave pending an investigation, are huddling with lawyers while they try to cobble together a version of the incident that points to them fearing for their own safety.

Even though there were two of them, the guy was unarmed, and by all accounts, was already on the ground at the time that he was shot.

Did he tussle with the two officers? By all accounts he did.

But that doesn't make an unarmed man accused of assault being shot in the head by a police officer any less of an egregious example of excessive use of force.

While some media sources are already publicizing the fact that court records show he had a 2010 conviction for aggravated robbery and a conviction for making terroristic threats earlier this year, Clark's brother Mario Reed said Clark was just a 24-year old who'd made some mistakes and was actively trying to make positive changes in his life - according to Reed:

"He was trying to get his life back together, he was going to work every day. I was dropping him off every day. He worked at the car wash in northeast Minneapolis and he was just getting his life back in order," 

That chance was taken from this young man.

And now his grieving family is left to deal with the reality that Jamar Clark has joined the ranks of The Counted nine days before Thanksgiving.

By the way, according to the latest statistics in The Counted database, over 1,000 people have been killed by members of law enforcement in the United States in 2015.

"With liberty and justice for all."

Christie's Red Meat Strategy

Chris Christie on CBS' Face the Nation on Sunday

Between the brilliant foliage decorating the trees, the refreshing morning chill, and the clear skies and sunshine over Central Jersey today, fall is truly in the air.

But across the American political spectrum there's a whiff of desperation in the air too.

Trump attacks Ben Carson's religion because he's slipping in the Iowa polls? Low rent.

On Sunday Chris Christie took to CBS to score some free airtime and desperately-needed national exposure to try and remind Republican voters that he's still running for president.

In a move that offers a glimpse into just how desperate his campaign is to remain relevant to conservative voters in red states, he denounced the Black Lives Matters movement, saying that he doesn't believe "that movement should be justified when they are calling for the murder of police officers."

Now obviously that's a false narrative perpetuated by right wing media. But it's a pretty sad reflection of the state of the Christie presidential campaign that he'd repeat it on national television to bolster his conservative cred.

The truth isn't some kind of currency to be tendered whenever it suits your interests, especially for someone who's running for the highest office in the land.

The Black Lives Matter movement was first formed as a peaceful grass roots response to the killing of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012 and a Florida's jury's acquittal of racist sociopath George Zimmerman in the killing.

The term, 'Black Lives Matter' was intended (in part) to reinforce the idea that the lives of the unarmed people of color being killed by police have value and meaning; because the actions of some members of law enforcement in the U.S. suggest there is an entrenched attitude amongst America's police culture that the lives of black people simply don't matter.

While it may be true that in the midst of some protest marches that have taken place in various parts of the country in response to the rash of police killings of innocent and unarmed African-Americans, an occasional voice advocating violence against police may have been heard from an angry young guy.  

But that lone voice, or small group of individuals tacking their own violent agenda onto the Black Lives Matter message does not represent the BLM movement; and it was wrong for Christie to suggest it does - a feeling echoed by more than one Op-Ed piece today including one written by Newark Star Ledger guest columnist Reginald Jackson.

If you look at the BLM Website, the group's guiding principles affirm that it is "an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folk's contributions to this society, our humanity, and out resilience in the face of deadly oppression."

In no way does the group or it's members advocate violence against police.

When an angry white guy yelled out "White power!" at a Donald Trump rally in Alabama recently, I don't recall seeing Chris Christie on CBS denouncing Trump's campaign as a hate group that advocates white supremacy.

Pro-immigration protester being dragged from Trump speech

I don't recall hearing a peep from Christie when a Trump supporter recently dragged a man who was protesting The Donald's demeaning anti-immigrant fear-mongering out of the room and kicked him while he was on the ground while the crowd chanted "USA! USA! USA" (pictured left).

Situational moral outrage on Christie's part?

Just saying.

As Christie continues to cloak himself in an increasingly extremist conservative veneer, he seems to be abandoning reason and fact in favor of the fringe political perspective of those (as Tim Dickinson described members of the Republican Freedom Caucus in the October 22nd issue of Rolling Stone) whose "political imperative is to serve up red meat to furious constituents who say they want 'their country back'"
     
From a politically strategic standpoint, it's understandable that Christie would want to bash President Obama to serve up some of that red meat to hungry conservatives who despise the president.

But when he goes on a national broadcast and tells CBS host John Dickerson, "The problem is this, there's lawlessness in this country. The president encourages this lawlessness. Encourages it... by his own rhetoric. He does not support the police, he doesn't back up the police. He justifies black lives matter." He's not demonstrating the type of demeanor and thoughtfulness characteristic of someone worthy of being president of the United States.

He's just tossing chunks of red meat out to encourage the lowest common denominator of American politics.

Sure that dog may eat it up in the short run.

But when it comes to the long (presidential) run and winning the political mainstream and the electoral votes needed to win in 2016?

That dog just ain't gonna hunt.

Waiting While Black & The Cost of Police Misconduct

Ex-tennis pro James Blake

It's only Thursday but I'm just going to go ahead and award this week's George Lincoln Rockwell Award to the as-yet unnamed member of the NYPD who ran up and tackled former American professional tennis player James Blake (pictured left), violently slammed him to the ground, handcuffed him and arrested him yesterday.

Blake wasn't committing a crime or anything, dude was just standing outside his hotel waiting for a car to pick him up and take him to the US Open in Flushing Meadows, Queens - where the main tennis stadium is named after Arthur Ashe. 

According to the typically dry and evasive statement from the NYPD, five white undercover officers mistakenly identified Blake as a member of an ID theft ring.

Or, put simply, he was Waiting While Black.
  
This latest incident is yet another in a long series of flagrantly ignorant racist-Keystone Cop moments for the NYPD that not only makes them look like reactionary moronic bigots, it also plainly demonstrates the extent to which racial bias (on the part of some officers) affects excessively violent treatment of black citizens; even innocent people who are aren't criminals, aren't running and haven't done anything wrong.

Remember, Blake is a world famous athlete with GQ model-looks; so imagine what happens to the unfortunate average-Joe black guy who's just standing on a street in the Bronx or Brooklyn minding his own business when five members of the NYPD roll up and "mistakenly" tackle him, slam him to the ground and arrest him - that guy is probably still in Rikers Island awaiting trial.

Blake was quickly released when the brains of the five-person NYPD posse realized who he was.

As The Guardian reported yesterday (his mom is British so the story has reached England) Blake was quite eloquent and thoughtful about his reaction to being physically assaulted by a plain clothes NYPD cop on a busy street. 

“I don’t know if it’s as simple as [racial profiling]. To me it’s as simple as unnecessary police force, no matter what my race is. In my mind there’s probably a race factor involved, but no matter what there’s no reason for anybody to do that to anybody. You’d think they could say, ‘Hey, we want to talk to you. We are looking into something. I was just standing there. I wasn’t running. It’s not even close [to appropriate]. It’s blatantly unnecessary. You would think at some point they would get the memo that this isn’t OK, but it seems that there’s no stopping it.”

No, those guys definitely did NOT get the memo.

Finding Forrester actor Rob Brown

Reminds me of when Treme actor Rob Brown (pictured left) was falsely arrested and detained by Macy's security in mid-town Manhattan back in the summer of 2013 after he used his credit card to buy a $1,300 watch for his mom; as I recall at least one of the Macy's security who illegally detained him for at least 45 minutes (and mocked him) was off-duty NYPD.

Remember folks, being arrested by police while simply standing on a busy public street waiting for transportation like Blake isn't unheard of for young men of color in this nation.

Remember back in early December, 2013 when three black high school students were arrested by a police officer in Rochester, NY while waiting for a school bus to pick them up and take them to a basketball scrimmage?

Yesterday's incident with James Blake puts the ongoing conservative media onslaught against the Black Lives Matter protest movement in a different context; revealing that the Fox News - Tea Party conservatives literally do not (or choose not to) see the stark reality of the way black people are treated by some members of the law enforcement community.

The terrible human cost of the systematic police misconduct in this nation that's been thrust into the forefront of the media spotlight so often lately comes at such a high price.

Charleston cop Mike Slager shoots unarmed Walter Scott

It degrades the humanity of both the abuser and the abused, and shatters an already fragile trust between civilians and the members of the law enforcement community that's sworn to protect them.

The many good cops, who's positive deeds too often go unseen and unreported, find their reputations unfairly tarnished by the rampant misconduct (and abuse) committed by their fellow officers as well.

Today's incident in New York is just one indicator that this nation has a long way to go; but progress is being made.

Increased demands for reforms in police tactics and procedures, along with growing public awareness and grass roots activism targeting police misconduct, are some of the factors bringing incidents of abuse of civilians by public servants into the spotlight.

But the widespread availability of personal cell phone video coupled with an array of social media platforms that streamline the ability to document and share information on cases of police abuse, is one of the most important reasons that at no other time in this country's history have Americans been confronted so directly with the incredible human toll of institutionalized racism.

The growing importance of technology in holding police officers accountable for their actions is backed up by the release of the New York Civilian Complaint Review Board's 2015 semi-annual report earlier this week.

New York CCRB head Richard Emery

Yesterday morning, Richard Emery (pictured left), the head of the CCRB was interviewed on The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC - very informative, give it a listen if you've got a few minutes.

The CCRB is the primary agency in New York responsible for investigating all civilian complaints filed against NYPD officers; their report reveals some interesting trends.

Civilians complaints against the NYPD are down 22% from this point in 2014 and a remarkable 45% of all the substantiated excessive force complaints were accompanied by video footage evidence taken from either cell phones or CCTV cameras.

The data in the report also shows that most cops are good cops. Over an 18 month period, 14% of all NYPD officers are responsible for all civilian complaints received; for repeat offenders the percentage is even smaller.

But even bearing in mind that there's no way to know how many victims of police misconduct at the hands of the NYPD don't report incidents to the CCRB because they're intimidated, don't know the procedure to do so, or are incarcerated indefinitely in some place like Rikers Island while waiting for a court date, the CCRB's 2015 semi-annual report is showing progress is being made.

Maybe things have to get worse before they get better, but the toll it's taking on America is dividing us as a nation.

In the wake of the highly publicized killings of members of law enforcement, efforts by Fox News and other right-wing media talking heads to vilify the Black Lives Matter movement by falsely characterizing the organization as anti-cop or promoting violence were a cornerstone of the conservative media narrative last week.

Yesterday The Baltimore Sun reported that the five-member spending panel of the city of Baltimore has agreed to pay a $6.4 million settlement to the family of Freddie Gray in two separate payments of $3.2 million that will paid over the course of two years.

As reporters Yvonne Wenger and Mark Puente reported, this is one of the largest settlements paid to victims of police abuse in the history of Baltimore; one paid for by the tax payers.

Some of the same residents of Baltimore whose lives are negatively impacted by the lack of city services or failing urban infrastructure are seeing their tax dollars cover the costs of compensation for cases of misconduct by members of the BPD.  

As essayist Chauncey Devega recently observed during an interview with Farron Cousins on the
September 3rd edition of 'Ring of Fire' on Free Speech TV, some large metropolitan police departments actually put aside amounts of up to $50 million in order to settle injury claims or wrongful death suits filed against individual cops.

An Associated Press report revealed that between 2000 - 2010 the NYPD paid out a staggering $964 million in compensation to settle claims of misconduct against NYPD officers - all of it paid for by the tax payers. Almost $100 million a year.

So as the 2015 CCRB report shows, under 14% of the approximately 34,450 NYPD officers are responsible for the most serious cases of police misconduct, but the cost for their actions are paid for the millions of tax paying New Yorkers - and as we know, it's rare to see a police officer face significant consequences for serious cases of misconduct against civilians.

Remember Daniel Pantaleo was caught on camera choking an unarmed man pleading for his life and he was never even indicted; he's back on the job earning a salary, benefits and pension right now as you read these words.

The real cost of police misconduct is paid by the family members, friends and co-workers of those injured, maimed or killed by police indifference to human life and dignity - and to a lesser extent, the smaller indignities and humiliations suffered by guys like James Blake who happen to be black in the wrong place at the wrong time when the bias behind the badge shows itself.