So things have been crazy lately, from car wrecks to conventions, it’s been a busy few weeks. Because of that I haven’t been able to do my usual research for this weeks blog, so instead I’m going to post up some videos that I think are interesting, and hopefully you’ll enjoy.
thanks
The State, one of the funniest shows ever, doing a piece of “free market economy”
This Bob Dylan interview is pretty amazing.
and this is fastly becoming one of my favorite songs.
sigur ros, Hoppípolla
thanks for checking this out, and for looking at my website, it’s meant the world to me.
next week, it’ll be back to normal.
CW and I went to Green Bay this past week and had an amazing time.
It was cold, real cold, like 40 below cold. I had a great time getting to hangout with old friends and make new ones, and also do some fun tattoos. I also had alot of time to think though. With the inauguration of a new president, it seems as though the country may be going in a different direction, or at least that is how the media is guiding those thoughts. Everywhere you look they are creating an imagine of a president that died for our sins, and that will “save the nation”. This all made me wonder, how far have we truly come? Have we grown past the times of direct racism, the klan and other acts of disgusting violence?
It made me remember two stories I had heard about growing up in the South.
The first is about Medger Evers. Medgar Evers was an African American civil rights activist from Mississippi who was murdered by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the Ku Klux Klan in 1963.On June 12, 1963, Evers pulled into his driveway after just returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts that read “Jim Crow Must Go,” Evers was struck in the back with a bullet fired from an Enfield 1917.303 rifle that ricocheted into his home. He staggered 30 feet before collapsing. He died at a local hospital 50 minutes later. Evers was murdered just hours after President John F. Kennedy’s speech on national television in support of civil rights.
Mourned nationally, Evers was buried on June 19 in Arlington National Cemetery, where he received full military honors in front of a crowd of more than three thousand people. It was the largest funeral at Arlington since the interment of John Foster Dulles, former U.S. Secretary of State in 1959. The past chairman of the American Veterans’ Committee, Mickey Levine, said at the services, “No soldier in this field has fought more courageously, more heroically than Medgar Evers.”
On June 23, 1964, Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and member of the White Citizens’ Council and Ku Klux Klan, was arrested for Evers’ murder. During the course of his first trial in 1964, De La Beckwith was visited by former Mississippi governor Ross Barnett and one time Army Major General Edwin A. Walker.
All-white juries twice that year deadlocked on De La Beckwith’s guilt.
The murder and subsequent trials caused an uproar. Musician Bob Dylan wrote his 1963 song “Only a Pawn in Their Game” about Evers and his assassin. The song’s lyrics included: “Today, Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught/They lowered him down as a king.” Nina Simone took up the topic in her song “Mississippi Goddam”. Phil Ochs wrote the songs “The Ballad of Medgar Evers” and “Another Country” in response to the killing. Matthew Jones and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom Singers paid tribute to Evers in the haunting “Ballad of Medgar Evers.” Eudora Welty’s short story “Where is the Voice Coming From,” in which the speaker is the imagined assassin of Medgar Evers, was published in The New Yorker.
In 1965, Jackson C. Frank included the lyrics “But there aren’t words to bring back Evers” in his tribute to the Civil Rights Movement, “Don’t Look Back,” found on his only, self-titled, album. Malvina Reynolds mentioned “the shot in Evers’ back” in her song “It Isn’t Nice”. More recently, rapper Immortal Technique asks if a diamond is “worth the blood of Malcolm and Medgar Evers?” in the song “Crossing the Boundary”. The Rza sang on “I Can’t Go to Sleep” by Wu-Tang Clan, “Medgar Took One To The Skull For Intergrating College”.
In 1994, 30 years after the two previous trials had failed to reach a verdict, Beckwith was again brought to trial based on new evidence, and Bobby DeLaughter took on the job as the attorney. During the trial, the body of Evers was exhumed from his grave for autopsy, and found to be in a surprisingly good state of preservation as a result of embalming. Beckwith was convicted of murder on February 5, 1994, after having lived as a free man for the three decades following the killing. Beckwith appealed unsuccessfully, and died in prison in January 2001.
Here’s a video about the anniversary of Evers death.
The second is the young boy named Emmitt Till.
Emmett Louis “Bobo” Till was a fourteen-year-old African American from Chicago, Illinois who was murdered in Money, Mississippi, a small town in the state’s Delta region. The murder of Emmett Till was noted as one of the leading events that motivated the nascent American Civil Rights Movement. The main suspects were acquitted, but later admitted to committing the crime.
Till’s mother insisted on a public funeral service, with an open casket to show the world the brutality of the killing: Till had been beaten and his eye had been gouged out, before he was shot through the head and thrown into the Tallahatchie River with a 75-pound cotton gin fan tied to his neck with barbed wire. His body was in the river for three days before it was discovered and retrieved by two fishermen.
Here’s a video about the murder. It’s just an introduction to an hour long documentary.
Here’s a video to the song about Emmitt performed by Bob Dylan
As I sit and watch everything that is bombarding the airwaves and such by the media this inaugural day, I would love to think that we have grown past this. But with the death of Oscar Grant and others, it has to make you wonder where we are as a people. Are we really as far as we like to think? Have we grown, or is there a mask on hiding the real state of the nation? How many murders are we not told about? What is really happening?
The only way to progress is to look within ourselves and to challenge ourselves to living the way we know we should. Change is needed, change can happen now, change is inside of us. Instead of growing stagnant and fooled by what we are being told, let us rise up and challenge what is going on and truly change the world, so that this really will never happen again.
Let’s not rely on a president, a government, or a group to tell us how and when we can have “change”, take the reins and bring change on yourself. Let us not rely on someone who is fallible, and instead act now. We know what to do, now let’s get off the couch and do it.
Let’s take the power back.
Leonard Peltier — a great-grandfather, artist, writer, & indigenous rights activist — is a citizen of the Anishinabe and Dakota/Lakota Nations who has been unjustly imprisoned since 1976.
A participant in the American Indian Movement, he went to assist the Oglala Lakota people on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the mid-70s where a tragic shoot-out occurred on June 26, 1975. Accused of the murder of two agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Peltier fled to Canada believing he would never receive a fair trial in the United States.
On February 6, 1976, Peltier was apprehended. The FBI knowingly presented the Canadian court with fraudulent affidavits, and Peltier was returned to the U.S. for trial.
Key witnesses were banned from testifying about FBI misconduct & testimony about the conditions and atmosphere on the Pine Ridge Reservation at the time of the shoot-out was severely restricted. Important evidence, such as conflicting ballistics reports, was ruled inadmissible. Still, the U.S. Prosecutor failed to produce a single witness who could identify Peltier as the shooter. Instead, the government tied a bullet casing found near the bodies of their agents to the alleged murder weapon, arguing that this gun had been the only one of its kind used during the shootout, and that it had belonged to Peltier.
Later, Mr. Peltier’s attorneys uncovered, in the FBI’s own documents, that more than one weapon of the type attributed to Peltier had been present at the scene and the FBI had intentionally concealed a ballistics report that showed the shell casing could not have come from the alleged murder weapon. Other troubling information emerged: the agents undoubtedly followed a red pickup truck onto the land where the shoot-out took place, not the red and white van driven by Peltier; and compelling evidence against several other suspects existed and was concealed.
At the time, however, the jury was unaware of these facts. Peltier was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. He is currently imprisoned at the U.S. Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
Here’s a video reguarding the case
here’s a video recounting what happened that day.
And here’s a video of Mumia Abu Jamal talking about Leonard Peltier
Learn more at
www.leonardpeltier.net
and at
www.aimovement.org/peltier/index.html
On a side note, does anybody know what happened a few weeks ago in Tennessee?
Here’s a rundown,
The TVA Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill occurred on December 22, 2008, when an earthen dike broke at a 40-acre (0.16 km2) waste retention pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, USA. 1.1 billion gallons of coal fly ash slurry was released. The coal-fired power plant, located in the city of Kingston, uses three ponds to store fly ash, a byproduct of coal combustion, in wet form. The slurry (a mixture of fly ash and water) traveled downhill, covering up to 300 acres (1.2 km2) of the surrounding land, damaging homes and flowing into nearby waterways such as the Emory River and Clinch River (tributaries of the Tennessee River). It was the largest fly ash release in United States history. Many are saying this is a larger environmental tragedy than even the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.
Here’s a video about this tragedy.
So I was going to write about Leonard Peltier this week, but I got a call last night that is going to make me wait until next week to write about Leonard.
I received a text early this morning from a friend of mine out in Oakland, she sent me pictures of police in riot gear. Of course, I was a little worried and asked what was going on. She told me to google the name Oscar Grant, and that BART officers had murdered someone new years night. So I googled Oscar Grant, and this is what I found.
From news.infoshop.org
In the early morning hours of New Year’s Day, an unidentified BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) officer executed an unarmed man on an Oakland train platform. oscar grant, who was being restrained by officers, was lying on the ground with two officers kneeling on top of him when one officer casually drew his service weapon and shot grant in the back, killing him.
Here is some video of the incident shot by a bystander from the train, be warned, it’s pretty graphic.
and here’s another video
(San Francisco Chronicle) (01-04) 19:38 PST Oakland — BART’s police chief asked for patience from the public on Sunday after video footage surfaced showing one of his officers fatally shooting an unarmed man who was on the ground on a station platform on New Year’s Day, and after an attorney for the dead man’s family said he planned to sue the transit agency for $25 million.
Chief Gary Gee said he, too, had seen video images of the shooting of oscar grant, a 22-year-old supermarket worker from Hayward. But Gee said he found the footage to be inconclusive, and he said his investigators still needed to interview a key witness - the officer himself.
That officer, a two-year veteran, has not been publicly identified and has been placed on routine administrative leave. BART officials have said only that his handgun discharged at about 2:15 a.m. Thursday at the Fruitvale Station in Oakland and that the bullet struck the unarmed grant, who had been detained with several others.
Officials have not said whether the officer intended to shoot grant. One source familiar with the investigation said BART is looking into a number of issues, including whether the officer had meant to fire his Taser stun gun rather than his gun. Alameda County prosecutors are conducting their own investigation, as is standard in officer-involved shootings.
“We are taking this investigation very seriously,” Gee said during a news conference at BART headquarters in Oakland on Sunday. “As frustrating as it is, I want to stress that we cannot and will not jeopardize this case by discussing details before the investigation is complete.”
Gee spoke after attorney John Burris held his own news conference at his Oakland office, where he was surrounded by grant’s family members and friends and witnesses to the shooting.
Burris said he plans to file a $25 million claim this week against BART - a legal precursor to a civil lawsuit - because, he says, witness statements and video footage recorded by other passengers make clear that the shooting was unjustified.
“It is, without a doubt, the most unconscionable shooting I have ever seen,” said Burris, who has won several damage awards against Bay Area police departments and worked on Rodney King’s civil suit against the city of Los Angeles. “A price has to be paid. Accountability has to occur.”
“It’s pretty clear from the tape and from witnesses,” Burris said, “that (grant) wasn’t doing anything of a threatening nature to the officer.”
Burris said he has interviewed several young men who were with grant when he was shot on the platform of the Fruitvale Station and has gone to the station with them to walk through a re-enactment. Burris said he has also viewed video from three different cameras.
Burris said he will file suit on behalf of grant’s mother, Wanda Johnson, and grant’s 4-year-old daughter, Tatiana.
David E. Mastagni, an attorney for the officer, declined to comment Sunday.
grant was a butcher at Farmer Joe’s Marketplace in Oakland’s Dimond district, family members said. They said he loved to play basketball and video games and hang out with friends. He had been in some trouble, they said, but was doing better in recent months in an effort to be a good father.
According to sources, grant had a prison record. Details were unavailable Sunday.
The officer
The officer who shot grant has been with BART for about two years, is in his mid-20s, and has not been accused in the past of using excessive force, according to a source familiar with the investigation. The source described him as physically fit and respected by peers within the organization.
A source also revealed Sunday that BART police had been on edge before grant’s shooting because two guns had been recovered in separate incidents along the rail line in the hour before the shooting.
In one of the incidents, a teenage boy with a semiautomatic pistol had fled from police and jumped off the West Oakland Station platform, breaking several bones while landing. In another, the source said, a revolver was recovered after a fight at the Embarcadero Station in San Francisco.
Chief Gee said officers were called to the Fruitvale Station at 2 a.m. Thursday when police got a report that two groups of riders were fighting on a train that had just left the West Oakland Station and was headed for Dublin/Pleasanton. The officers then detained several people, the chief said.
Mario Pangelina Jr., a 23-year-old Hayward man whose sister, Sophina Mesa, was grant’s girlfriend and the mother of his child, said he saw some of what led to the shooting. He said officers had grant against a wall on the platform. One officer briefly choked grant, and someone pointed a Taser at him as well, Pangelina said.
Pangelina quoted grant as saying, “Please don’t tase me, please don’t shoot me, I have a daughter.”
Apparent struggle
Video footage taken by passengers, first shown by KTVU television, shows officers forcing grant to the ground and trying to hold him down. The officer who shot grant appears to try to put cuffs on him before drawing his weapon and firing. In the video, grant appears to struggle with the officers, though it is unclear exactly what he was doing.
Burris said a single bullet went through grant’s lower back, hit the ground and ricocheted through his upper body. grant died at Highland Hospital in Oakland several hours later.
Among other things, BART police are looking into the possibility that the officer who shot grant thought he was pulling the trigger of a Taser stun gun, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
BART officials declined to say whether the officer was carrying a Taser - a device that sends out two electrical probes and can incapacitate its target - when he shot grant. The agency uses Tasers but does not have enough of the expensive devices to give one to every officer.
Normally, officers who finish a shift give their Taser to an officer starting a shift. But with so many extra officers working on Wednesday and Thursday in expectation of holiday revelry, there were not enough Tasers to go around.
It is unusual for police officers to mistake their handgun for a Taser, but not unprecedented. Tasers are similar to many guns, with a trigger that must be pulled, a safety device that must be switched off, and laser sighting.
Many Bay Area police departments that use Tasers - including BART - force officers to take precautions, such as wearing them on the opposite side of their strong hand and facing backward. This requires officers to reach across their body to retrieve them.
this information was taken from news.infoshop.org
We need to be educated.
This has happened time and time before, we need to stand up.
here’s some things you can do from racewire.com
1. Contact BART Director Carole Ward Allen and demand that 1) the officers involved be taken off duty without pay and charged and fully prosecuted; 2) there be an independent investigation of the shooting that includes a review of training and hiring practices; and 3) BART establish an independent residents’ review board for the police Call her at 510-464-6095 or email the BART Directors at BoardofDirectors@bart.gov
2. Call the BART police to complain about the officers’ conduct and demand immediate action: Internal Affairs: Sergeant David Chlebowski 510.464.7029,dchlebo@bart.gov; Chief of Police: Gary Gee 510.464.7022, ggee@bart.gov
Call them toll free at 877.679.7000 and press the last four digits of the phone number you wish to reach.
3. Talk it up on your blogs, networks and talk radio shows (call Michael Baisden 877-6BADBOY or Rev. Al, etc. to get this on the national radar)
4. Stay tuned for other actions, protests, etc., especially if you are in the Bay.
