Activist Bree Newsome climbed the flagpole in front of the South Carolina State Capitol building in Columbia on Saturday and took down the Confederate Flag. Both Newsome and fellow activist James Tyson, who waited at the bottom of the flagpole, were arrested, leading to twitter hashtags #FreeBree and #FreeJames.
With this act of Civil Disobedience, Bree Newsome has become a legend now, and the image of her climb to take down the flag has traveled around the world via social media.
Activists calling themselves “concerned citizens” said in a news release that they removed the flag about 5:30 a.m. Saturday. A woman identified by the group as “Bree” climbed the pole and pulled the flag down, the group said. “Deciding to do what the SC Legislature has thus far neglected to do, the group took down the symbol of white supremacy that inspired the massacre, continued to fly at full mast in defiance of South Carolina’s grief, and flew in defiance of everyone working to actualize a more equitable Carolinian future,” the group said in a news release distributed to the media about 6:30 a.m.
The state Bureau of Protective Services confirmed it had arrested two people at the State House about 6:15 a.m. Those arrested were Brittany Ann Byuarim Newsome, a 30-year-old Raleigh resident, and James Ian Tyson, a 30-year-old Charlotte resident, the protective services bureau said.
They are charged with defacing state property, a misdemeanor that carries penalties of up to three years in prison or a fine of up to $5,000 or both.
Newsome was loudly reciting the 23rd Psalm as she was being arrested.
In the sad wake of the Charleston deaths at the hand of racist Dylann Roof, Twitter exploded over the weekend with calls for Governor Nikki Haley and the South Carolina House of Representatives to move quickly and take down the emblem of hate, the Confederate Flag, standing just outside the State House in Columbia.
. . . while U.S. flags have been lowered, the Confederate battle flag remains high -- even padlocked into place.
Why?
It is a matter of state law.
Back in 2000, civil rights activists successfully lobbied to have a much larger Confederate flag removed from the Capitol dome. But there was a compromise. The South Carolina Heritage Act decreed that just about all other tributes to Confederate history would be virtually untouchable. The only way to change anything of that nature -- including the smaller flag that was erected on the State House lawn -- would be to gain the endorsement of two-thirds of lawmakers.
Take down the #ConfederateFlag at the SC Capitol. To many, it is a symbol of racial hatred. Remove it now to honor #Charleston victims.
Last Wednesday evening a white man named Dylann Roof walked into a Bible Study at Emmanuel AME Church in historic Charleston. He sat quietly for some time, appearing to listen to the religious message, before standing up and shooting nine innocent people while terrorizing the survivors with racist statements.
Later it was discovered that Dylann Roof had been planning some kind of attack for months, and had told his drinking buddies that whites needed to kill the blacks and bring back segregation. He later said he almost didn't shoot anyone at the church because they were so nice to him, but his evil purpose overcame any conscience he had (if any). But we don't have to guess at his reasons because Roof wrote an online manifesto stating his plan and why he chose that church:
A week later the sorrow still simmers across the nation, as families plan funerals and calls rise up from all sides to take down the festering symbol of racism that is the Confederate Battle Flag. But I deal with the flag controversy in a separate post. The rest of this post is about the victims and their families.
The town of McKinney, Texas, became the new "face of racism" this week after a pool party was broken up by a rogue cop. Officer Eric Casebolt was filmed rolling on the ground as if in a video game as he entered an area where young teens were having a pool party; he then proceeded to curse at and man-handle a 14-year-old girl before sitting on her, and at one point waved his weapon directly at several boys who sought to help the girl on the ground. At that point at least two officers stepped in to make him put down his gun because he was clearly out of control.
Words can't do this situation justice, so we're lucky to have video thanks to another child who filmed the whole thing.
Just the language coming from Casebolt was bad enough, but the way these kids were treated was completely shocking and uncalled-for, not to mention blatantly racist.
Eric Casebolt has now resigned from the McKinney police force:
Cpl. Eric Casebolt's resignation comes a day after hundreds of protesters marched near the pool in McKinney where the incident took place last weekend.
McKinney Chief of Police Greg Conley said this evening that Casebolt's actions on the cell phone recording of the incident were "indefensible."
"Our policies, our training, our practice do not support his actions," he added.
Conley described Casebolt as being "out of control," while praising the actions of the 11 other officers on the scene.
"I had 12 officers on the scene and 11 of them... did an incredible job," Conley said.
But Casebolt's lawyer says he is "suffering" from this ordeal and other recent events, such as suicide calls he witnessed the same day as the pool party:
The officer, Eric Casebolt, was under emotional duress when he responded Friday evening to reports of a disturbance at a community pool in McKinney, Texas, said his attorney, Jane Bishkin. Earlier that day, the officer had handled two suicide calls, including one in which a man shot himself in the head in the presence of his children.
“The nature of these two suicide calls took an emotional toll,” she said at a news conference. “He allowed his emotions to get the better of him.”
In court documents, Albert Earl Brown Jr. described how, in April 2007, he was sitting in a car with white female passengers, when Casebolt approached the vehicle and made comments about Brown’s clothes and the white women Brown was with.
In court documents, Brown said that Casebolt asked to search the car after allegedly seeing marijuana seeds, yet Brown maintained that Casebolt didn’t find any drugs after the car search. Brown alleged that Casebolt pulled down Brown’s pants to conduct a body search while another officer slammed Brown’s face into the hood of the car. In response to the complaint, Casebolt said that he did, in fact, find marijuana seeds inside Brown’s car.
Brown was convicted of a drug charge stemming from that arrest, but he still filed a civil rights lawsuit against Casebolt and the other police officers present during the arrest. Brown argued that Casebolt conjured up a “fake charge” in order to cover up how badly and inappropriately Casebolt and the officers had treated Brown during the stop and arrest.
The lawsuit was dismissed because Brown said he was incarcerated and unable to collect all of the evidence he needed to prove his case. Brown also said he didn’t understand the legal process enough to follow through with the suit, the International Business Times reports. Later that year, Casebolt won the Patrolman of the Year award, according to the International Business Times.
There is a major concensus among those attending the party, white and black, that race was a motivating factor in the 911 calls and the reaction of Officer Casebolt.
Brandon Brooks, the 15-year-old white teen who shot the video, said there's no doubt race was a factor in how police responded. He said the officer was targeting black teens at the scene.
"I was one of the only white people in the area when that was happening," he told CNN affiliate KDAF. "You can see in part of the video where he tells us to sit down, and he kinda like skips over me and tells all my African-American friends to go sit down."
Brandon said the argument that drew police to the pool party didn't even involve most of the teens Casebolt was going after.
"It was a fight between a mom and girl, which had nothing to do with all the other kids," he told KDAF.
Brandon said he was unnerved to see his friend tackled and pressed to the ground.
"I think she was 'running her mouth,' and she has freedom of speech, and that was very uncalled for him to throw her to the ground," he said.
Talking head Megyn Kelly of Fox News took flack for saying on air that the 14-year-old girl who was wrestled to the ground by Casebolt was "No Saint," echoing a similar controversial headline by the New York Times after the shooting death of Mike Brown in Ferguson, another racially motivated attack by police. People on social media were quick to note the difference in Kelly's tone from the softball interview just last week with the Duggar clan, whose eldest son is facing a scandal over molesting several of his sisters as well as a babysitter. Kelly was also quick to interview 911 caller Sean Toon as an eyewitness without any apparent background check (scroll down to see more about that below).
Fox News host Megyn Kelly said on Monday that, while she was not defending McKinney, Texas police officer Eric Casebolt’s actions last week, the 15-year-old girl he attacked was not without blame.
“The girl was no saint, either,” Kelly said of Dajerria Becton. “He had told her to leave, and she continued to linger. When a cop tells you to leave, get out.”
Conservative radio host Michael Berry said the McKinney kids were "acting like jungle animals," and thus the actions of Casebolt were justified.
“You’ve got a ready-made crowd of people who don’t have day jobs that are ready to storm the streets and threaten the cops,” Berry said on his eponymous show on Houston’s KTRH, which is an iHeartRadio network station. “Let me suggest that for the people who end up getting in fights with the cops: Shut your mouth!” NBC News cannot be certain the audio was not edited.
“Let me ask you, how many among you would put on a badge and a police uniform today?” he added. “How many of you would put on a badge, police uniform and be the first to respond — by yourself — to a crowd of teenagers, amped up — watch ‘em! Man, they’re screaming! ‘Get outta here! Who are you?! You don’t know what you! You go! You get! Who are you?! You can’t do that! No man, we gon’ get you! You bet!’ I mean you’re talking about, like, jungle animals. I mean this is wild, crazy, out of control.”
On his Monday broadcast, Berry also defended the “probably white” people who called police to the scene at the pool party, saying they were “scared to death” because “there’s a bunch of black people and they’re out on the streets and they’re fightin’ and carryin’ on and they’re playing that music from Jay-Z.”
Yeah, but not racist, right?
Several white adults are believed to have called the police when they thought the black teens were getting rowdy or believed the children of color "didn't belong there" due to, you know, their race. But that wasn't true - most of the kids were from that development, known as Craig Ranch, if police had bothered to listen to them.
A local white man named Sean Toon admitted to calling 911 and the next day posted a "thank you" sign at the pool for the police. Twitter's revenge was the hashtag #SeanToon911. Some digging from people on Twitter uncovered a felonious history for Mr. Toon, who was once charged for brutally killing farm animals as a teen, and later served jail time for "assault with a deadly weapon" on a human being.
In November 1999, aged 18, Toon and three high school friends were arrested and expelled from school after vandalising the agricultural centre of a rival high school district and attacking animals housed there, many of which were owned and cared for by school children.
“Cows and pigs were cut and bruised, apparently beaten with wooden boards. And baby turkeys were slain, their limbs torn apart,” the Dallas Morning News reported at the time. Dale Gardner, a teacher in the school district’s agriscience and technology program, told the newspaper: “It was brutal. There’s no way to describe it. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
About a dozen prize turkeys, which were reportedly being bred by a student aiming to win money for his scholarship fund, were feared killed.
Animals and buildings were covered in green and gold paint, according to reports. These were the colours of Toon’s high school, Newman Smith, whose football team rivalled that of RL Turner High, whose students used the agricultural centre.
. . . Toon pleaded guilty to felony criminal mischief and was sentenced in August 2000 to 285 days in jail and fined $300. His three friends were also punished for the incident.
A Dallas County court clerk confirmed details of the case on Wednesday but was unable to confirm how long Toon served in jail.
In September 2000, Toon was charged in nearby Denton County with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to court records. After pleading guilty to an unspecified lesser charge, Toon was sentenced to 75 days in jail.
In a shocking video from Tulsa, Oklahome you can see Bob Bates, a 73-year-old reserve cop, shoot a black suspect named Eric Harris, who had already been tackled to the ground by another cop. Then Bob says "Oops, I'm sorry, I thought it was my taser."
New excuse - His taser made him do it. Even though the taser was inside his vest and the gun was on his hip. Oops.
Again, Harris was on the ground and nearly subdued. Other cops were standing around him, so there was no need for Bates to shoot, and indeed, dangerous to do so because he might have hit another cop!But good old boy Bob Bates just had to do something, so he shot Eric Harris.
Then as the dying man lay on the ground saying "I can't breathe," you see another cop press his full body weight onto Harris's head while snarling "F--- Your Breath," possibly referring back to the death of Eric Garner in New York City, the man who was tackled to the ground and grabbed around the neck while begging for air.
Seems like cops have had enough of this "freedom of breath" nonsense. The only thing you can do is just kill people. Totally understandable. After all the jails are too crowded, right? Killing suspects for petty crimes clears more space for the real bad guys - the killers, etc. You know, just like Bob Bates.
Bob Bates didn't even have the proper training records, according to Tulsa World
In a statement that the 73-year-old reserve deputy gave the sheriff's office following the fatal shooting of Eric Harris during an undercover operation on April 2, Bates noted he had taken "active shooter training" from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.
Lisa Allen, chief media relations office for the sheriff's office there, said they had no record of Bates attending their training.
. . . "We don't allow out-of-state people to take the class," she said. "I'm only surmising, and I can't confirm this because this would not have been our class, but our active shooter instructor did travel to Dallas once to teach a class.
. . . Supervisors at the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office were ordered to falsify a reserve deputy’s training records, giving him credit for field training he never took and firearms certifications he should not have received, sources told the Tulsa World.
At least three of reserve deputy Robert Bates’ supervisors were transferred after refusing to sign off on his state-required training, multiple sources speaking on condition of anonymity told the World.
Even beyond the nonexistent certification is the fact that Bob Bates had supplied the Tulsa police department with gifts of money and equipment. So did he bribe his way onto the force?
“First and foremost, let me apologize to the family of Eric Harris,” Tulsa reserve deputy Robert Bates said of the 44-year-old black man he fatally wounded. “This is the second-worst thing that’s ever happened to me or the first that ever happened to me in my life. I had cancer a number of years ago. I didn’t think I was going to get there… I’d rate this as number one on my list of things in my life that I regret.”
Asked by Matt Lauer how he could make the fundamental mistake of grabbing his gun instead of the taser, Bates replied, “This has happened a number of times around the country. I have read about it in the past. I thought to myself after reading several cases, I don’t understand how this can happen.”
He added: “You must believe me, it can happen to anyone.”
The remorseful deputy, who was surrounded by his family and lawyer, told Lauer that “I have no desire to ever take anyone’s life,” and recalled the state of shock he was in the moment he realized he had shot Harris.
~~~~~~~~~~
"This is my taser, this is my gun. This one's for killing and this one's . . . oh look, a black guy!"
~ Arfer on Crooks and Liars
As ever... conservatives love to TALK about responsibility... but when it comes to TAKING responsibility... we have folks like this guy. "I pulled my gun instead of my taser, but that's okay, because it's happened before to others, and I killed a guy but I right away said I was sorry, so I am NOT GUILTY!"
~ Willem on Mediaite
Literally unbelievable. "The second-worst thing that's ever happened to me." And "it can happen to anyone."
Well excuse me, Deputy Dawg, but I believe this is the first-worst thing that ever happened to Eric Harris, and the second worst is that you're still drawing breath.
"Remorseful" my foot. Bates is mildly inconvenienced because of all the attention he's getting because of his little oopsie and he wouldn't mind if you all just went on with your business and left him alone.
This guy needs a room with no view next to Alex Hernandez, and should be let out on the same day.
~ expatpatiot on Mediaite
The Academy Awards bore most of us senseless because: (A) many of us out in the heartland aren't able to see some of the films, and (B) the choices leave us scratching our heads. And whenever I see a movie that I think is Oscar-worthy, you can bet it will be immediately snubbed by the Academy, or thrown a "special effects" or "costumes" award. Another complaint I have is they often highlight films about women falling apart mentally or being victims of violence. So I don't even click on Oscar stories anymore.
But this week's Oscar snubs couldn't be swept under the rug as Hollywood chose to ignore actors of color and the movie "Selma" and Twitter rose to the occasion with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite started by @ReignOfApril and picked up by the national news media.
“It’s disconcerting that every single year, we can count the people of color who are nominated on one hand,” April Reign, the attorney and blogger at ReignOfApril.com who started the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag, told MTV News over the phone. “That really needs to change. It’s not because there’s a lack of quality films that star or feature people of color; that’s not the issue. There was an article in The Atlantic recently which indicated who the Oscar voters are. They are 94 percent white, 76 percent male, and the average age is 63 years old … and they might not be as interested in seeing ‘Selma.’” . . . “How is it that you can nominate a film for Best Picture, but then not nominate it for anything in any of the other categories?” Reign asked. “How is it a Best Picture if the screenplay isn’t nomination-worthy, or the actors, the actresses, the director, the cinematography? If nothing else is Oscar-worthy, then what makes it a best film? I’m happy for the nomination, but part of me says, ‘Maybe they just threw us a bone.’”
. . . Thursday's 2015 Academy Awards nominations, which have come under fire for a glaring lack of diversity. Social media erupted after the slate revealed that the 20 contenders for lead and supporting actor and actress are all white for the first time since 1998.
"It was a total blow, it was like getting hit in the stomach," says regional Fox network film critic Shawn Edwards, who runs the website ILoveBlackMovies.com. "It was like, 'Here we go again.' "
. . . Selma, centered around Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights struggle, received two nominations, for best picture and best song. The film's Golden Globe-nominated director Ava DuVernay, who would have made history as the first female African-American director nominee, was notably shut out. So was her much-touted star David Oyelowo.
Not only were the acting categories filled with white men and women, the Academy also seemed to snub women as a whole in other major categories such as directing and original/adapted screenplay. We're looking at you, Angelina Jolie, Gillian Flynn and Ava DuVernay.
"I guess white men can *finally* have their day in the sun, you know? #OscarNoms," tweeted another user.
The last time the acting contenders were only white was in 2011, and before that it hadn't occurred since 1998.
AND THE NOMINEES ARE: White Person White Person White Person White Person and finally, White Person #OscarNoms
— YeaYouRite (@YeaYouRite) January 15, 2015
On Saturday December 13, 2014, there was a March for Justice in Washington DC, and another in New York City, that drew thousands to the streets, while millions watched on TV and computers worldwide. And the marching will continue all over the country because there needs to be Justice for Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin - the list is apparently endless. Society has to change. The Police need to police themselves. The scales of justice have to balance again so our country can survive.
What is your life? It is even a vapor,
that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away. New Testament James 4:14
There are really no words - or breath left to speak words - after the non-decision of a New York Grand Jury in the tragic death of Eric Garner, who was killed by a cop while in a stranglehold on a public sidewalk. The whole thing was caught on film from the first interaction to his dying breath, yet to the bafflement of the world, no indictment against the cop was brought by the Grand Jury. Once again a prosecutor chose to protect law enforcement instead of enforcing the law.
And it's been another sad day for our country as we grieve another senseless death at the hands of the police, the death of a man who was selling cigarettes on the city streets. He wasn't a thug, he wasn't being violent. There was no danger for the cop who killed him. There is no instant death sentence for resisting arrest.
We have to solve this, and soon.
Eric Holder has announced an investigation into the Garner case, as well as in Ferguson for the victim Mike Brown. Until there is some kind of justice and cops are held accountable by somebody somewhere, protests are going to fill the streets of our country. Tonight thousands flooded into the streets from New York to Seattle, and Reverend Al Sharpton has called for a march on Washington on December 13th. It would be nice to have some sense of resolution of all these racially motivated cop shootings by Christmas, but the thin blue line is into protecting itself these days and most politicians don't seem to give a damn.
