Tag Archives: Eric Garner

Political Rants

Eyes open.

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We’ve reached a moment in American life when blindness is no longer an option. When I say “American life”, I’m referring to the world of relatively comfortable white people, a world I inhabit. A lot of the people in this world were skeptical of the notion that racism is a feature of our society, not a bug. Many still are, I’m sure, but not as many as at the beginning of this year. We’ve seen race-based murder on the part of police and vigilantes many times in the decade prior to January 2020, but like mass shootings, they never seemed to move the needle on public opinion. And again, by “public opinion”, I mean the views of relatively comfortable white people, whose preferences and sentiments drive public policy (not as much as corporate power does, but to some degree).

In July of 2014, Eric Garner was choked to death by a New York City cop. It was an arbitrary, racist killing shockingly caught on video, and yet very little happened as a result. The cop was eventually fired, that’s about it. George Floyd was killed in a similarly arbitrary, racist manner, caught on video, but as if to underline the heinousness of the abuse of power that took Garner’s life, Floyd’s murderers affected a kind of casual air as they choked the life out of him, keeping the knee on his neck minutes after he stopped breathing. And the effect was like, listen up, white people, this REALLY is a thing. If you didn’t get it when you saw Eric Garner heinously murdered by a choke hold, here’s the same crime plus a kind of devil-may-care attitude and mutilation for good measure.

In 2015, Walter Scott was shot in the back by a cop. The heinous crime was, again, caught on video. The cop went to jail, but still, not a lot changed. Now, five years later, Rayshard Brooks was killed in a similar way, under similar circumstances in some respects, but with the added outrage of physical abuse of the wounded victim. When Scott fled, his assailant shot him, then dropped his taser next to his dying victim in an attempt to substantiate his bogus police report. When Brooks fled, his assailant shot him through the heart, then kicked him as he lay dying while another cop put his boot on Brooks’s shoulders. So here again, it was as if the gods were saying, take another look, white people – Walter Scott’s death was not some kind of unicorn. This shit happens all the time.

Obviously, it takes a lot to get through our thick skulls. But if the recent wanton murders of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Breonna Taylor and others have opened some … perhaps most white people’s eyes a bit, well, better late than never, I suppose, though distinctly not better for the families of those we’ve lost.

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jp

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Political Rants

Fighting for air.

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Another grand jury delivers yet another unsatisfactory conclusion. Seems like prosecutors now have a workable model for not indicting the proverbial ham sandwich. Convene a grand jury for a specific case. Drop a metric ton of data on them with no clear guidance as to how to make sense of it. Invite the individual against whom charges are being considered to present his case to the jury without pointed cross-examination by prosecutors. Drag it on for an impossibly long time, so that the grand jury is exhausted and only too eager to get back to their lives. Next thing you know, the ham sandwich walks.

#ICantBreatheWhat does this prove other than the well-established fact that powerful institutions will always find innovative ways to protect themselves? Police are the strong arm of the government, which is itself a rough representation of the sentiments of the general population, this being a democracy. For decades, our politicians have built their careers on stoking fears over crime, particularly urban crime perpetrated by “scary black people”. They employ coded versions of racial stereotypes deeply rooted in American society, going back to the arrival of the first African slaves on these shores. Police are the “thin blue line” between scary black people and your white person’s home, your white person’s family, your white person’s privilege.

What did Eric Garner do to warrant being tackled and choked to death by a gang of cops? Was it selling loose cigarettes? I sincerely doubt it. Aside from blackness, what is it that he shared with Michael Brown and so many others? I contend that it is defiance – in Garner’s case in particular, defiance of police authority in the presence of other African Americans. You could say the same for Michael Brown – he wasn’t going to go quietly. If you stand up to injustice, challenge the officer’s right to bend you to his will, you open yourself up to very harsh treatment, to the point of death. Defiance of authority, in my opinion, plays a key role in that decision by Darren Wilson to pull the trigger five more times once Michael Brown had already been shot.

This goes a lot deeper than anything that might be fixed by mounting cameras on police uniforms. A better start might be to put cameras on every black person in America.

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jp

Political Rants

War comes home.

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Obama now has something like 1,000 American military personnel “on the ground”, as they say, in Iraq. The situation for the Yazidi families, while serious, was not as dire as the government had suggested apparently, as thousands had been escaping their mountaintop exile every night, according to the NY Times. Just yesterday, NBC’s Brian Williams characterized their plight as “a modern Exodus,” though I don’t recall him using that terminology to describe the thousands upon thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes in northern Gaza under withering Israeli fire (that would have been all his job is worth).

Mine proof assult vehicles. That's community policing?Still, the U.S. military action will continue in Iraq, sans dramatic justification. Neatly done. And we will continue to provide arms to the people fighting those other people we provided arms to. There’s a foreign policy for you. What’s even more worrying than that, though, is the degree to which our military have been providing arms, armored vehicles, and advanced tactical gear to police departments across the country, like the one in Ferguson, Missouri. In the wake of the seemingly arbitrary police killing of teenager Michael Brown, this mostly African-American community looks reminiscent of Soweto, South Africa, during the bad old days of Apartheid.

This is not limited to one small Missouri town. Police tactics with regard to young Black men appear uniformly driven by aggression and the presumption of guilt, even in the absence of any definable criminal transgression. Michael Brown was walking up a street with his friend. Eric Garner, in New York, was selling individual cigarettes. Ezell Ford, in Los Angeles, was lying on the ground, under arrest, when he was shot in the back by the police. We have seen this movie before, right? Only now, it seems, the tactics and firepower of the U.S. Military are being brought to bear to confront communities justifiably outraged by these killings. What are these police departments so afraid of? Why do they always turn the amp up to 11 when it comes to Black people?

There are many answers to that question, and they’re all pretty ugly. Suffice to say that there’s a culture of discrimination in law enforcement in the United States. After over a century of deliberately criminalizing Black life, it’s a hard habit for them to break. But we must break it … peacefully … with our collective resistance.

luv u,

jp