Again...

Thinking about and sadly inspired by Trayvon Martin. More to come.

Breaking News!!! OMG! WTF??? XYZ!

Brace yourselves...

Joe Arpaio arrests 'very few' non-Hispanics.

Shocking, right?

What the Hell, Arizona?

Both houses of the Arizona state legislature have passed SB1070, a truly frightening piece of "immigration legislation":

Arizona's bill orders immigrants to carry their alien registration documents at all times and requires police to question people if there's reason to suspect they're in the United States illegally. It also targets those who hire illegal immigrant day laborers or knowingly transport them.

As a historian, I don't like to hear people say "If we don't learn history, we're doomed to repeat it." We learn history all the time, and still do much of the same, hateful stuff that's always been done.

In reading the provisons of the bill, I wondered, how different was it from the Geary Act of 1892:

The law required all Chinese residents of the United States to carry a resident permit, a sort of internal passport. Failure to carry the permit at all times was punishable by deportation or a year at hard labor.

or the 1954 INS-sponsored operation that

coordinated 1075 Border Patrol agents, along with state and local police agencies, to mount an aggressive crackdown, going as far as police sweeps of Mexican-American neighborhoods and random stops and ID checks of "Mexican-looking" people in a region with many Native Americans and native Hispanics

or, in Arizona's own more recent history, the actions of Joe Arpaio?

Historical comparisons are not the only things circulating in my mind, though. The point is this law codifies racial-profiling and harrassment and criminalization of Latino/as (because, really? what is likely to be the basis for "suspect[ing] they're in the United States illegally"?). Isabel Garcia, an Arizona legal defender, offered this description:

[T]his bill represents the most dangerous precedent in this country, violating all of our due process rights... We have not seen this kind of legislation since the Jim Crow laws. And targeting our communities, it is the single ... largest attack on our communities.

Latino/a* lawmakers are entreating Republican Governor Jan Brewer not to sign the bill into law for fear that it will "authorize discrimination."

Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce shrugged off those kinds of worries:

You know, this is amazing to me. We trust officers, we put guns on them, they make life and death decisions every day

The casual assertion that everyone lives in communities in which police and their decisions are respected and trusted?

Pri-vi-lege.
____________________________________________
*I sincerely hope Latino/a lawmakers are not standing alone in protest of this travesty.

Apparently, We Forfeit Our Right to Respect and Love

**Trigger Warning**

One of things I notice most, while living as a fat girl, is how often I am invisible until people want to express their disgust/pity or marvel at how ____________ I am (for a fat chick, of course). That blank has been filled by all sorts of adjectives during my life--smart, happy, well-dressed, pretty. But backhanded compliments like that are the flipside of the expressions of disgust/pity. Both are rooted in my perceived lack of self-respect. How can I have any respect for myself if I've "let myself get like this?" And, more importantly, how can I expect anyone else to have respect for me?

So, I witness disrespect expressed towards fat people in this life almost daily. For me, the cost of living under and resisting the disrespect, the disgust, the dehumanization is so high sometimes.

Especially when I realize the hatefulness follows us after death.

Teresa Smith died Tuesday in Indianapolis. Because she was a large woman, the police and the coroner did not feel the need to treat her with respect.

The Marion County Coroner's Office has come under fire after it was revealed that an obese woman was dragged from her home and hauled away on a trailer in front of family members following her death.

[snip]

[T]he deputy coroner made the decision to call a towing service to remove the body from the home.

"We debated for quite a while about how we were going to get her out of there and so we finally decided, since we didn't have a van that was large enough to carry her, it was decided between (the police) department and the coroner's office to use (the truck)," said Detective Marcus Kennedy.

Smith's boyfriend and the couple's 13-year-old son, along with several neighbors, watched as Smith's body, still on her mattress, was dragged across the courtyard of the apartment complex, strapped down on the wrecker and covered with a piece of carpet.

Lest you have sympathy for the supposed dilemma faced by the police department and the coroner's office:

Former Chief Deputy Coroner John Linehan said he was shocked and dismayed that appropriate steps weren't taken to remove the woman from her home.

He said that fire and medical personnel have equipment available for handling patients up to 1,000 pounds and that moving obese individuals is not all that rare of an occurrence.

"When they scoop up dead dogs off of the street they don't treat them that way," he said. "It's just not the way to treat a human being."

But therein lies the rub, Mr. Linehan! She forfeited her humanity because she was fat.

I usually avoid comment sections at most places, but because I thought I knew how these would be, I peeked. I don't advise you to. One commenter argued that she forfeited her right to respect because, obviously, she did not have self-rspect. Another opined that her boyfriend was there just for rent--so much embedded there. How could he find a fat woman attractive? How could he have sex with her? How could he love her?

That last assumption brought me back to one of her neighbors' comments about the dirty carpet slung across her body: "I would have never let them throw that on my loved one."

It would not surprise me one bit if officials from the police department and the coroner's office treated Teresa Smith this way, in part, because they could not fathom that she was someone's loved one.

H/T to my cousin, Tren, via e-mail and to Laurie.

(Crossposted)

Officer Jack Sparrow?

**Updated**

Do the police in Tenaha, TX, "shake down" drivers, particularly drivers of color, in what one attorney calls "a piracy operation?"

Roderick Daniels was traveling through East Texas in October 2007 when, he says, he was the victim of a highway robbery.

The Tennessee man says he was ordered to pull his car over and surrender his jewelry and $8,500 in cash that he had with him to buy a new car.

But Daniels couldn't go to the police to report the incident.

The men who stopped him were the police.

This story caught my attention because my family and I routinely travel through Tenaha on our way to and from Louisiana. I have my own stories about East Texas police:

My experiences with the police have included:

My father and I being pulled over while I was an undergraduate, separated, and questioned. We were in Texas, our car had Louisiana plates, and the cops admitted they suspected drug trafficking.

Similarly, I was tailed closely by a cop for a while in a small East Texas town who didn't turn on his lights, initially. He was following me so closely that I put on my signal and got into the next lane. Then he turned on his lights--said I was supposed to wait until I'd traveled at least so many feet after turning on my signal to switch lanes. The problem, again, was my Louisiana plates in a Texas town. He wanted to know where I lived currently, where I was traveling to, and why. I answered, simply because I didn't know if I was allowed not to answer and I had no intention of disappearing in East Texas.

More recently (several weeks ago), my sister and her fiance were pulled over in East Texas after meeting me in Houston. Her description:

The cop pulled out behind us and trailed us for five minutes before turning on his lights. He made [my fiance] get out and come to the back of the car and made me stay in. He shined the light directly in my baby's face, woke him up, and wouldn't move the light. Of course, he started crying and I was digging for the insurance papers and wanted to cry myself.

He kept asking the same questions over and over, trying to find inconsistencies. Then he asked for permission to search the car. I told him yes because he wouldn't find anything and offered to show him all my prescription medicines. When he realized we were telling the same story, he didn't want to search the car anymore. I'll be honest, I definitely felt like it was racial profiling--he saw a black man who didn't live there, driving through town late at night. But, I threw him off by agreeing to let him search the car.

My sister's experience and one of mine occurred in Diboll, TX, 70 miles from Tenaha.

There seems to be some element of racial-profiling in the Tenaha cases, as well.

[Attorney David] Guillory, who practices in nearby Nacogdoches, Texas, estimates authorities in Tenaha seized $3 million between 2006 and 2008, and in about 150 cases -- virtually all of which involved African-American or Latino motorists -- the seizures were improper.

Emphasis mine.

You might wonder, if the stops seem suspect, why people sign waivers forfeiting their property. There is of course the very immediate fear of what can happen to you, particularly as a person of color being pulled over in a rural town by the police. Then there are the threats. According to the article, the officers routinely threaten people with jail time and the loss of their children.*

Of course, town officials deny all wrongdoing. I scoffed while reading that. Stops like this are often the result of the so-called war on drugs. You know, the "war" that disproportionately targets people of color and takes away their liberty, property, and rights. It feeds into racial-profiling which 1) encourages cops to conduct searches of people of color and their vehicles more often when they are stopped (and treat them more harshly) 2) perpetuates the stereotype that all African Americans and Latin@s with large sums of cash must be drug dealers or doing something illegal 3)justifies the intense focus on communities of color which contributes to the disproportionate numer of arrests and convictions.**

I also scoffed because the racial disparities in arrests and convictions, and the concurrent violation of PoC's rights, have been particularly well-documented in small Texas towns.

We'll see how this plays out, though I can already here the faint cries of the coming, "It's the damn outsiders trying to make something racial outta this!"

H/T Bint via Twitter

(cross-posted)
_____________________________________
*This is a particularly salient threat--the state intervenes disproportionately in families of color, a fact partially attributable to both racism and classism--as Dorothy Roberts said in Shattered Bonds, "the public child welfare system equates poverty with neglect," (p 25).

**For statistics about the claims I made in this paragraph, I referred to a fact sheet I put together for my class's discussion of the prison industrial complex. The fact sheet was culled from these sources.

TAKE THOSE THINGS AWAY FROM THEM. NOW.

Trigger Warning

So said Nez when he tweeted about this story: Police chief fired for using taser on wife (News video there).

From the AP:

OAKWOOD, Texas (AP) — The chief of a small Central Texas town's police department has been fired and jailed for allegedly using a Taser gun on his wife.

Former Oakwood police chief Oly Ivy is in Leon County Jail in Centerville on Wednesday, charged with aggravated assault. Bond is $100,000.

I don't have a lot to add--we know that abusive police officers prey on vulnerable and marginalized people and communities. So it's no surprise that women who live with men who are abusive and who are trained how to restrain people and how to use deadly force, are at risk.

They might be, as this fact sheet describes, "uniquely vulnerable."

(Crossposted)

Since When...

...is lying on your belly with your hands behind you not a non-threatening enough position?

From Carmen:

Early New Year’s Day in Oakland, Oscar Grant, a 22 year old father, held his hands up and pleaded with the arresting officers not to hurt him because he had a daughter. But once he had been wrestled down to the ground, with one officer’s knee in Grant’s neck area, a second officer stepped back, took out his gun and shot Oscar Grant the back. And then Oscar Grant was handcuffed. And then Oscar Grant died.

And my sister tipped me to this story from near our old home:

It was 2 a.m. on December 31 when [Robbie] Tolan and his cousin, Anthony Cooper, were confronted in the driveway of their home by Bellaire, Texas, police officers. Police officials say the officers suspected the two young men were driving a stolen car.

Bellaire is a prominent, mostly white suburb in southwest Houston.

[snip]

Tolan's relatives say the two young men had just arrived from a late-night run to a Jack-in-the-Box fast food restaurant.

As they walked up the driveway to their home, Anthony Cooper said an unidentified man emerged from the darkness with a flashlight and a gun pointed at them.

"We did not know it was a police officer," said Cooper. "He said, 'Stop. Stop.' And we were like, 'Why? Who are you?'"

The officers ordered both men to lie down on the ground. Tolan's parents heard the commotion and came outside. Police will only say an "altercation" took place. Tolan's family say it involved his mother.

"The cop pushed her against the wall," said Tolan's uncle, Mike Morris.

Relatives say Tolan started to lean up from the ground to ask the officer what he was doing to his mother. That's when the family says Tolan was shot in the chest, the bullet piercing his lung and then lodging in his liver.

But don't worry, the assistant chief of police assures us: "any allegation of racial profiling, I don't think that's going to float."

This after the police admitted suspecting that a black man in Bellaire, late at night, had to be a car thief.

And reading the coverage of these shootings, I am again struck by what I noted here.

Excessive Force

**H/T mrs. o and my cousin, Trin**

I will say, flat out, that I don't know how tasers work, how well they subdue people, how long the effect lasts. Still I think tasing someone nine times, the first six times in a three minute span, might be excessive.

Especially when the man tased died shortly thereafter. From the CNN article:

A police officer shocked a handcuffed Baron "Scooter" Pikes nine times with a Taser after arresting him on a cocaine charge.
...
Dr. Randolph Williams, the Winn Parish [Louisiana] coroner, told CNN the 21-year-old sawmill worker was jolted so many times by the 50,000-volt Taser that he might have been dead before the last two shocks were delivered.

I'm not sure what, exactly, Mr. Pikes could have done two merit two more blasts after he was probably dead. The arresting officer, Scott Nugent, maintains that Pikes fought him, but the coroner says that Pikes was already handcuffed when he tased. Nugent's supervisor and attorney offer the following explanations/excuses:

He done what he thought he was trained to do to bring that subject into custody. At some point, something happened with his body that caused him to go into cardiac arrest or whatever.

Yes, something mysteriously happened that caused Pikes's heart to fail, something that had nothing to do with the fact that the seventh shot, in particular, was directed at his chest.

Excuse number two:

His partner had just come back to the police department from triple bypass surgery and could not assist Officer Nugent.

Why in the world was Nugent's partner back out on patrol, then?

Further problematizing Nugent's claim that he was just doing his job is this:

In the year since Winnfield police received Tasers, officers have used them 14 times, according to police records -- with 12 of the instances involving black suspects. Ten of the 14 incidents involved Nugent

Emphasis mine.

Despite the fact that 12 out of 14 incidents involved black suspects, a police lieutenant interviewed for the story was quick to claim, "race 'isn't an issue at all'."

The Pikes family attorney noted that the family wants justice. That family has been troubled by injustice in Louisiana for sometime now. Baron Pikes was the first cousin of Mychal Bell, one of the Jena Six defendants.

The Power of the Uniform

According to this HoodNews video (embedded below the fold), 21-year-old Shalonica Patton (sp?), while riding a bus, flipped off an officer of the Long Beach Police Department. Apparently, as her sister suggests, his manhood was offended (I'd argue that his concept of what/who you become because of that uniform, was offended). He pulled the bus over, allegedly "football-tackled" Patton and dragged her from the bus.



The police allegedly slammed Patton's face into the concrete, breaking four bones in her face. One officer held her down with his knee in her back, despite her repeated cries of "I can't breathe... I can't fucking breathe!"

Guess what? Shelonica Patton was held on charges of assaulting an officer.

What I noticed about the video (aside from the cops jerking a young woman off a public bus and injuring her for a damned finger sign) was how police brutality has led us to be always ready to assume the defense. Her mother stated over and over that her daughter was "good" and wasn't a "criminal." She'd never been in any trouble. She theorized that the police officers' actions were a manifestation of the
problem" LBPD has with young, black lesbians.

Claudie Jones, the reporter, argued that incidents like are why we should always be armed with video equipment, so that we can have indisputable evidence--as if because it is a given that police will brutalize marginalized people and communities.

What do you say when we are still at the point where we assume the defensive, have to proclaim our status as "good" and "like everyone else," otherwise mistreating us is okay?

What do you say when our words, our broken bones, our bruises, our lifeless bodies are not enough "evidence?"

“On the surface it certainly does not look good..."

Speaking of my best friend, she just called to ask me if I had seen this video of the somewhat euphemestically titled "video of police apprehension" in which 3 suspects in a shooting are pulled from their car by five to six times as many* police and... well, you can imagine what happens next.

From Philly.com:

A police chase ended violently last night when cops pulled over a car in Hunting Park on North Second Street near Lippincott, after a shooting had been reported nearby. Fox29, hovering in a helicopter overhead, caught the confrontation on tape; it shows police officers stomping, kicking and beating the men from the car.
[snip]
Police took all three suspects to Temple University Hospital for treatment of their injuries. The nature and extent of their injuries is unknown at this time because the three suspects remain in custody and family members said they’ve been unable to see them.

I'ma have to agree with Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey who said, “On the surface it certainly does not look good, regarding the amount of force that was used."
______________________________
*I counted that many at the end. It looks like somewhere between 10-15 may have participated in the actual "apprehension."

Police Brutality Strikes Fifth Anniversary of Sylvia Rivera Law Project

**Update from Jack:**

Reggie and Ileana have just been released from police custody! The DA declined prosecution, which means that no charges are being pressed. They are free and clear, and are now getting the support they need from their community - in person.

**Those arrested are friends of Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who blogs at Broken Beautiful Press.**

NEW YORK - On the night of Wednesday, September 26, officers from the9th Precinct of the New York Police Department attacked without provocation members of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and of itscommunity. Two of our community members were violently arrested, and others were pepper sprayed in the face without warning or cause.

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project ( http://www.srlp.org/) is an organization that works on behalf of low-income people of color who are transgender, gender non-conforming, or intersex, providing free legal services and advocacy among many other initiatives. On Wednesday night, the SylviaRivera Law Project was celebrating its fifth anniversary with acelebration and fundraising event at a bar in the East Village.

A group of our community members, consisting largely of queer and transgender people of color, witnessed two officers attempting todetain a young Black man outside of the bar. Several of our community members asked the officers why they were making the arrest and using excessive force. Despite the fact that our community was on the sidewalk, gathered peacefully and not obstructing foot traffic, the NYPD chose to forcefully grab two people and arrested them. Without warning, an officer then sprayed pepper spray across the group in a wide arc, temporarily blinding many and causing vomiting and intense pain."

This is the sort of all-too-common police violence and overreactiontowards people of color that happens all the time," said Dean Spade, founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. "It's ironic that we were celebrating the work of an organization that specifically opposesstate violence against marginalized communities, and we experienced a police attack at our celebration."

"We are outraged, and demand that our community members be released and the police be held accountable for unnecessary use of excessiveforce and falsely arresting people," Spade continued.

Damaris Reyes is executive director of GOLES, an organization workingto preserve the Lower East Side. She commented, "I'm extremely concerned and disappointed by the 9th Precinct's response to the situation and how it escalated into violence. This kind of aggressivebehavior doesn't do them any good in community-police relations."

Supporters will be gathering at 100 Centre Street tomorrow, where the two community members will be arraigned. The community calls for charges to be dropped and to demand the immediate release of those arrested.

1) Call the District Attorney's OfficeThe District Attorney's office # is 212.335.9000, you ask for the early *case* assessment bureau, and ask that all charges be dropped against arrest #s 683706 (Reggie Gossett) and 683701 (Ileana Mendez-Peñate).

You can also call:
- Christine Quinn, President of the City Council: 212.564.7757
- Rosie Mendez, City Council person for the district where Reggie and Ileana were taken: 212.677.1077
-Alvin Vann, City Council person for the district where Reggie & Ileana live: 718.919.0740

You can also go on the web to http://www.nyccouncil.info/ and send those city council people emails with the same message.

And Alexis's words...

“Without You Who Understand"

Two loved ones of mine have had their names added to the long list of victims of the New York Police Department’s everyday every night brutality. And every time this happens it is an assault against my people, whoever they are. People of color, queer people, young people, transgendered people, activists, sex workers, immigrants. Every time this happens is my people locked away.

But these two. These are my people. This is who I have cried with after break-ups, eaten ice cream with when I should have been studying, this is who sat with me in limbo every semester, unregistered and undocumented because no one believed we’d be able to keep paying for school, least of all us. This is who brought me lemonade and sandwiches when couldn’t get out of bed and couldn’t say why, and most importantly these are the people who stayed up all night with me too many times to count, like Pinky and the Brain in pumas with wild hair, plotting and believing in another world. Projecting and practicing freedom. These are the ones who said, yes, we can build that. And we should paint it purple, not blue. And if someone had been tracing our hands as we punctuated every detail about what playgrounds to make out of the rubble of prisons, what mosaics to glue to the empty US mint…if you had been tracing our hands you would have seen that we were spelling blood and water and water and blood. This is what I mean when I say, these are my people.

They are the ones I have trusted to hold my youth and to hand it back to me with a firm nudge if I ever consider selling out. These are the ones I have trusted to sell their vintage sneakers and stolen accessories to hire a lawyer when the state finally notices. We have agreed that this is a morally and strategically better than actually letting each other become lawyers. So these are the ones I trust to break me out of prison, to never forget where I am. To prove the lie of the state when it says no one loves you, you little black girl. You are nothing. No one cares where you are right now. And they have trusted me too, to pawn, to plead, to risk, to witness, to remember. I have agreed to the same.

But I didn’t think it would be today.

As I write this, my people are locked down for keeping their part of the agreement. After months of planning a fundraiser for the Sylvia Rivera Liberation Project my people were ready to celebrate. After gathering queer and trans people of color and allies from all over the tri-state area my people, these two, deserved the peace of bass and the release of rhythm. Late Wednesday night, like every night, my people were dancing. But late Wednesday night, like every night, the state was on the prowl. And right in front of the bright loud colors, right in front of the opening sounds (you see my people dress like confetti parades, my people move like new memories) the NYPD was doing the state, forcing the power of one black man into a space to small for dignity. And my people, though practicing the celebration, though air traffic hailing the future, this night, my people do not forget the moment. This is why my people wear sneakers and flat shoes. They remember what we agreed. So early Thursday morning they stopped the dancing to witness this arrest, one of millions of arrests, (these too my people). And they said with their eyes what we promised we would say. They said
We see you. We remember what you deserve. And when the lie come out that you are not human, that who you are does not matter, we will stand up that moment with the truth. We see you.

And the policemen could not tell who they addressed with their eyes, from the reasonable distance of the sidewalk. The policemen did not know if by “you” their brown eyes meant the person in the handcuffs or the one clanking them shut. So while their brightly clad feet and their hair awake with dancing did not get in anyone’s way, the policemen found their gazes too wide and too loud. So the policemen grabbed them. And closed their own eyes.

These two. My people. And shoved them in the car without warning.

And what I got then was a 2am text message indecipherable and cut short. And 12 hours later an email. They have not been charged. They have not been arraigned.

Because there is no such crime as love in excess. There is no such crime as too bright for 1984. There is no crime called smarter and braver than what day it is. There is no such crime as wanting more.

But they have not been released yet either. Because to place your soul firmly against the blunt edge of lawfulness is to share terror on measured and socialist terms. And police officers cannot afford to remember the neighborhoods they come from and who is now missing, lest their hearts beat and break against the tight armor of the state. And dreamers cannot afford fancy lawyers. So what I got then was a 2 am text message, and 12 hours later an email.

And what I have now is a promise to keep.

Please, please, call someone, send an e-mail, show up as a supporter.

Outcomes

A few days ago, I blogged briefly about the story of Precious Story, a young white woman allegedly killed by her black boyfriend and his brother. My post focused on local black residents' prediction of how whites would react and what her murder would mean for race relations.

Last night, we got a partial answer. My niece called me around 11:15 and began the conversation with, "Another white girl is missing." "Do you have to say it like that?" I asked her. "Yeah," she said, "Because they over here kicking folk's doors down and stuff."

From what I've been able to piece together, a 16-year-old girl had been expected home by her parents after work yesterday. When she didn't show up, they went looking for her. Her father and male relatives went to the home of her black ex-boyfriend and kicked the door in.

Now, I've heard that they were armed, but I cannot verify that.

Shortly after I got off the phone with my very irate niece, my best friend, Vivian, called.

"So, that's how it's going to be? Every time a white girl is late, they coming to the black part of town kicking in doors?" She was angry, too.

"Hell, no," I said. "That better not be how it's going to be."

We talked for a minute it and she ended the call with, "When her ass shows up at school tomorrow, I'll call you."

So, she called me a few minutes ago. Turns out, the girl wasn't at school, but neither had she been abducted, nor had she run off with the ubiquitous evil black boy.

She'd fallen in her backyard, into a shallow old well, and couldn't get out.

Her father had been at the school in this morning turning in her books and taking her out of the predominantly black high school. His only explanation--he and his wife are old-fashioned.

Mm-hmm.

"Wait," I asked. "How is he at the school? Why he ain't in jail?"

""The police said there's nothing they can do."

I knew she must be joking. She swore she was not. The local police hadn't done anything (though they did show up last night). So now, the boy's mother is going to the parish police.

To which both of us said, hmmph.

I'm guessing this won't be in any of the local papers, so I wanted to document it here.

Who Gets to "Peaceably Assemble?"

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me...

Remember, at the end of School Daze, when Lawrence Fishburne is ringing that damned bell, then utters a solemn, "Wake up"?

Yeah.

From Nezua:

THERE IS NO PEACEFUL RIGHT OF ASSEMBLY IN AMERICA. There were signs earlier, it's true. But now it can be said to be official. File this along with what you read on blogs about habeas corpus and wiretapping, this latest display of contempt for our rights: here is a clear example of excessive use of police force, of tyranny by weaponry, of unwarranted police aggression, assault and battery—on women, children, and citizens alike.

See BfP here and here.

H/T Sylvia, who adds

Say whatever bullshit you desire about your racist and classist preferences of designating living, breathing people as “alienz,” but I have a hard time thinking that born and bred, tried and true American citizens are receiving any better treatment from our so-called “representative democracy.”
It is not a crime to seek a better life.
It is not a crime to seek out opportunities for your families.
It is not a crime to agitate for fair policy.
It is not a crime to challenge unjust laws.

What of Rural America?

I want to do a short series on my neck of the woods back in Louisiana, brought on by a number of recent events. I'm prompted by a post to the St. Louis White Citizen's Council of the 21st Century Council of Conservatives Citizens' blog. I was going to link, but I'm not trying to leave trackbacks.

Anyway, the post was about the nationally televised case at Spearsville High in which two fifth-graders had sex in school. Initially, the poster was alarmed because wikipedia said Spearsville was 96.7% white and it just couldn't be white kids having sex. It couldn't!!

Fortunately for his psyche, a Spearsville resident wrote in to let him know that the students were black and that Spearsville High was nowhere near majority white. He was relieved and started going on about how black children mature (sexually) more quickly and he knew it couldn't have been white kids, and how the guy who responded to him wrote about Spearsville High going to hell in a handbasket because of black children in school there.

And I thought...

1) Not once is anyone talking about how the census counted not one black person in Spearsville in 2000, when I know that the village has a significant black population (there's an all black subdivision, for one). Let me just say, the fact that the historical trend of undercounting (and not counting) people of color/ignoring our communities continues ought to tell you something about our life in North Louisiana.

2) The letter-sender-inner glossed over the horrible state of education and schools in Union Parish (which I will happily tell you about in an upcoming post). No money, corruption, overpaid administrators, underpaid teachers, you name it, they got it.

3) In the high-speed car chase mentioned in the post (in which a black Spearsville High School student was killed), black people in Union Parish are very loudly suspecting foul play. The kid was being chased by police who (allegedly) left the scene of the crime then returned and were (allegedly) seen doing something questionable to the car. Now, whether or not that is true, my point is to give you an indication of how very much the police are distrusted by the black community in Union Parish. And trust me, it's for a good reason.

4) The racial divisions there are so sharp it's almost unbelievable. Almost.

So I will tell you about how this little area of rural America is dying and how so many of us who care, who crack about our country, backwards homes love them and worry and have absolutely no idea what to do.

When Will It Be Taken Seriously?

From the beginning, the fact that police and school officials defended their actions by dismissing the initital shootings at Virginia Tech as a "domestic issue" has shocked me. From BfP:

The most horrible thing I’ve heard throughout the coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting has been that police did nothing after the first shootings because they had believed it to be “just” or “only” a “domestic” issue. Nobody will even call it for what it is. They thought some crazy asshole had killed his girlfriend. Sad, but not important enough to shut down a thriving campus. Disturbing, but not urgent enough to send swat teams up and down the hallways, banging on doors, pushing people out of classrooms at gunpoint.

This window they provided of how people, fuck it, how police still think about "domestic" abuse--unimportant, only between two people, normal--I just don't have the words to express my disgust.

Her name is Emily Jane Hilscher, and she was not just a "domestic" abuse victim and she was not, as this vile account tries to fetchingly entitle “The girl who led to massacre.”* Why, why, why are we still having to assert and defend women's humanity?

Then, as I am/was typing this post, I click more links (in the comments here) and find that the shooter may have actually been stalking Hilscher, that their may never have been a romantic relationship. Thus the dismissal of her death is further problematized by the fact that it was based on assumptions and undoubtedly, the purview of people who think they've seen it all before. I can't wait for the articles that discuss how she led to her own stalking.

I know that I am not being coherent; I just can't right now, because I am so fucking angry. So, so, damned mad.
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*I included the link so that you could go leave a comment. Please leave a comment.

What the Hell is Wrong with the Police?

That's what I was blogging about before I was so rudely interrupted. First, the Florida woman who reported a sexual assault and then was arrested for an old fine. Arrested and denied a second dose of EC.

Then yesterday, I saw that a Kansas City woman miscarried after she was arrested, while telling the police she was pregnant and bleeding.

The Florida woman's arrest works in at least two ways to deter women's reporting of sexual assault-- the actual arrest/loss of freedom and the old tried-and-true impugn the victim's character. But I am bothered by a link I see between these cases. Do you just lose all rights to reproductive freedom when they slap the cuffs on you? You can't have a second dose of EC because of your jailer's religious convictions? You don't deserve medical care for your pregnancy? All because of fines and warrants?

I want someone with better analytical skills than I to talk about this.

Wait, It Is the 21st Century, Right?

A while ago, I blogged about how the residents of my hometown elected the town's first black mayor. Since then, one long term employee of town hall has resigned and one police officer has decided to go work in another parish. They are both white. While the police officer claims the other parish will pay more and and pay his mileage, the town hall employee has been pretty honest about the fact that she doesn't want to work for a black man. I know you're thinking, "that's two people, elle," but remember I come from a town in which we have three police cars, a volunteer fire department, and about four town hall employees. So this is significant. And no, these aren't throwbacks to another age--the town hall employee is a year younger than I am. And when I see her, she will smile and speak and I will once again be blown away about how some people just don't get it.

For a number of people in my hometown, "it" isn't racism if "it" doesn't entail some violent act. Sort of like the white girl who confided to me years ago, when my cousin J was dating a white boy, that she just didn't understand why he would date J when he could have a white girl. Or how my high school let black cheerleaders ride the bus with the all-black boy's basketball team, but the white cheerleaders had to be chauffered to games because "it wouldn't look right." I could regale you with stories like that all night, but I digress.

The reason I'm thinking about my hometown mayor, is because I read this: Louisiana Mayor's Death Sparks Controversy. Gerald Washington, the new black mayor of a mostly-white town, was found shot to death and the coroner has ruled it a suicide.

But the coroner and the sheriff have offered no reason for why Washington would have killed himself. No suicide note was found. And there is no evidence he bade farewell to anyone, put his financial affairs in order, or gave any other indication he was about to kill himself, authorities said.

In fact, Washington seemed to be readying himself for his new job:

About noon, he set City Hall's alarm system for the first time. He got instructions on how to raise and lower the U.S. flag. He had already ordered a new mayoral letterhead with his name on it and a button-down shirt embroidered "Gerald Washington, Mayor."
A few hours later he indulged in a hobby, placing a $4 bet at a nearby horse racing track.

Apparently, the coroner wishes people would just get over these damned unfounded conspiracy theories!

"This is the South, so of course everybody's going to say it was some white guy shooting a black guy," said Dr. Terry Welke, the Calcasieu Parish coroner who ruled that Washington killed himself.

Now why in the world would we think something like that?

What Do You Teach Your Child about the Police?

Especially when your child is a black boy (yes, I think that makes a difference)? That question is on my mind this week because of Sean Bell and Kathryn Johnston. My son saw me reading an article about the Bell case and asked me what happened. After I explained to him, he asked me, "But why did the police do that?" And in a fit of angst, I told him, "Because they can. They can just kill us for no reason." That is unlike anything I've ever told him before, and I am worried about it.

Over at BfP's, Luisa made this observation on a post (in which BfP asks "does it make sense to give a group of people who put on a specific outfit the power to kill, rape, violate, and otherwise cause destruction and devastation to a particular area and its occupants?"):

I was not raised to respect the police or military. and this gets me in a little trouble ever now and then… I can feel myself becoming anxious around them. I always want to say something rude but, I also fear them. It is a strange emotion. I feel queasy when cop cars pass me. They are the only people who I fear in my neighborhood because if they force me into their car late at night, my fellow humans might just let it happen and who knows where I will end up. who knows what story they’ll tell…

I know that strange mix, the loathing that comes from knowing that, when this person puts on a uniform, he (yes, he) somehow assumes a power that makes his actions unquestionable (even if those actions include demanding a minstrel show). That fear that he can do anything to me and get away with it. And I'm not just saying that; it is a very real fear for me. My experiences with the police have included:

• My father and I being pulled over while I was an undergraduate, separated, and questioned. We were in Texas, our car had Louisiana plates, and the cops admitted they suspected drug trafficking. Similarly, I was tailed closely by a cop for a while in a small East Texas town who didn't turn on his lights, initially. He was following me so closely that I put on my signal and got into the next lane. Then he turned on his lights--said I was supposed to wait until I'd traveled at least so many feet after turning on my signal to switch lanes. The problem, again, was my Louisiana plates in a Texas town. He wanted to know where I lived currently, where I was traveling to, and why. I answered, simply because I didn't know if I was allowed not to answer and I had no intention of disappearing in East Texas.
• Coming from a club one night, my sister and I were pulled over by two white male cops who made us get out, shined flashlights in our faces and smirked the whole time. They asked us what we were doing out so late.
• My male cousin, a minor at the time, being taken to the police station in the middle of the night and the police refusing to let any of us come in. When we began to loudly protest, my aunt begged us not to, scared what they might do.
• Having a friend who was pulled over for a traffic stop quizzed about my car (I passed by twice to make sure he was okay). The officer, new to my hometown, asked why that "Texas car" was in town so much. What kind of business could I have there?

And so on. It's not that I don't have respect for people trying to do their jobs; it's that I've had a wealth of experience in which that job description has magically expanded in ugly ways. Quite often, the response from black parents I know has been to teach their children to always defer to authority, to not question, to do as they are told. For example, I hear parents say, about spanking their kids, "I'm whooping his/her ass now, so the police won't do it later." And no, this is not just an excuse to engage in teh evil spanking, it is evidence of a very real belief that teaching children to obey "authority" figures may save their lives.

Yet, just as I don't want to leave my son with the image of the police that I created with my comment, I don't want to teach him to blindly obey either. I did tell him later that there are "lots of good police who protect people," but that some of them feel like they have "superpowers over people" because they have guns and clubs.

And uniforms. Lord, the power of a uniform.

In the meantime, I am thinking of this. Sean Bell was 23. Kathryn Johnson was 92. Is there ever a time, an age when we are safe?

H/T Y. Carrington and Philip Arthur Moore