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Archive for the ‘violence’ Category

4 Chicago Thugs Torture Disabled Young Man on Facebook Live Stream (Video)

There is no excuse for violence against another for any reason, and should not be condoned by anyone. this whole 4 thugs torture a poor defenseless mentally challenged child” narrative is skewed. I read a lot of comments under the videos presented and news stories written about this event. It seems that folks can hardly wait to spew venom at the supposed perpetrators of a crime against someone they deem innocent, harmless and defenseless.
And then I remember. The innocents who were kidnapped, tortured, beaten,
starved and stuffed in the hulls of ships during the North Atlantic Slave trade. I remember the many who died and who still cry in the slave Castles of Elmina. I remember standing there and feeling the walls close in on me as their cries ripped my ears apart. I remember not being able to even read the entire book “Black cargoes.”
I remember Antoine Sterling, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland and many others who simply wanted to be able to be treated like human beings.
I remember the Palestinians, who face torture and trepidation every day as they watch home after home, community after community bulldozed to the ground and their guts squeeze in a vice grip, like a traffic jam.

I remember homeless veterans who fought for a cause not their own, but for a false system with the false belief that it is the protectorate of the world and the way to keep it safe from tyrannical leaders, is to drone democracy down its throat.

I remember the many traumatic false flags perpetrated by a thuggish system that only cares about the financial advantage of its escapades and not the hurt, trauma, guilt and deceit perpetrated on the masses who view this thuggishness.
I remember the many lost children, lost forever and barely recorded by the alphabet agencies, who thru their own complicity, cover up the many scandalous crimes perpetrated against the most vulnerable of our world, our children.
I remember how the churches, mosques and synagogues are filled with hate, deceit, anger, distrust, incest, rape and adultery, while their walls are painted in diamonds and gold.
I remember the buried bodies of aborted fetuses, silenced in the night by the desperation of ill-informed and frightened women, who see their bodies as property for someone else to use and discard of as they see fit.
I see, lost children, stuck in their devices, screaming and fainting when they don’t

get what they feel they deserve no matter how outlandish it may seem to their adult counterparts.

I remember men in dark cloaks, in dark rooms in the middle of the night, who plot and plan the annihilation of millions of people from the face of the planet by any means necessary.
I remember the destruction that is blasted through the media in movie after movie, video game after  video game where oversized imaginations struggle to believe it ain’t real, when, all the credits say is, “no animal was hurt in this film.”
I remember the cognitive dissonance.
And then I remember the litany all over again, the pain, hurt, distress, agony, abuse, etc. that one human being can impose on another, but then, somehow, it has to do with race or nothing at all to do with race, or maybe a little bit to do with race, or maybe it’s just ugly people doing ugly things.
And then I remember how fascinated we as humans become, to watch and engage in the total destruction of another human.

Maybe some of it is poor judgment, some of it nervousness, some of it voyeurism and some of it just incredulous, but all of it is us.
Every last one of us. All of it is in us.
And each of us, have the potential to be mean, cruel and despicable as the person we happen to be recently pointing our fingers at.
Cause I remember those cries for blood for the murderer. The lust and pleasure and joy in the eye when the verdict came down, “Execution” and the crowds that gather around to “watch” the “murdering thug” take his last breath. I remember the pleas for clemency from that murdering thug both behind bars and free .

I remember how quickly we are able to commit acts of violence, spanning a wide spectrum, against another human being and blame them for just being there, in the way.

So, yeah, those 4 young people, who lost their minds, lost their sensibilities, lost their empathy for another helpless defenseless one, were being insensitive thugs, they were committing a crime, and Facebook was complicit in this criminal act for allowing it to be aired and participating in the agenda of divide and conquer.
And yes, there is justice, and yes, there is truth, but in this reality, were we are all complicit, were we are all capable, so. Let us all remember, but for the Grace of God, go I.
Four Chicago Suspects Charged With Hate Crime After Broadcasting Torture of Special Needs Teen on Facebook Live

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Alternative News, beheadings, Chicago, child abuse, CNN, destruction, ISIS, lynching, man's inhumanity to man, MSM, pedophilia, religion, thugs, torture, violence

Commentary: Is There A Hidden Psychosis Behind Police Brutality?

Police Shoot Two Unarmed Men 377 Times, In Car That Had Already Crashed

I always wondered about this connection between firearms and sex. Stay with me here. One day I had a dream as I was trying to figure out why rape and war go together. In this dream I was told that men shooting guns actually get sexually aroused and that once that happens they need to relieve themselves so they rape. It is also about power and control. If you look at the language used when describing sexual intercourse, you get words like “firing his shot”, “blasted” “busted” and various other metaphors for what it means when a man ejaculates. And then there are these synonyms: emission, ejection, discharge, release, expulsion.

So, we have in this story, a barrage of senseless bullets shooting up a car where clearly the men had to be dead long before 377 shots to their vehicle. Are we dealing more with sexually frustrated men who have to act in this manner? Are we dealing with men who ejaculate too quickly? Are we dealing with men who can’t seem to satisfy their partners and who feel so inept that by this obscene show of force they can, ejaculate over and over and over, hundreds of times without needing to stop and regroup? Are they insecure because after on orgasm it’s over for them, whereas by assaulting someone while wearing a badge they can “orgasm” over and over and over again?

I hadn’t thought about the sexual implications of war and police brutality in that way before. But It always appeared to me to have sexual overtones. When you watch how the police force suspects into handcuffs. Or how they “knock” you to the ground in a what appears to be sadomaschistic demonstration of dominance over someone they have rendered weak and helpless.

We keep looking at the sociopathic indicators that this type of behavior reveals, but I am wondering if we are missing an even deeper psychosis. Are we actually looking at folks who have sexual hangups, possibly sexual abuse and assault in their own history? Are we looking at a sexual perversion that can be shrouded in a uniform and a badge where a take down is imminent? Do these folks have a license to kill?? Or a license to rape, mentally, emotionally, physically and psychically?

I remember years ago noticing that weapons tend to resemble, in some way, the male phallic. From guns to to rockets to bombs they all look the same. The male phallic. Does this mean that there is an innate insecurity that men have about their manhood which is many instances is determined by their sexual prowess, however distorted this perception may be. What do bombs, guns etc. do? They penetrate, they explode, they ejaculate.

We have been living in an era of the Patriarchy for the past several thousand years. Male dominion over all life on Earth, particularly when looking at Male dominion in so many religions, politics, economics and social institutions around the world. It is expected that men should dominate! If a man does not carry that energy he is considered effeminate and a disgrace. Looking at our world we are seeing how this distortion has lead to more destruction and chaos since the days of the Gladiators.

The male principle in its desire to have dominion over all has become so distorted that the idea of freedom. peace, justice etc. is skewed and gleaned through the lens of destruction. Their creations have become destructive toys that hurt, maim and kill.

Frustrated, insecure and competitive men with killing toys are running our world and the consequences are devastating.

A Prison Nurse’s look at Sandra Bland’s Death, by Paul Spector

Excerpt: “In prison, infliction of mental and physical agony on helpless captives provides sexual pleasure to sick individuals. No penetration is needed, violent predators value power and control more. Sandra’s treatment, particularly isolation, are techniques found in CIA prisons and Guantanamo Bay. They are unbearable and leave no marks. The UN calls it torture.” Read More:

In my opinion, any editing of the information released to the authorities is suspect. In this video there is a shot you may want to check out. Sandra has a huge lump on her head that has been obviously photoshopped out. Here’s the link to that photo. http://www.conspiracyclub.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ne55be5a07.jpg
Why did they do that? I am still suspicious and I don’t think the person in the video of Sandra in a orange jumpsuit is Sandra, maybe another person from another time, maybe it’s staged, with no timestamp and no identifying info on this video it could have come from anywhere.
Proof that Sandra Bland’s Mug Shot Was Edited & Why: http://www.conspiracyclub.co/2015/08/02/sandra-blands-mug-shot-edit/

 

  What Every Mental Health Professional Needs to Know About Sex By Stephanie Buehler

 

From the Urban Dictionary:

Ejaculation
The one time a male says the words “I love you” and really means it.
While depositing an ejaculation into your partner the male screams with authority… “I love you!”
by Lummer HummerDecember 30, 2011

March 13, 2013 12:56 p.m. My Adventures With ‘Penis-Numbing’ Spray
In a bold step toward remedying the world’s least pressing health issue, the FDA recently approved an over-the-counter topical spray to treat premature ejaculation. (Similar products have long been available, but this is the first to win FDA approval.) Manufactured by Absorption Pharmaceuticals, Promescent’s active ingredient is lidocaine, a local anesthetic you have probably encountered at the dentist. Promescent’s website boasts that it “benefits both men and women by helping a man have staying power.”

Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders: Premature Ejaculation

Police Shoot Two Unarmed Men 377 Times, In Car That Had Already Crashed

May 14, 2014 7:34 pm·

Police abuse doesn’t get much more flagrant than this. Recently dozens of Miami-Dade police officers filled Adrian Montesano’s vehicle with 377 bullet holes, shot from every imaginable angle.
The frenzied show of police force was described by witnesses as “chaotic” and “contagious” in nature.

The vehicle’s 2 occupants had been trying to surrender, but 23 police officers in total decided to act as judge, jury and executions, shooting up the car, the suspects and also neighboring houses, businesses, vehicles. Even fellow police officers were hit by the insane barrage of bullets from the high capacity magazines carried in triplicate by each officer.
The events began back in the early morning hours of December 10th, 2013, but questions about the massive show of police force have begun to mount in the community.
Adrian Montesano had already crashed, and his vehicle remained pinned between a utility pole and a tree after an earlier police pursuit around 5:00 a.m.
Dozens of officers aimed their M4 assault rifles, as well as high capacity handguns towards the from every angle, and for several minutes, they shot round after round into the unarmed suspects. 
Anthony Vandiver witnesses the assault from his house. He ran upstairs to watch the whole thing unfold, from a perfect, unobstructed view.“They said, ‘put your hands up!’  And the guys were still moving after they shot, like maybe 50-60 times,” Mr. Vandiver told CBS-4 Miami.  “And the guys tried to put their hands up, and as soon as they put their hands up, it erupted again.”
Read more: Counter Current News

Category:

abuse, bombs, control, manhood, patriarchy, phallic, police brutality, power, sexual assault, sexual predator, violence, war, weapons

The Economic Destruction of Baltimore, by Rob Urie

    Baltimore, Police Violence and Economic Justice
    by ROB URIE
    “We need more police, we need more and tougher prison sentences for repeat offenders. The ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out’ for violent offenders has to be part of the plan. We need more prisons to keep violent offenders for as long as it takes to keep them off the streets.”
    Hillary Clinton 1994
    The Economic Backdrop
    American politics is the realm of Immaculate Conception where actual policies and accumulated history disappear behind a veil of personal characteristics and unrelated acts. The (mis)leadership class pretends that ruling class machinations— trade agreements, financial deregulation, imperial wars, surveillance and policing have no bearing on social outcomes. American cities bear the imprint of these policies plus the residuals of slavery, genocide and the particulars of Western capitalism that have embedded history into current social relations. This is to argue that the individualist explanation of Western history may be interesting for those so-inclined, but it fails as description in every conceivable dimension.
    Freddie Gray. Original Image source: cnn.com
    Political explanations of public policies like trade agreements and financial deregulation put a political face on fundamentally economic arrangements. When Bill and Hillary Clinton instituted the ‘tough-on-crime’ policies that so exacerbated mass incarceration there was a political explanation— pandering to White suburban voters’ manufactured fears of a Black urban underclass to garner votes, but the policies tied closely to American economic history as well. From slavery to convict leasing to urban dispossession, racial repression has produced economic value that has been expropriated. The Clinton’s neoliberal trade policies exacerbated the urban industrial exodus while deregulation of finance ‘monetized’ Black wealth for the taking. Seemingly unrelated ‘political’ policies often have economic explanations.
    Economic history ties America’s cities to political and economic hierarchy through the dimensions of this hierarchy. Washington to Baltimore to Philadelphia to New York was the land route North for Southern Blacks fleeing slavery. This was also one of the routes to industrial jobs following WWII. Sequential (engineered) oil crises in the 1970s roiled industrial America. In the late 1970s and early 1980s Federal Reserve policies decimated the industrial economy by increasing the value of the U.S. dollar. Bill Clinton passed NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and his deregulation of Wall Street provided the money needed to finance the relocation of a large portion of the U.S. industrial base overseas. None of these policies were crafted by the inner-city residents.

    Modern day Baltimore, Philadelphia, Detroit and Chicago have neighborhoods left behind by policy decisions that decimated the economic bases that once supported them. When there were jobs people worked. When the jobs left people either stopped working or found other, less remunerative work in the service sector. The housing boom and bust monetized inner-city houses until the bubble burst. Rather than forcing Wall Street to clean up the mess inner city residents were left with their former wealth in the hands of bankers and an economy that imploded in the Great Recession. While this story is full of malefactors, Bill Clinton has major policy responsibility for mass incarceration, for neoliberal trade deals and for bank deregulation.
    The bankers who destroyed Baltimore discuss their bonuses
    with Congress. Image source: google images.
    The Murder of Freddie Gray
    The wholly implausible storyline that Freddie Gray severed his own spine being put out by the Baltimore police is a Rorschach test for social accountability. The political strategy of officialdom is to peel away those who will accept any explanation in favor of police actions, no matter how implausible, to marginalize protestors. That a significant portion of the population, both Black and White, wants to believe that the police always act in good faith illustrates a preconception that will only be effectively challenged through political estrangement. The fabrication adds insult to Freddie Gray’s murder and as such, to the conduct that the Baltimore police department needs to be held to account for. Freddie Gray was murdered in police custody. Technocratic explanations of the particulars only serve to obscure this basic truth.
    When videotape revealed the brutal beating the Los Angeles police inflicted on Rodney King the defense was able to convince a jury and a substantial portion of America that Mr. King had assaulted the police ‘batons’ with his head. One might wonder how graphic footage of a group of cops beating Rodney King within an inch of his life in plain public view could be construed otherwise. The tactic used was similar to the comments from officialdom, including the Black (mis)leadership class, toward protestors in Baltimore. Mr. King was alleged to have been in an angel dust rage that made him impervious to pain and to rational thought— he was an ‘out-of-control’ Black man. Likewise the protestors in Baltimore were deemed irrational ‘thugs,’ criminals with no legitimate right to political action.

    Graph (1) above: the official storyline has unknown forces producing intractable poverty in American cities when many of the forces are quite visible. Mass incarceration is racially targeted and causes wholesale immiseration by precluding meaningful employment. Wall Street’s subprime lending fiasco racially targeted neighborhoods and emptied them of residents as local wealth was transferred to the bank accounts of the already wealthy. It is paradoxical that public discussion of ‘looting’ in Baltimore has focused on angry citizens without deep discussion of what they are angry about. Home foreclosures in Baltimore (Graph (1) above) have followed the national housing boom – bust because Wall Street made predatory mortgage loans targeting neighborhoods of color. Rather than charging bankers with making fraudulent, predatory loans the citizens of Baltimore were forced to bear the consequences of banker malfeasance. Source: Baltimore Homeownership Preservation Coalition.

    In telling form, officialdom’s concern for property overshadowed care for the life of Freddie Gray and the many other Black, Brown and poor White youth and men murdered by the police. These misplaced priorities are thinly veiled socio-cide, concern with what can be replaced in place of what can’t be. The rapid vilification of protestors was accompanied by Immaculate Conception politics, denial of responsibility for the circumstances being protested. However, made apparent by events in Baltimore is that police murders only enter the American consciousness when buildings and police cars burn. Assertions that peaceful protests are the only legitimate form face the burden of history and official hypocrisy. Moral suasion through peaceful protest assumes a capacity that divergent class interests render improbable.
    Democracy Now! illustrated one such experiential divide when a Baltimore mother refused to join local youth who had volunteered to clean a burned CVS store because, as she put it, the police need to be made to understand that they can’t murder Black youth with impunity. Left unexplored, and apparently unconsidered by the youth who saw the local CVS outlet as ‘their’ store, is that through direct purchase and their Caremark consulting business CVS has put hundreds of locally owned pharmacies in inner city neighborhoods out of business and replaced them with minimum wage jobs and extractive economic practices. Likewise, the Ace Cash Express that was burned is a payday lender whose business model is to make usurious loans in poorly banked communities under terms that lead to permanent debt servitude.
    State police or police state? Original image source: spaulforrest.com.
    National Mis-Leadership Meets Local Mis-Leadership
    When President Obama called protesters in Baltimore ‘criminals and thugs’ he neglected to mention the class divisions that have as his major campaign contributors the Wall Street bankers who engineered the housing boom – bust still devastating Baltimore and whose subsidiaries are the payday lenders who destroy lives and neighborhoods there. Some fair portion of these campaign contributors would have been ‘criminals’ if Mr. Obama’s Justice Department had not shielded them from prosecution for their crimes. The term ‘thugs’ is widely used as racist code for Black and Brown youth and could be more appropriately applied to American drone operators so regularly slaughtering wedding parties across the Middle East. And the term most certainly applies to the police who murder Black and Brown youth with alarming regularity and officially sanctioned impunity.
    Much of the reaction to events in Baltimore harkens to the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s quip that “justice is incidental to law and order.” Implied is that justice may be set to the side if order can be maintained through systematic injustice. The conceptual problem is that, as with President Obama’s and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s slander of protestors as ‘thugs,’ class interests lie behind class-based policing. Heavily armed, militarized police could storm Wall Street (as metaphor for geographically dispersed finance) and corporate executive suites kicking in doors, handcuffing everyone they meet and opening fire on those who aren’t immediately compliant under the same theorized justification they have for doing so in Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia or Los Angeles. That they don’t is evidence that neither law nor justice is behind police actions in poor communities.
    If peaceful change is possible, why have the police been militarized to prevent it?
    The Department of Homeland Security calls protestors ‘terrorists’
    and the Ferguson, MO police department calls them ‘the enemy.’
    Original image source: google images.
    The economic crises affecting communities of color in Baltimore and elsewhere tie directly to government policies like trade agreements that benefit financiers, upper class ‘professionals,’ industrialists and the owners of capital. Official indifference to the social consequences of industrial relocation has produced economic dead zones in major cities since the 1960s. Wall Street’s predatory mortgages decimated black wealth in cities like Baltimore and with it the capacity for economic investment. Elite chides that citizens are destroying their future prospects through rebellion provide cover for the economic forces they control for their own benefit. In the last decade Wall Street has destroyed more of urban America than citizen rebellions ever could.
    The problem of the economic capture of the mis-leadership class suggests that political resolution is unlikely to come through the ballot box. Blacks have joined this mis-leadership class with co-optation being the singular result. American political economy is set up to perpetuate existing class relations with the racial residual of history as a component. Martin King began addressing economic justice with the understanding that it is a prerequisite to social justice. He was murdered shortly thereafter. The interest in ‘property’ in the face of the loss of life at police hands is clear indication of what drives official concerns. Therein lies the political paradox— economics is the more dangerous dimension of social injustice to address but it is also the most necessary. The U.S. has subverted democratic movements and invaded countries to prevent implementation of a minimum wage. But how is life possible without a living wage?
    Rob Urie is an artist and political economist.  
    Weekend Edition May 1-3, 2015

Category:

Baltimore, bankers, Clinton, Congress, criminal justice system, destruction, economic, foreclosures, Freddie Gray, neoliberal, Obama, outsourcing, rioting, violence, wall street

Anti-Police Organizing in the Wake of Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s Death

Anti-Police Organizing in the Wake of Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s Death

by MICHELLE MATISONS

Cop Killer Ismaaiyl Brinsley Had Pocket Full of $100 Bills – But No Job or Home

Remember how the 9/11 attack led people to cancel or pull back from anti-globalization protests?  It appears a similar dynamic could be at work as a shocking event challenges and divides a growing and effective movement making serious headway.  Like anti-globalization protests before it, the anti-police brutality/ policing movement is going through its own birth pangs as the tactics debate (when is property violence appropriate?) and issues such as how to foreground anti-black racism (#BlackLivesMatter vs. #AllLivesMatter) have taken center stage in the multifaceted and large scale resistance efforts underway.

Saturday, December 20th, was a big day for movement news.  While Minnesota’s Mall of America protest had people occupying space in the US’s largest mall to demand an end to police violence, half way across the country in Brooklyn, two police officers were shot and killed by a young black man who had ostensibly posted on social media before the shootings about his intention to “put wings on pigs”, citing revenge for the deaths of Brown and Garner as motive.  The accused shooter, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, shot himself dead on a nearby subway platform after shooting the officers.  As of Sunday afternoon, there is little information and much speculation about the accused murderer’s life (including that the murders were part of a counter-intelligence plot to discredit the movement and justify extreme force).  Much is uncertain, but it’s certain that the NYPD is already using this to suppress protest, repress entire communities, and further foment divisive public relations–especially with NYC Mayor deBlasio.  How can recent police union behavior and statements be considered anything but a naked admission of a police force’s own extra-legal/ paramilitary ambitions?

At this writing we do know a few things for certain: the corporate state’s policing apparatus will do everything in its power to use this event as a further call to arms against protesting U.S. residents and communities of color.  They will attempt not only to discredit a growing direct action-based movement, but also to aggressively attack protest groups and individuals they have been trying to get their hands on anyway.  If Ismaaiyl Brinsley had been arrested  and charged with the killing of two police officers in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, clearly the anti-policing movement would be having very different debates and discussions.  Now, in his death, many people righteously struggle to contextualize his motives or opportunistically use his actions for their own political reasons.

Not that probing Brinsley’s motives is entirely irrelevant–he shot a woman, possibly an ex-girlfriend, before the officers, for example– but the movement can hurt itself by participating in the posthumous quasi-legalistic media charade of “nailing down” his motives or state of mind.  (This activity already inculcates participants in the state’s judgmental logic of condemnation/ exoneration–echoing media character assassinations of murder by police victims like Brown and Martin.)   What if he was acting in concert with counter-intelligence forces? What if Mao’s little red book was in Brinsley’s pocket?  What if he was an active member of a local Cop Watch group?  What if he was a well-known local homeless man struggling with mental illness and addiction?

Initial activist reactions offer a range of responses: some grapple with the delicate issue of expressing compassion about the shooter’s life, death, and family; some timidly, or not so timidly, tiptoe around self-defense concepts and a deep understanding of the extreme nature of “revolutionary suicide”; some routinely denounce Brinsley’s actions–acting as guardians of the “real non-violent movement” against  “unstable violent outsiders”; some have decided that was a police action he got entangled in.  Then there’s those (new to the issue white activists, I am talking to you) who may have been active and supportive of the anti-police brutality movement, but will use this as an excuse to pull back.  (Controversial events function as a movement’s filtering process, losing people who are too challenged to keep fighting and were just waiting for a chance to fold anyway.)

If there’s anything I am reminded of by this event, it’s the power of social movements, and anti-racist struggles in particular.  For me, there is a connection between the cop murders and the movement.  Before you jump down my throat insisting that I am “feeding the cops’ ideology” by saying this–hear me out, please, and don’t take my statements out of context.  Since the drug war and mass incarceration/ deportation practices, many black and brown lives have been destroyed.  You don’t have to be a front lines long term activist to have strong opinions about policing and institutional racism in America, and feel hopeless in the face of it, too.  Frustration and anger is woven into the everyday fabric of people’s lives, and this includes individual consciousness, rhetoric, and self-understanding.  Add to this an endless flow of social media, news commentary, and live feeds of protests and demonstrations all over the U.S.  Some people may not be able to attend protests for various reasons (work, childcare, transportation, not living close to one, or a shy demeanor) but social media offers a strong way to feel emotionally connected to events since Ferguson began.

This access and ability to connect is both reason for the movement’s effectiveness and a reason to prepare for more controversial actions taken up by individuals in the name of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, or against violent police generally. (And then there’s always police counterinsurgency activities…)  In a large, multifaceted, international movement such that the Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!/ anti-policing movement has become, no one can ultimately judge who’s a protestor or a non-protestor, who cares or doesn’t care, about “the issues”. (Who has an authentic political consciousness gauge and where can I get one?) We can only state if we support certain actions as part of strategies our organizations or ideologies endorse.

I believe, from what I understand about Brinsley’s biographical facts and his presumed state of mind before the murders, he understood himself as a target of racist policing.  Go figure: young, black, and male in the U.S. A. But, As Dr. Johanna Fernandez wrote in CounterPunch, he could have also been acting in concert with authorities to execute a state plot to discredit the movement.  We will never know the facts here, and it shouldn’t deflect from our understanding of institutionalized racism, anyway.

Whether or not Brinsley acted alone or in concert with the state, his life had a truly tragic end.  If we admit understanding or empathy with people espousing extreme tactics — even cop murder — to express oppositional feelings, are we only throwing the police state, and its rabid NYPD, another reason for street level preemptive attack? (As if it ever needed a reason.  We’ve clearly seen over the decades, if the state doesn’t have a reason to justify aggression it’ll make one up.)  What about attempts to understand how social pressures like racist policing and mass incarceration damage people–like Ismaaiyl Brinsley? If we deny a careful consideration of the incalculable impacts movements can have, which include tapping into very real frustrations/ psychological dynamics leading individuals to act alone or as police agents, we sacrifice any potential unity than can be derived in a process of self-reflection and greater political awareness. Collective analysis may not lead to the unity of a shared position, but it could lead to an “agree to disagree” unity or a commitment to explore unpopular perspectives.  Something beyond simple condemnation or exultation is called for here.

It’s a daunting situation and the corporate state wins again if we play into the terms of engagement it always sets by the very nature of its power.  If Ismaaiyl Brinsley had survived and faced his accusers in court, we would see the movement split around “just” court procedures and outcomes.  Some would want him evaluated to qualify for mental health rehabilitation services, some would want him routinely punished, and some would call for his freedom, with an understanding his actions were committed under extreme duress due to the pernicious police state apparatus (a kind of “black rage” defense– if you will.)  From the looks of his social media posts, he knew he was probably going to die Saturday.

I shudder to think about what the state would do to Brinsley, and how the movement would split around his “just” punishment and desirable “rehabilitation.” (How are we going to rehabilitate psychotic racist police?  Any ideas?)  We would have to painfully endure a real trial of the Left’s anti-policing/ abolitionist positions. Instead, we are left to grapple with three dead bodies, many unanswered questions, and a big question mark about our ability to buoy the turbulence of building and sustaining a mass movement, focused specifically on the deep and festering wound of racist police violence, in the age of social media activism.

 
 

On Tuesday police Commissioner William Bratton said Ismaaiyl was carrying $100 bills in his pocket.
But he had no job or home.The Yeshiva World reported:

If we are going to posthumously speculate on Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s life, dare I suggest we use the very commitment to institutional analysis and human compassion that has served as a foundation of the Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!/ anti-policing movement–and previous anti-racist movements– since its inception?  As the saying goes, let’s “keep our eyes on the prize.”

Michelle Renee Matisons, Ph.D. has  written for Counterpunch, Black Agenda Report, Z Magazine, Mint News Press, the NJ Decarcerator, Rethinking Schools, Alternet, and other publications. She can be reached at michrenee@gmail.com.

Anti-Police Organizing in the Wake of Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s Death » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Category:

CIA, conspiracy, counterpunch, hands up don't shoot, Manchurian candidate, mike brown, police brutality, police state, poverty, prison industrial complex, racism, USA, violence, white supremacy