Police-Brutality

Afeni Shakur is best known as the mother of the hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur. What is less well known is that she was a member of the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party, a dedicated revolutionary who served time in jail for her political activities. Freedom Archives says her work “shaped the political discourse of Black Liberation movements in the 70s.” Visit their article on Afeni to hear excepts of her speaking. In 1968, 21 members of the Harlem Chapter of the panthers were arrested on alleged bomb conspiracy charges, with bail set at $100,000. The following is part of a letter that Shakur wrote from prison in January 1970, decrying the colonial jail system and the entire U.S. state apparatus that has oppressed people of color since colonization arrived on this continent, and brought the first enslaved Africans shortly thereafter. Featured image: Afeni Shakur speaks at a Black Panther Party Rally. Image via Freedom Archives. ...

by Eric London / World Socialist Web Site Lost among the wall-to-wall press coverage of allegations of Russian interference in US politics is a recent revelation that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) received 1,310 reports of rape and sexual assault of immigrant detainees by ICE officials between 2013 and 2017 alone. On July 17, Emily Kassie of the New York Times published a short documentary with interviews with two women who were sexually assaulted by guards at immigrant detention facilities in Texas and Pennsylvania. ...

by Cultural Survival Claudia Patricia Gomez Gonzalez was shot and killed by border patrol after crossing the border in Laredo, Texas on May 23, 2018. The border patrol agent who fired the shot fatally wounding Gomez Gonzalez remains on administrative leave. Claudia Patricia Gomez Gonzalez, 19 years old, was from the Maya Mam community of San Juan Ostuncalco, Guatemala. She held a degree in accounting, but had not been able to secure a job. ...

by Courtney Parker / Intercontinental Cry Intercontinental Cry has been reporting for almost exactly two years now on the escalating state-sponsored violence in Nicaragua, while many otherwise informed people remained stubbornly, loyally, and piously in denial – clinging to the romantic Sandinista, anti-imperialist, revolutionary narrative… It’s charming; it really is. And, that’s why it has become so dangerous. The recent mass uprising in Nicaragua is youth-led with decentralized leadership, much like the ‘Occupy Movement’ to the north – and, it has received some of the same criticism of the Occupy Movement regarding the lack of organized leadership. Yet, who is to blame a generation who grew up under a growing dictatorship for wanting their movement to be proactively more egalitarian, in practice not just propaganda? ...

Featured image: Marielle Franco speaking at a campaign rally in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2016. Photo: Mídia Ninja/Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0 by Fernanda Canofre / Global Voices Less than two hours before she was murdered on the evening of March 14, Rio de Janeiro city councillor Marielle Franco was speaking at a roundtable of black women activists about “young black women moving the structures." As Franco was leaving the site, a car pulled up to the side of her own vehicle and fired nine shots into it. Franco and her driver, Anderson Pedro Gomes, were killed on the spot. The councillor’s press officer, who was in the backseat, was hit by glass fragments and injured but survived. ...

Featured image: Police cam video of Daniel Shaver (pictured at right with his daughters) just before being killed by Mesa, Arizona Police Department officer Philip Brailsford. Brailsford was acquitted of second-degree murder in the case. by Pray for Calamity Cold air bites at the tip of my nose and the upper rim of my ears as I crunch across the driveway to the wood pile. Pulling from a rick consisting mostly of ash, I load my arms. We burned through the last rick of wood too quickly. Subzero temperatures moved in right after the winter solstice, and for weeks they held strong, the winds at night drawing the heat from our cabin through every crack and seam. Wool blankets cover the windows, and we trade light for heat. At night we nestle into our bed as a family, buried under our down comforter, which can effectively create an ecosystem all its own. Before sunrise though, I will feel my cheeks getting cold, and I will head to the kitchen to find the last embers of the fire on the verge of extinguishing. In the dark I will snap small sticks with my hands, then feed them into the steel belly of the woodstove, and layer split wood on top of that. I wait, watching, listening. When I am sure that the fire has taken, I head back towards bed with the orange flicker lighting the way. ...

by No More Deaths Arivaca, AZ—In temperatures surging over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the US Border Patrol raided the medical-aid camp of humanitarian organization No More Deaths and detained four individuals receiving medical care. Obstruction of humanitarian aid is an egregious abuse by the law-enforcement agency, a clear violation of international humanitarian law, and a violation of the organization’s agreement with the Tucson Sector Border Patrol. This afternoon, in an unprecedented show of force, approximately 30 armed agents raided the camp with at least 15 trucks, two quads, and a helicopter to apprehend four patients receiving medical care.Agents from the Border Patrol began surveilling the No More Deaths camp on Tuesday, June 13 at around 4:30 p.m. Agents in vehicles, on foot, and on ATVs surrounded the aid facility and set up a temporary checkpoint at the property line to search those leaving and interrogate them about their citizenship status. The heavy presence of law enforcement has deterred people from accessing critical humanitarian assistance in this period of hot and deadly weather. These events also follow a pattern of increasing surveillance of humanitarian aid over the past few months under the Trump administration. ...

Featured image: The Dongria have resisted attempts to mine in their hills for years, but are facing serious pressure to give in. © Survival International by Survival International The Indian government is harassing and attempting to silence the leaders of the Dongria Kondh tribe, famous for winning a “David and Goliath” court battle against a British mining giant. The Dongria’s resistance to mining on their lands has continued since their landmark victory in 2014. Leaders including Dodi Pusika feel that the risk of mining remains as long as a refinery is operational at the foot of the Niyamgiri hills, an area which the tribe have been dependent on and managed for generations. A recent protest at the refinery was met with a baton-charge from police. ...

Featured image: Dozens of people have been shot on sight by park guards in Kaziranga, including severely disabled tribal man Gaonbura Killing. © BBC by Survival International Survival International has called on the UN expert on extrajudicial executions to condemn shoot on sight conservation policies. In a letter to the Special Rapporteur charged with the issue, Survival stated that “shoot on sight policies directly affect tribal people who live in or adjacent to ‘protected areas’… particularly when park guards so often fail to distinguish subsistence hunters from commercial poachers.” ...

by Noah Weber On Sunday, March 7, 1965, roughly 600 African Americans and their allies gathered and marched towards Montgomery, Alabama in order to take a stand and draw attention to the fact that 99% of Selma, Alabama’s registered voters were white, and that the African American community was being denied their legal right to vote. The unarmed men and women who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge were met by a heavily armed police force and were tear gassed and beaten horrifically. In the end, 17 marchers were hospitalized, and another 50 were treated for injuries caused by the police. ...